What is the connection between parliamentary booze and Nazis?
Denial, obfuscation and manipulative gaslighting. The pulling of wool over eyes.
First, the Nazis.
On Saturday 19 February 2024, well-known neo-Nazi and active National Socialist Network member Nathan Bull posted a selfie of himself with Victorian Senator Ralph Babet, time and place unspecified.
The caption read: ‘Heil Ralph Babet, Heil our people.’
It can be interpreted that Bull is giving a cheeky half-Nazi salute, just not the full stretch, a gesture recently deemed illegal under Victorian law.
Babet, of course, knows nothing about this — no idea who this bloke is.
The Senator told The Age:
Hundreds of people per month ask for a photo with me everywhere I go.
"Are you Ralph Babet?" "Yes, I am." "Can I have a photo?" "Okay, yeah, sure." That's the extent of it. "See you later, bye."
Babet has spent plenty of time hanging out with Craig Kelly in the world of the fringe but seems not to have paid any attention to the identity of a well-known NSN member from his home state of Victoria who had recently been a feature splash in the Murdoch media.
Babet is also a fan of the mouthily-named Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, AKA Posie Parker, British anti-trans activist and professional self-promoter.
After Kellie-Jay’s Canberra rally, the one where Senator Lidia Thorpe generated more free publicity by bluing with police, News.com.au reported:
Ms Keen-Minshull, who goes by “Posie Parker”, was supported by Pauline Hanson and party mate Malcolm Roberts as well as United Australia Party’s Ralph Babet.
Senator Babet said it was “cowardly” no one from the Coalition had turned out to support Ms Parker.
Meanwhile, those gathered opposite loudly chanted “Posie Parker you can’t hide, you’ve got Nazis on your side” — in reference to the neo-Nazis who joined her rally in Melbourne on the weekend.
In March 2023, The Guardian reported:
‘Anti-transgender activists clashed with pro-transgender rights activists outside Victoria’s parliament on Saturday after an event held by the controversial UK gender activist Kellie-Jay Keen. A group of about 30 men from the Nationalist Socialist Network marched along Spring Street, repeatedly performing the Nazi salute.’
Maybe Babet didn’t know all the Nazis at Posie’s Victorian rally, maybe he had never met Bull, but as a Senator, he really should be more careful who he is seen with.
The smell of gas lingers.
Now the booze.
Nationals Senator Perin Davey, she of the slurred words in Senate Estimates, reckons she’d had just two glasses of wine before her very iffy performance.
Even shock-jock Ray Hadley, 2GB’s “little Ray of darkness”, reckons the Senator was “full as a state school” and surmised the glasses must have been the size of buckets.
Until it hit, Davey had no idea a storm was on its way.
Sky News reported:
‘One day before it was revealed Nationals Deputy Leader Perin Davey had been drinking before a Parliamentary Committee, she took to social media to proudly post a photo of a large glass of red wine.’
The Nationals closed ranks and put up the smokescreen.
A headline in The Australian read:
‘Dutton defends Davey after her pre-estimates glass of red confession.’
As reported in The Canberra Times:
Nationals leader David Littleproud has declared he supports his “mortified” deputy Perin Davey “wholeheartedly”...
“It was a long day and I think we all slur our words from time to time.”
“I’ve spoken to Perin a number of times over the weekend and she obviously has been upfront, she had a couple of drinks as most of us do to wind down and make sure that it’s within the prescribed environment, that no one goes beyond that.”
Sure. If you say so.
Then maybe the biggest gaslight of all.
Not Barnaby blaming his public concrete lie-down on mixing meds with booze, that is simply an admission of stupidity and lack of self-control, but his preposterous claim he is giving up booze for Lent.
Lent! Barnaby!
Who left the gas on?
Ross Jones is IA's investigations editor and the author of 'Ashbygate: The Plot to Destroy Australia's Speaker'. You can follow Ross on Twitter @rpzjones_fin.
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