The ant and the grasshopper

ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER

Two Different Versions…. Two Different Morals

OLD VERSION

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house

and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the

summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.  The grasshopper has no food or

shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN VERSION

The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long,

building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the

summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands

to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is

cold and starving.

Channels 7, 9 and 10,the ABC and SBS show up to provide pictures of the

shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home

with a table filled with food.

Australia is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is

allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on the ABC with the grasshopper and everybody cries

when they sing, ‘It’s not Easy Being Green.’

The CFMEU stage a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news

stations film the group singing, ‘We shall overcome.’

The Archbishop of Melbourne then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the

grasshopper’s sake.

Prime Minister Shorten condemns the ant and blames Scott Morrison, John Howard, Robert

Menzies, Capt James Cook, and the Pope for the grasshopper’s plight.

Tanya Plibersek exclaims in an interview on Today Tonight that the ant has gotten

rich off the back of the grasshopper and calls for an immediate tax hike on

the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, Labor in conjunction with the Greens draft the Economic Equity &

Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs

and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is

confiscated by the Government and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends

finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he

is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant’s old house,

crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn’t maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the night, never to be seen again.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now

abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorise the

ramshackle, once prosperous and once peaceful, neighbourhood.

MORAL OF THE STORY:  Be careful how you vote in May, 2019.

I’ve sent this to you because I believe that you are an ant – not a

grasshopper!