Category: booing

Abbott’s Consistency in The Coalition of Contradiction

Image by noplaceforsheep.com

Let’s start with Andrew Bolt:

More booing from the mob as Abbott leaves. There is a tendency among all collectives to not be satisfied with love. They also need to hate. Thus do trash boo at funerals.

Disgraceful

I suppose the fact that he decided to attack Whitlam within minutes of his passing was nothing like booing – it was his way of his showing love. You see, Bolt loves the current government because you only have to put two of their statements together and you get some wonderful contradictions.

For starters, let’s look at their attitude to red tape slowing things down and place that against the “rushed” insulation scheme which led to the death of workers. There should have been more oversight, which is, in some way that I don’t understand, different from red tape.

And the Medicare Co-payment, which is going to a medical research fund. Somewhere. The details are probably commercial in confidence. BUT WE NEED THIS CO-PAYMENT TO MAKE MEDICARE AFFORDABLE. Even though it’s not supposed to discourage people from going to the doctor. Neither is it going into general revenue. But we need it because of Labor’s mismanagement of the economy, even though it has nothing to do with the past but is – supposedly – about the future.

I could talk about their change in attitudes from Opposition to Government with such things as the unemployed, the car industry, SPC or even Government Debt. $283 billion in debt is a disaster, but let’s not mention what the debt level is expected to reach in the next few weeks…

Then, of course, the Carbon Tax was a GREAT BIG TAX ON EVERYTHING. Even though it was only the biggest companies that were paying it. “But they’ll pass it on, you idiot”. The Paid Parental Leave Scheme (remember that) won’t cost us a cent because it’ll be paid for by a levy on Big Business. And it won’t cost them anything because – in spite of the Budget Emergency – we’re giving companies a tax break of 1.5% which is the same as the levy.

But I guess the greatest contradiction of them all is their Direct Action Policy because it’s a subsidy and they don’t believe in subsidies. Oh, unless it’s to things like coal. But wind, well, what if the wind isn’t blowing and one day, we’ll run out of sunshine because the Labor Party used too much of it when they were in government and we’re determined to ration the sunshine to the people who really deserve it. And, if those companies who take the money don’t meet their target, well, we don’t punish people for making mistakes. Or promising to do things which they don’t. Unless they’re Labor politicians.

Of course, I could point out to Andrew Bolt that it was a memorial service, not a funeral. Alternatively, I could promise him that I certainly wouldn’t be booing at his or Abbott’s funeral. But that would be tacky.

Instead, I’ll merely quote from the Bolt man himself:

Pearson then speaks in the biblical tones and cadences he’s now adopted for his oratory.

He savages Joh Bjelke-Peterson, and waves aside Whitlam’s chaotic mismanagement as simply the price to pay for inspiring reform. The crowd loves that.

He then says Whitlam had “not a bone of ethnic or gender prejudice in his body” and Pearson can “scarely point” to any leader since of whom that could be said. In front of him sit Bob Hawke, Malcolm Fraser, Paul Keating, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott, who are all entitled to feel grossly insulted. Indeed, Abbott may well feel betrayed, having devoted so much time to working with and for Pearson and his Cape York initiative, and having adopted Aboriginal advancement as his most passionate social cause.

I guess booing can take many forms. There are plenty of other subtle attacks in Bolt’s little article.

Still, as everybody knows, bolts are worthless without nuts to support them.

P.S. While on the subject, whatever happened to Christopher Pyne?

Booing Howard and Abbott: The expression of an enthusiasm maintained

Some people seem to think the passionate reaction to Abbott and Howard by the crowd outside the Whitlam memorial yesterday was inappropriate; Judy Crozier says that’s ridiculous.

MY MOTHER WOULD HAVE SAID the crowd’s reactions at Gough Whitlam’s State Memorial service were beyond the pale.

But then, my mother, bless her, was a conservative born in 1918 who may never have voted Labor in her life. Or she may have once — who knows? She kept how she voted a secret.

She was not consumed by a passion for left politics that reforms the social infrastructure of whole nations; she didn’t spend her life in a tension of hope for social transformation.

But I have.

I’ve had a day or so to consider the meaning behind that crowd’s response at Gough Whitlam’s State Memorial Service.

I watched the service from my couch, with a box of tissues next to me. The tears, strangely, first sprang up when ex-PM Howard arrived at Sydney’s Town Hall and was roundly booed before entering to take his seat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=39pp84Ty8Zo

Odd, I thought to myself, dabbing my eyes. Why now?

Because, I responded, this is visceral.

And I realised that even through the screen and from another state, I felt a bond with these men and women of Australia — who felt as I do, who had worked and fought probably for decades as I had, who have never felt that politics was any kind of game, who have never felt politics was anything other than welded to the very real business of life.

They were, as I was with them, at one with the Whitlam of our youth, who said:

“Maintain your rage and your enthusiasm…”

We knew well enough what would have been his reaction to the passion of the day, to the cheering of the heroes and the booing of the villains. We hold our passions dear.

These men and women were making this occasion their own, and across the nation most of us – true believers, participators and witnesses – understood that this was the case. We were present at Gough’s memorial and it was ours, as he was ours and we (most of us) were the workers for the Party that made this country great.

Once again, he and we were present for the making of Australian history.

Others since then have argued that that level of participation, the way these men and women asserted themselves and made their passionate statements of approval or disapproval, was wrong, was bad manners. But this is an absurdity for anyone who has slogged through rain and sun to go letterboxing, who has argued for hours in branch meetings or at policy committees, organised or attended all of those fundraisers.

Don’t be ridiculous.

Gough Whitlam believed in the assertion of passion and belief, equally for all.

As Graham Freudenberg said:

“He believed profoundly in the Australian Labor Party as the mainstay of Australian democracy and equality.”

And there it was, his Party, represented that day inside and outside the hall — and vocal, dammit, as it always should be.