The Memorial Service — two weeks on.
Monthly Archives: March 2019
Sprung!
Ho, ho, ho! Hardy-har-har!
That was my first response to Hidden cameras and fake websites: Inside the investigation into One Nation’s bid for NRA donations. {That’s the program’s originator right there.) And yes, there was at least one sequence where I could hear in their voices that James Ashby and Steve Dickson were pissed as parrots. (“Pissed” in Australia means drunk, blotto, flying, stewed, tanked…) But they weren’t all the time. Furthermore, while pissed they did offer unfiltered views of where they come from, what manner of men they are, etc. And it was ugly.
Fact is I enjoyed last night’s episode on ABC, and congratulate them and Al Jazeera on letting us see these jerks in all their native/naive finery.
On the journalistic ethics of what we saw see the show’s creator, linked above, and Did Al Jazeera’s undercover investigation into One Nation overstep the mark? See also ‘We were on the sauce’: One Nation staffers blame booze and ‘skulduggery’ for gun lobby sting and View from The Hill: James Ashby rocks a few boats, including his own. Check too the form of Master Ashby and Mr Steve Dickson. The latter, an LNP member until January 2017, has in the past issued such oracles as this:
We are having little kids in grade four at school, young girls being taught by teachers how to masturbate, how to strap on dildos, how to do this sort of stuff — that is the real problem in this country.
Last night we saw him sharing his views with the NRA on such topics as the exceedingly left-wing media in Australia, and the 230,000 (sic) a year migrant rate in Australia. You could have been forgiven for thinking he thought they were all Muslims…. Even Christian South Sudanese, apparently. He certainly thought (or was that Ashby) that the UK had been taken over by Muslims!
We’ve been importing all these Muslims into Australia. We have about 230,000 people coming in a year. Our population’s only 25 million… some really dangerous people. They’re just breaking into people’s homes with baseball bats and killing people. Basically stealing everything they own. Gangs. Our country is going into chaos.
God help us! And God help NSW too now that the taxi-driver’s nemesis has been elected, so it seems, to our state Upper House.
Looking forward to Thursday’s episode on ABC where our Antipodean patriots go grovelling to the Koch Brothers.
And my footy tipping went well…
Yes, only one wrong and I got the margin score correct! So well placed so far…
I also predicted the NSW Election correctly. I honestly don’t mind Gladys. Here in The Gong Labor won hands down: 70+% two-party preferred. And in first choices look who no-one supported!
Tonight’s must-watch: Waleed Aly interviewing Jacinda Ardern on The Project, Channel 10/WIN.
Waleed’s interview/confrontation with Scott Morrison was broadcast ad-free in prime time last Thursday night — most unusual. And unusual it was! Scott Morrison scored some, but also, I think, showed his critical weaknesses. I propose to watch it all again and may then comment further, but meanwhile I commend young Michael Koziol’s analysis. (He is I gather a twenty-something.)
Sincerity can be a real struggle for Morrison, partly because of his marketing background, and partly because of his own choices as Prime Minister that have sacrificed substance for political expediency (moving the embassy to Jerusalem, anyone?). So if he faces a credibility gap on this issue, perhaps he only has himself – and his party – to blame….
Neil's Commonplace Book 