Arbeit macht frei: - Fredrick Töben

Communist, ecologist and conservationist Jack Mundey was a ratbag and
is now rightly lauded for his environmental vision as one of the great
Australians.
I’ve always loved ratbags. They helped chart my life.
One of my favourite books is Keith Dunstan’s 1979 Ratbags.
Current Australian ratbags are: Bob Ellis, ex-pollies Michael Pratt and
Rob Sawford, councillors Ralph Clarke, Jim Jacobsen and Paul
Wormald, pollies Michael Atkinson, Kevin Foley and Graham Gunn,
Derryn Hinch, Peter Vaughan, Barry Humphries, Jeff Kennett, Paul
Keating, Father Bob Maguire, Johnny Haysman, Andrew Jarman, Geoff
Goodfellow, Phillip Adams, Rex Hunt, Prince Leonard of Hutt River
Province, Corey Worthington, Frank Pangallo, Sam Newman, Wilson
Tuckey and Bob Katter.
Every country town has its fair share of ratbags.
Historical ratbags; Jesus, Herod, Max Harris, Graham Kennedy, Joh
Bjelke-Petersen, John Bray, Don Dunstan, Pro Hart, Jim Cairns, Percy
Grainger, Steve Irwin, Ned Kelly, Jack Richards (former Mayor of
Norwood), Jim Killen, Fred Daly, Frank Thring, Robert Helpmann,
Jack Lang, Captain De Groot, John Gorton, Patrick White, Mo (Roy
Rene) and Bruce Ruxton.
Notice all these ratbags are blokes - women are more conciliatory and
reasonable but female ratbags - ratbagettes - include: Joy Baluch, Anne
Wills, Fiona O’Loughlin, Stormy Summers, Sandra Kanck, Dawn
Fraser, Lyn Breuer and the supreme queen of ratbags, Germaine Greer.
If you believe in the divine right of kings, censorship, the death penalty,
a flat Earth, aliens and most conspiracies, you are a ratbag.
If you admire George W. Bush and Sarah Palin, if you doubt that
Barack Obama was born in America, if you are anti-inoculation, antifluoride,
if you do macrame, sing in a male choir, are a vegan, go to
every local council meeting, are a door-to-door Jehovah’s Witness, a
trainspotter, a bird twitcher, a ferret keeper, a pigeon fancier, or think
products should have more packaging and you don’t recycle, you are a
flaming bloody ratbag.
Smokers are now ratbags.
Viva la Ratbag.
Keep tilting at windmills, unpopular causes must be supported to make
a democracy interesting and worthwhile.
And yes, I’m a ratbag too.
There’s an old poem by that greatest of all wits-anonymous which
celebrates many Australians, including ‘chromos’ and ‘polers’, old words
for harlots and spongers, and here’s the poem;
417