The thing that really gets me about Australian politics right now is not just that we are getting so severely screwed, it’s that we are getting screwed by such dingbats.
I mean, you cannot check the news on any given day without being smacked in the face with the latest utter insanity from one, or frequently, multiple members of the Abbott government.
And it is not even contained to this country. No, our rulers, not content to work hard every day kicking a dozen kinds of shit out of us, seem absolute determined to put in some decent overtime and, to rub salt into our wounds, blunder around the world stage spouting incoherent gibbering like an embarrassingly drunken uncle at a children’s party.
We’ve to put up with the glorious spectacle of Prime Minister Tony Abbott telling the British media his carefully considered view that supporters of the “Yes” vote in Scotland’s September 18 independence referendum were “enemies of freedom and justice”.
Well, yes, Tony. Absolutely. Letting Scottish people exercise their right to national self-determination is pretty much the greatest threat to freedom and justice the world has face in fucking ages.
And no doubt, when history records the worst violations of freedom and justice, few examples will stand out more than Pol Pot’s Cambodia killing fields, Suharto’s East Timor genocide or that time they let the Scots vote on becoming a fully fledged independent state.
In the aftermath of Abbott’s unwanted and, frankly, batshit crazy intervention, it was probably no surprise that the next reported poll showed record high support for independence — up to 48% once the undecided were taken out.
Their excuse for absolutely everything is that it’s all Labor’s fault. The budget emergency that economists say is not even real? Labor’s doing.
Jailing children in prison camps condemned by the United Nations as hellholes breeding despair, mental illness and self harm? Labor’s fault — despite the fact that all Labor did in this regard was continue the same basic inhumane policies of the previous Coalition government.
Hell, Abbott even managed to blame the drugs in sport scandal that broke last year on Labor, accusing it of seeking to “blackening the name” of the nation’s sporting elite.
No doubt Abbott also blames Labor for Australia coming in well behind England in the Commonwealth Games medal tally in Glasgow, but then again, I suppose it must be hard for our athletes to perform when surrounded by a population of which at least 48% are certified freedom-hating bastards.
But even Abbott outdid himself in response to the scandal at the Independent Commission Against Corruption hearings, which are exposing an ever-growing number of Liberal MP and officials for taking bribes from developers.
Yes, according to Abbott, even widespread corruption among high-ranking figures in the NSW Liberal Party is Labor’s fault.
Yes, if only those Labor bastards, under intense pressure due to their own deep-going corruption scandals, finally decided to make it illegal in NSW for developers to buy politicians, then there would be no problem.
If we just made bribery legal, there’d be no crime! You should try that if you ever find yourself in court for any crime whatsoever. Got caught stealing a car? Just insist that the real “problem” is those red-tape obsessed lawmakers who banned car theft in the first place.
I am sure, if he tried hard enough, George Pell could figure out a way to use this defence at the royal commission into systemic child abuse within the Catholic Church.
But, strangely, there are exceptions to the “it is all Labor’s fault” line. A fine example was provided recently by treasurer Joe “the poor don’t drive” Hockey.
You see, Hockey is pushing his budget that seeks to deny unemployed people under 30 about $225 a week of Newstart allowance for six months, you know, because there is a “budget emergency” and we must all share the “heavy lifting”.
Only it turns out Hockey is claiming $270-a-night in taxpayer-funded travelling allowance to stay in a Canberra house majority-owned by his wife.
The August 17 Daily Telegraph said Hockey defended this on the grounds that “it is an entirely legitimate practice embraced by scores of Labor MPs”.
So it seems not everything Labor does is wrong after all! Sure, banning outright bribes by developers is a pretty big black mark against it, but when it comes to snouts in the trough, Labor provides plenty of wonderful examples that deserve to be emulated.
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