The old Christian calendar to disappear. — Men from Mars now from “fourth planet out.” — Language gets a new name. — Monarchy disestablished and replaced by national beer.
Australia’s ruling labour party has had it with religious influence. They have decided to secularize their country once and for all.
“Changing the calendar to ‘common era’, didn’t go far enough,” claimed Australian PM Julia Gillard “we needed erase all trace of religious influence from daily life.”
The legislator explained that the world had many non-Christian, non-Western calendars. “The Romans counted time from the founding of their city, the Revolutionary French from the founding of their Republic, and even the Javanese had their own argy-pargy calendar.” Gillard went on “why shouldn’t Australia exhibit its national pride with a secular calendar?”
There was debate on when this Calendar would date from. “We decided to start the year from Australia Day.” Gillard said, “That was pretty much agreed right away.”
Which would be Australia’s ‘year one’ involved more debate. “Some members wanted to bring in an archeologist to determine when the first Aboriginal settled in Australia.” Gillard groaned, rolling her eyes, “However, as most party members are descended from convicts, we decided the arrival of the first convict ship would be our year zero.”
Gillard further went to point out how the current Christian, or Common Era, calendar, had no year zero. The Prime Minister put this down to “superstition.”
“The week now has ten days, as we’ve partially decimilized time.” Gillard went on, without being asked, “and if you must know, our Australian months are longer than your archaic superstitious months, and we only have ten of them in a year.”
“We haven’t only rid ourselves of Christian influence,” Gillad assured our reporter, “the days of the week no longer have pagan names. Even the planets have been decimilized, with names like first planet, second planet, etc, all the way up to ten.”
When asked if Pluto is a planet again, she responded that the name comes from superstition. There is no Mars in the Australian night-sky either, in its place is the “Fourth Planet.” Any Martians that may immigrate to Australian will now be known as “men and women from the fourth planet.”
But the new reforms didn’t stop with the Calendar. They have extended to the language. “Using the world ‘English’ is a relic from superstition.” Gillard grimaced. “The ‘English’ supposedly looked like ‘angels.’ Well, ask any Australian and you’ll know that there ain’t no such thing as angels, and if there were they wouldn’t be Poms. Officially, we now call our language Australian, and the dialect that dominates Britain is ‘Pomonian.'”
To complete the transition to a truly secular state, the Australians have decided to officially excommunicate the queen. “Though there’s no church of Australia” says the Prime Minister “the Queen keeps talking all this religious nonsense, with phrases like ‘Love thy Neighbour’.”
The Gillard Government, wishing to replace the Queen with a more secular symbol, looked for someone who never mentioned religion, but they couldn’t find one. So, they decided that the new head of state would be a national keg of beer. “This keg is to sit in the house of commons, and be replaced every time it gets empty.” Says the Prime Minister. “Each State will have its own keg, which will be filled and emptied on a regular basis.”
(There may be a need to change the flag some time in the future. For now, the saints whose crosses are being represented in the Union Jack in the corner are officially known as “life coaches.”)
So, there you have it. Australia is now more secular that the French Republic. Vive l’Australie!