One Term Ted, Our Supine Premier

SOME things are sacred, like the public’s right to visit and patronise shops and public facilities, although those atop at least two of our local democracy’s purported pillars do not seem to believe as much. A couple of months ago, Magistrate Simon Garnett, another of the former Brumby government’s testaments to the career opportunities in hackery, ruled that a rowdy, aggressive, anti-Semitic mob congregating regularly outside a Jewish-owned store represents neither an attempt to dissuade customers from entering nor a bid to silence its cash registers. This made some people very happy, as a good smiting of the Zionist entity and its Victoria Police puppets always will.

That Premier Baillieu has driven no appeal against Garnett’s ruling, simply asking the police to mull such a move even though the mob invades private property every time the Jew-baiting instinct needs assuaging, serves as a further reminder why he is known around Spring Street these days as One Term Ted. Perhaps thinking of fresh ways to slug decent citizens with speed-camera fines leaves too little time to contemplate the defence of property rights and principle. One Term would not want to be mistaken for a conservative, after all, for such a reputation might encourage hopes that he will winkle out the Labor holdovers white-anting his government’s policies from inside the public service, stop handing grants and prizes to leftist luvvies or remove the cordon sanitaire of gatekeepers and courtiers he has allowed to isolate him from his own ministers.

And One Term isn’t the only thing being isolated. Down Queenscliff way, there is both a lovely golf course (where an in-form Bunyip once shot a very respectable 89 and this hole, twice birdied, is a particular favourite) and an adjoining  island where a breathless report some months ago in The Age led readers to believe all manner of racist and imperialist mischief was being hatched by SAS trainees and operatives.

Your typical ratbag doesn’t need much encouragement to become a greater public nuisance, so the thin gruel of the Age’s report was enough to sustain former Occupists on their journey down the Geelong Road. They are now back and in strength, blocking access to both the SAS base on Swan Island and, as collateral damage, to the golf course as well, which will be closed to the public for at least a week.

This is the way things work in Victoria these days. A spineless Premier appoints a police commissioner whose specialty is running shakedown cameras, and whose supervision of the 3kph-over-the-limit counting house leaves no time to deal sternly with actual lawbreakers. So we end up with an illegally blockaded poultry plant, a CFMEU siege of the CBD and, now, a public golf course the public cannot use.

Two years remain until the next state election. Are no members of the parliamentary Liberal Party prepared to challenge One Term? Is there no one who fails to comprehend that it will be back to the opposition benches if he is allowed to remain?  

UPDATE: We can only imagine what closed-door humiliations were visited on this poor copper, who made the grave mistake of telling the truth about ethnic crime statistics. He makes amends below, never really denying there is a problem with youthful African miscreants, but apologising profusely for having allowed that fact to leak out.

Christine Nixon couldn't have put it better.