John Howard  rolled over in his sleep and winced as he came into contact with his wife's elbow. 'Whrrupwhhhhaterruupppp,' he grumbled.

'No, you move over,' she ordered.  'I'm already right at the edge.  Typical politician!  Have to have the biggest slice of everything, even the bed!'

Heaving himself into a sitting position, he snarled, 'Dont you start.  I have enough of that at work with Beazley's mob forever accusing me of every crime in the book. '

'Well, keep to your side of the bed and there'll be no problem.'

His bushy eyebrows drew together in a scowl, and pulling on his dressing gown he stormed down the stairs and into his study, where he poured himself a generous shot of Glenfiddich, then slumped into his huge leather chair to contemplate the unjustness of the universe.

He finished his whisky, and debated getting up for another one, but the warmth of the fire and the whisky combined with the comfort of his chair made him loath to move, and he drowsed comfortably, Kim Beazley and wive's elbows forgotten.

 'John!'

'Who's that?'

'John!'

'Who's that?  Who's there?'

'John!'

'What's going on?  Who's in here?'

'John, it is I, the spirit of elections yet to come.'  Strangely, he felt no fear or outrage at the intrusion.  He looked around, but didn't see anything out of the ordinary, yet there was no doubting he felt an eerie presence..

'Yet to come?' he asked shakily.  'What about elections past and present?,' proving that he knew his Dickens.

'What has been done has been done, and cannot be undone.  Yet amends can be made and must be made if you are to avoid this.'  The light from the fire seemed to intensify and gather together until out of the flames appeared the front page of a newspaper, proclaiming in a banner headline the news, 'Beazley romps in.'  Smaller print announced 'Howard trounced in welfare backlash.'

'What does this mean?'  asked John, startled.

'It means that if you go on as you have been doing, you will lose the next election by a great margin, and will go down in Australian history as the most despised Prime Minister ever.'

'But what can I do?'

'Have compassion.  Look to the plight of those unfortunates living in abject poverty.'

'What?' he gasped.  What can ex politicians do to hurt me?'

'They are hurting you simply by having their snouts still firmly in the trough.'  The newspaper wavered and transformed into the image of an old lady huddled in a ragged blanket in front of an unlit gas heater.  It wavered again, and reformed in the image of a row of hospital beds lining a corridor, filled with a suffering humanity.  'She is dying, and those patients are waiting for doctors and nurses to take care of them.'  

The next image to form showed a couple of young boys huddled together in a damp alleyway, a predatory shape looming closer and closer to them.  'They can't go home because of parental abuse, yet they are about to discover that there are worse things than that out on the streets.  Substance abuse is to blame and it is the result too.  Very sad'

'Why are you showing me this?'

'Because you are responsible.  You and your cohorts take so much from the public purse that the very people you have sworn to serve are dying.'

'But I'm not responsible for their failures.  I've never seen any of these people before.'

'And you never will again, for they are a dying breed.  But they have one weapon left to them.  The ballot box.  They finally know who is responsible for most of society's ills, and will overwhelmingly vote you out of office next year.  Even you in your ivory tower must have heard of grey power.'

'Is there nothing I can do to avoid this?'  John was almost wringing his hands in despair by this time.

'The measures you can take are countless.  A good start would be free prescriptions, free travel, free home security and exemption from the GST for all pensioners.  Better still, you could scrap the GST altogether.'

'But that's the cornerstone of my policies!'

'And that is the main reason you will be exiled to the political wilderness next year.'

'Is that what I must do?  Will that really divert disaster for me?' asked John.

'It is merely the start.  You must derail the gravy train that is crippling the country.  When politicians leave office, they must no longer be given huge pensions, free travel or any other perks too numerous to mention.  While still in office, they must also be required to pay for their own overseas jaunts.  Fact finding tours!' the ghostly being snorted in derision.  'Have they never heard of the information superhighway?  They can gather more facts in an hour on the Internet than in a whole year of so called fact-finding missions. 

'It is time that the higher end of society started pulling their weight.  Taxes on the upper income bracket must be raised to afford relief for those who have carried this country for so long.  Levy higher rates of tax on their mansions and their status symbol cars.

'And stop this legal slavery you call work for the dole. 

'You must scrap foreign aid and divert all that money into the public health system.  Then the detention centres that are draining the lifeblood from our economy must be pulled down.  The people in them must be sent back to their country of origin immediately or released into the Australian community.  That one I will leave to your own conscience, but the centres must go.'

'But that is impossible.  If I announced measures like that, I would lose my job now instead of next year.'  He was panicking now.

'Not so.  You would have the support of men of conscience in all parties, and Kim Beazley himself would proclaim you the saviour of the nation.'

'I can't give my future over to that...!'

'You will have no future if you do not, in politics at least.'

'No, no, no!'  John screamed, and struggled to get out of his huge leather chair, and found himself kicking at the entangling bed-sheets, his pyjamas drenched with sweat.

'What is it dear?  You having a bad dream?'  his wife asked sleepily.

'It was horrible.  I dreamed I was Scrooge, no, I was me, and it was a ghost in my study.  Thank God it was a dream.  He told me I was insensitive and unfeeling and that I was ignoring ordinary Australians.  He wanted me to do the most awful things.'

'God, you reek of whisky!  You shouldn't drink it before bed, you know that milk is better for you.'

'But I havent had any whisky in days...' his voice trailed off as he took in the look on his wife's face.  He breathed into his hand and sniffed at his palm.  Blanching, he leapt out of bed and ran down the stairs.  Almost fearfully he opened the study door and looked toward the huge leather chair.

There, sitting on the small side table was a single whisky glass.  His hand trembled as he picked it up, and sniffed the fresh dregs in the bottom of the glass.

'Oh shit!' he moaned.  'It wasn't a dream.  It wasn't a dream!'

Reaching out with his still trembling hand, he picked up the telephone and speed dialled a private number.

'Kim?  Its John.  John Howard.  Yes, that John Howard.  Yes, I know it's the middle of the night, but we need to meet urgently.  There are some reforms I have to announce in the House tomorrow, and I'm going to need your advice.'