“Tony Abbott’s election victory give us the chance to push for the repeal of laws stifling our right to free speech, which came under such sinister attack from Labor.” Andrew Bolt

 

“Or at least not to be offended about the things that matter to them, because almost all the sorts of people who like the legislation being deployed against Bolt would be horrified to think that those in the US who are offended by the burning of the American flag ought to be able to prosecute the burners for their offended sensibilities… The only kind of free speech worth anything is the kind that leads to speech that offends people.” Speech by James Allan

 

Did Scott demand: “Get this sh-t off?”

Hell, no. Here, instead, is the ABC’s official excuse for the shot, screened on The Chaser’s The Hamster Decides: “While strong in nature, the segment was consistent with the humour from the Chaser Team and in line with the target audience of The Hamster Decides. The graphic was clearly fake and absurd.”

Yes, the graphic was clearly fake. That’s not the issue. The issue is that it was obscene, humiliating and viciously abusive.

To that, the ABC has two evasive defences. First, “the segment was consistent with the humour from the Chaser Team”.

But if this Dog F—er “joke” was “consistent with” the humour the ABC expected from The Chaser, should it not explain why it knowingly hired the team to consistently broadcast such stuff?

Second, the ABC says the “joke” was “in line with the target audience of The Hamster Decides”. Andrew Bolt

I notice that there were a lot of derogatory comments about Sophie Mirabella on social media, some calling her “witch” and “bitch”. And I do understand how someone who denied the existence of the stolen generations and refused to stay while Kevin Rudd made the apology can excite strong passions. But it does trouble me that many of these people were the same ones who objected to Abbott, Mirabella and company standing in front of the “Ditch the Witch” signs.

In Victoria, our Premier, Dennis Nap-time relies on Geoff Shaw’s vote for his survival – Shaw, who has recently been charged with 24 offences relating to the misuse of his taxpayer funded car. The Labor Party is outraged that the Liberals are being kept in office by a “tainted” vote. Sound familiar? Of course, the Liberals argue that Shaw is entitled to due process and the presumption of innocence. Something I agree with. And believed in the case of Craig Thomson, Peter Slipper, Muhamed Haneef and David Hicks. Strange that it’s only recently that the Liberals have discovered this concept.

Consistency may not be easy to achieve, but it’s certainly something to aspire to. Andrew Bolt may make a living by being so outrageously inconsistent that it gets people talking. How can he seriously be arguing that “The Hamster Decides” needs to be censored because it was offensive while arguing that being told to correct his factual inaccuracies about “white” people claiming to be black is stifling his free speech? (It was “stifled” to the extent that he had the front page of the paper to complain.) Bolt may have a point when says that people are selective in their attitudes to what should be allowed said (not him, of course, the latte-sipping, chardonnay-sipping socialists), but where is his outrage that the commercial networks refused to show GetUp!’s ad?

But in the end, Bolt’s just a mouthpiece and doesn’t really matter. He’ll write what suits his paymaster. It’s the hypocrites that are now running the country that concern me.

We’ll be told that someone on the minimum wage has more than enough, but someone on $150,000 is “struggling”. We’ll be told that the surplus doesn’t matter because the economy needs a boost because Labor left it in bad shape. We’ll be told that low-interest rates are a sign of good management by the Government, or else we’ll be told that rising interest rates are a good thing because they’re a sign of increased activity. We’ll be told that Indonesia just won’t cooperate, but it’s no big deal because the number of boats arriving doesn’t matter now we have Temporary Protection Visas. We’ll be told that it doesn’t matter if Holden stops making cars here because it’s not a viable industry without Government subsidies, but we’ll go on subsidising mining, because without subsidies they may pack up and start mining in the middle of the Cayman Islands. We’ll be told that – in spite of rising unemployment – that there are plenty of jobs out there. And we’ll be told that the number of women in Cabinet has tripled when another couple are appointed, and it was all done on MERIT.

And the strangest thing of all, in spite of the election being a “referendum” on the Carbon Tax, we’ll be told that the Abbott Government have a mandate to do all sorts of other things, as though electing a Party gives them open slather, even for things barely mentioned in their election campaign.