I have been rummaging through articles at The AIMN looking for totally bizarre comments from Tony Abbott but I downed tools when I read this on the Prime Minister’s own web page (from a doorstop interview):
Prime Minister, how concerned are you about the problems in China and Greece, those economic problems spreading to Australia and specially the plunge in Chinese stock prices?
Prime Minister: Michael, look, the important thing to do is whatever we can to build a strong and prosperous economy locally, and again I get back the the Grocery Code of Conduct. This is about ensuring that we have the strongest possible local businesses. We have a great supermarket system. That rests on the shoulders of great local suppliers and this is about ensuring that we continue to have very strong local suppliers, best possible product at the best possible price so that we get the best possible deal for consumers – and if we do that we will avoid the problems that we see overseas.
Seriously, his response would have been more intelligent if he had just stood there with head trembling. (If the interviewer wanted an intelligent answer he would have certainly got one from AIMN author John Kelly).
I can’t believe he said that. Does he know it’s on his web site for all the world to see and mock? Maybe it’s there as a practical joke. Maybe someone in his office hates him.
I began to doubt if even here at The AIMN I could find something so utterly bizarre. So utterly out-of-this-world stupid.
But I carried on with the onerous task. Surely there had to be something to match this incompetence.
And there was! From Tony Abbott’s Environment was this gem:
Ever since I was old enough to understand the term, I have regarded myself as a conservationist.
As a child, I used to play in the gullies and creeks surrounding the Lane Cove National Park. I wasn’t as careful then as now about protecting fauna, such as the red-bellied black snake, but I loved the bush for its potential for adventure and sense of solitude.
In the valley behind our house, I first learnt to sleep under the stars. On canoeing trips, I learnt to read a map. On student bush walks, I developed a sense of direction.
What was so stupid or incompetent about that? Nothing on the surface of it, but it was when the author dissected it down that the true stupidity was revealed:
Reading a map on a river. In a canoe! Wow. What a life changing moment that must have been. It clearly made him an expert in the field on the environment.
No wonder people such as Andrew Bolt rate him more credible than most of the world’s scientists. Scientists spend at least three years studying at university to become knowledgeable in their field. Tony Abbott reads maps. While floating down a river. How could you doubt him? How could you doubt a person who has a sense of direction because he walked in the bush yet needs a map to paddle a canoe?
I think we’ve got some worries ahead of us. We could be handing the future of our environment over to a man who needs a map to paddle a canoe.
Or is basing our whole economic survival on an onion (which I hope has prominence in the Grocery Code of Conduct).
I must admit, our Prime Minister is a deep reservoir of knowledge.
