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It’s Not Easy Being Privileged Or What’s Wrong With Barramundi?

Now, there’s been a bit of a pile on about ScottyfromPeteEvansPotentialReplacement and his barramundi from Humpty Doo…

You know the sort of thing, lefty bastards with their politics of envy asking how much it cost the taxpayers for this fish to be flown in for the PM’s NYE feast. Well, I can’t answer that but – what with the subsidies that probably went to the organisation who caught it – I suspect that it was just a New Year’s Eve gift and it didn’t cost us a thing…

I’d like to emphasise that the previous paragraph is pure speculation and I don’t know a thing but like most opinion writers (Hey, happy new year, Joe Hildebrande!), not knowing anything is my prime qualification for writing. If I actually knew something, I might be a little more circumspect and who wants to read something by someone who’s carefully considering all possible scenarios.

So, I’d like to say, Good on you, Scotty for cooking fish even if it’s true that one of your family is allergic and would need an Epi-pen were she to eat any. Don’t surrender to those politically correct people who try and force anaphylactic restrictions on us all. “Freedom!” as Mel Gibson and Craig Kelly and a dwindling number of Covid positive protesters tell us.

Anyway, enough about Scott Morrison because I’d rather talk about my own difficulties. You see, I’m privileged and over the past few years I’ve discovered that’s a terrible burden. What with being white, male and – compared to most of the world – rich, it’s very hard for people to understand how hard it is when people question why so many of us are in positions of power. We used to be able to argue that we got there by merit but a federal government which not only includes people like Peter Dutton, Stuart Robert and Richard Colbeck as members, but actually has them in the ministry, pretty much ends the merit argument forever.

Now, when I call myself rich, I’m using an interesting definition of the word. By rich, I simply mean that I am quite happy that I have a home, food in the fridge, an income, and a plan to pay off my mortgage before I retire, so by comparison with so many people in the world, I’m wealthy. Yes, I can even afford to buy a RA test without needing AfterPay or Harvey Norman’s interest free terms…

(No, I can’t buy enough RATs to give them away to everyone and fuck Harvey Norman by leaving him stuck with excess stock, but thanks for asking and if anyone can organise something, you can put me down for next week’s pay…)

Many of us are richer than we feel, and we’re encouraged to measure our success against the affluent rather than those who’d gladly take our place. Some of us are poorer than the privileged few can possibly understand because we’ve never had to actually choose between eating and shelter. And now they may have to add a RAT to that choice.

It might be nice if the government could at least remove the GST from the RAT, but I suspect that we’d hear some sort of argument that making the price lower just encourages people who don’t need them to get one and, after all, the whole idea of making people pay is to bring down the number of positive cases…

Of course, when I say the number of positive cases, I mean the number of positive cases that we know about. Just like the boats, if we make tests another “We don’t comment about On Water Matters”, then we can sweep them under the carpet and say from the thirty three PCR tests done yesterday there were only thirty positive cases. That’s well down on the thirty thousand we had on January 6th.

As for the RATs, I can already hear Morrison standing up and saying, “It’s thanks to Can-do capitalism that we have these tests in the country, if it were left to state governments we wouldn’t have got them so quickly… No, I can’t give you the numbers of tests imported because that’s commercial in confidence… No, we don’t see any need to restrict prices, these businesses are having a go and if you have a go you deserve to make a profit, we’re not socialists like Labor who’d have you paying more in taxes, whereas we’re all about choice and you can choose not to buy the RAT… Thanks, but no more questions as  I have to take an important call from a world leader in discount prices so if you need a new appliance, you can get ten percent off if you buy your RATs there.

Yes, while Australians were cheering Scott Boland, he only stopped one test… The other Scott has managed to stop millions!

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17 comments

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  1. Harry Lime

    Wouldn’t you love to slap him around the gills with that Barra? Leave our wildlife alone shithead, you’ve already done enough damage with your incompetence,your visionless views and your constant stream of lies and idiocy.

  2. Phil Pryor

    Who can stand that stream of pictures of the brown orifice posing as a leader? A P. M. who is a Pathetic Misfit, strains the spewcontrolling valves too much. He comments endlessly in stupidities and corny cliches, on topics of no relevance, just to pose and grin in his psychodeficient need. BUT, his murderous laziness and inefficiency are criminal, ruining the nation. Conservative, loudmouthed, truth avoiding substandard types in media, politics, social posing, are a new pox of immense size, clouding hope.

  3. Kate Ahearne

    Thanks, Rossleigh. Another lovely piece.

    Yes, isn’t it interesting that our tendency as human beings is to compare ourselves with others who are more fortunate than ourselves, rather than with those who are less fortunate? A timely reminder. Thank you.

  4. corvusboreus

    Any time I start feeling shitty about my station, I imagine slipping on my ‘workboots’ (reporposed truck-tyre sandals), grabbing my little handpick and big wicker basket, and starting upslope for another shift mining sulfur from a volcano in the Indonesian archapeligo.
    PPE against corrosive sulfurous fumes consists of a rag wrapped around the mouth, and the going rate is about $12 a day (if your work your absolute guts out).

    Male, white, Australian with a job, it’s almost enough to make me want to take a smugly smirking selfie!

  5. Terence Mills

    Is it true that Scomo has been accepted as a contestant for Celebrity Masterchef 2022 ?

    If so it means that he will have seek leave from his current employers (that’s us, so will be readily granted) and that will mean a tussle for his job between Josh and Spudley.

    Bring it on !

  6. Max Gross

    Morrison really doesn’t give a shit. NSW records 20,794 “official” new Covid cases and Victoria 8,577, with seven deaths across both states. Tasmania has reported 466 new Covid-19 cases, marking another record day for fresh infections there. Queensland has annopunced 4,249 new COVID-19 cases. As predicted by those who actually know what they are talking about, hospital beds are filling up and hospital staff are being crushed. But Perrotet has no regrets and Morrison offers us his thoughts and prayers and handshakes. He claims that hospitals are “equipped” to manage the Omicron surge, despite clear evidence to the contrary provided by nurses and doctors. The Guardian reports: ‘With 1204 people hospitalised with the virus today in NSW alone – up from 1066 the day before – and more than 2500 health workers furloughed, the health system is under strain… As of December 30, 2510 healthcare workers were in isolation after being exposed to COVID-19.’ And being such a devout Christian, Morrison says “We’re now in a stage of the pandemic where you can’t just make everything free,” as he farms out rapid antigen tests to business mates who sell the kits for profit. Morrison’s mob of mediorities has also removed access to Medicare rebates for Covid tests. From the ABC online: ‘[Morrison] said businesses needed confidence they would not be “undercut” by free testing regimes. “By making that policy very, very clear, then that means the private market, whether it’s in the big warehouse pharmacies or the other pharmacies or the supermarkets, they can now go and stock their shelves with confidence that they won’t be undercut by the government.” No doubt this is an example of Morrison’s “can-do Capitalism”. In the words of independent Senator Rex Patrick ‘The case for widespread free RATs is clear, but Scott Morrison says “you can’t just make everything free”. He didn’t say that to big business as they took $billions in JobKeeper money they didn’t need. And the PM has billions more put away for election pork barreling.’ As somebody commented on Twitter, “What is more apparent now is that COVID is rapidly spreading through Australian communities at a time when definitions of close contacts, testing centres and rebates are scaling back. This is solely to hide the true case numbers from us.” It was obvious from the start of this pandemic: the health and safety of the general piublic is NOT a priority for Morrison, the federal government or the NSW government under Berejiklian and now that Opus Dei nutter Perrottet.

  7. Hotspringer

    Male, white, heterosexual, with UBI (age pension> Life is great!

  8. corvusboreus

    Hotspringer,
    I really should start substituting ‘pale’ for ‘white’.
    More accurate with less loading.

  9. Michael Taylor

    “Would you like barramundi with your Covid?”

  10. Kaye Lee

    Why are we subjected to endless photos of our Prime Minister cooking things? Or posing as if he is, should I say. Does the personal photographer spend every holiday with Scotty, Jen and the girls?

    And who is looking after the chooks at The Lodge? Come to think of it, has anyone seen a photo of the chooks?

  11. Stephengb

    I always enjoy the satire of Rossliegh, even if he hoves from the Redneck State.
    Thank you, you do lift my spirit.

    In the meantime, and in the spirit of satire, I see that media commentators are very carefully about how they talk about those politicians who happen to be in the current cabinet, for fear of being sued.

    So I have to say that I would never refer to any of those said pollies as lying ars%£€÷s because that would be rude! So I will not say that.

  12. David Stakes

    Good chance he had nothing to do with the cooking of the fish Just another Scotty photo Op.

  13. corvusboreus

    David Strakes,
    Based on form, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out the fish was a photoshop.

  14. Phil Pryor

    That useless synthetic brownjob P M, a Pernicious Malady, has never ever done anything proper, decent, typical. If he cooked that fish, the Pope lives in Teheran. With a superstitious mediaeval misguided mouthy misfit in office in NSW, and a Dud Drongo Dickskull in office in Canberra, we are Furrilythucked and going nowhere good, for Neither has as much brains in reality as a small can of catfood. The organised running of good covid crisis policy is wrecked, by political perversion…right now, most health experts are despairing and unhappy…

  15. Rossleigh

    Stephengb, I’m actually from Victoria. Brisbane is my surname. The city was named after some distant relative from the side of the family that wasn’t disinherited about six generations ago.

  16. Darrell

    Terence Mills. almost true mate new show called celebrity master baker

  17. Hotspringer

    corvusboreus,
    Fair enough. My hair, eyeballs and (presumably) bones are white. I wear skin of many colours, predominantly in shades of beige to brown, from some pinkish and purplish bits, to dark brown liver spots.

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