I don’t know what the fuss is all about with the Australian Day Honours Lists and the Duke of Edinburgh. After the emperor Caligula* broke with tradition around 39AD and appointed his horse as a senator I can’t see why another deranged madman, 2000 years later, shouldn’t do a similar thing and award a knighthood to a genuine ass: it makes perfectly reasonable sense to me. And the decision is a long overdue one. An unmistakeable and very affectionate nod in the direction of our much-cherished Italian community, reflecting and reaffirming our shared Greco-Roman heritage.
So I’m firmly of the belief that Tony Abbott – with whom I don’t always agree – has this time got it absolutely right. The Prime Minister may be an idiotic climate-change denier, and he may have refused (to my great dismay) my secret, repeated requests to bomb the Lakemba mosque and hang Waleed Aly, but bestowing this honour on the Duke was a great ‘captain’s pick,’ and entirely reasonable under the circumstances (insanity).
*Caligula: Roman Emperor (31-41AD), democratic reformer and leading human rights advocate.