There’s something quite terrible about what’s happening in Australia.
If I can sum it up it goes something like this: There’s a suggestion that the Indigenous population will be given a Voice to Parliament but unless I know what they’re going to say I don’t think that they should be allowed to speak.
Ok, I may have that slightly wrong but I did hear the incredible Sussan Ley tell radio listeners today that the trouble with a Treaty is that we don’t know what will be in it… which, if you think about it, is usually the case in the days before a Treaty is agreed to. I mean, consider the Ukraine/Russia situation and ask yourself if it sounds reasonable for Zelensky to say: “I won’t negotiate a peace deal with Russia until I’m told what the final deal will look like.” The whole point of any sort of treaty is that you negotiate so the idea that we know what it looks like is slightly absurd. Or to put it another way, Sussssan is basically suggesting that Albanese could simply say that he’s decided on the Treaty and that it’s all sorted and he doesn’t need to consult anyone else…
By the way, when I called Sussan Ley “incredible” I meant it. She is incredible. She’s unbelievable. She’s neither credible nor believable…
Anyway, back to Peter Dutton.
I want to make a couple of things quite clear here:
- I sort of imagined that I’d be mocking the Labor government for their inability to do more by this point in the electoral cycle.
- I also imagined I’d be mocking The Greens for their inability to negotiate something that was better than what Labor are doing.
- I never imagined that the Liberal Party would be so bad that I can’t resist shooting fish in a barrel and letting Labor and The Greens off the hook because why resort to fishing with hooks when you have all those fish in the barrel just waiting for me to take shots at…
That’s actually more than a couple. With number skills like that I could replace Josh Frydenberg as Treasurer because he was 60 billion out…
So like I said, back to Dutton…
Magicians are good at what’s called misdirection. They encourage their audience to look at one thing when the trick is really being performed somewhere else and suddenly, “Hey presto, look at this magic I’ve performed.” Of course, when it comes to magicians, we refer to what they do as “magic tricks” because we’re all aware that they’re tricks.
When it comes to politicians and the media, we’re often aware of the misdirection and that means that we sometimes start looking for it so hard that we fail to see the obvious thing. For example, Bruce Lehrman is suing parts of the media and now he’s threatening to sue the ACT DPP and this has led to some people backing him and saying things like, “Poor bloke, the court found him innocent!” while other people are pointing out that it was a mistrial and no verdict was found and… The whole argument comes down to whether he’s been been a victim and some say yea and some say nay and… Why, there was even a story about how he worried that he’d never work again… It seems that nobody will employ him but he still has enough money to pursue all these legal actions…
To me the question that seems to be overlooked here is: Why isn’t he suing any of the people who had him sacked prior to the 2019 election? I mean, if he feels so aggrieved, why not the ones who sacked him and let Brittany Higgins keep working?
I’m not going to speculate on an answer for various legal reasons, but it is an interesting question, don’t ya think?
Any, back to Dutton… Apparently he’s a lovely chap. He’s even managed to get an endorsement from his wife which raises another obvious question but that’s not the obvious one that I want to talk about.
The Uluru Statement asked for a Voice, a Treaty and Makarrata or truth-telling. While there’s been a bit of an attempt by the Coalition to argue: “Look we’re not racists; we just think that giving the Indigenous people a Voice could lead to all sorts of things like them using it to say things that we don’t approve of”, they are trying hard to suggest that they’re actually in favour of reconciliation.
But what do they mean by reconciliation? Not a Voice. And certainly not a Treaty. The attacks on Labor and the attempt to say that the Voice is just going to lead to a Treaty makes it quite clear that they are dead set against that. Given their attacks about the idea that Albanese plans to deliver the Uluru Statement IN FULL, one must presume that they’re also against a Makarrata or truth-telling…
Actually, I think that we can be certain that Peter Dutton is definitely against anything to do with truth-telling!
So it seems that the Coalition is opposed to every part of the Uluru Statement. They’re not opposed to recognition and if only Labor had a referendum on that, they’d have supported it. Why the idea of constitutional recognition is something they’ve been in favour of as far back as when John Howard was Prime Minister. It’s just been a bit too hard to have a referendum on the thing because well, there was so much else to do… Like checking up the legality of Robodebt!
Yes, Dutton supports reconciliation as long as it doesn’t lead to anything.
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