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George Brandis obviously wants two laws

Oh, shoot me, please.

Attorney General George Brandis has:

. . . hit out at criticism of Tony Abbott’s religious beliefs, describing the “ridicule” to which the former prime minister was subjected as “bigotry at its most shameless”.

He is further quoted as saying:

“The incessant sneering and ridiculing of the former prime minister, Mr Abbott, on account of his religious faith was bigotry at its most shameless – made worse, if possible, by the added hypocrisy of the fact that many of those who engaged in that sneering were the very same people who like to pose as the enemies of bigotry.”

Hypocrisy! Oh dear.

This is the same George Brandis who in 2014 (in defence of Andrew Bolt, one assumes) declared that:

”People do have a right to be bigots, you know,” Senator Brandis said.

“People have the right to say things that other people would find insulting, offensive or bigoted.”

So who is the hypocrite, George?

It seems that there are two laws in this country: one for ‘them’ and one for ‘us’.

You can count me as one of ‘us’.

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33 comments

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  1. Peter F

    ‘Liberals’, our Gift that keeps on giving. The spirit of Joh lives on in Qld.

  2. David

    I have posted your article to Twitter Ros, there is no end to the hypocrisy of Brandis, it is a national disgrace this thing is A/G. He is unfit to be anywhere near the law except on the receiving end.

  3. Stephen

    Of course it’s different it is always different when it’s you or others like you. The power of hypocrisy trumps just about everything, and if he was called on it and shown it in writing he still would not see it because it’s different.

    Bigotry is only good when you are the one handing it out, it sucks big time when you are feeling affronted by some one, no pleasure in that, no feeling of superiority, all the noble principles of the right to speak your mind quickly disappear, the plebs are not recognizing their place and showing due deference to their obvious superiors.

    Damm peasants really are revolting little people.

    Stephen

  4. Jennifer Meyer-Smith

    George can be insulted on behalf of Tony all he likes. George conveniently blames us for bigotry against Abbott’s faith. No George, that’s not the reason.

    We are celebrating victory over Abbott’s defeat and the first cracks of the LNP MALadministration for proving themselves just as common as their enemies who they accuse as the Labor faceless wo/men. The MALadministration cannot claim the moral highground for not operating as an effective “broad church”.

    It just makes me happy that we hit home with our condemnation of Abbott’s bigotry, deliberate ignorance and shameful waste of our valued reputation and resourcefulness.

  5. Kaye Lee

    Reminiscent of Tony’s defence of his shnookums Peta. No-one would have found her a controlling bitch if her name was spelt differently…according to him. But Gillard was playing the gender card.

  6. John Fraser

    <

    jesus on a stick ! …… I attacked the idiot Abbott across the board.

    I'm really disgusted that Brandis cherry picks my criticism of the idiot Abbott.

    John Fraser ….. Rome, Italy.

    Where muslims are thin on the ground.

  7. David

    Jennifer well put, you speak for tens of thousands who sit back and suffer in silence

  8. Diane Pearton

    I don’t think that Tony Abbott was ridiculed for his religious beliefs as much as his incompetency, and failure to present his intentions prior to election.
    As far as Abbott’s beliefs go, or those of any other politician, why should we even know about them? Religion should be a private concern, not evident in public discourse.

  9. Brett

    Ahh, leftist presumption at its finest (worst).

    He has every right to take offense at and condemn whatever he likes, including ridicule of Abbott’s obviously stupid religious beliefs.

    What he is not doing, which is what seems to only be occurring within the confines of a few insane individuals’ minds, is claim they have no legal right to ridicule religious beliefs.

  10. Backyard Bob

    Brandis made the philosophically unnoteworthy observation that people have a right to be bigots, much like they have a right to be stupid. He did not say being bigotry was a good or laudable thing. There is no hypocrisy in his statement about Abbott. His mistake was to not take into account that some of the criticism of Abbott as a voice of the Catholic faith came from members of the Catholic clergy. Dismissing their criticism of Abbott as “bigotry” is kind of, well, dumb.

  11. John Fraser

    <

    Brett

    Absolutely right …… just take a look at my Comment above.

  12. Umberto Ledfooti

    It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Soapy, the least competent A-G in Australia’s history, would blurt out yet another smouldering mountain of cheap-labour-conservative hypocrisy. It’s a core part of what makes him and his fellow wingnuts so contemptible and ridiculous – they’re not only out of step with public opinion, but completely out of step with reality.

    Abbott’s xenophobic rant to a bunch of hardline Tories, who were gathered in memory of a dead bunnyboiler wingnut, was so Out There that even they were offended – and some were heard to compare The Sniveling Grub to the neo-Nazi UKIP nasties.

    Still, one has to wonder why these has-been failures of the LNP, like Abbott, or Campbell Newman, or little johnny howard, so valiantly cling to the delusion that anybody with any integrity or intelligence is the least bit interested in what they have to say.

    And if the Tories were stupid enough to pay Abbott for mumbling at them, did they also pay for his air fare, accommodation, and expenses? If not, why not? Or did Abbott yet again – in the tradition of Madame Chopper, and especially Brandis, who rorted parliamentary travel allowance to attend schlock jock Michael Smith’s wedding over at one of the Kathy Jackson / Michael Lawler mansions – put the bill back on the Aussie taxpayers?

  13. John Fraser

    <

    Can I just say that I think Abbotts choice for Governor General should go down in history as another marvellous piece of misogyny.

    Somehow no one in the 100,000 + crowd at Flemington told him that history had been made with a female jockey winning the Melbourne Cup.

    WTF ….. I think I just added a bit more criticism to the Abbott legend ….. and knowing that the Melbourne Cup is a "religion" to all Australians I must be a religious bigot.

  14. David

    While on the thing brandis, an interesting battle is reaching its climax in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in Sydney on Friday.
    The SMH has run the story but can’t help itself, of the countless photos of Opposition Shadow AG Mark Dreyfus who is bringing the case, this excuse for a decent paper runs a picture that is close to an insult as it pertains to the article.
    \.
    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/whats-in-george-brandis-diary-labors-mark-dreyfus-takes-on-the-attorneygeneral-20151105-gkruyq.html

  15. Ella

    Mr. Brandis must be away with the faries making such a ridiculous statement.
    Mr. Abbott was not ridiculed for his religious belifes . He was ridiculed for his ;
    broken promisses
    missleading the voting public,
    and for treating the voting public as if they were iddiots.

    I hope that our new look government learns from the mistakes made by Mr. Abbott.
    Mind you, I am getting a bit tired of hearing “it is all about you …the voter”

    They have talked the talk …NOW let us se them walk the walk!

  16. babyjewels10

    Hoist by his own petard. Loathesome creep.

  17. silkworm

    Someone on Q&A a few weeks ago said the same thing, that people were being bigots for ridiculing Abbott’s religious beliefs. Unfortunately, and laughably, this person gave as an example of this bigotry the labelling of Abbott as the “Mad Monk.” I mean, really! Conservatives are such crybabies.

  18. margcal

    Speaking as someone who has a religious (Christian) faith, my problem with the criticism of Abbott’s faith is that it never went far enough, he was never called out on his practice of it. If he acted according to his so-called beliefs he would never have falsely called asylum seekers “illegals”, he would have released all imprisonned asylum seekers on his first day in office. He would not have had any truck with any financial measures that deprived further those who were already deprived. On same sex marriage he might have considered acting in accordance with the majority of his co-religionists who think the Vatican simply wrong on this.
    He was a bad politician “and” a bad Christian. He did enormous damage and got off lightly.

  19. Kaye Lee

    I find it a tad precious to be talking about poor Tony’s persecution when he has deliberately fired up the whole nation to view all Muslims as terrorists or bludgers.

    And whilst he was talking up the evil of contraception and abortion when we were at uni, he was also having unprotected sex with anyone who would say yes, and happy to leave the woman to deal with the consequences. When he spoke of his daughters’ virginity as a ‘gift’ I thought you sanctimonious patriarchal hypocrite.

    Tony’s religion is a habit rather than a philosophy. It helped him move in the ‘right’ circles.

  20. mars08

    I don’t remember ever sneering at Abbott because of his religion. I never saw the need to examine his personal take on Christianity… mainly because there were oh-so many other reasons to ridicule the babbling moron.

    Oh… poor Liberals… the eternal victims…

  21. Jennifer Meyer-Smith

    Well said, margcal.

    Abbott, Abetz, Andrews (Kev), Bernardi, Brandis (to name the first few alphabetically) are all failed Christians.

    They don’t practise what Jesus teaches. Simple as that.

  22. Backyard Bob

    Saying someone is a “bad” Xian is making the claim that there is an objective notion as to what a Xian is and how they ought be. I contend that such a notion is not sustainable (that’s a polite way of saying “silly”). At best we can say someone does not conform to our personal notion of what a Xian is or should be.

  23. Kaye Lee

    Bob,

    I think that most religions work on the Golden Rule – one should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself. Do you think Tony fulfilled this basic tenet?

    I couldn’t care less about his religious beliefs but I strongly object to them coming into play in legislation like the school chaplain programme not including non-religious counsellors or refusing to approve RU486 and badmouthing the cervical cancer vaccine and his opposition to marriage equality.

  24. Jennifer Meyer-Smith

    I’m prepared to acknowledge your criticism, Backyard Bob, for my subjective notion of what a good Christian is and how the Alphabetical Arseholes don’t measure up.

    However, I’ll do a Dyson Heydon and judge myself according to the “fair-minded, lay observer” objective standards in TURC and deem myself justifiable in my stance because anybody who knows anything about what Jesus teaches, would not condone the Alphabetical Arseholes in any righteous light for their contempt of our socio-economic living standards and the right to survival of the vulnerable on welfare, those seeking asylum (not from Syrian minority groups) or those being bombed on by the LNP neo-con super-power mates in the US and Israel.

  25. lawrencewinder

    Georgie, Georgie, please don’t forget that #1/ we, according to you, you dreary little blimp, have a “right” to be bigots. And #2/ to call Rabid-the-Huns faux religiosity, belief, convictions or faith is to gild the Lily too, too much.
    Go and have playtime with Timmy-Twat-Freedom Man, instead!

  26. Kaye Lee

    “Thousands of migrants are currently stranded at sea on rickety boats, severely malnourished and fighting over what remains of their food and water. Southeast Asian countries are in a stand-off, refusing to rescue the desperate people adrift off their coasts.

    The prime minister was then asked if Australia would help to re-settle any of the thousands of Rohingya refugees who find themselves without a home.

    Nope, nope, nope”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEbIuSxdG1U

  27. paul walter

    Brandis is such a smarmy liar.

    He talks of people persecuting Xtians, a line he picked up from the US Tea Party.

    But what of the attempts at censorship, to deny people fair access to accurate information and news on which to make their significant life decisons?

    What persecution or protection of dissidents will come of his arbitrary surveillance/ detention/censorship laws?
    I think Dr Haneef, Abyan or the likes of Assange are the real markers for what George Brandis is about..not much concern about religious tolerance, the rule of law or thirst for justice for folk who don’t share his background or views.

    He hides his attempts to turn bigotry-laden persecution of variant “others” and viewpoints from the exception to the norm with a faux “concern” sympathy for Abbott, an individual whose Prime Ministership he was apparently instrumental in undermining.

    Guilt till innocence proven and deliberate refusal of oversight of process, of acceptance of accountability or redress for error doesn’t seem the response of someone concerned with the fair go for the underdog.

  28. khtagh

    I’m so over this government, all ‘Truffles Turnbull’ has done is allow these grubs to rehash their own bigotry anew. To compare what Justin Trudeau has done with what ‘Truffles’ has done is the biggest contrast you will ever see in politics. Can we find a Justin Trudeau version in Australian politics please.

  29. Wally

    Kaye Lee

    “Tony’s religion is a habit rather than a philosophy. It helped him move in the ‘right’ circles.”

    Never a truer word has been written about Abbott.

  30. jim

    And then there’s the TPP and it’s Europian cousin the TTIP if these deals are not stopped it’s good-bye environment and it’s good- bye Law and justice;United Nations of which we are apart of has called on all countries concerned in these corporate deals ie… UN calls for suspension of TTIP talks over fears of human rights abuses
    UN lawyer says tactics used by multinationals in courts outside of public jurisdiction would undermine democracy and law Also Protests go ignored ;http://www.globalresearch.ca/mass-european-protest-against-ttip-corporate-takeover-eu-commission-sanctions-revolution-against-law/5486736 per Abbott FU by Lilly Allen.

  31. Carol Taylor

    I cannot for the life of me remember when Abbott was “ridiculed” for his religious beliefs except for his quite odd habit of littering his comments when pseudo-biblical quotes (often taken about of context), and except when his fellow Liberals nicknamed him The Mad Monk.

  32. David

    Brandis is confusing ridicule with facts, deliberately it seems. I have often taken the religious hypocrite Abbott to task for deliberately lying, often several times a day and then attending Mass as a God fearing Catholic. who used the Confessional to get, in his twisted brain, a fresh start to starts the lying over anew. After partaking of Communion of course to show the nation his Spiritual side was alive and well.
    That’s fact and even Brandis isn’t so thick as to not understand the facade Abbott indulged in. There are many instances I’m sure we are all familiar with, Catholic or not, so stick it Brandis, concentrate on explaining your own dirty game,

  33. diannaart

    If Tones had not been religious…. his surname is ‘abbott’ he is demonstrably ‘mad’, hence ‘mad monk’ – whereas Brandis is just a dick, a brandick, not seeing any persecution of Christians here.

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