Ok, let’s get everything clear. You’re a very, very privileged person and any attempt to create another narrative, I’m going to shoot down because, well, let’s be real here.
Growing up, did you have an indoor toilet? No. Well, did you at least have one that was close to the house? Did it flush? I mean, did you flush all that perfectly good drinking water down the toilet. You lucky bastard! Don’t you know that a large number of the world’s population have to travel miles to get water that you wouldn’t be prepared to use to wash your car…
And that’s another thing. You have a car? Or a telephone? Or a TV? Computer? You rich bastard…
Now let’s pause and acknowledge that almost nobody reading this will be completely exempt from what I said above. Some of you may be able to tell me how hard it was to go outside to that toilet after dark… I know that I needed my Nanna or my mother to go and wait with me until I was a certain age. I don’t know how old I was but I left home at sixteen so I’m pretty sure I’d stopped asking my relatives to check that the spiders hadn’t dragged me in…
Like Bill Shorten, my life is one of privilege and deprivation. This isn’t unusual. And the narrative you choose to tell will depend on the narrative you understood as you were growing up. And yes, I can tell the story of my outdoor loo. And yes, of course, my Nanna and my mum spoiled me by waiting outside when I was too young and scared to go out there by myself.
Of course, as I tell you about my childhood, I am aware that almost nobody will tell me that the particular part of that narrative I have chosen is untrue. Nobody will suggest that I’m “inventing it”. But then I’m not standing for public office and I haven’t told Murdoch to shuffle off and spend your last years with Jerry and just stop trying to control the world.
Nobody checked to see if Jen Morrison really didn’t take medication when she was depressed. Or even if she was really depressed and not just a little sad that she’d been stuck with Scott. Nobody checked when Peter Dutton’s wife said he wasn’t a monster at home.
No, that would have just been wrong. But they decided to trample all over Bill’s memory of his mum.
Forget the politics. What scum these people are! How dare they lecture us about how the “tone” of political debate has been lowered when they’re the ones who lower it at every opportunity.
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: “We all born in the gutter, but Rupert Murdoch has made billions by telling us to look at the ones from Fox studios and then go back to the gutter and read my newspapers!”
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