Okay wow. Surely Malcolm Roberts is going to lose his twitter privileges soon. Twice this month he has had to delete tweets after realising how stupid or offensive they were. This first effort was his tasteless clapping of David Leyonhjelm’s appallingly narcissistic and uncaring response to the loss of lives in the Bourke Street tragedy. The second was in his embarrassingly petty and ignorant response to the Change the Date protests around Australia Day, where he demonstrated he had no idea that Labour Day was not connected to the Australian Labor Party.
Now there isn’t a lot wrong with not knowing what Labour Day (or 8 Hour Day as it is also known) is about, but when you are a politician, if you don’t know something you need to find it out. That is why they have overpaid advisors (well it should be). Politicians who just guess what something means don’t just embarrass themselves, as Roberts did. This combination of laziness and arrogance is dangerous. When else has he not bothered to check he understands something before making a decision and just gone with his instinctive guess? Is this where his views on Islam and climate change come from (admittedly in the caser of climate change it is probably more based on the money he received from coal industry donors)?
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I think it is important to be able to reflect on our own thinking and be willing to change our minds. And when you share a lot of your opinions in a public forum such as this, you also need to be ready to openly admit when you might have been wrong about something (unless you're in politics where it seems acceptable to just avoid the question). Last year I published some thoughts about Australia Day. I am mostly happy with what I wrote, especially the point that you are not demonstrating a love for the country by expressing bilious hatred for those Australians you deem unworthy. Wearing the national flag and take no effort and as such is a poor illustration of patriotism (Pauline Hanson take note). If you want to show how much the country means to you, start by not being an inconsiderate or hateful jerk.
On the other hand I do feel my views around the date of Australia Day are shifting and I now disagree with some of what I wrote. As I said in last year’s article, I have no attachment to the date, January 26. It was neither the date the country was discovered (by aboriginals or Europeans) or founded. Having said that, last year I did not support calls for changing the date. Wow that really was disgusting. Leyonhjelm, Hanson and Roberts showed not a shred, not even a pretence of basic decency, respect or compassion for those affected by the horrible events in Melbourne this week. They didn’t act like it was a tragedy. They treated it as an opportunity! It seems every time I write about what a poor excuse for a human being David Leyonhjelm is, he finds a way to go even further. But surely he hit rock bottom when his first response to the tragedy was a sarcastic tweet using the incident as some sort of bizarre argument against gun control.
Unsurprisingly, most of Australia was horrified at this utter lack of class or humanity, but not Malcolm Roberts, who cheered it on like a pathetic sycophant. What a creep. Who knew children on billboards could be this scary?
Something is really wrong when a billboard with an Australia Day image featuring two young girls waving Australian flags is taken down due to threats of violence. That is terrorism. Did I forget to mention the girls were wearing hijabs and the threats of violence came from right wing extremists? No I didn’t forget, I left it out because that detail isn’t important. “One nation candidate says …” seems have been a fairly common headline over the last 12 months.
I have some mixed feelings about the fact that being a One Nation candidate makes your opinions more newsworthy than it really should be. I mean I get it that the people do need to know if a prospective politician who is asking for your vote is a tinfoil-hat wearing nutjob (I know I usually treat those I’m writing about with a little more respect but they usually deserve more) so it is kind of incumbent on the media to report it. But it is how they report it that I would like to see improved. I’m a teacher myself but I’m not angry about Andrew Laming’s bizarre attack on my profession.
A common cliché teachers and parents use when someone fails to show the expected responsibility or maturity is to say “I’m not angry, I’m disappointed,” but I’m not even disappointed. It is not like I expect a greater level of maturity and responsibility in his social media usage. Not after Laming’s previous forays including his ill-informed comments on an outbreak of street violence in 2013 and his Facebook feud with a group called The Simpsons against the Liberals (he is pretty much following the trump playbook now that I think of it). So I have already explained why I feel the narrative that 2016 was such a terrible year is a bit overblown. There were many things that happened during the year that I was extremely grateful for. Indeed I spend January reflecting on many of these events.
But something that we often forget are the small acts of kindness and generosity that we often greatly appreciate at the time, but quickly forget amongst the ‘bigger’ events taking place. David bloody Leyonhjelm. I detest the man for many reasons, but right now he has me in a bit of a double-jeopardy situation. You see, last year I wrote a short piece titled, David Leyonhjelm has no respect or empathy. Nothing controversial about that statement, I know. But it does present me with a bit of a problem as to what do I name an article about his complete disdain for pensioners? David Leyonhjelm has no empathy 2 seems to lack something as far as headings go (and no, Mercury writers, I’m not talking about the lack of ‘witty’ alliteration you people seem obsessed with).
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