Day to Day Politics: The mouth that roared has come ”unfixed”
Thursday 29 June 2017
To hear that the job of the Leader of Government Business in the Lower House Christopher Pyne (also known as “The Fixer”) is in jeopardy following yet another outbreak of foot in mouth disease is unsurprising.
This time it is over a leaked audiotape where he, with the aid of a few drinks, champions that the moderates have control of the party room and that a vote on Marriage Equality would be brought on sooner than later.
The outcome is that there are calls for the Prime Minister to dump him as leader of the House of Representatives. As should the three ministers involved in the contempt of court scandal.
But the problem for Malcolm Turnbull is not that a mouth filled with alcoholic misguided utterings let it all rip, but rather that he confirmed the fact that there is a left versus right war of attrition being waged in the Coalition. One that will determine the future of both the Liberal and National parties.
The problem with having a big mouth is that it continually gets you into trouble. John Howard recognised this with Christopher Pyne and never considered him for a senior position in the Parliament. Abbott – when PM – thought both he and Mirabella were front bench material. Good judgment there!
Pyne in particular gives the impression that he is so mean that if you paid him a compliment he would ask you for a receipt.
He has a capacity for foul-mouthed venomous invective that fortunately has escaped most Members of Parliament.
Remember when he called either Shorten or Burke a cu@t (it’s on YouTube) on the floor of the House? It is uncertain which one he was addressing but the word he used is categorically, unambiguously and incontestably the one in question.
Or did your ears deceive you when the then Speaker, Bronwyn Bishop, did not to eject him for vulgar crudity was not only incompetent, but also unforgivable?
Then he instructed Bishop with a hand gesture to rise from her chair when rapturous applause once broke out from the Opposition benches (the Speaker rising indicates that the House should come to order).
His denial of the use of the word only inflamed the matter further enhancing his reputation as loud-mouthed grub.
In that instance he openly displayed his contempt for the Parliament, his belief in his own self-importance, and control of the Speaker.
She in turn exhibited her disgraceful bias for all to see. This is exactly the sort of conduct of members in Question Time that reduces them to a rabble of badly behaved schoolchildren.
Christopher (The Fixer) Pyne is the second youngest MP ever elected to the House of Representatives. He is also arguably the most disliked. No one has been expelled from the Chamber for unruly behavior more times than Pyne.
Offence comes as naturally to him as does sleeping and wakening. His demeanor is crass and unpleasant. His self-righteous indignation is prissy, shallow, superficial, and school-boyish. When they won the 2013 election Abbott said; ”the adults were back in charge.” Huh?
It’s difficult to imagine how this adolescent loutish, imbecile with an uncouth acerbic tongue got the job of Government leader.
He, however, seems to have an image of himself that is beyond any critique that would offend. And if it did, it would be inconsequential.
It takes a peculiar personality to gain satisfaction from being disliked. Christopher, however, seems to delight in it. Perhaps psychology has a name for it.
Now I don’t of course know him personally and I like to think that I don’t judge people. I do form my own opinions, of course. And you can only do that based on how people present themselves. The perception they themselves create. He seems to have an opinion of himself larger than the outdoors.
There are three kinds of people: Those who know, those who know when they are shown, and those who have no interest in knowing. Pyne falls into the latter category. That of an obnoxious little buffoon with no interest in any values other than his own. A narcissistic, prissy philistine.
In the past, Pyne has served as a Parliamentary Secretary, Assistant Minister and Minister for Aging. How a person of such juvenile intellectual capacity was given Aging is a mystery.
Although, on second thoughts, perhaps that could also apply to the Education Portfolio he once had. It seems extraordinary to me that a person like Pyne would ever have been given Education in the first place. He has never shown an inclination toward the advancement of knowledge. (He never even read the Gonski Report.)
On the contrary, he gives the impression that it should only be accessible to those of a conservative ideology, of privilege and favoritism.
The occupation of power has a way of revealing characteristics in people that we would not otherwise see. In Pyne’s case power has accentuated his arrogance.
He must surely be one of the few people in the world who actually believes his own bullshit.
Feigning indignation for his offensiveness comes naturally to him but those of us of a wiser ilk see right through him.
My thought for the day
“How is your relationship with yourself going?”
13 comments
Login here Register here-
Terry2 -
SimsonMc -
Shogan -
Joseph Carli -
helvityni -
Ricardo29 -
Kaye Lee -
Michael Taylor -
wam -
Graeme -
Jurgen Lenz -
diannaart -
paulwalter
Return to home pagePyne has apologised for saying that the moderates of the Liberal Party are in the winner’s circle which was intemperate and factually incorrect. The Far right of the Liberal Party are still in charge and are holding Turnbull hostage to their demands and the policies of the IPA : nothing has changed.
The suggestion that marriage equality may be coming sooner than many expect was also factually incorrect. The coalition put Tony Abbott’s non-binding plebiscite to the parliament and it was rejected. Not only was a non-binding plebiscite – opinion poll – pointless as senior Liberals had already said that no matter the result of the plebiscite they would not change their stance and would vote against marriage equality, the $180 million to be spent on a national opinion poll was a complete waste of taxpayers money.
Ultimately something has to be done about Abbott who is a destructive and disruptive force in Australian politics and personally I do not agree with Joyce and others who say that, as a back-bencher, he is free to say what he likes, when he likes and where he likes. What it shows is a lack of discipline withing the Liberal Party and this is Tunrnbull’s fault. Until the pre-selectors or the electors of Warringah rid us of this meddlesome [failed] priest Turnbull’s authority is totally undermined and his leadership hamstrung.
I think Andrew Edler from Politically Homeless probably summed up Pyne best with the following observations:
Pyne…..”doesn’t care what others think of him – if asbestos had a personality it would be his.”
(Paraphrasing) – The only achievement Pyne has to his name as a politician is that he has served under seven Liberal leaders and he’s been disloyal to them all.
It was six Liberal leaders when Andrew wrote the article in 2014 but I’ve updated it for relevance and due to the fact that he hasn’t changed one little bit.
Spot on John!!…The only thing that amazes me about Pyne is that Albo is a friend & that is hard to comprehend & says more about Albo than Pyne.
Shogan..There is a kind of “cross-pollination” going on between the politicians that almost borders on a kind of “camaraderie” of “them and us”..”us” being ; we-the people…a short inquiry will uncover many “friendships” that would shock your average political tragic of either side of politics.
I put a lot of it down to friendships formed under the verandah of ;”The old school tie”.
Albo is just a nice bloke, not all politicians need to behave badly…
Turnbull waved his arms once again and said: ‘ Australian people are bored with the constant political in-fighting.’
Why then are YOU doing it, Mal ? You are obsessed with Bill bashing…
The Fixer needs to be fixed, and he’s not the only one.
I agree with everything you say about the poodle. However it distresses me that so much of the mainstream media’s limited time available for political discussion is taken up with the inconsequentialities of the internal bickering while the bigger issues, like the economic impacts of this government’s disastrous policies go largely unexamined. One result is that blatant lies, like the so-called great achievements as claimed by Pyne and Turnbull, are allowed to go unchallenged. Turnbull lectures the media, rightly I think, about the public’s lack of interest in such internal bickering, urging them to look at what the public’s real interests are. If the media acted on that suggestion we would quickly see the government unravel as the truth of Gonski 2 ( go Lee Rhiannon), its flawed tax policies, its assaults on pensioners and welfare recipients, its problematic climate change policies, its attacks on privacy and misguided attacks on terrorism, flawed foreign policies, the same sex marriage debacle and on it goes. And if the mainstream media then applied its attention to Labor it would see that far from ONLY opposing, as dissemblers like Pyne and others claim, Labor has policies which actually address the issues referred to above, and largely designed to improve the lot of the bulk of Australians. If there was honesty from the MSM Labor would be much further ahead in the polls. LNP pollie, who must be despairing of their poll positions anyway, don’t seem to realise that most people have long since stopped believing in the trickle-down economics their parties continue to cling to. Instead they are seeing the policies of economic inequality continually pursued, and don’t like them. Come the revolution. And put the LNP last.
Ricardo, the only thing you will hear about Labor is that Shorten trails Turnbull in preferred PM poll.
Kaye, the government could be trailing Labor by 10 points in the polls, but if Turnbull is ahead of Shorten as preferred PM, even with the smallest of margins … guess what the news.com headlines will be?
Is Pyne hiding the substance of the subs from the slimy lawyer hopefully till labor is gone in SA?
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/george-brandis-clears-out-infuriating-tribunal-20170628-gx071l.html
Sorry if this is hijacking the Pyne whine cause he really deserves all we can throw at him, but see the link above.
Like a duck appearing calm but paddling like mad under the water, LNP(IPA) govt. are frantically undoing our institutions while they can.
If we focus too much on this theatre stuff, don’t we risk playing right into their hands?
Ricardo, please do not call ‘The Fixer’ a poodle. My little poodle is very upset to be mentioned in one sentence with this man. A dog is loyal and the best friend to its owner. I don’t believe you can say that about Pyne.
A Liberal Left Faction? Only when compared to the far-right goons in the Libs, even then still right of centre.
Abbott and Pyne. Neither should be anywhere within reach of the levers of powers, any more than children, matches.