Ok, there’s no truth in the rumour that the Liberals are changing their name to the Sleeping Dogs Party, because people should get let them lie.
However, one has to wonder. Just how stupid do they think we are? Of course, the answer to that may well be, you’d have to be pretty stupid to elect any party that had Tony Abbott as its leader. (Of course, we weren’t voting for Tony we were getting rid of that “terrible woman”, that “dysfunctional government”, that bunch of incompetents that caused the GFC… But I’m getting ahead of myself, more on that later!)
And speaking of more on: Let’s start with Joe Hockey.
Over the past few months, the public has been repeatedly told that things like changes to pensions and Medicare, cuts to the ABC/SBS and various other promises didn’t matter, because the Abbott government was keeping the big ones. In particular, these things had to make way for the biggest of them all: Getting the Budget back on track.
Now if I can sum up what Mr Hockey has had to say:
Of course, cuts had to be made. Any fool can see that. Let’s start by cutting the Carbon and Mining Taxes because they’re just a big drag on the economy and giving money to government which doesn’t help the Budget bottom line at all. However, when Tony said before the election that there’d be no cuts to various things, you have to balance that with the fact that we were telling you we were going to get the Budget back in the black and that nothing was exempt, so you can see that – in this card game called Politics – we had a bigger card to beat the small card of no cuts. Clearly, everybody knew that before the election. So why did Tony lie? Well, he was asked to. He was asked to rule out cuts and he did. It was really the interviewer’s fault. But let’s not live in the past, let’s move on. We promised to have the Budget back in the black as soon as we took over as government. Not with the first Budget as I originally said, but we amended that to “within our first term”… and by first term, I meant before we were voted out, not in our first term of office. Our latest projection isn’t the 2018 I suggested a few months, but sometime in the 2020’s, so if you vote us out before then, it’ll really be your fault. Whatever, at least we’re not like Labor who promised a Budget Surplus and then didn’t deliver!
Joe is starting to sound more absurd than Christopher Pyne’s attempts to justify the change in tone on Gonski from before the election which was about as convincing as me attempting to argue that there’s absolutely no difference between me and George Clooney! Ok, he’s rich and good-looking but apart from that, we’re practically twins. Well, yes, he’s successful too, if you want to be like that…
Yep, I can’t see that the person who was going on a blind date with George, will be happy that I was the one who turned up. Whatever, I don’t think I’d like to have Mr Pyne as the one who’s trying to convince her to stay…
But, of course, the Gymnastic/Contortionist award for the previous few weeks would surely go to Tony himself. Not only that, but I feel that, in spite of the strong competition from Joe and the rest of the Keystone Cabinet, Abbott should be awarded Gold, Silver and Bronze.
The Bronze for his performance on the Paid Parental Leave Scheme. While trumpeting it as a signature policy, it’s been watered down a couple of times and still he hasn’t actually managed to announce what form it’ll take. But rest assured, Abbott is the MiniStar for Women (at least women who have children – the others can look after themselves), so he intends to keep on improving it. Perhaps, better childcare or, even nannies, whatever. he promises that he’ll definitely announce further details before it starts.
The Silver goes to his announcement that another of his “priorities” the recognition of the Aboriginal People in the Constitution should be delayed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of 1967 referendum. Why? Now, some suggest so that he doesn’t have to do anything about it in this term of office, but surely he can’t be presuming that he’ll get another one. But I’m giving this the Silver for the way he managed to justify it by citing the Referendum on the Republic, telling us that the Republic didn’t succeed in spite of both major parties and a whole list of other groups being behind it. He neatly neglected to mention that there was also a majority of the public being behind it, but the proposal was neatly snookered by Howard creating division about what type of republic to have leading to various pro-republic people campaigning with the Monarchists to defeat the referendum.
But the Gold Medal for twisting and turning has to go to his statements on Peta (Peter) Credlin. (Autocorrect kept changing it to “Cradling” – it must be sexist too.)
Apparently, there’s an element of sexism behind the attacks. Mm, is the PM suggesting that his Party contains men who are sexist? I’m gobsmacked. Is this the beginning of the Minister for Women actually doing something in the role (apart from defending the right of women to have babies and get the PPL)? Something like telling his Party that sexism is wrong and just for “girlie men”? Could this lead to the number of women in Cabinet exceeding the number of female prime ministers that Australia’s had? (Sophie Mirabella was lamenting the other day that, by losing her seat, she felt partly responsible for the lack of women in Cabinet. After all, if she was there there’d be double the number!)
Or is this a more subtle attack on a potential leadership challenger?
After all, hasn’t there been a suggestion that there’s a lot of tension between Julie Bishop and Peta Credlin? Is Abbott suggesting that Julie Bishop is behind these “sexist” attacks? After all, it was just a few weeks ago that Bishop felt it necessary to tell us all that she wasn’t a feminist. And if she’s not a feminist, couldn’t she be the one behind all these sexist attacks? At the very least, she should be defending poor defenceless Peta from those nasty men, like Tony’s doing.
Yep, this could be his way to show everyone that Bishop is far too sexist to be taken seriously as a potential Prime Minister.
P.S. Someone just brought an article to my attention which says that Peta and Julie get on just fine and have a very professional working relationship, and any suggestions of tension between them are completely exaggerated. Ah, so it’s all ok.
P.P.S. I did try to squeeze in an honourable mention for telling us that the G20 was about economic matters and not the place to discuss climate change only to send the Finance Minister to Lima, leaving the Environment Minister at home. Apparently, meetings about climate change are not where you talk about the environment either!
