Dislodged from
the Lodge
Australian Elections 2007
Saturday Nov 24 – night of the long knives: Maxine de-fangs the big'un in Bennelong; Abbott the enforcer shoots himself in the foot; stormtrooper Brough ‘blacklisted’; Downer done and dusted, and, treasurer Costello and Nationals leader Vaile fall on their swords leaving young-Turks to trawl over the entrails. Suddenly, a conservative’s wet dream was over. And … how sweet it is!
I say that, lest we forget that Lazarus with the triple bypass loaded us with a never-ever goods and services tax; turned a blind eye to AWB’s (wheat board) 300 million-dollar kickback to Saddam and, despite our protests, followed the riders of the apocalypse to Armageddon in Iraq – looking for fictional WMD (weapons of mass destruction).
Remember balaclava clad security and guard dogs, and Dubai-trained scab labour on the waterfront, in the darkness of night breaking the backs of maritime unions; commandos boarding Tampa; lies about children overboard; scrapping of the free dental scheme; abolition of ATSIC (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Commission); refusal to apologise to the stolen generation; wrongful deportation of Australian citizens and reneging on ‘non-core’ promises.
Remember $100,000 university degrees; two-tiered health system; massive 400 billion- dollar foreign debt that no one speaks of; 500 million-dollar political advertising; pork barrelling out of control; vicious welfare reforms; stacking the ABC’s board; bizarre appointment of an archbishop as governor general; politicization of the public service and federal police; deputy sheriff riding roughshod over East Timor, New Guinea and the Solomons; Pacific solution with prisons on Nauru and Manus islands; brutalization of asylum seekers and compulsory detention of refugees.
Who can forget the misuse of the senate to
rubberstamp Dickensian industrial relations laws? Or the desperate ‘Black-Kid-Tampa’
policy that put soldiers in aboriginal settlements and undermined native title?
Or David Hicks abandoned in a hellhole in
And in the bargain, an immoral foreign policy turned half the world against us. Am I sorry it’s over? Hell no.
Alain
Leveque