It will be seen by historians, probably, that this last week sealed Abbott’s doom. His appointment of the needlessly divisive Adam Goode instead of, say, the tactful Noel Pearson or Warren Mundine or Cate Blanchett or Baz Luhrman or Brad Haddin as Australian of the Year; the story of the blinded eyes and burnt hands of a crimeless adolescent Somalian fugitive from genocide and the hiding of available film of this event; the destruction of the Shepparton district for want of the price, per taxpayer, of a single cappuccino in the coming decade; the warning to Toyota, Ardmona and Holden that Australia hereinafter is closed for business; and his attack on the ABC and Turnbull’s defence of it, show a government tottering, and a leadership addled, like none since the final days of Billy MacMahon. Those who want a measure of this dread week should hear Tony Eastley’s interview with Scott Morrison, and the bureaucrato-babble with which he refuses to clarify things by saying what happened and providing video of what happened, and refusing to say how many boats this month, this year, have headed in feverish hope towards Australia and not got there. A new word, scottmobbledigook, arrived in the language and will hereafter, probably, lodge there. It is now certain there has been no more crazed Immigration Minister in our history, repeatedly invading foreign waters with unwelcome smugglers’ boats he bought and thinks are legal and ordering the torture of an adolescent fugitive Somalian worse than he suffered at home, a torture so unpleasing he tried, at twenty, to suicide. It is probable there has been in a century no worse Foreign Minister, shouting at her mortified Chinese opposite number, and lecturing that great country, and significant customer, on its internal politics and territorial claims in the sea at the top of her voice while cameramen, amazed, kept filming. It is certain there has been no worse Education Minister, calling ‘Conski’ a noble system he later embraced, and now mendaciously plans to starve. It is probable there has been no worse Treasurer, refusing to say what decade he would have us back in surplus, and pondering, lately, the privatisation of the most esteemed broadcaster in the hemisphere or, probably, the world, in order to save the Australian taxpayer two dollars a week in perpetuity. And there may have been, old friend, no viler backbencher, ever, than Cory Bernardi, who compared gay marriage to the copulation of beasts. And this week it became apparent how bizarre this hopping and screeching bunch of Neolithic primates is. They would rather kill manufacturing, and with it our economy, than deviate from a punishing neo-Plantagenet crush-the-serfs dogma which all other nations have long since abandoned. All other nations subsidise their car industry; but they do not. All other nations protect their rural sector; but they do not. All other nations are doing well out the social-democrat-humanist approach that Austria, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, India, South Africa and Venezuela adopt and prefer. But they do not. And we will soon go down the gurgler of world history because of their purity of heart and become in ten years the Mexico of Asia. Its time a petition got up to sack them Its time Bob Ellis
Posted on: Sun, 02 Feb 2014 00:48:14 +0000
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