Now I must confess that I didn’t watch the Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony, but apparently, it’s caused quite a stir because it not only had an Indigenous rap artist, but it also featured didgeridoos. While you personally may not have a problem with either rap or didgeridoos, it’s caused a lot of concern for some people… Ok, mainly Alan Jones and Pauline Hanson, but I’m sure that their opinion matters more than anyone else’s. As Pauline told us:
“I’ve got nothing against the Aboriginals but I’m sick and tired of being made to feel as if I’m a second-class citizen in my own country… I am Indigenous as far as I’m concerned. I was born here – this is my country as much as anyone else.”
So don’t accuse Pauline of being racist. She doesn’t hate Aborigines – or ‘Aboriginals” as she puts it. She just doesn’t think that they should be given so much attention and that people like her are just as indigenous as they are, because well, as far as Pauline is concerned, she’s Indigenous and when it comes down to it, as far as Pauline is concerned, what she thinks is all that should concern anybody. No, it’s not racism from her. As she said, “Our country is not based on the Aboriginals. Our country is what it is because of the migrants that have become here.” It’s unclear, however, whether she was advocating for a group of dancing One Nation members dressed in burqas to be part of the Games ceremony, or whether she’d have been content to merely have a parade of trained kangaroos pulling a sleigh of bronzed lifesavers around the stadium.
Whatever, Pauline is “…sick and tired of people having a go at me because it’s racism. Don’t call me a racist when people don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.”
While I’m not sure whether she included herself in the “people who don’t know what the hell I’m talking about”, but I was rather intrigued by the possibilities of her recent threat to Labor about putting The Greens last or they’d “place the Greens and Labor last at the next election”.
If Pauline was here, I’d have a few questions to ask her, but as she’s not, I’ll just have to make them rhetorical:
- If Labor refuse to do her bidding, will PHON actually put Labor last on their how-to-vote cards?
- If PHON does that, doesn’t that mean that they themselves aren’t doing what they demanded Labor do?
- If they don’t put Labor last and preference them ahead of The Greens, doesn’t that mean that Pauline’s threat was an empty one and that we can’t rely on her word?
- Has she not noticed that Labor don’t actually listen to her, unlike the Liberals who – after throwing her out of the party in 1996 for announcing their agenda of cutting funding to Indigenous services and demonising immigrants before the election – have attempted to tell us that we need to listen to her because she speaks for a significant minority? (This would be ok, were it not for the fact that they then argue that we don’t need to listen to anyone on the leftish side of politics because they failed to win a majority!)
- Did she ask Tony Abbott to launch her book because he was the main instigator of her time in jail, which gave her the chance to compare her eleven weeks jail time with the almost thirty years that Nelson Mandela spent incarcerated?
- Why was her book, subtitled “In Her Own Words” when it was written by a ghostwriter whose name was on the cover?
- Would she rejoin the Liberal Party if they offered her Malcolm Turnbull’s job, or would she want to actually be their leader?
- Does she ever miss her days in the fish and chip shop when the only thing she could stuff up was the orders?
- Can she sum up what she’s learned in twenty-five words, or is that too many?
Ah well, let’s ignore Pauline. I mean, that’s what most of us have tried to do for the past twenty-two years, but she doesn’t seem to go away. There are more important things happening.
Like Newspoll. Tomorrow apparently is the thirtieth Newspoll loss for Turnbull.
Interestingly, the media don’t seem to be working on the theory that it might be a win. After all, polls do have three percent margin of error which means – as I frequently point out – they could be three percent up or down and the pollsters would still consider that was accurate. This, of course, means that no single poll is actually worth analysing, but that would take all the fun out of explaining why the Coalition have improved by one percent when the figure is so small as to indicate nothing.
Tomorrow also sees Tony on the Tour de Bike, so that’ll make it hard for him to launch a challenge. Although maybe he’ll think that he looks good in lycra and that announcing it while wearing a bike helmet will add a couple of votes.
Mm, tomorrow: Tony calls the challenge after dismounting his bike and standing in front of a coal-fired power station in the Latrobe Valley, telling us that it’s what John Monash and Menzies would have wanted. Peter Dutton announces that if there’s going to be a spill, he’ll also stand. Julie Bishop says she’s happy to go being Deputy Leader and Foreign Minister no matter who’s leader because she’s grown used to the role and the duty-free shopping. Kevin Andrews puts himself forward as a compromise candidate. Christopher Pyne says that he’d be a much better compromise candidate. A suggestion is made that they just install Shorten as PM and get it over and done with. Scott Morrison speculates about re-arranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic and says that for all we know, it may have helped. Nobody understands what Scott is talking about, but that’s one of his political strengths, so he is persuaded to be the leader. Malcolm is rolled and immediately announces he’s leaving Parliament. Pauline is sounded out about standing in Wentworth as a Liberal. Using his Home Office powers, Dutton has both Morrison and Hanson taken into custody and declares himself leader until the mess can be sorted.
Yep, sounds more plausible than anything that’s happened in the past four years.
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