The retirement of Jackie Kelly from the Federal parliament will at least serve the purpose of raising the average intelligence of the House of Representatives. The pity of it is that she’ll be on the receiving end of a shitload of cash from her superannuation and entitlements, and that my taxes are contributing to this.
Her performance today in attempting to defend her husband’s involvement in producing and distributing a racist and fake leaflet in her old electorate was abominable. She defended it as merely a prank. Further she went on to attack the Labor “goon squad” who caught her husband and mates out.
The government has constantly been attacking the ALP for its ties to the unions and their goons. Of course in the eyes of the government, a handful of union goons are representative of the entire union movement. However, the Liberals’ own goons are merely some misguided renegade individuals, not representative of the party. For fucks sake, the boys were just drunk when they thought up their prank ….excuses all doesn’t it?
Now of the 3 people in this picture who believes none of them knew of the leaflet beforehand? While the husbands of new candidate Karen Chijoff and current member Jackie Kelly have fallen on their swords and claimed their wives had no knowledge of it, and apologised for their stupidity, I’m having difficulty swallowing it. While I agree with what John Howard had to say today about the sins of partners not automatically applying to each other, ie:
“We, I hope, live in a society where we treat husbands and wives – although we respect the closeness of their relationship – we treat them as individuals and we shouldn’t automatically transfer blame for the deeds of one onto the other,”
I just find it hard to believe that the men concerned would have acted completely without their wives knowledge, especially during an election campaign. At the moment when candidates are totally focused on being seen in the best possible light, their partners wouldn’t even be farting in public without consulting them first. It just defies belief that they’d do something like this without their partners knowing about it.
Funny though, that John Howard has changed his views since Therese Rein’s companies had a few glitches over employment conditions …of course then Mr and Mrs Rudd were completely inseparable. Strange!
To be honest, I’m sure the PM knew nothing about the stunt … his fault lies only in fostering the attitudes where candidates and supporters are prepared to do anything including playing on racist sentiment to win elections.
If Mrs Chijoff had any involvement or knowledge of the leaflet, which I think she does (despite the spousal firewall thats been constructed), common decency would dictate that she fall on her sword and withdraw her candidacy. Ha ha, thats not going to happen is it! If she won’t go herself, the Liberal party should axe her …. again, ha ha thats not about to happen. Indeed if somehow this stunt manages to appeal to enough bogan racists in Lindsay for her to win the seat on Saturday, no doubt she’ll be celebrated as a hero with backslapping all around , and lots of “ho ho ho, that was a laugh wasn’t it?”. As for the referrals to the police and the Electoral Commission. no doubt everything will quietly fade away after the election, regardless of who wins (Liberals won’t want to have their own people in court, the ALP will have its own rocks it doesn’t want looked under).
Finally, some local politics in Canberra. On the radio this morning I was disappointed to hear Senator Gary Humphries (who I think is a reasonable, sensible man .. .for a politician anyway) and his slippery attempts to justify a dodgy misleading brochure the Liberals produced to attack the Greens. Gary, you are wrong, firstly issuing this sort of crap and then trying to defend it.
