the age of entitlement is over – sing it!

It’s another eight-flag day in the capital
Another record broken.
The great nation draped in a cape,
A token of a hundred million
union jacks and seven-point stars
stretched from Geraldton to Cairns
from Hobart to Darwin
And when the age of entitlement is over
You’ll be working from the grave
Hands reaching for the timesheet
Hockey-whipped at the funeral home
“Get up and work nanna”, they’ll shout
From the watchtowers
And when the age of entitlement is over
You’ll be working from the nursing home
18 hours a day, six point five days a week
Hunched over the blinking screen
punching data for the kids.
At a hundred you’ll get a miner’s hat and a spade
And a sunburnt placement in a Pilbara pindan camp.
And then your new career as a Google minion,
an Apple corer, A Bill Gates robot,
or working for the Hockey government
In a vineyard, or cigar factory
When the age of entitlement is over
You’re an electrician’s apprentice at seventy,
or fitting Pink Batts at eighty
you’re a solar-powered burger-hand at Maccas
You’ll be greeting the bright young things at Bunnings
You’ll stand bolt upright
smiling at the Master’s front doors
Weeding the potted colour in the Garden Centre
Leaning on your Zimmer Frame,
at the Centrelink drive-thru
wiping your wrinkly brow
with a flag, searching your pockets
for a 50-dollar Sir-Prince-Phillip plastic coin
to pay your taxes in a recession
that never happened
a budget that’s always in surplus
And when the age of entitlement is over
you’ll be waiting for the pension
when it kicks in - at a hundred and fifty