Strange Politics: You can't say that! You f***ing can

PROPONENTS of the gutter-mouthed branch of Australian vernacular are now officially free to tell their elected representatives to go f*** themselves.

Christian Democrat leader Fred Nile and Liberal Democrat Senator David Leyonhjelm have very different ideas on cuss words. Picture: Digitally altered

PROPONENTS of the gutter-mouthed branch of Australian vernacular are now officially free to tell their elected representatives to go f*** themselves.

A battle for the right to blaspheme like an effing trooper began back in September 2015 when two protesters at a marriage equality rally copped $500 fines for chanting "f*** Fred Nile" and "bigots f*** off".

Those fines were dropped, but the NSW Police decided to press criminal charges and a bloody ridiculous year-long legal stoush ensued.

This week a Sydney magistrate unequivocally sanctioned the f-bomb, finding cussing was perfectly reasonable if it is not "calculated to wound the feelings, arouse anger or resentment or disgust and outrage in the mind of a reasonable person".

What a monumental waste of time and taxpayers' money, especially considering our politicians themselves have been swearing like fishwives for six yonks and a year.

Kevin Rudd was impeccably versed in the art of four-letter wordsmanship and was a proud subscriber to their use, at least when (he thought) he was behind closed doors.

"Tell these d***heads at the embassy to just give me simple sentences," a leaked video showed him lamenting while struggling to deliver a pre-recorded speech in Mandarin.

"I haven't got the f***ing patience to do it... Just f***ing hopeless."

Rudd also apparently let fly at the Copenhagen Climate summit in 2010 with, "Those Chinese f***ers are trying to rat-f*** us." Such articulate prose.

Christopher Pyne swears black and blue he did not call Bill Shorten a c-word despite being on film doing so in parliament in 2014. And he definitely was not talking in code on the Today Show when he told Anthony Albanese he would "see you next Tuesday", which according to the suppository of all wisdom (Wikipedia) is a "backronym" for the aforementioned c-word.

Who could forget the vicious-gripped hand-shaker himself, Mark Latham, who in his post-politics life has built a career on offending anyone not from Sydney's Western Suburbs.

His outburst at the 2015 Melbourne Writers Festival was one for the history books. First he called host Jonathan Green an "ABC wanker", then told the baying crowd: "This is how I talk ... and if you don't like it, you can f*** off."

"What's wrong with a bit of unfiltered conversation? And the word f*** and c***, they've been on the front page of the Australian so they've been legitimised, so let's get right into it - f***, c***, poo, bum," he continued.

NSW Senator Bill Heffernan commented during committee talks about cross-runway landings at airports, "F***, that's risky s***." Hansard has it all on record.

And lastly there is Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm, who will call anyone he disapproves of just about any word under the sun, flat out telling someone on Twitter earlier this year he would call him a c*** "and probably a rude name after that".

Swearing in politics: fiddle-sticking good stuff.