Politics

Abbott’s worst week

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IT WILL BE SEEN by historians, probably, that this last week sealed Abbott’s doom.

His appointment of the needlessly divisive Goodes instead of, say, Noel Pearson or Cate Blanchett or Baz Luhrmann or Brad Haddin as Australian of the Year; the story of the blinding and the burnt hands of a crimeless Somalian and the hiding of available film of this event; the destruction of the Shepparton district for want of the price, per taxpayers, of a cappuccino in the coming decade; the warning to Toyota that Australia 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 McMahon.

Those who want a measure of this should hear Tony Eastley’s interview with Scott Morrison and the bureaucrato-babble with which he refuses to clarify things by providing video of what happened, and refuses to say how many boats this month, this year, have headed towards Australia. A new word, scottmobbledigook, arrived in the language and will hereafter, probably, lodge there.

It is now certain there has been no crazier immigration minister in our history, repeatedly invading hostile foreign waters and ordering the torture of a Somalian worse than he got at home, and so unwelcome he tried to suicide. It is probably there has been no worse foreign minister shouting at her mortified Chinese opposite number and lecturing that great country, and significant customer, on its internal politics. It is certain there has been no worse education minister — calling ‘Conski’ a system he later embraced, and then proposed to starve. It is probably 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 this hemisphere in order to save the taxpayer two dollars a week in perpetuity.

And there may have been no worse 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 primitive dogma that all other nations have 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 approach that Austria, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Scotland, Ireland, Canada and Venezuela adopt. But they do not. And we will go down the gurgler because of their purity of heart.

It is time a petition was got up to sack them.

It’s time.

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The originals of John Graham's art, featured in this piece as well as elsewhere on IA, are available for purchase by contacting the editor at editor@independentaustralia.net.

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