Channelling ScoMo’s ‘aggrieved victim of outrageous slurs’ approach, George Christensen has hit back at those who have criticised him for spending 294 days in the Philippines over four years.
According to the Herald Sun, George spent 72 days in the Philippines in both 2016 and 2017 compared to 51 days in Canberra in 2016 and 64 days in the capital in 2017.
An indignant George says he’s the victim of a “smear campaign”, which is difficult to understand since the report is true by George’s own admission.
It’s none of our business because he travelled to the Philippines to visit his fiancee and her family and to help raise funds for a charity providing disabled children with wheelchairs…apparently.
Matt Canavan calls it “a massive beat up that’s an invasion of George’s privacy.”
Surprisingly, I have been unable to find any rules about Federal politicians’ annual leave entitlements but, as they only have to front up to their workplace for a few weeks a year, surely taking more than ten weeks off a year to visit your girlfriend is stretching the friendship. I have found nothing suggesting he took leave without pay though he said he paid for the trips himself.
However he did charge the government for a trip to Manila in the Philippines in 2017, to attend the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) Inter-Parliamentary Assembly. The Guardian reported that the report filed by Christensen was basically copied and pasted from a report on the same event in Malaysia two years earlier.
Canavan also pointed out that George had been doing charity work in the Philippines. That’s nice, but he could probably have raised more funds here. Or donated his airfare rather than flying over himself?
I seem to remember Christensen, also in 2017, ranting against foreign aid, saying that “not one dollar should be spent on foreigners.”
Christensen is paid a significant salary, and very generous entitlements, to represent the people of Dawson and, further, to make the laws which govern all Australians. He is not paid to spend months overseas visiting his girlfriend.
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Is there no limit to the sleaze? and to the paranoid lies? eg that Teena Liberal woman on Q and A – the laughter of the audience was reassuring.
Please, Greens, Independents, Labor, get to the bottom of this loathsome man’s behaviour – what can that attractive young woman see in this human specimen? Is she that desperate to marry a racist?
The slug who walks, yet another example of who the f*ck votes for these degenerate arseholes. Oh to be rid of this assault on sensibilities. Consign these scum suckers back to the cesspit they oozed from. I think if it wasn’t for AIMN, the excellent writers and knowledgeable contributors l’d be thinking i’d slipped down the rabbit hole into an alternate universe. But this shit goes on and on and on infinitum, bolstered by the brain dead typists masquerading as journalists.
As most of us realise, we are in deep shit with this pack of science denying traitors, greed and hate rule, whilst climate change gathers force. Monstering up, ready and willing to give us all a smack in the chops.
Could it be that this planet is the insane asylum of the universe? That we live and die and live and die until we wake to sanity?
Our perpetually clammy, ten-pin shaped hero Gorgeous George could set the record straight by writing a book. No doubt it would have a happy ending.
Christensen was sending so much money to the Philippines that the AFP and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade investigated. George blamed a Labor MP for the “vile and defamatory” allegations except the investigation had started months before the Labor MP referred the matter. They were concerned he might be being blackmailed but that is not the case – he is willingly sending his money there, which is fine. His choice. But like everyone else conducting a long-distance relationship, George should realise that he can’t just troddle off whenever he pleases. He actually has a job to do.
Time for a larf?
“McQueen’s cringe-worthy Q&A performance did bring joy to some liberal mps, one of whom almost wet themselves after reminding this column of a reference written for her by 2GB’s Alan Jones last year.
‘ her firm articulation of the proper response of the liberal party to contemporary concerns has been both instructive and illuminating,’ he wrote.”
Larf or weep, this is the disgusting reality we live under.
It is already an afront that the gutless LNP chose not to have more sitting days in 2019. Business arising from the Bank Royal Commission could have been dealt with. In the real world any worker whether Manager, or whatever else, would have been shown the door if they sought to take such long paid breaks.
I think the strategy we are going to see from conservatives is to attack critics, even when the criticism is valid.
Keith,
Not only did they schedule very few sitting days, I don’t see how they can even do the four days planned from April 15-18. I think it will be cancelled.
They have to sit budget week April 2-4. Usually, an election is called on a Friday and the writs issued the following Monday. The minimum time after writs are issued to an election is 33 days. If he called the election straight after the budget week and the writs were issued on Monday April 8, that would give the option of a May 11 or May 18 election (assuming they intend to have a joint HoR and Senate election).
If he waits until after the scheduled sitting week April 15-18, and even if the writs were issued immediately, the earliest the election could be held is Saturday May 25.
The Australian Electoral Commission has advised it takes up to six weeks to finalise the Senate count, so May 18, 2019 has been advised as the last possible day on which a half-senate election can be held as they start their term from July 1, 2019.
So he either cancels that second April sitting week or we have separate elections for Senate and HoR.
In case you didn’t notice……the Christchurch massacre has the Right in a shouting match about who is the toughest on Islamic Terrorism.
George Christianson looks like a bag of shite tied in the middle. That will do.
Christensen made 28 trips to the Philippines between April 2014 and June 2018, spending a total of 42 weeks there.
Blind Freddy can see why he doesn’t want his relationship to be a public one.
We have allowed our politicians to dictate to us how hard they work and how much time they can have off. Some of them are shameless and forget how hard the rest of us work, particularly that 10 weeks or so they get off in summer.
Christensen’s mates including Matt Canavan have said that he is a very dedicated local member who just happens to have made 28 trips to the Philippines between April 2014 and June 2018, spending a total of 42 weeks there, including 72 days in 2016 and again in 2017, more days than the House of Representatives sat in those years.
The very dedicated local member has said (was it from his domicile outside Manila ?) that this is all a smear campaign.
What does George not understand about turning up for work. Like so many other back-benchers, particularly in the National Party and it seems One Nation, he seems to think that we pay him just to turn up in Canberra on increasingly infrequent occasions to strut his stuff and for the rest of the time it’s making whoopee at the taxpayers expense.
George, this is meant to be a full-time job, that’s why we pay you an annual salary with perks !
George’s parents were both disability pensioners. If they travelled outside the country for more than four weeks in any year, their payment would be stopped (even though they wouldn’t be missing work to do it)
Good ole’ Queensland National Party women not to your taste mate, or was the problem that they could see through your lies? Import a Filipino bride, at least she won’t see through you for a few years. Don’t complain when you are dragged along to b-b-q’s where you don’t understand a word of what’s being said in Tagalog mate, you don’t know what you’re in for lol!
Shaun,
Fat boy would have been a classic case of an “incel” (I really detest that stupid no-word) if he hadn’t gone to the Philippines.
I wonder if George still ascribes to his published view on women….
“My thoughts: the truth is women are stupid and that’s that … let me just say: Will Smith … you’re lucky God gave women no bloody brains.”
VOTE ANYONE BUT NAT$ &FORM A BETTER GOVERNMENT