“Asked about his threat on Wednesday to look for other savings measures that by-passed the senate, Mr Hockey said the government was working hard to get what it laid on the table through the parliament.

He agreed some of his budget measures meant Australians would have to make sacrifices.”

 

news.com.au 17th July, 2014

 

“Maurice Newman, who has been vocal in his climate change scepticism, has attacked governments, including the former Labor government, for pursuing “green gesture politics” by introducing carbon price signals in an opinion piece for the Murdoch-owned News Corp publication The Australian.

He likened the measures to “primitive civilisations offering up sacrifices to appease the gods”.”

Sydney Morning Herald, August 14th 2014

My rich friend picked me up today. We were going for lattes in spite of his obvious wealth. I mean it goes without saying that he’s very well off. He was driving a car and he was talking me over a kilometre to the coffee shop. When you factor in the return journey, that was well over a mile in the old scale  – just in case Abbott has returned us to imperial measurements by the time you’re reading this.

Of course, I asked him to pay for the coffee – anyone who can drive that far must clearly be able to spring for a cup of coffee for a poor writer like myself, but he seemed to have heard that the age of entitlement was over and suggested that as he’d already driven there then perhaps I should be the one paying for the coffees as people like him – the ones that own cars – had already contributed enough to the likes of me.

I had to admit that he had a point, so while I ordered the coffees he picked up the newspaper.

“Jihad Bludgers” screamed the headline.

“Mm,” I speculated, “surely The Herald-Sun isn’t suggesting that the jihadists aren’t working hard enough to make it happen.”

“No,” he explained, “apparently when they go overseas, the Government’s been cutting them off the welfare payments.”

“That seems a bit unfair. Why isn’t everyone on the dole stripped of their entitlements whenever they go on one of their overseas jaunts?”

“I think they would be, but I don’t actually think that people on the dole travel overseas all that often.”

“Right – so they’re not treating these people any differently. I guess they need to be careful how they report this, given the government’s broken promise on 18C, which we shouldn’t really consider a broken promise because he really meant it at the time and it’s only because of those bludging jihadists that he’s had to change his mind.”

“Yes, Andrew Bolt’s been writing about stopping Islamic migration for week’s now and because we haven’t removed 18C he can only vilify them on the grounds of religion, not which country they come from.”

“He hasn’t just been writing about that. Last week he was concerned about all the people writing anti-Semitic things about Israel.”

“Doesn’t he support the right to free speech?”

“No, it’s ok to be a bigot. But only if you’re bigoted against people he doesn’t like.”

“At least he’s consistent then.”

“Yeah, I can respect someone who has a different view, as long as they’re consistent.”

“Like Maurice Newman.”

“What’s he consistent on?”

“The only thing that matters is making money. That – and climate change being a myth.”

“No, I think you’ll find that’s not what he believes.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, he has an opinion piece in today’s Australian saying that we weren’t prepared for global cooling which is what one person is predicting, so I guess that means if the planet’s cooling then he must believe in climate change. Then he compared climate change measures to primitive societies making sacrifices to appease the gods.”

“Oh, I thought the Business Council wanted Australians to make sacrifices to get the Budget back in order.”

“Yes, but that’s completely different.”

“How?”

“In the same way that the ABC is biased and how when they have people from the IPA on, they never give them a chance to speak on climate change.”

“You think the ABC is biased? Don’t they have to ensure balance?”

“They’re meant to. But I was talking to a man the other day who said that he tried to get on after a scientist had described Mars as a lifeless planet. This guy – Bruce, I think his name was – said he was writing a book about how Mars is populated by tiny bugs and this is why the Martians had to move to earth and infiltrate our political ranks. And when he asked the ABC to stick to their charter of balance, they told him to come back when the book was published. Which, of course, will never happen.”

“Because the Martians will stop its publication?”

“No, of course not. It won’t get published because the man’s a raving lunatic who refuses to send it to publishers for fear that they’ll change the words.”

“So why do you think the ABC should have given him time?”

“For balance. I mean, people who are raving lunatics have a right to be heard too.”

“But don’t they get heard in the letters section of The Herald-Sun?”

“I just think if it’s good enough for the ABC to interview Eric Abetz, then why should they draw the line at a man who thinks we’re being invaded by Martians?”

“Surely, they have to draw the line somewhere. Why on earth would you interview a man who had no qualifications on the subject, no evidence and no idea what he was talking about just to achieve balance?”

“Now just a sec, it wasn’t the ABC who did the George Brandis interview on metadata…”

Our lattes arrived. At this point we always stop talking, because I have it on good authority that all latte saucers are bugged so that the government can listen to the likes of me as we plot its downfall.

But trying getting that on the ABC!