Elizabeth Farrelly can help join dots between whingeing and whipping
MEANWHILE, Julian Burnside QC shares his fond dream that stars Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton.
ELIZABETH Farrelly in The Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday:
WE all have our inner fascist. Overheard in the women’s loo at Bronte rockpool, two blondes, having a whinge about their fellow swimmers. They didn’t like the fast, thrashy guys, the lane nazis. They didn’t like the slow, lumbering whales. They resented breaststrokers and backstrokers, and expressed contempt for both the side-pool walkers and the “teabags” who bob and steep at pool-end ... they didn’t really welcome anyone who did things differently from themselves.
Farrelly takes a breath and moves seamlessly to the next sentence:
IT was the same day as the first public flogging of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, sentenced to 10 years and 1000 lashes for “insulting Islam” — viz, attempting public political discourse in a regime that criminalises dissent.
Farrelly clarifies:
OBVIOUSLY, the blondes weren’t Wahhabis. They’d have been wearing way more clothes.
In case you had any doubts about his feelings for Tony Abbott et al, Julian Burnside on The Drum yesterday:
THE hard facts about the horrific conditions on Manus Island that I’ve outlined above may not be enough to shock us, but the one thing that really might shock us is to see (Tony) Abbott, (Scott) Morrison and (Peter) Dutton prosecuted in the International Criminal Court for those crimes. That’s a pro bono case I would gladly prosecute.
Burnside on The Drum on October 20, 2013:
THEN in 2013 we had an awful election campaign in which (Kevin) Rudd and Abbott competed with each other in their promises to mistreat asylum-seekers.
Back when it was OK. AAP on July 6, 2010:
PROMINENT human rights lawyer Julian Burnside QC has given conditional approval to the proposed East Timor processing centre ...
But that was in Gillard’s time. Back to Burnside’s 2013 Drum article:
IT’S tempting to think that if Pauline Hanson had been asked to help Rudd (in the 2013 campaign), she might have been concerned that he was too far to the right for her taste.
Say, how is Pauline going? Hanson on Facebook on Sunday:
I URGE everyone to make a stand and celebrate our superior Western culture …
A motto in the making. Pauline Hanson yesterday:
I DON’T like what I’m seeing.
Round up the usual suspects. The Townsville Bulletin yesterday:
WORKERS at Clive Palmer’s Yabulu nickel refinery have received emails asking them to help man the booths for his party on election day. Palmer United Party’s Mundingburra candidate Clive Mensink — who is the managing director of the refinery — said he didn’t see anything wrong with asking his employees to volunteer for the party.
Endorsement on the cover of Mark Latham’s new collection of essays, Latham at Large:
AS a writer on Australian politics, he is the complete package — Peter FitzSimons.
Urban Dictionary gives the popular slang meaning of package:
MALE genitalia.
The ABC’s Q&A on August 9, 2010:
AUDIENCE member: On a scale of 1 to 10, how big a tool is Mark Latham?
Julia Gillard: There are some things that can’t be measured.
Latham at Large publisher Melbourne University Press offers a solemn promise on its website:
THERE is no one else like him in Australian public life.