Voice deserves better than a Shaq attack

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese holds a press conference with NBA legend Shaquille O'Neal. Picture: NCA NewsWire

There’s a great Hunter S. Thompson quote about politics: “Most days in politics are boring, but every so often you get a wild one. One that wakes the ’ol boys from their slumber.”

That for me was last Saturday as I watched the most bizarre press conference of Anthony Albanese’s career – the one with American basketballer Shaquille O’Neal. It was just so tone deaf, so patronising and so clueless to think the voice could be helped by a celebrity endorsement from Shaq.

Shaquille O'Neal in Melbourne. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

This has rightly been condemned by Indigenous representatives across the political divide – senators Lidia Thorpe and Jacinta Price. No doubt other leaders from the community will also speak out.

I understand this had taken up the full bandwidth of the Prime Minister’s media unit as it made plans for the Saturday announcement. Sure, a big-name US sports personality best known for his massage table innuendo-laden ads for online betting has a media edge to it. But did anyone check out Shaq’s other post-game career – his rapping?

I did and the lyrics are full of toxic masculinity in its most profane form. Shaq’s most played song has the line: “Taxiderm your bitch head, mount it on a wall.” He sings in another lyric about punching a girl in the stomach because “yo, she breathed on my neck”. The worst is in his other “hit” song, You Can’t Stop the Reign – “we want the exotic, erotic ladies, not them toxic ladies that burn a lot”.

It’s disgusting, but clearly Albo’s brains trust thinks this will help the voice.

NBA legend Shaquille O'Neal greets Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Picture: NCA NewsWire

Shaq’s use of “nigga” may well be culturally appropriate but when sung as “Kobe, nigga, tell me how my ass taste” can only be topped by the lyric “To tell niggas to suck c--k, run and get a gun”.

And there’s so much more.

What on earth was Albo thinking? Surely he didn’t do this knowing these were Shaq’s attitudes to women, guns, domestic violence and drug use.

The voice is such a fragile, precious thing, but as recent polling shows it is not yet supported by the majority of voters in any state, not even Victoria.

Albo should sack anyone who recommended this act of self-harm to the voice. He then needs to apologise to Australians, especially Indigenous Australians, for participating in this.