And the tail wags the dog … Anna Palaszczuk’s astounding abdication of political responsibility.
The theory of Unintended Consequences strikes again … a feminist boast has ‘em on toast …
But First
In a week, when Johnny Depp suggested our florid Deputy Doo Dah Barnaby Joyce was ‘inbred with a tomato’, our man was a busy down on the farm, conversing with desperate cow cockies.
Dairy famers were helpless when ambushed by a dairy processing cartel when it cut its price so drastically mid-contract that many small operators faced walking off the farm. So the free-market Coalition Government decided to do the only fearless thing they could do during an election campaign … instead of taking a big stick to the cartel or the likes of the cretinous Coles chain, the coalition decided to prop up the dairy cartels with taxpayers’ money… all in the guise of helping the put-upon farmers. After all, they couldn’t give it directly to the cartels – shit, Labor would … umm, cream them. Bentley saw Barnaby explaining it to a group of his more savvy voters thus.
This issue brings to mind the theory that if you look after the big end of town, the benefits flow on down the chain to us plebs. It’s called the right-wing Trickle Down Theory. Renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith summed it up in this definition.
‘Trickle down theory – the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats , some will pass through on to the road for the sparrows.’
Happy pecking, folks.
Incidentally …
With Johnny Depp and Amber Heard to split, Amber is expected to revert to her full pre-Depp name of Amber Neverheardofher. The ‘Pie speaks for himslf here … an indignant Pie-ette sighed about how out of touch her old man is. Having read her movie credits, happily so, darlin’.
Is Aurukun Anna’s Armageddon?
It may be more than three years before the electors have heir Day of Judgment, but Premier Anna Palaszczuk is already fighting her political Armageddon. The site of the first skirmish was the aboriginal township of Aurukun this week, when she abandoned the rights, future and protection of 88 indigenous school children because of a dozen or so juvenile grubs who have ‘threatened’ the 25 schoolteachers at the Cape York community. For the second time in a month, the school teachers were flown out ‘for their own safety’ when a few of these lawless little snots harassed the (indigenous) headmaster. Most of the others – but not all – ‘felt threatened’.
The first time this could be seen as an emergency action and a alarm signal to the government and the police. But the mini-crims did the second night of hijinx after the teachers return, hijacking the school principal’s car – because the initial response the repeat was to see if they again had the power to cow authority.
No doubt touchy-feely politics had a lot to do with the ineffectiveness and lack of political will to take heed. So when the teachers returned after the first evacuation, with a couple of extra coppers assigned to the township (to take the number into double figures), the little smartarses decided to chance their arm again. And presto, it was off to the airport again, with a declaration that it’s for the term, we won’t back for 6 to 8 weeks..
That is classic tail wagging the dog.
Indigenous Commissioner (and former Townsville Magistrate) David Glasgow admitted on ABC Radio that he was bewildered that fewer than 20 rogue children (not his words) could be the excuse to deny 88 local kids their right and eagerness for vital education. And like Commissioner Glasgow, The ‘Pie is at a loss to fathom how a dozen or so coppers cannot control so small a number of youths (some as young as 6) in such a small community.
These kids obviously aren’t interested in school, so surely the sensible edict is that those nocturnal offenders against the teachers are promptly shipped out to Cairns for judgment, removed without argument or negotiation from their dead-beat parents who allow their lawlessness and delinquency to flourish.
But no, too risky, for both the premier and the PC-jumpy police hierarchy, unsure of political support.
The much promoted bogeyman of Black Arm Band history and the ‘stolen generation’ hangs over not so much Aurukun but over the Queensland ballot box … the uncertain situation in George Street makes a snap election a constant possibility. If that’s the case, Anna Alphabet has sure pulled the wrong rein.
A firm order to the coppers and community leaders to ‘man up, fellas, and you have our backing’ was replaced with a wishy-washy feel-good wall of meaningless twaddle and spectacular inaction. The premier going to Aurukun is one of the most cynical photo ops we’ve seen for a long time … a failed exercise of political grandstanding, the magnitude of which easily beats eating raw onions, or standing at an anniversary ceremony at a Tasmanian mine pithead.
For Christ’s sake, the admirable women of Aurukun have themselves said it loud and articulately… parents must take their responsibility, and should not complain when their kids are collared and punished … if they ever are.
If only this timid government took its responsibility instead of it’s pathetic attempts at self-preservation.
Colin For Canberra? Yeah, right.
In one of the less subtle political matings, the Bulletin official CBD stadium spruiker, economic poodle Col Dwyer will run for the Katter Australian Party in the federal seat of Herbert.
Colin Dwyer
The Astonisher made a big noise about this twice during the week, with the stadium project front and center. (They must’ve sacked Dolan Hayes, he wouldn’t touch the Katter Party with a 10 foot pole.)
But despite some mandatory mumblings that ‘we can win this seat’, Colin’s undisguised message was that he wanted his preferences to unseat Ewen The Town Cryer Jones. Although prevaricating on the point, his indirect message pointing for his preference to go to Labor’s Cathy The Tool. And later, he hints he could be looking at maybe 16-20% of the vote, far from getting within cooee of the Canberra gravy train, but being a significant spoiler. You see, in another of Colin’s entertaining mathematical theories, he figures the previous Katter candidate Bronwyn Walker snatched 8.08% of the vote in Herbert, with 57% of the major party preferences going to Labor. Add to that the Palmer Party candidate last time around (when Yabulu was still up and running) who did even better with 8.88% of the primary. Col rightly figures bugger all people will vote for PUP this time around, and will in fact look lovingly on his snowy locks as the saviour of the north. Throw in maybe 3-5% extra for his own dazzling personality, and presto, about 20% primary, and a barrow load of preferences likely to head over to Cathy The Tool. He thinks.
This is possibly one of Mr Dwyer’s saner if optimistic projections, of the many that have graced the Astonisher’s pages ever since he started to toe the required editorial line.
But the Katter Party for our federal rep?
Well, think on this. In almost 25 years as the member for Kennedy, The Mad Katter himself has admitted he has achieved bugger all (this is one of the stated reasons he started his own party, but still with not much useful effect for Kennedy). And there’s a good chance he’ll be turfed out in a few weeks time. The fact that son Robbie … who in The ‘Pie’s summation is the keeper of the Katter family marbles and looking like a very sensible politician at state level … will probably have negligible impact on a federal poll here in Herbert. Same goes in spades for Shane Knuth (slogan: Knuth? Kn’oath.)
So one can only assume that the super ambitious Mr Dwyer is playing a long game, lifting his profile for future tilts at the windmills of Canberra or Brisbane.
Never fear, Col, like Don Quixote’s fascinated biographer, The ‘Pie will ever be your Sancho Panza.
It’s what’s between your ears not between your legs that counts.
Or maybe not.
Talk about leading with your prettily dimpled chin. Executive editor of the Huffington Post Liz Heron (are we allowed to call her a bird?) thought it would be a jolly feminist wheeze to post this little item on Twitter.
Probably as intended, that opened the floodgates, with some predictable but funny comments in reply. Some were po-faced and serious …’ wot, all white sheilas’ type of thing, and the inevitable Big Two … wot no blacks?!? And a very presumptuous wot, no transgenders?!? (how could you tell, maybe they all are?)
But if you’re going to bait the blokes, anything goes. This one guaranteed a few chauvinist guffaws.
And this pisstake speaks for itself – The ‘Pie was tickled pink by the coloured outfits.
It Figures
Richard Di Natale
It was a week when it was revealed that the Greens leader Richard Di Natale employed three under-paid au pairs on his farm.
No surprise really, we all know that the Greens believe in the Nanny State. Chortle wheeze.
Vanity number plates can be a trap for the vain.
Spotted in North Ward recently.
Any sloppy driving and Mr/Ms Burke will have other road users vocally and loudly agreeing with him/her. Some rev heads agree that it is a good description for anyone who drives a Beamer.
Speaking Of Vanity …
Is there anything more amusing that the written gymnastics of the art critic? Well, yes there is … it’s when they get hoodwinked by a prankster … and then go into overdrive to argue the prankster is an artist but doesn’t know it.
Such was the latest in a long line of such occurences.
To you and me, this looks like …
…well, it looks like a pair of glasses on a floor.
Which is exactly what they were.
A couple of teenagers with a playful instinct for an artistic pisstake were unimpressed with the art on display in San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art, and decided they could do better.
And they did, there and then, and in spades. One of the boy’s carefully placed the spectacles on the floor in front of an official looking piece of paper, and stood back, cameras at the ready. Soon, to their delight, the raptures and incomprehensible nattering started –sample tweet: ’it’s really just an exacerbated metaphor of society’s perpetual blindness to those cognitive of us’.
You’d think that a bit of artistic slap and tickle would be good for a laugh and then fade into history after brief celebrity on twitter. But not all the twits are on Twitter, so Guardian art writer Jonathan Jones wrote a piece that declared ‘The glasses in the gallery aren’t just art … they’re a work of genius – a transformative masterpiece’.
Jonathan probably drives a Beamer with ‘BERK’ plates.
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