By Craig Cormick
Based on highly reliably international contacts, leaked documents and horoscopes from several TV magazines, Nostradamus' Media Watch presents a highly accurate forecast of political events across the globe.
Liberal employment scheme
The Liberal Party, responding to the government's employment initiative Working Nation, hit back with their own targeted employment scheme.
Unlike the Labor Party's various schemes to promote training, or simply wrap up welfare benefits by another name, and vastly increase the numbers of people employed in advertising — the Liberal Party's scheme, according to the party, offers genuine benefits.
The scheme, Working Notion, works by recruiting Australia's several hundred thousand unemployed through the leadership of the Liberal Party, providing each with an honest day's work, work experience (of a kind) and — who knows — maybe even a few original ideas for the Party.
Royals in royal panic
With the British Labour Party climbing daily in the polls and threatening to abolish large numbers of petty royals, there is panic in the richest estates of the UK.
Those royals under threat hire an advertising agency to promote them to prospective employers. Their credentials encompass being able to drink expensive champagne and talk a lot of drivel about good breeding, and the ability to smile at cameras and look comfortable while being driven by a chauffeur.
The Australian Liberal Party, impressed with these credentials, extends its Working Notion employment initiative to take in the royals, offering them a chance at leadership of the Liberal Party.
Boat people crisis
In March, 10 Chinese boats arrive off the northern coast of Australia, causing a panic amongst Australian immigration authorities.
While all relevant ministers are busy giving TV interviews, denying they have no coherent policy relating to the boat people, and insisting that the situation is under control — they land at a Club Med in the Territory and are rounded up by club staff for not having a suitable standard of dress.
The 457 new arrivals are locked up in a quickly erected detention centre at Pine Gap, where they are given medical examinations by army doctors, fed on McDonald's from the local franchise and given access to several televisions locked onto CNN.
The government then passes legislation banning people from China arriving in northern Australia, in a month with more than four letters in it, in a Chinese-made boat, from making a refugee or immigration application.
However, before they can be forcibly repatriated, the boat people apply for refugee status in Switzerland, and are granted it, on the grounds that they have been unreasonably persecuted by the Australian government.