The Mocker: Greens leader Adam Bandt postures, virtue-signals as party slides to irrelevance
Unfortunately for Bandt, his tweeting an image of this letter did not get the desired response.
Things are tough at the North Melb public housing flats this morning, where residents got locked down last night with no notice and now can’t leave. This was dropped out a window by one resident. pic.twitter.com/t5o1p0tdHy
— Adam Bandt (@AdamBandt) July 5, 2020
Many were sceptical about the its origins, pointing to the absence of spelling and punctuation errors. Soon Twitter was awash with images of satirical letters to Bandt with the hashtag #HiAdamLetters. They inspired me to pen a few myself.
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Adam, I am a prisoner in my one-bedroom apartment situated on the twentieth floor. Imagine my loneliness. As I look from on high, I can just make out the ant-like figures of people below but amazingly I somehow recognised you. I decided to write you this note and alert you to my plight. I cannot post it and only hope that when I throw it out the window it will magically find its way to you. If only there were a global network of machines which could communicate with each other instantaneously, linked by a multitude of wireless, electronic, and optical technologies that could fit in one’s palm. Regards, Sophia
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Adam, I am a social worker who, in solidarity with these imprisoned residents, has volunteered to stay and comfort them. I have also personally interviewed every single resident in this massive complex and can confirm, of the ones who have contracted coronavirus, none did so as a result of attending the Black Lives Matter protests or coming into contact with someone who had been to those rallies. Regards, Lucy
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Adam, I am Iranian asylum-seeker and father of two. Government repress us but I very glad you defend our human rights. Also my six-year-old son Farrokh watch coverage of the Eden-Monaro by election on Saturday and said, “The Greens’ securing of 4.52 per cent of primary votes is testament to the strength of Adam’s leadership”. Proof that voting age should be lowered to 16. Peace, Hashem
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Adam, I am Hashem’s daughter. In this post-truth era it is vital that residents are kept up-to-date and informed by an impartial and well-resourced national broadcaster. As such I was devastated to learn the federal government has subjected the organisation to an $83 million three-year indexation freeze. Also ABC Life is no longer financially sustainable. Have the conservatives any idea of how knowledge-poor we will be if no longer have online articles such as “What I learned about climate change in a hot swimming pool car park” and “Yumi Stynes on how coronavirus isolation transformed the way she thinks about ‘beauty’”. Peace, Dilshad, Age 7
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Adam, I am wife of Hashem. My English not good but I want to say ABC complies fully with statutory Charter. I wake up at night with panic attacks at thought of essential programs being cut as consequence of reduced funding. If conservative government really believe ABC biased maybe they should commission nice man Ray Martin to do independent review. Peace, Fatima
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Adam, as a resident I am cross at the Andrews Government’s heavy-handed approach, but Scott Morrison deserves most of the blame. We need the best and brightest minds to find a cure for coronavirus. But if the federal government is successful in pushing up fees for humanities courses, I will be unable to complete my PhD thesis on how the disproportionately high death rate among males suffering coronavirus is simple a ruse to reinforce patriarchal control. Regards, Agatha
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Adam, I know the odds of residents’ letters landing directly next to you are normally slim, but fortunately I am skilled in mathematics and the art of wetting one’s thumb, and accordingly I’ve advised the occupants the relevant wind/speed velocity with appropriate adjustments for their level. I have calculated at least 95 per cent of the documents concerned will land within reach of you. Regards, Tobias
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Adam, please excuse the messy writing and the tear-stained paper, but my treatment at the hands of this fascist police force has left me totally distraught. As a resident in lockdown I had ordered sanitary pads – an essential hygiene requirement – and hearing a knock at the door I answered it. “Sorry,” said the police officer, sanitary pads in hand, “I’ve obviously got the wrong apartment”. He went to shut the security door but unfortunately, as I stuck my head out to correct him I got my beard caught in the process. I feel utterly, utterly humiliated. Regards, Angelique
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Adam, I am an epidemiologist and have discovered information about coronavirus that the federal government is desperately trying to suppress. Through my research I have ascertained that unemployed people with anxiety are highly susceptible to the virus. However, this can be reversed if we maintain the doubling of JobSeeker payments indefinitely. Note, I do not trust conventional means of communicating with you, hence my decision to drop this letter randomly outside a housing commission high-rise just on the off chance you happen upon it. Signed, Anon
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Adam, I refer to a recent Guardian article written by Flemington housing resident and Sudanese-Australian Awatif Taha, referring to the mass descending of police on our estate. She correctly observes “When we see the police like that, we think there is a big problem.” Yet she then goes on to state “But we aren’t frightened by the police. I work with the police a lot, as a community worker. The police have been good tonight – very polite and very respectful.” Why does the Guardian allow this propaganda? Regards, Yassmin
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If Bandt is open to suggestions about how he could help his constituents in this latest outbreak, perhaps someone could remind him that as recently as late February the Greens leader’s priority was dining at Asian restaurants in order to combat “racism”. Last month he applauded the upcoming and unlawful Black Lives Matter mass assemblies, drawing an analogy between deaths by coronavirus and deaths by racism.
Also, his protesting the hard lockdown of public housing tenants is little more than a token objection. If anything, he is shilling for the Andrews government, telling ABC News on Tuesday “If the rest of the country had done what Daniel Andrews had been urging them to do earlier on in the pandemic earlier on we might be further down the New Zealand road.”
Yes, if only all the other states had refused the federal government’s offer of providing Australian Defence Force members to assist with hotel quarantining. They would have been far better off to engage dodgy security companies without going to tender. And kudos to those companies for providing at least five minutes security training to guards, albeit the topic “Bonking people in quarantine is strictly prohibited” was not included.
Bandt would be better off putting aside the Comical Ali impersonation and concentrating on the needs of impoverished constituents, as opposed to those of affluent inner-types and university students. For example, how does he think tenants on social security can afford skyrocketing power prices, which will increase even further if the Greens succeed in their ambition to abolish coal mining?
While he is at it, Bandt could have a quiet word to the party’s new senator, indigenous woman Lidia Thorpe, who last month bemoaned she had inherited “trans generational trauma, not stolen wealth”. Her base salary is $211,250. By comparison single age pensioners receive $24,554 per year and do not qualify until they turn 67. No doubt they would take comfort in Bandt’s tweeting “We’re all in this together”.
The Greens will preference Labor ahead of the Liberals and Nationals, with Labor appearing in the number 2 spot on the How to Vote card when voting starts tomorrow.
— Adam Bandt (@AdamBandt) June 14, 2020
By voting Greens, Eden-Monaro voters can send the government a powerful message about the climate crisis.
Only last month he tweeted that the voters of Eden-Monaro could send “a powerful message about the climate crisis”. They certainly did, only it was Bandt who was the recipient of the powerful message, the Greens’ primary votes having dropped three per cent. He might be better off reconsidering his virtue preening and alarmist posturing.
As one Twitter wag observed in a mock handwritten note “Bullshit letters won’t improve the situation but thanks for (your) concern”.
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Greens leader Adam Bandt was on a coronavirus mercy mission this week when he visited a North Melbourne housing commission estate in lockdown. According to Bandt, one resident, protesting the mass presence of police, dropped him a note written in a colourful marker pen.