"On behalf of the Coalition . . . I welcome the Prime Minister back after her bereavement leave. This is a tragic time for her, and we all feel for her at this very difficult and sad time. I also acknowledge the sad duty that the Prime Minister and I have been engaged in over the last few days attending military funerals . . . I again acknowledge John Gillard, who has done his country proud in producing such a daughter.">
Abuse is Treasurer's stock in trade
One member of the federal cabinet is the Member for Gutter. Another is the Member for Sewer. One resides permanently in the gutter, the other resides permanently in the sewer.
To understand the unprecedented ugliness, the carnivorous churn, that at present afflicts the apex of Australian political debate, one need only look back several weeks to September 19, when Julia Gillard returned to Parliament after attending the funeral of her father and the funerals of three Australian soldiers who had been killed in Afghanistan.
The Prime Minister was white with grief. After she spoke of her father and the military funerals, the Leader of the Opposition rose to reply. This is what Tony Abbott said:
"On behalf of the Coalition . . . I welcome the Prime Minister back after her bereavement leave. This is a tragic time for her, and we all feel for her at this very difficult and sad time. I also acknowledge the sad duty that the Prime Minister and I have been engaged in over the last few days attending military funerals . . . I again acknowledge John Gillard, who has done his country proud in producing such a daughter."
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You would think this was untouchable. But no. It must be the tenor of the times, the massive amount of trolling that goes on in political discourse, via Twitter, via the internet, via social media, and via constant opinion polling. The political class lives permanently on edge.
This fraught context can only go so far in explaining the endless distortions and smears that have become the daily language of the federal Treasurer, Wayne Swan. Even when packaged in a suit and tie and surrounded by the gravitas of the House of Representatives, he looks and sounds like a spiv.
In preparation for this column I spent two days going through the Hansards of recent months, extracting all the personal insults that Swan has engaged in, all the outrageous distortions, all the self-praise. I've found the sheer amount of damning material from his own mouth can't be contained in this confined space. It requires a chapter, not a column.
Earlier this year I described Anthony Albanese, another member of cabinet and the leader of government business in the House, as someone who had made the gutter his permanent address. He still lives there. He's added an extra room. But Swan has found somewhere lower to dwell. He has found the sewer.
It was entirely predictable that of the 102 Labor members of Federal Parliament, the two who sought to exploit the death of John Gillard for political advantage were Albanese and Swan. The Member for Gutter and the Member for Sewer sought to attach blame to Abbott for a distasteful remark made by the broadcaster Alan Jones about John Gillard's death. Abbott had encouraged the ugly tone, they said, with not a shred of irony.
It was business as usual. These two have been alleging for months that Abbott has a personal problem with women, a scurrilous line that has no basis in fact and is overwhelmed by contrary evidence, starting with his wife and his three grown daughters who are proud of their father. I'm not suggesting that Labor has a monopoly on parliamentary boors. The Liberal shadow minister Sophie Mirabella would win the bronze medal in the boorishness competition after Swan (gold) and Albanese (silver).
The nastiness coming from the top of the federal government reflects the hollow moral core of a government that operates as a front for the unions and depends on the support of the moral Frankenstein of Australian politics, Craig Thomson. If Albanese resides in the gutter, and Swan the sewer, Thomson occupies a public prison of disgrace.
This is the moral foundation of the Gillard government. It is little wonder that the party grassroots are withering. Labor is about self-interest. It is about big unions and big public service bureaucracies staffed with public sector unionists who vote Labor.
The evolution of progressive passions and anti-corporate agendas has thus shifted to other groups which camouflage their agenda as they seek support from an inherently conservative mainstream. Groups such as the Greens, GetUp! and Change.org.
The Greens are not an environmental party. Everyone has worked out their real agenda. GetUp! operates largely as a front for the unions and the hard left. Now comes Change.org, the organisation at the centre of the Alan Jones boycott campaign.
Change.org would have us believe it is a neutral platform for grassroots democracy, like Twitter and Facebook. It is not. It did not just provide the technology for disseminating the boycott campaign against Alan Jones. It provided the social platform. It provided the scale. It provided the context. It provided media support. It sent out press releases with ringing endorsements of the campaign, quoting the Australian director of Change.org, Nick Allardice: "As more advertisers pull out, the more consumers are buoyed by their ability to hold people like Alan Jones to account for what they say, and the more pressure builds on advertisers who are left."
Note the use of the term "people like Alan Jones".
Change.org also drew attention to the commercial damage caused by campaigns using its platform, and did so with approval: "A petition on Change.org led to more than 60 advertisers withdrawing their advertising from the Kyle and Jackie O program, at a cost of more than $10 million."
Or, as one reader wrote, with revealing candour, in a letter published in the Herald last week: "We do not want Alan Jones on the air."
That is also what the Member for Gutter and the Member for Sewer want.
Which leads us to a cure – attempted ruin and suppression – that is worse than the disease.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/abuse-is-treasurers-stock-in-trade-20121007-2776r.html#ixzz28ewO6fPU
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