Abbott’s failed dog-whistling
John Richardson writes: Re. “‘Burqa’ debacle shows Abbott lacks Howard’s political smarts” (Friday). As Bernard Keane rightly contends, few would agree with the federal government’s persistent assertion that terrorists and their supporters “… hate us for who we are, not what we do”.
And while most Australians would acknowledge that Tony Abbott doesn’t come within a bull’s roar of John Howard in the art of effective dog-whistling, surely the overwhelming majority would agree that he has the dubious distinction of being the ugliest person to ever occupy the office of Prime Minister, judged by every meaning of the word.
So much for high-minded
Caroline Armstrong writes: Re. “Misogyny far more important than marriage” (Friday). I have thought for years that Julia Gillard’s views on marriage were as described by Helen Hooper — that she “doesn’t believe in marriage as it is accepted in our culture, be it under secular or religious law”. However I disagree that Gillard’s stance has been high-minded as it is a position she was not clear in explaining while PM. Look back on the times she explained her views on marriage and she never said “look I’m not in favour of any sort of marriage, so I’ll leave it to a conscience vote if the issue is raised by others in Parliament”. She didn’t say (as she did in October 2013) “I went to university and started forming my political views of the world, we weren’t talking about gay marriage. Indeed, as women, as feminists, we were critiquing marriage.”
As PM she was quoted as saying ‘”I think that there are some important things from our past that need to continue to be part of our present and part of our future,” she said. “If I was in a different walk of life, if I’d continued in the law and was partner of a law firm now, I would express the same view, that I think for our culture, for our heritage, the Marriage Act and marriage being between a man and a woman has a special status.” Teflon-coated politico-speak it may have been, high-minded it wasn’t.
How to save the ABC (and save lives)
Chokyi Nyingpo writes: Re. “ABC board talks potential program cuts, with Holmes not invited” (Wednesday). Given that the new “War on Terror” in Iraq (only) costs about $500 million/year, i.e. are rapidly approaching $1 million/person/year sent over there, if the Abbott gov’t reduced our (non-combatant) force by just 100 persons, that saving alone would take care of all the proposed budget cuts to both the ABC and SBS. Two birds? Problem solved.
Are a former P.M’s current thoughts on marriage anywhere near as important as her thoughts and actions in the past? I’d have hoped Woman’s Day was more appropriate for these views than a serious media entity.
Was John Howard so clever with ‘dog whistling’? Is it not true that earlier in his career Howard was hammered for saying inappropriate and inaccurate things about Asian immigration? Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I recall that John Howard had to be coerced by his party into publicly condemning the views of Pauline Hanson when she was first attracting national attention. Did Tony Abbott have any part in influencing John Howard at that time?
Hillis, the facts are that Hanson was never going to be elected until Keating made the blunder of attacking her viciously to gain traction in the general electorate by suggesting (wrongly)Howard supported Hanson’s views.
Howard removed Hanson as candidate and she ran as an independent to go on and win a rock-solid Labor seat we’d NEVER lost before. It was, in fact, the ONLY Queensland seat in Federal Parliament the conservative side of politics had never won, and was at one stage the ONLY seat we held in the House of Reps.
I apologise for spoiling a good story, but having a long association with Labor and a reasonably good memory often leaves me in an uncomfortable contrarian position.