Akerman: Canberra’s irrational decision-makers have wormed way into national consciousness
Worms in their brains could be the answer for the wacky nonsense being spouted in the nation’s capital, writes Piers Akerman.
Opinion
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Rational readers have long asked why so many irrational decisions are made by people living in, or regularly visiting, the ACT. The answer may lie in a recent peer-reviewed paper written by nine Canberra medical authorities that appeared in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Before we look at the article though, let’s list just the wacky nonsense that residents and visitors to the nation’s capital have spouted.
Anthony Albanese has repeatedly said the only thing we need to know about the double-edged question we must vote on in the October referendum is contained in the single-page Uluru statement. The Prime Minister has ignored the fact his claim has been contradicted by several of the actual authors of the document, which they acknowledge runs to more than 20 pages.
The day before he announced the referendum date, Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney had contradicted her boss’s claims about the document in an interview with the ABC’s Annabel Crabb in the Kitchen Cabinet’s seventh series. If the ABC has any reputable fact-checkers left after having to cut all ties to the RMIT unit it had partnered, they should go to iView and look at the program at the 27-minute mark.
Burney makes it clear it is “important” to read the document “in full” because the Uluru statement is just “the beginning of a process”.
The pair then dig into a rice pudding so viewers miss an exposition of the full statement and its claims for rent and reparations to non-Indigenous Australians as a percentage of GDP.
Albanese even manages to overlook the emotional passages plagiarised from a case heard before the International Court of Justice in 1975 involving a dispute over the Western Sahara. But he can’t match Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen when it comes to ignoring incontrovertible evidence.
Bowen’s repeated claim so-called renewable energy sources such as wind and solar are the cheapest is based on disputed data provided by GenCost, a contractor to the CSIRO, that does not take into account the billions that need to be spent on connecting untold numbers of wind turbines and thousands of household solar panels to a new transmission grid, nor the $12bn and increasing cost of Snowy Hydro 2.0. By ignoring the real costs of his green dream, Bowen is misleading taxpayers.
The ACT’s little legislature has also succumbed to the delusion disease as evidenced by its decision to stealthily decriminalise addictive drugs including ice, cocaine, heroin, MDMA and LSD.
Concerns raised by the ACT police, who see first-hand the connections between ice with the cycles of crime, appear to have little impact on local Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith, who boasted how the legislative changes were introduced through a private member’s Bill to avoid scrutiny.
The attacks by ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr on retired Queensland judge Walter Sofronoff KC, whom he had appointed to investigate the dumped prosecution of Bruce Lehrmann after the Brittany Higgins alleged rape saga, are also worth mentioning.
So what is the possible link between these actions by ACT Green-Leftists?
It’s the live roundworm found in the brain of a woman by a Canberra Hospital neurosurgeon. The discovery, described in the medical journal, led to the theoryshe ingested roundworm larvae after collecting Warrigal greens where a carpet snake, the roundworms’ usual host, had shed the parasite via its faeces.
Given the majority in the ACT vote for Green-Left candidates, it’s possible many residents would graze on this bush tucker.
Bring on worms in their brains and the need for MRI scans before they do even more damage to the nation.
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