One of the many who warned about the perils of Catholics occupying high office was the Reverend Dr McGibbon who officiated at the opening of Sydney’s Protestant Hall on November 9, 1877. The Sydney Morning Herald duly reported his remarks the following day: “It may be quite true … that at the present time, and in our favoured land, Popery and the priest are as harmless and loyal as any other ‘ism,’ but why are they so?”
“Only because they have not yet the power to be anything else,” explained McGibbon. “Their quietness is constrained. It is not natural to them. Develop Popery to its logical result – give the priest of Rome his own way, and the dangers of miseries of bygone years will speedily reappear. Let not this be said to be Protestant suspicion and unjust reproach. It is the teaching of Romanists, which cannot be denied … Popery has poisoned and blighted everything.”
Fortunately, the SMH is now a progressive publication. It no longer lends itself to this imbecilic bigotry, which is why it has long ceased giving space to those preaching sectarian vitriol under the guise of Christian tolerance. Aside from last Monday week, that is, when the bilious McGibbon was resurrected in the form of writer and commentator the Reverend Dr Stephanie Dowrick. Writing in the newspaper the day before Dominic Perrottet was appointed New South Wales Premier, she disparagingly referred to him as “a highly conservative Catholic with views that represent the most extreme end of a rigidly male-dominated institutional church”.
“If this growing representation of highly conservative Christians in positions of great power is to be contained in Australia, NSW needs to do better,” she wrote. “Fundamentalisms vary greatly. What they have in common, though, is a narrowness of conviction that cannot be challenged by logic, evidence or appeals to reason.” As Janet Albrechtsen noted in this newspaper, Dowrick was oblivious to the irony.
Translation: Catholics aren’t suitable for office because they don’t share my religious beliefs. #bigotry#prejudice#fundamentalismhttps://t.co/H8Cmf3slYn
— Michael Kellahan (@michaelkellahan) October 3, 2021
“It is a problem. It is a problem for women, LGBQTI people, and anyone of a different faith,” commentator and feminist Jane Caro told ABC news regarding Perrottet’s elevation. “So, I’m concerned, I think a lot of women will be.”
Judging by this nonsense, you would think the new Premier had announced the outlawing of sports on the Sabbath, the reintroduction of beach inspectors to ensure women’s bathing costumes are sufficiently modest, and a prohibition on consuming meat during Lent.
“Since entering Parliament in 2011, [Perrottet’s] made plenty of controversial comments as a spear carrier for the religious right,” said ABC political reporter Sarah Gerathy. Co-host Ellen Fanning of ABC’s The Drum labelled him a “religious hardliner” and a “ultraconservative Catholic”. And ABC NSW news presenter Juanita Phillips’s first interview with the new Premier began with this question: “You’re a conservative Christian man with traditional views. What about all those people who don’t share those views – how are you going to connect to them?”
Perrottet should have retorted that unlike the ABC, the views of the NSW electorate are not homogenous. So much for ABC editorial policies which require that presenters “Avoid the unjustified use of stereotypes or discriminatory content that could reasonably be interpreted as condoning or encouraging prejudice.”
I am not sure what is worse in the eyes of his critics – his conservative religious leanings or that he, like a lot of us, enjoys blowing the froth off a couple. When the Premier used a pub as a backdrop to celebrate NSW’s so-called ‘Freedom Day,’ he was again harangued.
“For Dominic Perrottet, NSW’s awakening from its Covid hibernation was about blokes and beers,” complained SMH state political editor Alexandra Smith. “Appealing to white middle-aged men will not give the Coalition an electoral edge.”
Never mind that he was promoting the long-suffering hospitality industry, or that Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese was doing the same, or that his fellow frontbencher Michelle Rowland was downing a middie around the same time.
A social media pile-on followed, with prominent finger-wavers berating Perrottet for partaking in the demon drink. And this is where it became truly comical. Last week he was supposedly an arch-Papist who was unfit for secular office. This week his critics, in castigating him, may as well have been vying for the presidency of the National Women’s Christian Temperance Union.
Am I alone in really not feeling this? On a number of levels. 😑 (No homeschool for the boys!) https://t.co/zuY0MYnFr6 via @BabyMacBethpic.twitter.com/CIsibGuWqg
— Georgie Dent (@georgiedent) October 11, 2021
[it]felt like it was a reunion of Young Liberal blokes …â€
— Julia Banks (@juliahbanks) October 11, 2021
I know how that feels.
Dom and Scott seem very similar.
But Scott always uses the few female Liberal MPs that are there, as “female props†to “mask the blokey tone†#auspol
https://t.co/j38DjjBKOu
An excellent piece.
— Tracey Spicer AM GAICD (@TraceySpicer) October 11, 2021
Who on earth is advising the Premier…? https://t.co/RkUFfgKmFD
One of their number was Dowrick, who tweeted sneeringly “Back to the 1950s with a boy-leader born in 1982”. Apparently 39 is too young an age to be Premier.
But in March last year, Dowrick gushingly tweeted that New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern “is one of the great leaders of our time”. Ardern was at the time – you guessed it – 39. You were saying, Reverend?
****************************************************************************
‘Freedom Day’ should be celebrated all around Australia. We should profusely thank governments for their generosity in granting us freedoms – you know the same freedoms that are inherent. Thank you, Prime Minister Scott Morrison, for finally allowing us to travel internationally, something you had no right to take away in the first place. Thank you in advance, Premier Daniel Andrews, for dropping that longstanding curfew that had nothing to do with health or enforcement reasons.
Thank you, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, for your incessant and self-serving tweets in which you told us you were working tirelessly to keep Queenslanders safe. Thank you for demanding the federal government bail out your touristy industry after your arbitrary border closures ruined local operators.
Thank you, Premier Peter Gutwein, for forcing mainland tourists out of their accommodation and ordering them to leave Tasmania in March last year. “I make no apologies for working hard to keep Tasmanians safe,” you declared. Good on you for giving those freeloaders the bum’s rush I say. Thank you, Steven Marshall, for denying Victorians who lived literally metres from the border from entering South Australia, whether it be kids attending school or people needing lifesaving medical care.
As to which leader deserves the prize for being the most obnoxious in this affair – well, the judges’ verdict was unanimous. Step forward Mr Piss & Wind, otherwise known as Premier Mark McGowan. Despite the sandgropers’ longstanding parochialism, those of us on the east coast would have been genuinely saddened had West Australians decided to leave the Commonwealth. Now thanks to your egomania, half of us wish your state would secede just to shut you up, even if means a Chinese submarine base in Fremantle.
Thank you to those who have come up with those sayings and terms we have grown to love e.g. ‘We’re all in this together,’ ‘lockdown-lite,’ and ‘ring of steel’. It has helped us understand how long-term prisoners come to be institutionalised. As for your doughnuts, you know what you can do with them. Thank you too to the many Karens who posted on social media images of crimes against humanity, such as people exercising on Bondi Beach or purchasing an ice cream during lockdown. We would not have coped without you.
Lastly, a big thank you to the bureaucrats who saw the pandemic as an opportunity to grandstand and lord it over us. All praise to you, Jeroen Weimar, the Victorian Covid-19 Testing Commander who pompously referred to “further incursions of Covid from NSW”.
And where would we be without Queensland chief health officer Jeannette Young, and her egocentric “I need you to” pronouncements. To her and her ilk, let me say just one thing. We need you to put a sock in it.
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