A GOOD WAR: TURN BACK THE PLANES!

There can be no doubt that Julia Gillard and her government are in deep excreta. She has taken hard hits on refugee policy and carbon tax, to name just a couple. In terms of popularity, she and her government rate just above rancid butter.

The refugee and carbon tax issues are both knotty and complex, and demand far greater scrutiny, insight, intelligence and education than Australians habitually own up to, for which Tony Abbott is only too pleased to give them a pat on the back and shout another round, ably assisted by the Liberal Party's Coalition partners, News Corporation and Alan Jones.

Of course in their more sanguine moments, a space of perhaps a few minutes after a nice lunch and before a Bex and a snooze, most Australians do know that refugees are arriving here because of wars in other parts of Asia, some of which we helped start, and that it is our duty to help out our fellows in distress. And they know that considered in terms of overall migration numbers, and against illegal visa overstayers,  they constitute a trickle to our shores. 

And they know that something real will have to be done about global warming, which almost every boffin on earth is telling them is real and true and caused by us and must be addressed pretty well now, and they know the Coaltion's policy is a non-starter, a people pays the polluter scheme, with absolutely no idea of what to do after a 5% reduction by 2020 - which would never happen anyway. And they may have given some tiny thought to rich shareholders ripping 22 billion dollars in profits out of land that nominally at least belongs to us all, and carting off the booty to the four quarters, and that maybe a bit more of that plunder might help us keep making things and employing people in industry.

They know all that but they still don't care. They want the boats stopped, no carbon tax and no super profits tax, and that's that.

So what to do?

If Ms Gillard were a conservative leader, the path would be obvious. When Mrs Thatcher was in trouble in the early 1980s, and when John Howard was likewise in the early 2000s, what did they do? They did what conservative leaders always do: start a war.

Given that Australia is by no means any superpower, she would have to select a pretty soft target. The Americans are very good at this, well, if you don't count Vietnam.

One obvious selection criterion for a foe would be a nation that threatens our borders with an endless flow of its most criminal, diseased and useless who will do nothing but bludge off the fat of our wide brown land.

This makes the choice crystal clear. Ms Gillard has to turn back the trans-Tasman planes and secure our borders against New Zealand. The RAAF could be scrambled - our armed forces appear to be that much of the time anyway - to repel any attempt to land more New Zealanders invaders here, and then a Gulf of Tonkin style incident could be engineered to provide the spark for Total War against New Zealand.

Given that our easygoing national racism extends even to New Zealanders, it would be a popular war, a good war, and all over by Christmas too. And by extending our national territories, it would give Ms Gillard and Mr Bowen an obvious dumping ground for refugees - the state of New New Zealand.

Simple, really. With all the advice John Howard has been giving Ms Gillard lately, it's surprising he hasn't let it slip.