David Penberthy: Shoot-from-the-hip Senator David Leyonhjelm should take aim closer to home
WE have heard enough by now from the so-called “Libertarian” Senator David Leyonhjelm to know that the man’s brain is wired differently from other people’s.
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WE have heard enough by now from the so-called “Libertarian” Senator David Leyonhjelm to know that the man’s brain is wired differently from other people’s.
A lot of people, especially those who work in law enforcement or respect those who do, would regard the NSW Senator as a sick sort of a puppy.
He is the man who was caught on video addressing a rally against anti-motorcycle gang laws in Sydney, where he used the most repellent language imaginable to accuse police of interfering with the civil liberties of bikers.
“They wonder why no one comes to their aid when they are in trouble,” he said of the police.
“For myself, I am never going to help someone who thinks it’s OK to pull me up, search me and threaten me with jail if I don’t answer their questions, merely because I ride my motorcycle in company with a couple of other people.
“If that’s what they think, they can lie on the side of the road and bleed to death.”
Wow. People in public life have issued grovelling apologies for saying much less than this. Asked if he stood by the remarks when the video of his speech was made public in October, Leyonhjelm had this to say: “In the context, the comments were appropriate.”
Anyone who can imagine a context where willing the death of a cop is appropriate needs their head examined.
It is in keeping with his now-established pattern of behaviour, whereby Leyonhjelm has supported his violence-plagued soccer team the Western Sydney Wanderers, saying its fans had a saying that “all cops are bastards”.
“The cops have earned that label, they have to un-earn it,” stated the 200k-a-year fringe senator, arguing that the people who had the most explaining to do about soccer hooliganism weren’t his dopey shirtless mates setting off flares or smashing seats, but the police trying to maintain public order.
One telling indicator of Leyonhjelm’s weird policy appetites comes from the demands he has issued as a result of the democratic quirk that has seen him exercise veto rights in the Australian Senate.
I suspect that most normal people who found themselves in a position of being able to demand that a government do pretty much anything would be motivated by a sense of public good. You might propose an anti-poverty measure, an idea involving education or health, a job creation scheme to help start-up businesses in our most depressed suburbs.
The No. 1 thing Senator Leyonhjelm has demanded as his precondition for supporting key government legislation is the importation of a gun which fires bullets at a slightly faster rate than the model currently cleared for sale in Australia.
In my humble opinion, the bloke is a card-carrying peanut.
This week, and not for the first time, Leyonhjelm aimed his metaphorical crosshairs at our fair state of South Australia, labelling us a hopeless pack of bludgers who are wholly reliant on government handouts.
Likening the SA Government to a middle-aged obese man who lives in Mum’s backroom playing Xbox and eating Cheezels, Leyonhjelm homed in on the wrangle over Murray-Darling water allocations to accuse SA of being the hand-out state.
“The primary concern of some SA politicians appears to be that people visiting holiday houses in Goolwa might miss out on watching gigalitres of freshwater flow into the ocean every day,” he said.
Setting aside any suspicions that what this former veterinary surgeon knows about the Murray could be written on the head of a pin, there is a fairly significant logical fallacy in Leyonhjelm’s assertions.
You could make a much stronger case that it is in fact the eastern states which are the real hand-out states when it comes to the management of the Murray-Darling. The entire water deal is predicated around their constant cries that without a guaranteed level of water, the entire farming sector and almost every town in the Riverina will be wiped off the map.
Their constant plaintive cry is that unless governments keep agreeing to provide them with an endless supply of water, their lives will come to an end.
Even though the river itself might come to an end as a result of the unchecked practices advocated by the rattier irrigators, such as building gigantic cotton farms at the top of the river system, indifferent to the undeniable damage wrought downstream.
There are of course plenty of can-rattlers in SA and we have been at our worst with our factually-challenged bleatings about things like the car industry, which died plain and simple because of globalisation, cheap foreign labour and a high dollar, and could have never been saved with endless wasteful government bailouts.
But the idea that SA has some kind of monopoly on demanding government intervention is a complete joke. Indeed, the National Party in its entirety is largely a handout-driven organisation, existing for eastern states’ farmers who want to privatise their profits and nationalise their losses, demanding special cabinet meetings every time it rains too much, or not enough.
And if it is special interest bleatings David Leyonhjelm really wants to see in their full, glorious colour, he need go no further than his beloved Western Sydney, home not only to the Wanderers, but the most accomplished lobbyists in the land.
When it came to covering state and federal politics in NSW, my decade-plus journalistic career in Sydney was dominated by endless demands for the latest and best infrastructure and services for the people of western Sydney.
These people find themselves in the happy political position of being home to more marginal seats in a 20km radius than SA, Western Australia and Tasmania combined. Their MPs know it and act accordingly.
When it comes to special interest pleadings, we are rank amateurs compared to that lot.