The phrase UnAustralian has long resonated deeply with the bogan. The bogan knows that it is Australian; indeed, the best kind of Australian. Anyone who disagrees with things the bogan likes is therefore not Australian. QED. However, something has occurred this week that gives us pause, as we consider the possible death of one of the classic bogan-baiting calls of all time. This is kind of like when Liberace died.
Much has been made of the success (and phenomenal ROI) of the mining companies’ campaign against the MRRT, or RSPT, or GREAT BIG ROCK TAX (GBRT) of late, as for a piddling investment of about $22 million, the likes of Rio Tinto, BHP, and Xstrata managed to put the kybosh on a tax that would have cost them as much as $100 billion. Such a meagre investment was all that was required to convince sufficient bogans that their well-being, their incomes, their VERY WAY OF LIFE was at threat because the government sought to tax the extraction of goods that were technically part bogan-owned in the first place.
Do the maths, because the Australian Leisure and Hospitality Group (ALH) certainly have. In other words, Woolworths have. Woolies, who own 75% of the ALH and over 10,000 pokie machines nationally, are ready to take their case to the bogan. They have witnessed the value for money on offer in convincing bogans to act against their own interests, and, in tandem with the Australian Hotels Association (AHA), are ready to punch out a $20 million propaganda campaign to convince the bogan that its happiness and well-being are conditional upon allowing large corporations to run armies of one-arm bandits. Because, like all canny operators in a bogan-facing sector, Woolies have learned that to gamble on the bogan’s stupidity is to make a sure bet.
When the bogan is off capitalising on its $1 litre of milk, it will not pause to consider that this is being subsidised by its grandmother in Armidale, who is tossing the fortnightly pension cheque at Woolworths’ 10,000 machines. Such is the callous ability of the bogan to selectively ignore causality and dwell in the fleeting present. The same callousness is however visibly absent when it is faced with the possibility of having to pay $1 more for a pot of beer so that 300,000 people have a significantly reduced chance of blowing their life savings into a slot attached to a shiny box.
While the likes of Nick Xenophon (that wog bloke) and Andrew Wilkie (that weather bloke) have attempted to combat the situation with facts and common sense, the bogan cares not. After all, they are nothing but greedy politicians looking to curry favour from people that are not bogans. Despite its reasoning faculties being significantly truncated, it knows that there are more bogans than non-bogans which means that it can get pretty much anything that it wants. Even if it means condoning a crippling social malaise that has irreparably damaged tens of thousands of households in its own neighbourhood. What is far more important is its God given right to cheap dairy and beer.
One of the bogan’s true strengths is its ability to tactically ignore facts when those facts are inconvenient to it achieving the requisite amount of awesome, and nowhere is this more pronounced than when gambling. The (Un)Productivity Commission recently declared that 1 per cent of the country’s adult population (130,000 people) are estimated to have severe problems with gambling, while an additional 160,000 adults are estimated to have moderate problems. To the bogan this can only mean one thing. That 290,000 gamblers lost that day, 130,000 of them, the whole dole cheque.
It is this sort of cognitive convolution that the ALH and friends are clearly keen to exploit, And why not? The bogan knows that it has a God given right to blow its “freedom to make individual choices” on the one arm bandit. As can be seen in the adjacent graph, the average Australian spends about 4% of her disposable income on some form of gambling or other. The Boganic Australian, however, top that by a further 50%, indicating their greater predilection for speculation on investments with terrible odds of success and no real information about the topic they’re betting on.
Moreover, the bogan wants to bet to the maxtreme, hence the love affair with the insatiable pokie. As the below graph demonstrates, pokies allow the bogan to gamble at a more maxtreme rate than all other, less awesome forms of gambling. And the bogan knows, the more it attempts something, the higher its odds of success.
Hence, it is infuriating to the bogan that its rights will be taken from it because of the bludging of poorer people than itself. As a result, the clubs and pokies industry figured they were on a sure thing spending a lazy 20 million convincing the bogan to protect its right to gamble.
On this occasion however, we at Boganomics, just today incorporated as Maxtreme Consulting Services Inc, must report that they are wrong.
It’s not because the cause isn’t worthy. Fleecing the bogan of its housing generated wealth is clearly a well-trodden and noble path in Australian corporate endeavour. Nor is it that the bogan isn’t ripe for the picking. The female Bogan in particular has worn an oversized buttock template in the local barstool.
No, the problem is the ALH, or its advertising cronies, have UnAustralianed themselves out of the game with their ad strategy. Let us explain.
All of the advertising associated with the UnAustralian campaign represents the bogan as a battler (see below). Nothing could be further from the truth. The modern bogan is a bludger, that sees herself as a battler. A subtle but crucial difference that means the bogans’ cringe gene cannot be stimulated by images of itself as a local loser. Only upward looking envy can evoke the requisite spirit of self-destruction in the bogan that the ALH campaign requires. The bogan is aspirational, as Honest John Howard understood so well. The trousers with a barstool imprint that are hanging in the female bogan’s cupboard are from Country Road, not Lowes.
The mining campaign understood this implicitly with its smooth-talking array of Eureka bogans defending the right of their brethren to strike it rich. If it hopes to succeed, ALH must immediately pull its campaign and reshoot it with a handpicked set of bogans-made-good. We suggest Charlie Sheen and Pamela Anderson, both of whom, we believe, are available. A scene in which Chuck pours a river of five cent coins into Pam’s cleavage should do the trick nicely.
We strongly recommend that the ALH and AHA teams get in touch with Maxtreme Media, a recently formed subsidiary of Maxtreme Consulting. It is not too late to turn around this worthy cause. Moreover, we fear that to not do so risks destroying the UnAustralian gambit once and for all. It is therefore a threat to the very future of the share of profits in the economy. Such an outcome would be, well, bloody UnAustralian.