With Sophie Mirabella yesterday comparing Julia Gillard with Colonel Gaddafi adding to a long list of indiscreet comments by Liberals, Barry Everingham wonders what's happened to the once proud Liberal Party.
There seems to be an un-Australian vein of evil running through the ultra-far Right conservative section of the Liberal Party, which surmounts what happened to the Liberals under John Howard.
As each day progresses, it seems Tony Abbott can’t stoop lower—his behaviour in the Parliament disgusts, but as a new day dawns and gets longer, down and down he sinks even further.
The malaise has turned really nasty with two MP’s getting death threats—the mild mannered Independent, Tony Windsor, and the Greens leader Bob Brown are targets. It’s a safe bet the threats are organised somewhere deep in the bowels of the Right; who else would be so egregious?
Then, to bring a new low to the debate, along came Cory Bernardi, the Muslim-hating darling of the ultra-extreme Right, tipping a bucket all over one of the world’s oldest religions, whose followers worldwide can be counted in the billions.
And who wouldn’t sack this clown from his front bench?
Right.
The self-professed Christian, the Opposition leader Tony Abbott, that's who—whose silence was just as deafening when Scott Morrison, another Christian – but one of the happy-clapper crowd – begrudged the money spent flying the relatives of those who drowned trying to get to Christmas Island to their funerals. He was angry that a little boy, who was in the depth of trauma after seeing his parents drown, cost the taxpayer an airfare for him to farewell them. Not much Christian charity there.
But the Liberals weren’t finished just yet, no siree.
Sophie Mirabella was in full flight—she likened Julia Gillard to Colonel Gaddafi. And so did one of the Senate’s other non-events, Eric Abetz.
Now Mirabella is a foul mouthed shrew—and let me explain why.
When she was running for the Victorian seat of Indi she had as her guide and mentor one of the most disgraced and disgraceful conservatives ever to blot the Australian Senate—Noel Crichton-Browne; he was so bad even John Howard distanced himself from him.
But not Mirabella, who had him at her side while she barnstormed the electorate, terrifying the Nationals who wondered why in the name of God the Liberals had preselected her in the first place.
Lest our readers forget, Crichton-Browne described seat sniffer and bra-snapper Troy Buswell’s departure from politics as a “tragedy”.
And in the middle of Mirabella’s quest for Indi, the charmer told a female Press Gallery reporter he’d like to “screw her tits off”.
When it became common knowledge that Mirabella (or Panopolous as she was then) was hanging out with Crichton-Browne, I called the lady and asked if he was her advisor in the run to the election.
“Not really,” she snapped, “but so what? He’s friend and I value his contribution”.
I reminded her of his remarks to the female reporter and asked her what her Greek mother would say if she knew her single Greek daughter was keeping such company, to which the now Honourable member for Indi replied: “Just fuck off” and banged down the telephone.
While I’m on the subject of egregious Right wingers, our old friend, the Indonesian-born Professor David Flint has leaped to Cory Bernardi’s defence—not for insulting Islam, but for being “a man of his word, a man thoroughly of principle and beliefs”.
It’s an underhanded Flint tactic to get at MP’s and Senators who by the stupid Constitution have to take an oath of allegiance although they might be Republicans.
Says Flint: They could not possibly be men or women of their word.
Now Flint’s words might even be an endorsement of Bernardi’s outrageous slur on Islam – which many people might wonder what his own Indonesian Muslim ancestors might think of him – or for that matter what the hundreds of thousands Australian Muslims will be thinking right now.
Just where do the Liberals find these people?
(Read more stories by Barry Everingham by clicking here.)
