ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A group of reporters from the Betoota office of our national broadcaster has been competing to find the most unrelatable, inappropriate subjects for stories they do on the struggles faced by the common Betootanese person.
A recent ABC News package about how interest rates have been affecting the bottom line of our town’s burgeoning middle class, which appeared on both radio and the ABC’s local website, featured interviews with residents that shared experiences that not many people have or could even empathize with.
The reporter interviewed a woman named Emma, who told the ABC that she has had to wind up her bespoke propeller cap business and move back home with her parents because of the increased cost of a mortgage. Not only that, her husband Tenochtitlan and Frisbee, their incontinent 15-year-old Labradoodle, have also moved in with Emma’s parents, who are an elderly gay couple who won Emma in a game of cards. They live in a 6-bedroom renovated ice cream factory that has one of the Diamantina’s last private moats. Her grand-uncle got pushed over by Keith Miller because he was walking too slow down Punt Road one afternoon in the early 1960s.
Not to be outdone by that subject, another ABC reporter set out to beat that.
They found a young middle-class couple that have just been married but have yet to enter the housing market due to the staggering cost. Just before they gave up on them for being too normal, Kevin and Rebecca remarked that they were gifted a deposit by their parents but decided to renege on the purchase at the last minute and spend $90,000 on a round-the-world holiday before spending the remainder of their savings on helping their elderly cat realise her dream of becoming a mother, so they took the cat to Turkey for feline IVF. The cat remarkably fell pregnant at the age of 70, in cat years, and gave birth to a litter of ten kittens. All of which, including the mother cat, asphyxiated in the cargo hold of the Boeing they returned from Turkey in. They’re now sharing a GoFundMe to finance a legal battle against Scoot.
Admitting defeat, the last reporter just opened their wallet and put a fresh $10 note in the office Friday Fun jar.
More to come.
