Andrew Bolt: Sally Rugg vs Monique Ryan puts woke generation on trial

The judge who took a stick to the Sally Rugg vs Monique Ryan mudfight deserves a giant thank you for giving the woke generation a huge smack.

Is it wrong to send a judge flowers? I just want to say a huge thank you to Justice Debra Mortimer for taking a stick to the Sally Rugg vs Monique Ryan mud-fight.

Thank you for giving the woke generation a huge smack on Tuesday for its me-me-me sense of something-for-nothing entitlement.

I’m sure Rugg had no idea she’d be getting a proper schooling from Mortimer for wallowing in what seems to me the typical self-absorption of her Leftist generation.

Rugg was hired last year by Ryan, the Teal independent MP, and is now suing her for allegedly making her work too hard, and then trying to fire her.

I should point out that Rugg is in every way the face of the modern in-your-face protester Left.

She was once campaign director of the global-warming-obsessed GetUp!, and then headed the change.org organisation, which enables couch-sitting activists to vote online to petition other people to do their idle and often ill-informed bidding.

Monique Ryan and Sally Rugg’s mud fight ended up in court.

Before joining Ryan, she worked with former Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to try to punish Murdoch papers like this one for expressing conservative opinions she didn’t like.

Yep, you know the censorious finger-wagging chair-polishing type, yet for some disturbing reason Ryan thought this was just the person she wanted to be her chief-of-staff.

Big mistake.

It turns out Rugg didn’t want to work the hours that many in Parliament House do when parliament is sitting — about 70 hours a week, she complained. The kind of hours I’ve worked year-round for decades.

Ryan meanwhile complained that Rugg didn’t seem interested in doing the important work of rallying supporters back in Ryan’s seat of Kooyong.

Ryan told the court Rugg seemed bedazzled instead with working with journalists and politicians in the glittering halls of Canberra power.

One way or another, it all came to a sticky end, and Rugg reached for the lawyers, instead of just working out this wasn’t a job for her, and finding another that was.

Rugg in her submissions had explained why it was important that Ryan keep employing her, even though Rugg wasn’t doing what Ryan wanted. Picture: Ian Currie

But in the meantime, Rugg insisted, Ryan should keep her on as chief-of-staff, and keep paying her a taxpayer-funded salary of $166,607 a year.

What? That’s when Mortimer told Rugg she was dreaming. Or in the judge’s words, Rugg’s demands “had a significant degree of unreality”.

Mortimer added; “They appeared to depend in part on a scenario in which Ms Rugg would set her own boundaries about what work she would do and how much work she considered reasonable, and Dr Ryan would … fit in…”

Yes, what a monstrous sense of entitlement the woke have.

But Mortimer hadn’t finished kicking at Rugg’s modish values. As I said, this was the woke generation on trial.

Rugg in her submissions had explained why it was important that Ryan keep employing her, even though Rugg wasn’t doing what Ryan wanted and had embarrassed this mask-wearing crusader by boarding a plane to Melbourne while sick with Covid.

Never mind all that! Rugg said Ryan must be forced to hire her: “I aspire to one day be a parliamentarian, and I am sympathetic to the ‘teal’ movement.

“I see myself as a contributing force for the movement. My ability to assist the movement (and pursue my dream of being a parliamentarian), would be irreparably affected if the termination were to proceed.”

Sally Rugg didn’t want to work the hours that many in Parliament House do when parliament is sitting. Picture: Ian Currie

Ha ha ha. Oh, this me-me-me generation.

Or as the judge put it, with acid: “There is little if anything in this kind of evidence that refers to supporting and assisting Dr Ryan. It is all about Ms Rugg.”

Yes! Isn’t that exactly the way now?

What should make this dressing down sting Rugg even more is that it seems Mortimer is herself of the Left.

At the ceremony when she became a judge a decade ago, the crowd was told Mortimer had a passion for social justice - uh oh - but there was this one big difference with Rugg’s younger generation: she also had “a formidable work ethic”.

So I have some advice for Sally Rugg, whose great ambition at 34, after years of telling off other people, is now to become a politician.

Sally, is this court case a great move for you?

And what will be your pitch to voters, if some party still chooses one day to take you on?

“Voters of Victoria! Vote for me, because being a politician is my dream. Oh, and I promise to work tirelessly for you, from 9 to 5, not including public holidays.”

Just don’t expect Mortimer’s vote.