From Port Havannah, Vanuatu: What have you missed? If you’ve had a gutful of trending politics like me, probably all of it. Every day brings another story about how the Albanese government is driving the cost of living through the roof. Labor has become the proverbial ‘passion fingers’.

Exhausted by press releases and nauseated watching Labor’s pitiful social media campaign (designed to bombard taxpayers with so much Budget propaganda that they eventually fall in love it), we went off to Port Havannah in Vanuatu for a week. It is the first time I have had an actual holiday in nearly 40 years of adult life. I turned my phone off and drank Piña Coladas like they were going out of fashion (if that’s possible).

There’s no point saving money while Labor is in power. I figured they’ll take it off me somehow. So off we went.

The trouble is, we ran straight into a microcosm of Labor’s bullshit in Vanuatu.

It’s a stunning place and we’ll definitely go back, but even paradise has its quirks.

The non-political one first. Did you know that the last time cannibalism, in its traditional form, was carried out there was in 1969? Within living memory.

I wonder, if one can have generational trauma for decades, how long does it take to rid oneself of the macabre taste of one’s own species?

But that’s not half of it. Vanuatu has a Ministry of Climate Change. Photos or it didn’t happen, you say? Here then:

Just like the Australian Labor government, it’s a complete farce.

[Editor’s Note: Yes. They were in the news all week following the UN adoption of the ICJ ruling for a case brought by Vanuatu. As our Canberra Vanuatu correspondent, where is the interview? All you filed with me were photos of yourself in an infinity pool. Headless. I will be publishing this in the article as punishment.]

More than 80 per cent of Vanuatu’s electricity is created by diesel generators, yet they don’t produce their own fuel. They’re a struggling developing nation playing games, in my view, to prop up their national finances.

Meanwhile, Australia is an advanced economy playing the same games – only we’re getting fleeced to fund things that will ultimately ruin us.

The parallels hit me straight away in the bus-driver rants.

At Sydney Airport, our bus-driver waxed lyrical about how ‘the Chinese own everything’. The one in Vanuatu hit me with the same rant, only in a Bislama twist. (Bislama is the national language, a pidgin-creole.)

Funny thing is, I didn’t see any real evidence of this beyond a few Chinese traders and restaurateurs with excellent merchandise and kai kai.

Meanwhile, Albanese’s steering of the ship of state lately reminded me of our coxswain, Harry, who tried to piss in our pockets with one hand while pinching our trolled kai kai with the other. We caught a couple of bonito for sashimi, then a fish that looked like a red snapper. Harry swore he’d eaten it before and it was good – until he wasn’t so sure. When we handed our catch to the chef, he suggested we keep only the bonito. Turns out we’d caught a local delicacy: the poulet fish. Smells like fish, tastes like chicken. In Tusker beer batter it still haunts me – nothing that good will ever come again.

So, in Vanuatu we navigated Harry being gammon.

Playing tricks on each other is their version of taking the piss like Australians used to do. And while nobody likes to be duped out of some good kai kai, the earthquake we experienced at the airport just before we flew out brought the reality home. Nobody begrudges Vanuatu for doing what it has to do to help its people survive.

But that’s the problem. As a conservative newsletter pointed out today, when you get to the point of such a surplus that you have no real problems, the problem-solving instinct kicks in and you start making up problems to solve.

Idiocy hit the roof last week…

In Senate Estimates, the Sex Discrimination Commissioner explained to Michaelia Cash that transwomen, aka biological men, may be discriminated against for being able to become potentially pregnant. (I have since suffered through listening to Labor luvvies trying to explain the situation to a bewildered friend.)

If Australian law is willing to lose touch with biological reality (or reality in general), I might consider taking out the sole parent pension for the theoretical possibility of a potential child.

The end result of this nonsense news week is One Nation clambering to the top of the pops! Labor’s let-them-eat-sh*t budget has resulted in no one being happy. It is a discontent that unites the social, economic, and philosophical classes of Australia.

But that doesn’t mean One Nation is in the clear. The freshly minted Member for Farrer will be flying three national flags instead of one.

Which reminds me – every other car in Vanuatu flies a large flag. Turns out they’re not national flags at all, they’re the flags of their favourite World Cup soccer teams. Brazil was clearly number one.

I hope you had a break from last week’s drudgery: our heritage being sold up the wazoo, gender confusion in workplaces, and the worst budget ever. Even with Angus Taylor and Tony Abbott back at their respective helms, the Coalition is still slipping backwards (along with Labor). One Nation is on the rise, and even Joe Hockey says it’s because the majors have lost the plot.

Give me Harry and his joshin’ about our fish any day. I hope you had a break from the rot, cause it’s only going to get worse. Give me an infinity pool overlooking a late-autumn tropical wonderland while reading Jack London’s South Sea novels any day.

I’ll even put up with Harry’s gammon fish identification skills.

Being back in the cold with the reality that my latter years look bleak under Labor is enough to make me sell up and move to Vanuatu. Did I tell you there’s no income tax there?

Dr Michael de Percy @FlaneurPolitiq is the Spectator Australia’s Canberra Press Gallery Correspondent. If you would like to support his writing, or read more of Michael, please visit his website.