Showing posts with label right wing rat bags. Show all posts
Showing posts with label right wing rat bags. Show all posts
Sunday 23 September 2018
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison apeing his hero......
Words fail me.....
Labels:
Donald Trump,
right wing rat bags,
Scott Morrison
Thursday 20 September 2018
Sometime Australian Prime Minister & MP for Cook, Scott Morrison, is the protector of religious freedom? Don't make me laugh
This was Australia’s
most recent Liberal prime minister quoted in The
Sydney Morning Herald on 17 September 2018:
Prime Minister Scott
Morrison will enact "preventative regulation and legislation" to
shield freedom of religion from future enemies, giving his strongest hints to
date about the government's intentions regarding "religious freedom"
laws.
What a load of
codswallop, manure, dung, heifers dust, cowpats, meadow cocktails – what ABSOLUTE BULLSH*T!
The Liberal Member
for Cook Scott Morrison already
knows that the Australian Constitution without qualification guarantees religious
freedom in this country at federal level:
The Commonwealth shall not
make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any
religious observance, or for
prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test
shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the
Commonwealth. [my yellow highlighting]
As the
Australian Constitution is the highest source in the land on this issue, one can only suspect that:
a) Scott
Morrison has never read the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act (as
amended up to 1977); or
b) Scott Morrison is shamelessly pandering to his
far-right, ideologically blind & bigoted supporter base, in the hope of being re-elected in 2019.
Even a callow first-year-in-parliament politician knows that when state law is in conflict with federal law it is federal law which usually prevails and, if either is in conflict with the Constitution it will be the Constitution which prevails.
Having well and truly politicised his own faith Morrison may in fact be creating his own "future enemies" - he has all but guaranteed that someone will take his legislation and regulations to the High Court of Australia - where every word, phrase and punctuation mark will be studied closely.
He
appears to forget that Australia has also ratified a number of UN resolutions which directly or indirectly protect religious freedom and these have been upheld by the courts.
While he ignores the fact that Tasmania has had a religious freedom provision written
into its state constitution since 1934 and Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia,
the Northern Territory as well as the ACT have passed legislation prohibiting
direct and indirect discrimination on the ground of religion. Only South Australia appears to have no legislation specifically covering religious freedom to date.
Morrison also
forgets that whatever legislation he forces through this parliament, or whatever
regulations he imposes, can all be undone in the first instance by subsequent federal parliaments and in the second instance by the minister of the day.
If he really
wants to genuinely strengthen existing religious freedoms he would call a
referendum to change the Australian Constitution.
Even a callow first-year-in-parliament politician knows that when state law is in conflict with federal law it is federal law which usually prevails and, if either is in conflict with the Constitution it will be the Constitution which prevails.
Having well and truly politicised his own faith Morrison may in fact be creating his own "future enemies" - he has all but guaranteed that someone will take his legislation and regulations to the High Court of Australia - where every word, phrase and punctuation mark will be studied closely.
Tuesday 18 September 2018
Prime Minister Shouty McShouty is just being his normal obnoxious self
There has
been some advice offered to Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison by mainstream media.
Some
journalists are suggesting that he should shout less.
That would be
nigh impossible as it would be going against his very nature as the political
version of a weekday schoolyard bully and a Sunday self-righteous prig.
Here are
videos of his performance in the House of Representatives as Treasurer to demonstrate
that he had little volume control even then :
Sunday 16 September 2018
The Scott Morrison Social Media Experience in 2018: expletives deleted
"QT was on fire today 🔥 Good work, team. https://t.co/M6UWcQO0HU"
Three hours after he posted this tweet on 13 September 2018, Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison deleted it;
Some hours later he apologised for the profanity included in the Fat Man Scoop "Be Faithful" hip hop song, part of which he had embedded in video of that afternoon's HoR Question Time - pleading ignorance.
Remove that dodgy tweet from his Twitter account he may have, but the twitterverse being faster than Morrison's digits meant there was still an echo left on that social media platform:
The reason why the government benches were conspicuous for so many arms upstretched in unison in the video is because, in true tent revival-style, Morrison was asking his colleagues to raise their hands:Good morning!— BuzzFeedOz Politics (@BuzzFeedOzPol) September 13, 2018
The prime minister deleted a tweet while you were asleep because it contained a song about fucking tonight. pic.twitter.com/oRxrIJi8aP
I'll ask those on this side of the House: who's ever run a small business here? Here we go! Who's ever worked in the private sector here? Here we go! Who's been a police officer here? Here we go! We've got a police officer up the back. Who is a farmer on this side of the House? We've got some farmers over here. We've got medical practitioners. Who has ever served in the Australian defence forces on this side of the House? The Liberal-National Party is the party of ordinary, everyday Australians going out there every day, having a go and getting a go.
"Who F#ckin Tonight? Who F#ckin tonight?
Who F#ckin Tonight? Oh!Oh! Who F#ckin tonight?
Who f#ckin Tonight? Who F#ckin Tonight? Oh!Oh!
Stop Playin, Keep It Movin! Stop playin, keep it movin!
Stop playin, keep it movin! Keep movin movin movin movin!
Hey sing along!" [Fat Man Scoop's "Be Faithfull"]
I'm still wondering which age demographic he was trying to impress. Particularly as these lyrics appear to have originally been penned in 1999.
I am also curious as to why the Prime Minister of Australia chose to ignore the conditions imposed on use of footage of parliamentary proceedings.
In particular 15.12(c) broadcast material may not be digitally manipulated.
As for why the reason Morrison gave for deleting his tweet changed in the following days from inappropriate lyrics to being in breach of parliament's rules on use of video footage, well that is anyone's guess.
Labels:
music,
right wing rat bags,
Scott Morrison,
Twitter
A sign of increasing desperation on Australian Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton's part?
After threatening to bring into the House of Representatives files he kept on members of parliament when he Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Minister for Home Affairs and Liberal MP for Dickson Peter Dutton made sure two particular files were very visible on 11 September 2018.
Images found on Twitter
After he quoted from these files the Opposition requested that they be tabled. A request Dutton refused.
Watching these files deployed prior to and during Question Time, in what looked suspiciously like a form of visual intimidation, did little to enhance Dutton's defence of his own actions as immigration minister in 2015.
Friday 7 September 2018
The new Australian Minister for Energy & Liberal MP for Hume Angus Taylor has "thought hard" about climate change for over 30 years.....
Excerpt form House of Representatives Hansard, 24 September 2014:
Mr
TAYLOR (Hume) (15:44): It is a great pleasure to speak on this matter
of public importance because I have had a deep concern about climate change for
over 30 years. I have watched the snowline rise south of here, and it is
something that I have thought hard about for over 30 years. That has meant that
I have come to the conclusion that there are three things that taking climate
change seriously really means. The first is effective and consistent policies
that actually contain global atmospheric concentrations. Secondly, that you
bring the Australian people along with you. Thirdly, you protect the Australian
economy so that we can pay for all of this. Let me tell you what I believe it
does not mean. It does not mean throwing lots of money at the problem for the
sake of it. It does not mean passing encyclopedias of legislation. It does not
mean putting endless programs in place. It does not mean establishing a cavalry
of so-called independent advisers and advisory boards. It does not mean turning
up at lots of global meetings.
Tuesday 4 September 2018
Michaelia Cash gets her just deserts
Once she
finished knifing then Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in the back,
Liberal Party Senator for WA Michaelia Clare Cash was demoted from
Minister for Jobs and Innovation to Minister for Small and Family Business, Skills and Vocational Education.
Then she was further ‘rewarded’
by this leak to the media……
Financial Review, 30 August 2018:
Cabinet minister
Michaelia Cash has become the latest target of the payback culture inside the
Liberal Party, after allegations emerged that she declined to provide a witness
statement to the Australian Federal Police investigating the leaking of a union
raid from within her office.
Senator Cash, who was
demoted in Sunday's leadership reshuffle after turning on Malcolm Turnbull,
rejected any assertion she refused to cooperate.
It is understood she
told the officers that she did not need to make a fresh statement because she
had been quizzed on the matter many times in Parliament and everything she knew
was on the public record.
The AFP was
investigating a tip-off to the media about a raid on the offices of the
Australian Workers' Union last year.
The raids were conducted
by the AFP at the behest of the union watchdog, the Registered Organisations
Commission.
Senator Cash had asked
the commission to investigate whether two political donations made by the AWU
more than a decade ago, when Bill Shorten was the union's national secretary,
accorded with union rules.
But
the exercise backfired when it emerged a staffer inside her office had
tipped off the media about the raid. The staffer resigned and Senator Cash
denied having any advance knowledge of the raid nor of the tip-off to the media…..
Thursday 30 August 2018
Tony Abbott: unpopular and unwanted
Sacked former prime minister and current Liberal MP for Warringah Anthony John "Tony" Abbott in August 2018.......
I hope history will record that it was @TonyAbbottMHR whose vengeance permeated the failed Dutton #libspill. He wrecked the Gillard Government, his own Government, & the Turnbull Government. Surely this is the story of the week. How one man has trashed 3 Prime Ministers. #auspol pic.twitter.com/rd09koM98H— Dr Chris Pepin-Neff (@christopherneff) August 25, 2018
Crikey, 28 August 2018:
Next year, Tony Abbott
will rack up 25 years as an MP. And the best way for him to celebrate it -- for
his party, for the government, and most of all for Australia -- would be to
retire. 2019 should be the election at which he calls time.
Abbott said to one of
his media friends on Monday that he still sees himself as a young man. In fact,
Abbott has always been an old man; he is the classic example of Keating's
"young fogey", from his days as a student politician through his
stint as a seminarian and his devotion to BA Santamaria, through his entry into
politics first as a staffer and then as an MP. Abbott has only ever seen the world
through the eyes of an old man furious at the changes wrought by young people,
determined to reverse the desecration of all that is sacred in his world where
Christian white males hold unquestioned authority.
What did the rest of
Australia ever do to the voters of Warringah? Lucky to live in one of the
most blessed constituencies on earth, stretching from Sydney’s leafy north
shore to the northern beaches, its residents have nevertheless foisted on
Australia the single most destructive politician of our time: Tony Abbott. The
failed priest, nicknamed the “mad monk”, has done incalculable damage to this
country. And for someone who aspired to
be a “junkyard dog savaging the other side”, Abbott has lately mostly savaged
his own, culminating in last week’s Pyrrhic victory over Prime Minister Malcolm
Turnbull, which slaked his thirst for revenge but left the Liberals in their
worst position for a decade.
As a former director of
Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, Abbott was a key wrecker of the 1999
republic referendum, denying this country a head of state who was one of us.
Abbott employed David Oldfield, who moonlighted for Pauline Hanson and helped
create One Nation. Realising the threat that Hanson posed to the Liberals’
right front, Abbott was the brains behind shabby outfit Australians for Honest
Politics, which helped put her in jail for electoral fraud. As a pro-life
health minister, under John Howard, he tried to block women’s access to the
abortion drug RU486.
In 2009, Warringah’s
local member tore down Liberal Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull over climate
change. It was desperately cynical even then: Abbott admitted to Turnbull at
the time that he’d been a “bit
of a weather vane” on the issue. But Abbott decided it was “absolute crap”
that the science of climate change was settled and, right there and then,
introduced a kind of madness into our politics. Ever since, the country has
found it impossible to agree on an energy or climate policy.
Emboldened after
toppling Turnbull, the member for Warringah went on to launch a misogynistic campaign
against our first female prime minister; he also embarked on a misleading “axe
the tax” campaign against Labor’s emissions trading scheme, which his chief of
staff, Peta Credlin, later excused as an exercise in “brutal
retail politics”, given the ETS wasn’t a carbon tax at all. As prime
minister, Abbott’s first great achievement was to kill off our car industry,
and he went on betray his promise to the
electorate that his government would make “no cuts to education, no cuts to
health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or
SBS”. His first budget in 2014, possibly the worst in living memory, defunded
schools and hospitals to the tune of $80 billion compared with forecast
funding levels under Labor, and failed to pass the Senate. That year
Abbott made Australia the first country in the world to abolish a carbon price.
Then in 2015 he knighted Prince Philip on Australia Day, turning himself into a
laughing stock, and his downfall began. When the Liberal Party turfed Abbott in
September 2015, a grateful nation rewarded the new PM Turnbull with approval
ratings of 68
per cent.
Ever since, Abbott has
sniped, wrecked and undermined the Coalition. Although he describes his aim as
being the “best possible member for Warringah”, he has never cared to represent
his constituency faithfully. In the equal marriage postal survey, 75 per cent
of his electorate voted “Yes” – the highest proportion in New South Wales – but
Tony Abbott, a loud “No” campaigner, later scarpered from
the House of Representatives.
Now, without care for
the national interest, the institution of parliament, the office of PM or the
electoral fate of the Liberal Party, Abbott has torn down Turnbull a second
time. To what end? Not policy: Turnbull had conceded everything the hard right
demanded of him. Not politics: today’s Newspoll[$]
shows the damage caused by last week’s spill; the Coalition now trails Labor
44–56, and Bill Shorten is preferred PM. The member for Warringah will reportedly [$]
give a “call-to-arms” speech to rally Liberal members behind new prime minister
Scott Morrison. But can Abbott be trusted to serve Morrison loyally? Or will he
start the work of tearing down another Liberal prime minister?
The party is desperate
to put the Abbott-Turnbull wars behind it. Federal Liberal president Nick
Greiner said
yesterday [$] that Abbott is at least partly to blame for the
divisions in the party: “Tony is an excellent political salesman, a political
warrior; he should have been spending his time – and I of course said this to
him – much more on bringing down our political opponents rather than focusing
on internal differences.” Columnist Niki Savva was less politic on the
weekend, writing:
“If he had any decency Abbott would resign too, now that he has accomplished
his mission.”
Former PM Kevin Rudd
absolutely let
rip this morning: “I cannot remember a single positive policy
initiative that Abbott has championed and then implemented. Not one. As a
result, unconstrained by policy, the entire energy of this giant wrecking ball
of Australian politics has been focused on destroying his opponents – within
the Labor Party and the Liberal Party. Of all modern politicians, Abbott
is sui generis. His singular, destructive impact on national politics
cannot be underestimated.”
Labels:
right wing rat bags,
Tony Abbott
Sunday 26 August 2018
Saturday 25 August 2018
Who do we blame as matters go from bad to worse over the next eight months in Australia?
The country is being crippled by the effects of drought and basic food prices will soon begin to rise, while at the same time wages growth remains stagnant. Cost cutting by successive Coalition federal governments is impacting service delivery on everything from health and welfare through to national broadband connectivity.
The federal government is still a policy-free zone with regard to energy and climate change due to toxic infighting between members of the Liberal Party of Australia which, along with its coalition partner the National Party, has an ideological inability to drag itself into the 21st century to face the consequences of ongoing land degradation and water insecurity.
Australia now has a new prime minister, but this situation is unlikely to change as the hard right remains holding the reins of government.
The next federal election is still over eight months away.
So who do we blame for the situation the country finds itself in between now and the election?
Take your pick.......
According to News.com.au this is the list of federal parliamentary members of the Liberal Party of Australia who voted to bring on the leadership
spill of 24 August 2018:
1.
Andrew Hastie
2. Tony
Pasin
3.
Craig Kelly
4.
Michael Sukkar
5.
Kevin Andrews
6. Tony
Abbott
7. Ian
Goodenough
8.
Nicolle Flint
9.
Peter Dutton
10.
Jason Wood
11.
Ross Vasta
12.
Luke Howarth
13.
Rick Wilson
14. Ted
O’Brien
15. Zed
Seselja
16 Greg
Hunt
17
Steven Ciobo
18
Angus Taylor
19 Alan
Tudge
20.
Michael Keenan
21
Andrew Wallace
22
Scott Buchholz
23 Jim
Molan
24
Slade Brockman
25 Dean
Smith
26 Jane
Hume
27
Mitch Fifield
28.
John McVeigh
29.
David Fawcett
30.
Amanda Stoker
31.
Jonathon Duniam
32.
David Bushby
33.
James Paterson
34 Eric
Abetz
35.
Concetta Fierravanti-Wells
36.
James McGrath
37.
Mathias Cormann
38.
Michaelia Cash
39.
Karen Andrews
40. Andrew Laming
41 Ben Morton
42. Sussan Ley
43. Warren Entsch
Friday 24 August 2018
Nationals MP for Page Kevin Hogan tries to straddle the Coalition fence by becoming a Faux Independent after the new Morrison Government is sworn-in
The political situation in Australia thus far this week..............
Thinking to hedge his bets in a toxic political environment and remain in the federal parliament beyond the forthcoming federal election, Kevin Hogan sent out this media release on 23 August 2018:You can't get any more blunt than @murpharoo's assessment of #libspill -— News Breakfast (@BreakfastNews) August 22, 2018
"The Government is killing itself in plain view ... It doesn't matter who wins because they're stuffed" pic.twitter.com/1HazIUyd06
STATEMENT FROM KEVIN
HOGAN
This constant rotation
of Prime Ministers by both the Labor Party and the Liberal party, I cannot
condone.
I am announcing
today, that if there is another leadership spill for the position of Prime
Minister prior to the next federal election, I will remove myself from the
government benches and sit on the cross benches.
I have made this
decision because my community is fed up. What we have been seeing in
Canberra with leadership changes over the last 10 years, is letting our
great country down.
This is not about Peter
Dutton, Malcolm Turnbull or Kevin Hogan, it is about the Office of Prime
Minister.
I remain 100 per cent
committed to delivering for my community. I remain committed to the National
Party.
If this occurs, I will
still attend National Party meetings if invited. I will not attend Coalition
Party Room meetings.
I will support the
Government in No Confidence Motions and Supply. Any other legislation I
will take on a case by case basis.
The model I intend
to follow is similar to what the Western Australian National, Tony Crook did.
Hogan has been in the federal parliament and a member of the Abbott & Turnbull Coalition governments for almost five years and in that time has never voted against Liberal-Nationals party policy.
What Hogan is doing with this media release is taking a hollow stance.
He fully intends to support the new Liberal Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Nationals Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack.
An arrogant new prime minister with a history since 2013 of human rights abuses as Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, of welfare recipient bashing as Minister for Social Services, of relentless cost cutting as Treasurer and as a strong supporter of propping up the rich at the expense of low income families.
Wednesday 22 August 2018
A definitive list of the far right nutters within the current federal Liberal Party?
Sky News stated this as a list of those in the Liberal party room who backed, then Minister for Home Affairs and now backbencher, Peter Dutton's attempt to overthrow Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull:
A Who’s Who of those voting against Malcolm Bligh Turnbull in the Liberal party room leadership ballot on 21 August 2018:
Peter Dutton himself,
Michael Sukkar, MP for Deakin (Vic) & Assistant Minister to the Treasurer,
Greg Hunt, MP for Flinders (Vic) & Minister for Health,
Tony Abbott, MP for Warringah (NSW) & former sacked prime minister,
Zed Seselja, Senator for ACT & Assistant Minister for Science, Jobs and Innovation,
Steven Ciobo, MP for Moncrieff (Qld) & Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment,
Michael Keenan, MP for Stirling (WA) & Minister for Human Services,
Alan Tudge, MP for Aston (Vic) & Minister for Human Services,
Angus Taylor, MP for Hume (NSW) & Minister for Law Enforcement and Cyber Security,
Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, Senator for NSW & Minister for International Development and the Pacific,
Tony Pasin, MP for Barker (SA),
Jason Wood, MP for La Trobe (Vic),
Andrew Hastie, MP for Canning (WA),
Kevin Andrews, MP for Menzies (Vic),
Eric Abetz, Senator for Tasmania,
Ted O'Brien, MP for Fairfax (Qld),
Amanda Stoker, Senator for Queensland,
Andrew Wallace, MP for Fisher (Qld),
Karen Andrews, MP for McPherson(Qld),
Jim Molan, Senator for NSW,
Luke Howarth, MP for Petrie (Qld),
Nicole Flint, MP for Boothby (SA),
James Paterson, Senator for Victoria,
David Bushby, Senator for Tasmania,
Ross Vasta, MP for Bonner (Qld),
Ben Morton, MP for Tangney (WA),
James McGrath, Senator for Queensland,
Rick Wilson, MP for O'Connor (WA),
Scott Buchholz, MP for Wright (Qld),
David Fawcett, Senator for SA,
Dean Smith, Senator for WA,
Ian Goodenough, MP for Moore (WA),
Andrew Laming, MP for Bowman (Qld),
Jonathan Duniam, Senator for Tasmania,
Bert Van Manen, MP for Forde (Qld).
What a gathering of 'entitled' climate change denialists, followers of King Coal, members of the IPA, homophobes and hardened welfare recipient bashers.
All in all, a handy list of who not to vote for at the forthcoming federal election if one prefers a world where Peter Dutton never becomes Prime Minister of Australia.
Tuesday 21 August 2018
William Fraser Anning - an ugly aspect of far-right politics in Australia
The Sydney Morning Herald, Fraser Anning |
William
Fraser Anning then a member of
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party was declared elected to the Australian
Senate on 10 November 2017,
as a replacement
for the recently disqualified dual citizen Malcolm
Ieuan Roberts.
Less than
seven months later he had joined Katter’s Australian Party.
In the 2016
general election Anning had received a
grand total of 19 votes (59 if transferred votes are counted) out of a possible 2.72 million Queensland ballots cast. The Queensland electorate had firmly rejected him.
Hansard shows that at 17:06pm on Wednesday 14
August 2018, nine months after taking up his seat, Anning made his formal First Speech on the floor of the Senate.
This is how The
Sydney Morning Herald reported this speech on 14 August 2018:
Queensland senator
Fraser Anning has praised the White Australia Policy and called for a
plebiscite as "the final solution to the immigration problem" in the
most inflammatory maiden speech to an Australian Parliament since One Nation
leader Pauline Hanson's in 1996.
The Katter's Australian
Party senator, formerly of One Nation, used his first speech to the Senate on
Tuesday to lament the demise of "our predominantly European identity"
of the 1950s and '60s.
The
Guardian’s opinion
piece on 15 August 2018 pointed out the dangers before us:
Fraser Anning is in the
parliament by accident. Having fluked his way into the Senate chamber because
One Nation needed a replacement for Malcolm Roberts, he now wants your
attention, and judging by his
performance in the Senate on Tuesday night, he doesn’t care what lines he
crosses to get it.
What we are witnessing
in national politics is the latest manifestation of Australia’s cultural
cringe. Far right political operatives, and the media voices prepared to give
them succour, are importing the nationalist debates that have sprung up in the
shadow of the global
financial crisis – the biggest economic dislocation since the great
depression.
We are building our own
tinder box, bit by bit.
Debates about race, and
sovereignty, and immigration have caught fire elsewhere because of deep
resentments felt by the losers of globalisation. Australia
didn’t suffer the biting effects of the global financial crisis, and the
prolonged economic downturn that followed it. By comparison to the visceral
experiences elsewhere, in this country we experienced a chilly, stiff breeze.
Notwithstanding these
facts, we are importing the outrage consciousness that exists elsewhere,
validating it, willingly projecting an alternate reality onto our own domestic
circumstances as a grotesque form of entertainment.
We are building our own
tinder box, bit by bit.
This would be pathetic.
Almost laughable. Except in terms of race and politics, we are now in the most
explosive period we’ve been in since John Howard sailed into choppy waters with
his feelings on Asian immigration in the 1980s.
There is nothing to
laugh about. Right now, there are all the ingredients of a perfect storm.
The first ingredient is
a fractured bunch of far-right leaning political voices in mortal competition
with one another for votes. The last 24 hours has been a public competition
between Anning, and his new running mate Bob Katter, and One Nation, for
attention. Anning and Katter apparently want to establish a new beach
head, charting
territory where Pauline won’t follow. Just let that happy thought settle on
you for a minute or two.
The second ingredient is
a polity profoundly disaffected by the repeated failings and default narcissism
of Australia’s major party politics, frustrated by their congested cities and
low wages growth and by governments who spent more time fighting their
fractured internals than navigating the future. The third is a
disrupted media landscape where conflict – the louder and more notorious the
better – is hard currency.
Fraser Anning used his
first speech to parliament to spin his own obscurity into notoriety: to try on
a troll suit in full public view.
The
Monthly spoke of Anning as "unrepresentative", "accidental swill" on 15
August 2018:
Fraser Anning’s
execrable first speech in the Senate yesterday, proposing a “final solution” on
Muslim immigration, marks a new low for Australian politics, but assuredly not
for long. Things are likely to get worse before they get better, as a bunch of
illegitimate right-wing nobodies in the Senate compete for race-hate shock
value in the lead-up to the next election. The combination of a double
dissolution in 2016 and the citizenship crisis has burdened us with the least
representative Senate in living memory. The crossbench is populated by senators
who won on the donkey vote, defected, were elected on a countback or were hand-picked
mid-term and are yet to face the people. Most face electoral oblivion in 2019.
We are used to hearing of “unrepresentative swill” in the Senate, where one
vote, one value has never applied, but a record number of our current senators
literally don’t deserve to be there. Call them accidental swill.
Anning’s speech, in
which he called for a return to the White Australia policy, did not come out of
the blue. We have been building up to this steadily. From Pauline Hanson’s
return to parliament, to Tony Abbott’s dog-whistling on immigration policy, to
Peter Dutton’s attacks on “African gangs”, to Andrew Bolt’s comments
about Chinese, Cambodian, Indian and Jewish communities“changing
our culture”, to Sky News airing an interview with neo-Nazi Blair Cottrell, the
trend is clear: we are sliding ever-faster down a slippery slope towards an
ugly, divisive race-card election.
Although his
formal first speech was somewhat tardy, according to They
Vote For You Anning has been busy voting strongly in support of:
On 14 August 2018 lawyer Richard McGilvray, an adviser to Senator Anning, resigned his position in protest.
Posting on Linkedin that: "I do not condone SenatorAnning's speech. His reference to 'the Final Solution' was not something I had seen, heard of, or discussed prior to his remarks last night and as a consequence, within hours of Senator Anning's speech, I resigned my position effective immediately. I'd like to thank many of you for your messages of support and encouragement this morning."
As is to be expected Anning's speech has been fact checked and found to contain numerous errors.
To date, Senator Anning has not issued an apology for elements of that speech.
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