The Amazing Tim Wilson And What He Does With One Hand!

Some of you have undoubtedly seen the glowing press release from our Attorney-General, Always Right. Whoops, I seem to having some trouble with autocorrect because every time I write G-e-o-r-g-e B-r-a-n-d-i-s,  Always Right comes up instead.

Whatever, he wrote a press release that was rather glowing in its praise for Timmy Wilson and his dextrous use of one hand.

To quote the man directly:

“In just two years, Tim Wilson has singlehandedly reshaped the human rights debate in Australia. He has restored balance to a debate which had previously been dominated by the priorities and prejudices of the Left.”

Now while I appreciate Georgie’s honesty in admitting that nobody in the Liberal Party has done anything towards the reshaping of the human rights debate, I can’t help but wonder what he means when he talks about the “priorities and prejudices of the Left.”

Just what exactly are these? Equality? Liberty, fraternity, brotherhood? Women’s rights? I mean, I didn’t know that human rights were a Right/Left thing. They’re rights. While the different sides of politics may differ over how best to to do things, surely human rights apply to everyone providing you’re human. (And, of course, not an asylum seeker because giving them human rights may help the people smugglers in ways that paying them to turn back a boat wouldn’t.)  So I am having trouble working out what these rights that only preoccupy the Left are.

Can’t be indigenous disadvantage or same sex marriage, because, later on in the press release, we’re told that Wilson has done a heap to “advance” these as well.

What’s he done exactly? Well, it’s a pretty short press release so I guess there wasn’t time to list all of Timmy’s achievements. Or indeed, any of Mr Wilson’s achievements. (Apart from what he’s done with one hand, of course. Which is reshaped the debate for those of you with poor memories, in case you think I’m suggesting that his achievements resemble something that starts with a “w” but ends with something that’s used to stop a ship from floating away.)

In the past, the Minister Responsible For Bookshelves had managed to have a clear view on the role of the Human Rights Commission:

“The Human Rights Commission, in my view, is an important national institution, but it has to be like Caesar’s wife, it must both be and be seen to be above partisan politics.

“Professor Triggs’s decision to delay holding an inquiry into the issue of children in detention — all of whom were put into detention by a Labor government until after the Labor Party had left office — can only be interpreted and has been interpreted by many, many people in Australia as an act that looked partisan.”

Now this does rather confuse me. If the Human Rights Commission shouldn’t be partisan, why is Tim Wilson being praised for shifting the debate away from the “priorities and prejudices of the Left”? Isn’t that being partisan?

Or is that ok, because, well, he’s on the side of what’s Right and when you’re Right you can’t be Wrong, so it’s all ok, because nobody should suggest that our Freedom Commissioner was partisan because he resigned from the Liberal Party when he took up the role and he hasn’t renewed his membership yet, so when he stands as a candidate for preselection, we can be sure that his years of service at $400,000 a year were approached in a totally non-political way and just shifting them away from one side of politics towards the other isn’t being partisan – it’s just restoring balance. And as someone once said, “Work Brings Freedom” and Mr Wilson is our Commissioner for Freedom.

As he said yesterday, and this is from memory so I may have it slightly wrong but this was certainly the subtext I picked up from the interview. Hi, I’m still Freedom Commissioner until Friday so I can’t use this interview to boost my chances at pre-selection so I’d just like to talk about what a spiffing job I did as Freedom Commissioner and, no, while I can’t actually point to anything I’ve actually done in a practical sense, so I’m going to ignore that question and just remind listeners how awesome I’ve been at making sure that people are reminded they’re free to do and say what they like, unless they work for the ABC when they better watch what they say and make sure that, if the Left tell you anything that’s true, you better make sure that you have someone on who can lie about it in the interests of balance.

Well, it was something like that. Like I said, autocorrect is doing some strange things and I’m a little confused.