Yesterday was quite a day for the grown-men-behaving-like-giant-babies brigade. It started early and just kept coming all day. So for those of you who had more important things to do than watch collective manchild tantrums on the internet (we’re assuming that’s all of you), here’s a brief summary:
The Abbott government started the day with unwelcome news that the election crushing polling results they’ve had for the last few months haven’t changed. On current form they could lose between 30 and 40 seats at the next election, Labor only need 21 to win. Cue the inevitable and destabilising rumblings about a leadership spill, and once again the business of actually governing grinds to a halt.
The government’s behaviour over the last few months – the political equivalent of an inebriated rabble in search of a hot dog stand – have incensed even their traditional supporters. The Chairman of the Macquarie Group yesterday publicly smacked Abbott on the nose with a rolled up newspaper and demanded that he clean up the mess he made.
John Dowd, a former NSW Attorney General wrote to George Brandis to remind him of a few of the basic principles of law in Australia. He seemed to be under the impression that Brandis, the Federal Attorney General, has forgotten lessons my daughter was learning in the second term of year nine.
Christopher Pyne’s university reforms took yet another body blow as one of the senior bureaucrats who helped craft the policy told a conference on higher education funding that the reform “don’t fix any of the major problems in the system and potentially make them worse”. Oops.
The ABC Fact Check division debunked Joe Hockey’s claim that repealing the “carbon tax” (it wasn’t a tax) saved households $550 per year. Poor Joe. He’s not having a good year.
Abbott’s signature policy, the Paid Parental Leave, has descended into utter shambles, as Scott Morrison and the Human Rights Commission conduct a public squabble over whether PPL is a “first world problem”
Backbencher Warren Entsch introduced his bill on same sex marriage yesterday, which prompted the entire government front bench, with the exceptions of Christopher Pyne and Malcom Turnbull, to flee screaming from the room. Terrified of being tainted in the eyes of the conservative minority yet again?
Then the government doubled down with Abbott’s latest Captain’s pick fail, Dyson Heydon – the ex High Court judge he appointed to head the Royal Commission into Trade Unions – who says he “overlooked” the Liberal Party’s connection to the event at which he agreed to speak. “Overlooked”. I wonder how many times that word is going to come up in testimony given to the Royal Commission from now on?
As reported by Mark Kenny: “Tony Abbott’s handpicked royal commissioner into trade union corruption, Dyson Heydon, will rule on Friday on whether an application from unions to disqualify him, should it be made, has merit.”
The Royal Commissioner appointed to examine corruption is now is examining himself and reporting to the Royal Commission on whether he should be allowed to examine corruption in others? You couldn’t make this stuff up.
Oh, and also, it turns out Heydon was on the board that awarded Tony Abbott his Rhodes Scholarship. Political class sizes really are getting smaller and smaller.
The other big story of the day of course, was Mark Latham’s sins finally catching up with him. He resigned yesterday – although, as Georgina Dent said, it’s still unclear whether he jumped or was pushed – after Mark di Stefano’s investigation uncovered the nasty little troll account on twitter that Latham has been using to hurl abuse at people like Rosie Batty, among others. The whole thing was unedified in the extreme, all the more so because it wasn’t Latham’s vicious, libellous personal attacks in his AFR articles (and hello, did he not have an editor?) that forced him out, it was a twitter account.
Heigh-ho. Moving on.
Western Australia’s Liberal Premier Colin Barnet made the mistake of saying what he actually thinks – that women can’t make it in politics on merit – only a day or so after Tony Abbott got all bewildered about how there are so few women in the Liberal Party. As Barnett said “Have a look at yourself!”
Finally, to add insult to manbaby injuries everywhere, more people tuned in to watch women’s football than the AFL game screened on the same channel. Low blow, I know, but after writing all that, I’m struggling to find my sense of maturity and reason.
There are some days when you get to the end of it and you realise that your brain just sprouted feathers and became this bird.