Night of the long bins It must be inspiring to the legion of MPs departing Canberra this election to see that they can still make a real difference post-Parliament. Take “Pacific Solution” architect and marriage inequality pioneer Philip Ruddock, now the mayor of Hornsby Shire Council, which is threatening not to collect the rubbish of residents with anti-Coalition stickers on their bins.
The stickers feature the image of Prime Minister Scott Morrison waving coal about in Parliament, with captions such as “bin him” and “chuck them out”.
The council intervened after receiving a complaint from an “offended” neighbour, who was presumably trying to achieve their black belt in snitching. It told the Nine papers that any political content, regardless of who it favoured, was inappropriate.
Of course, this isn’t the first politician to wind up at the council level — Reg Withers, who earned the nickname “Toecutter” for his brutal approach to enforcing Liberal Party discipline — went on to become lord mayor of Perth.
Do you have a retiring MP in your local area? Can you imagine Christian Porter overzealously fighting against the pedestrianisation of Ellenbrook Central or Greg Hunt manning the Mornington Peninsula issues chat box? Might they do a better job there? Let us know!
Woke up new War rages in Ukraine. There appears to be no slowing of the march towards climate disaster, with communities across NSW and Queensland still rebuilding after devastating floods. The nation’s two biggest cities are among the top five of least affordable house prices worldwide. I don’t know about you, but as a voter I really want the coming election to be fought on the real issues — a confected word of words around an increasingly meaningless term. So I can only thank The Daily Telegraph for this front page:
It’s a continuation of a few themes: the Tele‘s on-again off-again love affair with Albanese. The apparent decision from Albo’s people to make an centrist pitch to the News Corp papers. And of course Morrison’s conviction that literally anything Albanese says or does — whether it’s stating a position, buying glasses, or losing weight — is a sign of shiftiness. Morrison’s point on Sunrise was that the opposition leader doth protest too much: “I don’t have to do interviews running around telling people I am not woke; people know that is not the case.” June cannot come fast enough.
Just Bragging Senator Andrew Bragg appears to be getting all zeitgeisty, something that always works perfectly for politicians. Earlier this month he announced he would make his Twitter AVI an NFT for the remainder of March, at which point he would auction it for the Dreaming Foundation (which we’re not going to have a go at him for; we’re just worried that the sheer volume of money an NFT of a little-known Coalition senator will bring in might end up causing a lot of the same unintended consequences as that time Celeste Barber accidentally raised tens of millions for one fire service).
Following on from this, it was announced this week that he’s starting — with Fred Schebesta, the founder of fintech company Finder — a podcast called House of Tech, which covers innovation, policy, business… you know the deal. It’s the latest example of politicians transitioning into content creators.
The stickers features the image of Prime Minster Scott Morrison waving coal about in Parliament, and captions such as “bin him” and “chuck them out”.
In ACT the bin signs feature the face of Senator Zed (Put ZED Last) Seselja. When they appeared on my neighbour’s bins one dear long-standing neighbour immediately suspected me. I felt quite proud, despite being neither the source nor the organiser.
Another LNP attempt to influence council behaviour was Freedom Boy himself, demanding Bayside residents dob in neighbours who put up political advertising (on their own property) before the election is called.
And as a ratepayer in Goldstein I’m pretty p1ssed at the council
How is Philip Ruddock not dead??
He looked like he was about 102 at the turn of the millenium.
That assumes that the Cadaver is, in fact, alive, rather than animated – for brief intervals of public utterance – by some nefarious exponent of the Dark Arts.
Always reminded me of Mr Burns
Why the sexist ‘ Greg Hunt manning the Mornington Peninsula issues chat box?”