It's time to declare war on the sea.

Your-Brain-on-Coffee political reporter Benson Wong recently filed this draft media release from the office of Family First Senator Steve Fielding. It is presented here with original spelling.

When I asked Benson how he found it he laughed heartily, and had his butler give me a "lively thrashing."

    MEDIA RELEASE
    Wednesday August 5 2010

    FAMILY FIRST TO LOWER SEA LEVELS

    Family First Senator Steve Fielding has announced a radical new policy to ensure that Australia is not swamped by rising tides in the next century.

    “It’s so simple,” he said, “I can’t believe Julie Gillard and Tony Abbo haven’t thought of it before.”

    Speaking from his bath, Senator Fielding observed that water levels go up when things are put into the water, thus displacing it. “As a trained and qualified engineer, I feel I can confidently use the word “displacement” without fear of contradiction,” he added. “So if we want the water levels to go down again, shouldn’t we just take more things out of the sea?”

Family First will shortly begin drafting a set of policies to reflect their commitment to the issue. “One policy will be to make fishing compulsory for all Australians. If every Australian catches a fish, that’s the volume of 20 billion fish that will be displaced, causing the ocean to drop dramatically.”

    The policy will also include assistance for oil and gas drilling to be axelerated, which will leave plenty of free caverns where oil and gas used to be for the extra water to go into. “Even if the oil and gas is too much to sell, we can burn off the extra amount and thus force the price of oil back up again, thus causing the demand to rise again, thus causing the extra oil to not have to be burned,” Senator Fielding explained.

    Other measures will include digging a huge sea canal into the land continent of Australia, where the excess sea can flow into freely and be used for crop watering, recreation and other useful uses. In the final phase of the project, Family First proposes the construction of a huge pipe that could pump the excess sea back to Antarctica, where it could safely freeze again and not be a problem anymore.

    “With these sensible measures, Australia could avoid the terribly burdensome and wasteful costs of an emissions trading scheme AND enjoy the security of not drowning,” Senator Fielding said.