Friday, March 9, 2012

A Crew To Make You Vomit


WE KNOW they are incompetent, and the closed ranks around Craig Thomson demonstrate a stomach-turning tolerance for the reeking stink of the walking dead, but those deficiencies in the Gillard government are easy enough to understand. When a mob of congenital campus politicians is promoted above its experience and aptitude, as happened late in 2007, it is only natural its members will bring with them the postures and abstractions they perfected in student union dust-ups over the need to proclaim Parkville and similar precincts sustainable, gay-friendly nuclear-free zones.

As for tolerating the presence on the backbench of the throbbing member for Dobell while simultaneously having Fair Work's lickspittles stall any and all inquiries, well that is has been matter of sheer survival. Starving men have been known to eat their own excrement, and a knife-edge government facing a famine of votes was never going to spit out Thomson, no matter how reluctant his colleagues might be to leave him within unsupervised sniffing distance of a daughter’s bicycle seat. When this mob is swept away, it may even be possible after a period of years  to enjoy a good laugh at our current PM’s crew, just  as we all do now at Jim Cairns, his absurdist economics and the deceits that surrounded the burlesque fling with Juni Morosi.

But there is one thing decent people will find much harder to forgive or forget, even when time has softened memories: this government’s sleaze and smears. There was a race riot at the Lobby restaurant on Australia Day because some genius thought there were votes to be gained by stirring one up. And today, more of the anything-to-win same. With the help of Channel Ten and a strategic leak, commandant of the Australian Defence Force Academy Bruce Kafer's good name is once again being sullied. The brush this time is a snatch lifted from the unedited report into the ADFA Skype scandal. 

Now isn’t that just the remarkable coincidence! Channel Ten broadcast the first allegations against Kafer, and today we see it is Channel Ten once again spreading the toxic word. A pair of Ten reporters won a Walkley award for reports that, as we now know, were wrong in element and whole, so the current preference for echoing the original allegations, however feebly, was entirely predictable. It is certainly easier than admitting their Scoop Of The Year trophy was undeserved.

But what of a government that operates this way? Is there no standard of decency it will not violate in the name of cheap advantage? A rhetorical question, obviously.

We have had some low, rum sorts in Canberra over the past century or so, but none can match this polyglot of sleaze which purports to be a government. Unlike cabinet comrade Craig Emerson, Defence Minister Stephen Smith is not known to have slept with our PM, but he has certainly been infected with all the strains of shamelessness that characterise her career, especially the sly use of the knife.

Smith’s office, the obvious source of the latest leak, could put the matter to rest by releasing the final, edited report on the Skype affair. It is the investigation taxpayers funded and whose findings we all have a moral right to examine. But Smith sits on it, his handmaidens in the press add to the calumnies, and where the nation needs adults we get circus clowns.

There is only one remedy, one way to flush the filth.

An election. Now!

16 comments:

  1. If government were allowed only one role (oh, don't we wish...), it would be defence. To alienate one's defenders is the hallmark of administrative ineptitude; indeed, the pinnacle.
    Just ask any third, second, or first world dictator, and they'll let you know where the bread's buttered.

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  2. There is another option Professor, but methinks that option is still a ways off!

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  3. Dear Sir. I don't know whence you came but you sure as hell must enjoy being able to tell it like it is. I certainly enjoy reading a column devoid of forelock tugging or weaselspeak.

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  4. I like your adjective though I'm sure Finkie won't

    I find this government absolutely contemptible and Im fast adding anyone who says they can support them as contemptible also,as lacking a moral compass.

    The Thomson affair is just humans showing some of them do not deserve to be "higher animals with free will"and every day he sits in parliament drawing some of our taxes absolutely disgusts me.

    He's lucky I'm not in his electorate, as I would have to make my feelings known.

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  5. ...no matter how reluctant his colleagues might be to leave him within unsupervised sniffing distance of a daughter’s bicycle seat.

    Love it!

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  6. "Is there no standard of decency it will not violate in the name of cheap advantage? A rhetorical question, obviously."

    I'm in awe of your verbal scything skills, Prof. This was an absolute pleasure to read, up with your best.

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  7. "the Westminster System"
    I remember Lord Carrington ,the UK Minister of Defence ,resigning at the start of the Falklands War,"I resign because I should have known they would invade "he was not told, but like a True Man he took Responsibility! This Mob of Clowns in the alpgreenindie"government "would be down in the burrow with the rest of the Rabbits in Carringtons position! General Strike till the illegals resign . Then try and jail the Buggers for the rest of their miserable little "socialist" lives.

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  8. Bravo Professor.

    Your reference to the "stomach-turning tolerance for the reeking stink of the walking dead" brings to mind Herod the Great. His condition, as described in "I Claudius" is "putrescent stomach, corpse-like breath, maggots breeding in the privy member, and a constant watery flow from the bowels causing inflamed madness."

    Sounds like our government doesn't it?

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    1. Ah-ha, that explains it. Thomson must have been crapped on by an owl, an event I believe Claudius saw as an omen of the fate awaiting Herod.

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  9. I'm with you there Baldrick

    ...no matter how reluctant his colleagues might be to leave him within unsupervised sniffing distance of a daughter’s bicycle seat.

    OMG!!!! Professor Bunyip you have surely won "The most brutal use of the English language without swear words award" for 2012, possibly for good. It has not been matched since the all time award for obscene band names without swear words was won in the 1980's by "Lubricated Goat"

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  10. Rodney Cavalier was on Sky News a few weeks back. He described the ALP as a shell of a former party inhabited as a playground for union hacks.

    Perhaps the best observer of the ALP is the Communist Party of Australia which knows it best "It will be a shell of its former self, without principle, purpose or mass links to working people – purely opportunist."

    Thats what we see today with Gillard running the show. If she had some ethical guiding principals that she stood by there may have been some ray of hope that she stood for something. But nothing. Just opportunism to hang on until the bitter end.

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  11. I'm hammygar's doppelganger and I'm here to help. In fact, I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more. Fancy trashing the good names of the brave Govt stalwarts doing such wonderful things for the country to make it safe for worshipping Gaia. I say to Bunyip and others that 'upstanding' Craig has said it wasn't him. Now what more do you want? It could have been a plot by Abbott and his thugs to taint this wonderful Govt. Have you considered that possibility? Shame.

    You raised the issue of old bedmates. Dr Jim Cairns and Juni Morosi dealt with that matter way back when, and no further comment is needed. As our delightful PM Julia said "don't believe what you read in the papers". So there. Just imagine what the country would be like today if Dr Jim's economic prescriptions were implemented. What a woderful dream.

    Another issue you raised concerns leaks. The ace reporter and Walkley Award winner Hugh Riminton only got a copy of the Defence Dept report because he happened to be standing on a corner when a truck raced by and a bundle fell onto the road. Hugh only retrieved it so it would not endanger traffic, and the bundle happened to fall open. Have you considered that possibility? Fancy assuming that clever Stephen Smith would leak that report to his mates to try and cover up his brilliant strategy for ADFA personnel.

    In conclusion, you people need to accept this wonderful Govt, and please give it some clear air. Perhaps then the smell wouldn't be so strong.

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    1. Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.March 9, 2012 at 7:15 PM

      Just tighten up Hammy's straitjacket and keep on going as above, Doppelganger. A pleasure to read for all of those who just love Julia's work.

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  12. The Old and Unimproved DaveMarch 9, 2012 at 3:52 PM

    Is there some sort of lobotomy involved in becoming a Channel Ten news reporter ?

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  13. Hang on a minute.
    The girl's complaints have been declared unsubstantiated because the investigation took the sleazy commandant's word against the girl's.
    Did she have a "friend" at the interview where the commandant now denies he tried to force her to recant?
    No!
    Did the investigation accept her version?
    No.
    Smith was right to flush this guy from the Academy since the ADA and military obviously believe she should be proud to put out for the boys..

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  14. I'm not anonymous; just using a borrowed computer, hence the delay in reading this wonderful bit of prose. A reply seemed almost mandatory.
    Sir, you have made my year! That first paragraph is priceless and deserves wider acknowledgement....... which I will see to promptly!

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