Tokyo Shock Boys, eat your hearts out; you have nothing on our Liberal boys when it comes to performing dumb stunts, like abusing a reporter and then sending her the text.
Or sooling a squad of Border Forcers on unwary Melbourne pedestrians, whose biggest crime is to fail to buy fair trade coffee beans.
Or joking about how climate change will drown out our little pacific whingers — with your microphone on. Dutton, Briggs — what a crack up!
Of course, as with all talent, our boys have to work at it. Make sacrifices. Some even forego their traditional R&R (rest and re-tool) Christmas break, courtesy of our taxes. While their colleagues, plus WAGs (and the odd former staffer), diligently beaver away on business-class OS junkets AKA "fact-finding tours", our own TSB's are hard at it.
It's not easy being a shocker. Our boys must punish themselves regularly to stay relevant and useful. You've noticed? Some see them as vital. After all, geese were a type of ancient early warning system for the Romans.
We've seen some beautiful shows lately. Eric Abetz wrenches himself away from his thesis on the link between abortion and cancer to campaign for an Abbott comeback. Abbott sets himself up, a sad capuchin, high above the others in his monkey pod cell, a leader in exile.
Former Built Environment Minister Jamie Briggs channels his inner ornamental snake to escape his minder, wild-life protector and "climate intellectual" Greg Hunt's watchful eye in the Ministry for Coal. Off the leash, Briggs drops a turd in Malcom Turnbull's honeymoon punchbowl.
#JamieBriggs sharing photos of staffer was worse than the incident in the bar, say lawyers. https://t.co/yXcy2xsmbz pic.twitter.com/tlohVyfGlK
— Financial Review (@FinancialReview) January 4, 2016
Honkers Bonkers Briggs sets off the rest. Top end trouper Nutso Dutton goes ape trying to protect all borders and ends up biting himself in the arse.
We can't blame Nutso Dutton. Decency and common-sense are raised in 'Ethics and Decorum for the Banana Bender Officer' a brief, optional module in Queensland Police training. Nutso Dutton may have easily missed it.
Or else he talked his way through it. Nutso has such a way with words that surely he will now be fast-tracked into Foreign Affairs — if Briggs will let anyone else get a look in. Nutso calls a reporter 'mad fucking bitch'.
Way to go Pete. And, wow, take a bow, Samantha Maiden of the Daily Telegraph. We need more of your sort to keep sport and misogyny top of the flag pole. Bugger any other "national conversation". Let tosser Turnbull and his conga-line of positivity embrace change all he likes. Just, for the nation's sake, don't let go of the real stuff.
Immigration Minister Dutton calls Maiden a "fucking mad witch" not to her face, of course but in a manly, lovingly hand-thumbed and respectful text message. Wrong button! Dutton says she got the message "by accident". Dutton wants to be included in the national security boys' club. Seriously. This latest slip of the thumb will put his weights up.
Dutton's off the hook, no question. But has he bowled his last maiden over? Sam helps out with the sight screen. It was, an indulgent, if not forgiving, Ms Maiden who, reaching for another cricket analogy, called it a "solid sledge", but she has "accepted his apology". Meaning she is happy to encourage more.
Boys will be boys. Shit happens. And, after all, Sam is only a woman, or – as they like to say in the Queensland Police and too many places elsewhere – a "female".
Of course, it's the victim's fault. She asked for it by knocking Jamie Briggs' right to put the hard word on any sheila he chooses. Besides, Jamie had just 'paid her a compliment'. If he says she's got a beautiful body, does she have to hold it against him? Political correctness has gone mad.
Maiden is on ABC radio laughing it all off to show that she enjoyed it, really. And the attention. It is the best damage control Turnbull can muster until he can find a wilted lettuce leaf to give his minister a public flogging.
Journalist Samantha Maiden hopes Peter Dutton won't be demoted over 'mad witch' text mishap https://t.co/k3rcfvvJsa pic.twitter.com/gd70ihybAF
— Federal Politics (@PoliticsFairfax) January 3, 2016
Wyatt Roy will be deputed, meanwhile, to message Julie Bishop to plan a hackathon on how this "change can be turned to advantage".
Our political circus boasts more than a few foggy ideologues, but not all of us are off with the pixies. Some question Briggs' right to circulate "before and after" .02. of our Hong Kong embassy, enabling meeja to republish the images. This reveals the victim's identity and trashes her rights to privacy and safety at the very least.
With a "mad fucking witch" here and a there, Pete Dutton and Jimmy Briggs toil selflessly night and day to discharge their public duty. They know their true function – their reason for being – is to remind us all how sexism and misogyny bubble along below the brew that is our "multicultural society" — a shonky phrase Mal Fraser made up to cover people he said we were happy to have crash our BBQ.
Migrants could bring a plate. Or two. Just as long as they left religion and politics behind. Shut up and listen; immerse themselves in the great Australian spiritual quest for ever more meaningless talk about sport.
Equality? Respect? Wash your mouth out. Most blokes in politics are just footy club jocks with a tie on. And the Ming Dynasty – the great white male club of self-interest – boasts many performers eager to remind us all of what the bafflingly broad church of the Liberal Party stands for — a return to the days when men were men and women were handy making the sandwiches out in the kitchen, or knocking up a plate of scones for your mate to take to the national picnic.
Whatever Pattie Menzies may have said to Robert Menzies in private, his Liberal Party was pretty much a blokes only do. It still is. But Ming would have had the balls to cull Dutton from the national conga line.
Ultimately, like the geese of ancient Rome, Briggs and the boys are a warning to all of us of the monumental injustice of our boys' club's claim to rule everything; of our political elite's deeply rooted misogyny and how, in 2016, it can still tap deep currents of Aussie blokes' fear of women; hatred; how increasingly, alarmingly, the boys are running amok in a way that makes the Tokyo Shock Boys look restrained, refined, even tasteful.
Labor demand Malcolm Turnbull act on Dutton’s ‘boorish’ mad witch comment https://t.co/gdmjikcvKh
— Guardian Australia (@GuardianAus) January 4, 2016
You can follow David Tyler on Twitter @urbanwronski.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
With Samantha Maiden in the news, timely to recall her dogged defence of Abbott's Indigenous lie. https://t.co/4gZdUDb5gh
— IndependentAustralia (@independentaus) January 4, 2016