Why activists have gone too far with Scott Morrison and Katherine Deves

In the case of Scott Morrison and Katherine Deves, the velvet rope that defines a rules-based order has been violated – twice – writes Joe Hildebrand.

Society is crumbling. Our last defence against chaos and barbarism has fallen.

I speak of course of the velvet rope – no, not that thing you saw in Fifty Shades of Grey, but the simple piece of twine that defines a rules-based order.

Twice in as many weeks we have now seen the rope get violated – again not in the Fifty Shades of Grey way but in something even more damaging and offensive to civilisation.

Both Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Warringah candidate Katherine Deves had angry activists invade their gatherings at two separate venues, thus breaching the sacred and once impenetrable boundary of a limp bit of fabric and a laminated Microsoft Word document reading “Private Function”.

This is a gross debasement of the very foundation stone of Australian values: Pub etiquette. Having attended, I am quite sure, literally every pub in the country, I cannot think of anything that would embolden myself or anyone I know to cross that sacred line.

You could be jammed in the public bar liked an economy pack of sausages and it would never cross your mind to cross that line. You could be being chased by a street gang waving bicycle chains and you’d still stop dead at the wobbly bollard and say, “Hang on guys, I don’t think we’re allowed in here…”

And even if you passed out drunk and started to fall over the threshold, your mates would always take hold of your comatose body and thoughtfully throw it on the safety of the front bar tiles.

Standards like this are the only thing that separates us from the animals. I mean what’s next? Sitting down at empty tables with a plastic “reserved” sign on them?

This is the Australian way, and if these knuckle-dragging thugs don’t like it, then they can drag their barbarian carcasses to a lawless foreign backwater like New Zealand or Perth.

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Originally published as Why activists have gone too far with Scott Morrison and Katherine Deves