Ian Warden: The No campaign's horror movie

The bulletin's horror-item-in-chief showed Liberal frontbencher Senator Michaelia Cash leading a frenzied flock of 1000 Liberals (and I use the word "flock" advisedly here) in repetitive chants of "If you don't know, vote 'no'!"

The ever-excitable Senator Cash was rabble-rousingly addressing the WA Liberal's launch at Ascot race course of the campaign calling for a "no" vote in the coming referendum on the Voice.

Not that this rabble needed much rousing. Already No-mindedly roused they had begun queueing "hours before the event began" The West Australian reported, noting that the rapt flock for this official WA launch of the "no" "dwarfed" the official WA "yes" launch "by more than two to one".

A host of zealous, revved-up Liberals, baying for some cause dear to its hard, spiteful Liberal heart, is always an appalling and unforgettable spectacle.

Alas, at 77 I am not as nimble as I was (and in any case was pinned to my couch by the 30-kilo mongrel dog sprawled across me) and so could not spring to the remote in time to turn this horror movie off before it could malignantly etch itself into my memory.

It all reminded one not only of the Skyhooks' classic but also, with the repetitive chanting of "If you don't know, vote 'no'!" of that passage in George Orwell's Animal Farm where the artful ruling pigs lead the simple and easily-brainwashed farm animals (and especially the farm's flock of sheep) in a chant of "Four legs good! Two legs bad!"

The two chants, the two slogans, have an eerie similarity. They share not only their mindless banality but also the virtue of being of only six words and so being intellectually undemanding for sheep and sheep-like simpletons to learn and remember.

And how disgusting the adoption of a slogan that encourages the cultivation in ignoramuses of a deeper, amoral ignorance.

Alternative versions of "If you don't know, vote 'no'!" conveying much the same sentiment might be "Thick as two planks? Vote 'no' thanks!" or "Lazy and feckless? Reject the 'yes'!"

Then, for animals a little smarter than sheep and so able to memorise slightly wordier slogans perhaps "Too dumb to be bothered to think or read? Make sure you don't let the 'yes' succeed!" Then there's "No moral compass? Lost your way? Follow the 'no' signpost on voting day!"

Some of the TV news horror movie surreality of the chanting of the WA flock had to do with the zeal, the fervour of the chanting.

From the slogan's plain, irreproachable words, read on a page, you'd think it a mildly mused sentiment of mild regret at being too muddle-headed a wombat to be able to make one's mind up about something.

But instead, as belted out, as bayed and baaed by the conservative, white, bourgeois choir at Ascot race course, the words became not an expression of not knowing at all.

No, they became instead a raged expression of knowing exactly that one is righteously outraged by the thought of ever showing these undeserving First Nations people some special justice and generosity of spirit.

READ MORE IAN WARDEN

Surreal clichés are the best clichés of all (all other sorts of clichés are not worth the paper they're written on and should be avoided like the plague).

TV-coverage commentators of the FIFA Women's World Cup matches liked to gasp, when a shot ricocheted away off the frame of a goal, that the defending side had been "saved by the woodwork".

Yes this is a cliché but for surreality lovers it is as well a lovely, poetical notion.

It asks us to imagine that a football goal's posts and crossbar become so emotionally engaged with, so loyal to the defending team they feel they are part of, that they join in the match, making the goal's space a ducking, leaning, shapeshifting space.

Some fine fiction writers do something like this when

they give activity and opinions and emotions to objects,

often furniture in rooms, we wrongly assume to be inanimate and without rich lives of their own.

In his poem The Mirror In The Hall C.P. Cavafy reports how "an enormous mirror, very old" in the entrance

hall of a grand mansion is much more than a fixture and feels deep feelings about the "thousands of things and faces" it reflects. The Mirror in the Hall poem - Constantine P. Cavafy (best-poems.net)

What a heartfelt thank you, then, the nation owes the activist woodwork of the goal used in the now legendary Matildas vs France quarter-final 20-penalty penalty shoot-out! On the 19th and penultimate penalty the woodwork of one loyal post inched just far enough to its left to block and deny a French penalty kick.

This enabled the Matilda's Courtnee Vine to then win the match with the very next penalty kick. Observant fans noticed how, as Courtnee ran up to kick, each of the goal's partisanly Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie posts leaned away a little so as to helpfully enlarge Courtnee's target for her.

Australians all let us go rapturously berserk

When our footballers collaborate with 'our' woodwork.

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