7 April 2018, Melbourne Town Hall, Melbourne, Australia
Magda:
I don't want to put pressure on the next person, but the J in his name stands for joke machine. Please welcome the captain and first speaker for the negative, the sparkling, Sammy J.
Sammy J:
Well, thank you so much, Magda. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you to all my fellow human beings who are watching this right now, here on this beautiful, vast, mysterious planet that we call Earth. The same planet that created every person you've ever loved, every song you've ever sung. Every kebab you've ever regretted, every grain of sand on every single beach, as the sun shines down on the dolphins, as they play in the waves and yet somehow this planet is still not good enough for the affirmative team who would rather escape to a barren wasteland then stay here and frolic in our own garden of Eden. Course, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, but that's the behaviour that Charlie is putting forward today. After all, he was once a proud citizen of another blue planet in his past.
And tell me my friends, What did Charlie do once he'd made a mess there on that planet? Once he sniffed the winds of insolvency and sold the share price plummeting? Did he stay and defend? Hell no. He jumped on a taxpayer-funded spaceship and made his way to the dusty red plains of the ABC. And now he's stuck there, left wandering alone, looking for signs of life, forced to participate in gruelling experiments to see how much the human body can endure in such a harsh environment, like hosting the New Year's Eve telecast for seven hours straight.
Well, the affirmative team might condone such behaviour, but we on the negative side take a different view. Round of applause for my teammates Dulcé Sloan and Rich Hall. Together we will be attempting to convince you that an actual life here on Earth sure beats a fictional life on Mars. We may indeed have screwed up one planet, but that does not give us permission to screw up another one. My friends, we must stay here and clean up our mess.
I will never forget when I was in my bedroom one day playing and my mother walked in and opened the door and her face just dropped. She was aghast, and it was just chaos in there. I've got to say, there was just Jurassic park figures flying around, the Spice Girls music was blaring, all spices. There were Lion King soft toys strewn across the carpet, just fluff hanging out. It was chaos, it was bedlam and my mother said, "Sammy, you've got clean up your room." This was like two weeks ago, so she had a point. I was going through a rough patch and I don't know about you, but when I'm stressed, I just need to visualise a velociraptor disembowelling Simba. It really helps me. Or any Lion King character. Nala or Zazu or Timon or Pumbaa or Mufasa or Scar or Sarabi. Sarabi for those who don't know is Simba's mother in the Lion King, not that you can tell from the lack of screen time they give her, despite the fact she's the only character to consistently stand up to Scar from the beginning while her useless piece of shit, son, Simba runs away at the first sign of trouble. But that's women in Hollywood for you!
And the point is when my mother told me to clean up my room, did I say, "Oh, don't worry, I'll do a Simba and run away? Did I say, "Don't worry, mom, just build me a new bedroom up the hall. That'll be clean." No, I stayed up. I tidied up my mess. Because what example are we sending to our children if we say, Earth is ruined. Let's move to another planet"? That's not the circle of life. That's the oblong of death. It's avoiding responsibility for a problem that we created.
Now, Charlie talked about the first words on Mars. I want to talk about some words right now. I want to talk about the word, must that is in this topic, that we must go to Mars. Look at that word. It's a fascinating little word, isn't it? I mean M and U are not natural bedfellows yet there they are snuggled up side by side with the S viewing on like a creep and the T pleasuring itself in the carpet. I mean, it's just, it's a creepy little word. It's a four letter word and yet I struggled to think of another four letter word that has done as much damage to mankind as the word must — except maybe tofu, or tuba or Trump, which to be fair, it's a five letter word, but let's not let facts get in the way of our argument now. It's what he would have wanted.
Point is my friends, the word must has been responsible for some of the history's worst abuses. We must conquer that land. We must fight that war. We must dedicate seven days straight media coverage to a bit of sandpaper and a cricket ball despite the fact that indigenous life expectancy is 10 years lower than the rest of us, but don't worry about that because the boys in the baggy green have brought shame on our nation. Real shame, not that silly life expectancy shame, real shame.
"Oh Sammy, don't. No, don't make fun of the boys in the baggy green. Oh, they've had a hard time. The boys in the baggy green. Oh little boys in the baggy green, [baby talk] I just want to gobble you up. Oh, now I'm pooing out the boys in the baggy green. Oh, put them in a little bag and throw away the boys in the baggy green." The boys in the baggy green, they'll be okay, don't worry. They've got an extra 10 years to get over it. They'll be fine.
We must go to Mars. I'm not done with this statement yet. I want to keep drilling down, okay? Because when I'm told I must do something I inspect that something a little bit more closely. What is it I must do. Why must I do it? Why must I do it and who might I ask is dishing out the must in the first place? Well, in this case, my friends, the man dishing out the must for Mars is none other than Musk. That's right. You heard me, Elon Musk. Entrepreneur born in 1971, founder of PayPal, Tesla, and other nonsensical words that would make our grandparents roll in their graves.
But it's most ambitious plan ever has been the creation of the company SpaceX. SpaceX made history in 2012, when it became the first private company to send cargo to the International Space Station. I understand the cargo included seven crates of original flavoured Pringles, the first three seasons of Masterchef on DVD and much to the relief of the astronauts stationed there, the Wi-Fi password.
Anyway, SpaceX got a bit cocky after that first interplanetary home delivery service because now Elon Musk plans to put a human colony on Mars in just six years. That's right. Six years. Humans, Mars. It was an inappropriate use of fingers. I failed my Auslan auditions, so ....
So let's get this straight. Okay. A private company is planning, as Charlie said, to call dibs on Mars. That means there is no rules here. This is uncharted territory. The private company is going to claim ownership of Mars. That means Elon Musk will become the self-appointed CEO of Mars. Although it would surprise to nobody if after a brief cooling off period, he updated his title to Lord of Mars or perhaps Glorious Supreme leader of Mars. And at that point did any of us put our hands up and say, "Oh, sorry, Mr. Musk, sir, I beg your pardon. Just thought maybe Mars might belong to all of us." He would simply laugh and say, "Well then dickhead, build your own bloody rocket ship. P.S., I killed Mufasa."
The fact is you can't argue with a man who is worth over $20 billion. Well, you could, but he would probably destroy you with one of his flamethrowers. Now that sounds like a joke, except for the fact that Elon Musk recently sold 20,000 flamethrowers on his website just for fun against the advice of all safety experts. This is completely true. And that is the man you want in charge of a foreign plant. Of course, I shouldn't be too harsh on Elon Musk. I mean, after all he did recently instal the world's largest battery in South Australia, so he's had experience in bringing new technology to empty lifeless barren lands. Am I right?
Why don't we send all of Adelaide to Mars? Who's with me? Let's do it. Interesting. Interesting response. Let's see what just happened then. I mean, clearly I was joking. I've got relatives in South Australia. I visit oft, and yet interstate rivalry is alive and well here in this country. We delight on hanging shit on each other across state borders. In fact, the history of human experience tells us that distance plus people will equal conflict. And can you imagine what an Earth-Mars rivalry would look like? I mean, they're football fans would probably be super obnoxious and pronounce a handful of words slightly differently like 'castle' instead of 'castle. I constantly bitch about how we stole the spaceship Grand-Prix from them even that was 20 years ago and they should just get over it.
See what no one seems to be asking is who is the, we, in the statement that we must go to Mars? It's not you. It's not me. It's not anyone on this stage. Not even Elon Musk is volunteering. And you know why? Because it's a one-way trip. You're not coming back from Mars. But has that stopped anyone from volunteering? No, it hasn't because right now hundreds of people are on a short list waiting to see if that will be part of the first colony going to Mars. And they're all from different backgrounds, different races, different genders, but it's safe to assume that one thing unites them all and that is that they must have done some seriously disturbing shit here on Earth if their best option is getting off the planet. I would've loved to see the sea of applicants the day they opened the office doors. Just a whole crowd of middle-aged men in trench coats going, "One-way ticket off the planet? Sign me up, yeah. Oh, yes, will there be animals on board?"
Don't groan. When your argument is weak insert a beastiality reference. So I learned that from Cory Bernardi. And even these volunteers aren't evil, okay. Let's just assume even if they do truly believe that they're helping humanity evolve through their sacrifice, it wouldn't stop the rivalry occurring and we know how it would start, don't we?
"Mars to Earth, we are out of fresh milk."
"Earth to Mars, copy that. Did you look in the second fridge?"
"We're storing Gary's body in the second fridge. He died on arrival."
"Sorry to hear that. What about the soy milk?"
"The soy milk is what killed Gary."
"Righty-oh. We'll send fresh milk. That will take 300 days and cost $230 billion dollars. Over and out."
And we'll all be sitting right back here on Earth, going, "We could probably spend that money on hospitals and public transport and slowly the seeds of discontent will be sown my friends before the people on Mars start to be viewed by the rest of us as somehow different, a different race, if you will. Almost, dare I say, less than human. And when you dehumanise someone, you make it easier for people to ignore their suffering. So suddenly when someone says let's invade them and take over the planet, we'll all be like, "Yeah, damn straight. Let's invade Mars." Only one problem though, the people on Mars will have flamethrowers.
Ladies and gentlemen, we must not go to Mars. We must stay here. We must get along and we must clean up our mess. In the words of David Attenborough, "Earth forever." Thank you.