Take a look around the media and you’ll find all manner of seemingly stupid statements by our elected representatives.
John Howard wants to hold a referendum to save having to say sorry.
“I believe we must find room in our national life to formally recognise the special status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as the first peoples of our nation,” Mr Howard told the Sydney Institute.
Mr Howard admitted he had struggled with reconciliation throughout his 11 years as prime minister.
He accepted his share of the blame for “low points” in relations between his government and indigenous people.
“The challenge I have faced around indigenous identity politics is in part an artefact of who I am and the time in which I grew up,” Mr Howard said.
Let’s not mince words. John Howard is a closet racist. I’d agree with him when he says his prejudices flow from his generation and the times in which he grew up. My own Mother is anti-blackfella. It is a generational issue, BUT…..John Howard is Prime Minister. Surely the responsibilities of that job require a higher level of personal sensibilities. So, to salve his conscience, he’s prepared to waste millions of taxpayer dollars on an exercise which is already a foregone conclusive ‘YES’, and effective collective ‘sorry’ from all Australians, , including indigenous Australians to those same indigenous Australians. Absolutely fucking ludicrous! The man needs whipping for such open willingness to assuage his own guilt with the peoples money.
The little man again, and this time, he wants to embed his own brand of conservative-flavoured Aussie history into a national secondary school curriculum. Kevin Rudd opts for the ‘me-too’ approach and says we ought to compulsorily study the English masters…..oh, and Miles Franklin as well. Frankly, I’d much rather qualified teachers in consultation with parents and social ethicists and demographers like Hugh Mackay set education curricula. Certainly, it’s not in the purview of politicians to decide.
Then there’s Tony Abbott. The lead clown in the Howardian circus decided to tell religious heads to stop doing what they do best – comment on social issues and lobby for change – and concentrate on saving souls instead. What makes Abbott’s blurt of verbal diarrhoea just happened to be to a school of converted disciples, the Institute of Public Affairs. Abbott doesn’t like it when catholic leaders criticise legislation that he’d constructed, supported and commended in it’s early period. Specifically, Workchoices. Catholic institutional research has revealed that the Workchoices legislation takes advantage of those who are least able to protect themselves from the predatory aspects of the legislation. Tony doesn’t want to hear that stuff, so he bit back.
“What the Catholic Social Justice crowd are really saying, is that, according to their criteria of morality, no individual could be worse off, in order to make any other individual better off.
And I have to say, that struck me as an extremely odd proposition, because, if for argument’s sake, it might under certain circumstances be considered just to say to someone with two overcoats, well, we’re going to take one of your overcoats away, so that someone with no overcoat can have one, why couldn’t you, at least hypothetically say, justly, to someone earning a high wage, that we will somewhat reduce your wage, so that another person can be employed as well as you.”
Now, that last piece is very disingenuous and not the least bit true of what the Anti-workchoices proponents claim. But you have to remember that Tony was speaking to the converted, so it didn’t really matter, so he believed, what he said or how he said it. He went on.
“And I certainly refuse to discern a new commandment, thou shalt not conduct wage negotiations without a union, as having any status to match that of the traditional commandments. The priesthood gives someone the power to consecrate bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, it doesn’t give someone the power to convert poor logic into good logic, a political argument is not transformed into a moral argument simply because it’s delivered with an enormous dollop of sanctimony, that can often be the problem when religious people start dealing in politics.
I do think that if church men spent more time encouraging virtue in people, and less time demanding a virtue from governments, we would have, ultimately, a better society and a church that is more respected.”
Quite a chop at the sky pilot brigade by the man known almost universally as ‘Captain Catholic’. Of course, if Cardinal George Pell were to come out and claim that certain aspects of the government’s policies were ‘you beaut’, Tony Abbott, et al would be welcoming the intervention of the ‘Catholic Social Justice crowd’ as proof positive of the justification in the government’s policies.
These examples all come from today’s media. Just the happenings, and a brief skimming of them, that our elected representatives involve themselves in on one day of the year. They really are palookas. Look it up. Websters says it means…
- an athlete, esp. a boxer, lacking in ability, experience, or competitive spirit.
- a stupid, clumsy person.
Pretty damned apt, I’d say.