Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Just for you, Tony

My last entry on this blog was Nov 21, 2010. Not that there has been a shortage of topics to get excited, alarmed or furious about. It's just that I've been very busy and nothing has really got my goat.............until now.

Today Tony Abbott spoke at a rally against a Carbon Tax. He spoke to a group of people, including Pauline Hanson, best described as Bogans. ie the ugly Australians most often seen at anti-Muslim school rallies and anti-asylum seeker protests. They have a right to protest; this is not Libya. But today they, and Tony Abbott, crossed the line of respectability. Amongst the posters were "Ditch the Bitch", the 'bitch' being the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.

Tony Abbott spoke standing in front of a very large banner which proclaimed "JULIAR,  BOB BROWN'S BITCH".
Even if he or the Liberal Party didn't provide the banner, a potential Prime Minister should have had the acumen and common decency to insist that the banner be taken down before speaking. By not doing so he has effectively eschewed any right to the top job.  Malcolm Turnbull and Joe Hockey were notable absentees from the rally. Wise indeed.

In 1993 John Hewson was a shoo-in in the polls to win the Federal election for the Liberals. Then he made a fateful decision to indulge himself in a series of shopping centre carpark rallies. The party faithful and political groupies in attendance shouted and screamed on cue. The TV news reported these rallies and showed footage of JH leading the chanting.

The public's reaction to this hoopla? Well, my dear old Mum looked on and sagely commented than she saw shades of Nazi rallies in those Aussie carparks and that it made her feel very apprehensive about John Hewson's bona fides as PM.

Come election day, the polls were proved disastrously wrong. There had been an unexpected turnaround in public sentiment in the last few days of the campaign. John Hewson was a political dead duck. Who knows what it was that caused this unexpected reversal but I like to think that my Mum was right, yet again.

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