Like a moth to a flame, Tony Abbott has now attended and addressed a second convention of the downtrodden, desperate and dispossessed. On Tuesday, Federal Parliament again became the venue for this people’s rally, or whatever it called itself, which was ostensibly convened to denounce the carbon tax and demand a fresh election in the absence of a government mandate to act on climate change.
Let’s insert a couple of quick caveats here. Everyone who attended these rallies is obviously entitled to hold the views of their choice. And many of the people who attended this rally, and the first one, were salt-of-the-earth punters with a legitimate and sensibly-expressed beef against the government of the day.
Many of them were also barking mad.
Not just a little bit wacky, but card-carrying, rolled-gold, fully paid-up fruitcakes who may well have thought they were being followed to the protest by black United Nations helicopters. Maybe they were. Hmm. Cue the theme from The Twilight Zone.
The assertion by the organisers and participants in these rallies that they represent nothing other than the silent majority simply doesn’t stack up.
The first thing which defines the silent majority in Australia is that it is just that – silent. We’re one of the most politically inactive countries on earth. Most of us might be about to ditch the Gillard Government for lying to us about the carbon tax and letting the lunar left get its hands on the gears of government, but we’re not about to march down the street about it. There are barbecues to attend.
The other thing which defines the silent majority in Australia is that it is also sane. It might have the irritts with the carbon tax and Gillard’s act of deceit, albeit deceit which was forced on her by circumstance, but that doesn’t mean it has leapt to the strange political conclusions which were again on furious hand-drawn display at Tuesday’s shindig.
A quick squiz at the placards around the crowd threw up the following political claims. The United Nations and the International Monetary Fund are taking over Australia. Julia Gillard is a member of Hitler’s Gestapo. Scientists can no longer be trusted. We must introduce citizens initiated referenda so that voters can create legislation themselves. International bankers are destroying us all.
A couple of the placards are worth quoting in their entirety:
“How do we rate women of substance? Aung San Suu Kyi: 10. Wendi Murdoch: 10. Julia Gillard: Nil.”
More odd than sinister, that one.
But also this: “Only LaRouche’s Homeowners and Bank Protection Bill can save Australia: Act Now!”, Lyndon La Rouche being an anti-semitic conspiracy theorist in the US who holds that Israelite usurers have enslaved the world.
If you ticked the box marked “agree” to more than one of the above assertions, I’d politely suggest you need a bit of a lie down. If you walked from Albury to Canberra to attend the rally, as one fellow did, you probably need a bit of a lie down too.
This is not normal behaviour in Australia. It does not represent what we are and how we think and behave.
Tony Abbott’s office said that staff vetted the placards at the rally before their boss attended. Whoever did the vetting either carries a white stick or has had a bypass of taste and reason. Abbott’s qualifier at the rally that he liked some of the placards but didn’t like others was a glib line which did not alter the stupidity of his decision to attend.
Supporters of Abbott have argued that John Howard was the subject of equally offensive ridicule and abuse at political rallies, and that Labor leaders and MPs also attended those rallies.
It’s a valid and important point. It’s also a point which Abbott should learn from.
Kim Beazley was rightly derided for whipping up the crowd at the 1996 union blockade of Parliament House, which turned into a full-blown riot. Beazley’s abysmal speech, where he accused John Howard of “hating” women and working people, did him great damage.
When Pauline Hanson formed the One Nation Party, also in John Howard’s first term as PM, she held rallies around the country which very quickly became a magnet for gun nuts and extremists. At some of these rallies Hanson was rubbing shoulders with unhinged men who would describe John Howard as a Nazi for disarming the Australian population after the Port Arthur massacre.
Hanson’s decision to hang around with these lunatics played a significant role in her abandonment by mainstream voters.
Going back further than that – to a campaign Tony Abbott worked on as a press secretary – many voters were uneasy at John Hewson’s decision to spend most of the 1993 Fightback! election campaign shouting through a megaphone at unruly street rallies.
And this is the baffling thing about Abbott’s conduct.
He has at his disposal the most extraordinarily rich seam of mainstream discontent over Gillard’s performance, yet he has thrown in his lot with the freaks, fascists and flat-earthers who think Ju-Liar is Bob Brown’s Bitch and should be burned at the stake. Some have accused Abbott of a lapse of judgment. Perhaps he has no judgment on this issue at all, happy as he is to associate with people who regard scientists as evil, and believe invisible international forces have enslaved our nation. As things stand we are set to get rid of a government which has opened itself up to ratty left-wing influence for one which is in bed with the ratty right.
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