View from the Street: Classy MPs walk out on discussion of indigenous health

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"Oh sorry, I just remembered that we all have a thing. Definitely not a thing about how we don't care in the least about indigenous people, though, that's for sure."

“Oh sorry, I just remembered that we all have a thing. Definitely not a thing about how we don’t care in the least about indigenous people, though, that’s for sure.” Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

Eurovisionary!

Before we delve into the nightmarish hope void that is Australian political discourse, let’s pause and remember that there are good and beautiful things in the world – like the glorious, inspirational news that Eurovision has given Australia a wild card entry in this year’s competition

Now before you say anything: shut up.

Eurovision is many things: a smorgasbord of largely terrible music, a celebration of white trousers, and an annual reminder that hoop-spinning is still a legitimate art form in Europe. But it’s also a night of pure, untrammelled joy – and as the victory of bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst demonstrated last year, a surprisingly potent vehicle for positive social change.

Naturally Australia is already awash with excitement at the news, but already the best idea has its own petition calling on TISM to reunite for the event. And with Australia in the mockworthy situation it currently finds itself, a bunch of frantically dancing satirists seems like the ideal way to represent us in Austria. 

For those who’ve shamefully forgotten the masked band that gave us such enduring classics as I’m Interested in Apathy, Greg! The Stop Sign! and All Homeboys are Dickheads, then be reminded by their best known hit…

Feeling better? Let’s fix that!

Australia’s submarine plans got even more baffling yesterday as SA Senator Sean Edwards took to Sky News to answer the question that so flummoxed Defence Minister Kevin Andrews. That question? Are 12 new submarines going to being built in Adelaide?

It’s a question that would appear to be one with a very limited range of answers, but as we explored in some detail yesterday it sent Andrews into a flustered flap where he explained that there was definitely no tendering process and there would instead be a “competitive evaluation”. And when asked what the difference was, he eloquently responded “I’m not going to get into all sorts of definitions and what’s a definition and what that is.” Magic.

But if Andrews was offering up a word salad, the main word course and word dessert were provided by Edwards. 

“I had two conversations with the Prime Minister over the weekend,” Senator Edwards began. “One when he rang me after I issued that statement [saying there’d be a tender] and then he rang me on Sunday and gave me the assurances that I sought on Saturday were the assurances that I received from the Prime Minister.”

OK, some mangled syntax there – but there’s going to be a tender, in other words? Well, no. Except also yes. And people should ask the PM for clarification.

And then something snapped.

“This is they say something and I say another and the Defence Minister… it’s all the same.”

Um, OK.

“We shouldn’t be flying these balloons.”

…What?

“You know, this I said, she said, you meant, it’s the only process is the one they’re now included.”

And if that wasn’t amazing enough then came the line that should be emblazoned across the skies in letters of fire: “You know, you never get a second chance to ask your uncle to your wedding. You’ve got to go through life having not asked your uncle to come to the wedding.”

Just to recap, the question was “are submarines going to being built in South Australia?”

Answer: Don’t fly balloons, and call your uncle. #GoodGovernmentStartsToday!

Walking out on a discussion of indigenous health looks classy and not even a bit racist

Speaking of the awesomely-started good government, it evidently decided to take a little break when a bunch of Coalition MPs ostentatiously walked out during Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s reply to PM Tony Abbott’s speech on the continuing failures of our nation’s indigenous policies.

See, every year the government pays lip service to our First Australians by looking at how badly we’re doing at – to use the name of the report – Closing the Gap.

The gap in question is between indigenous folks and all other Australians with regard to things like life expectancy, child mortality, educational attainment, incarceration rates, and other things that might look to the untrained eye like the result of two centuries of sustained discrimination and cultural genocide but is probably just a coincidence.

After Abbott revealed that yeah, we’re not going to hit those targets we keep talking about – like, for example, changing the fact that the life expectancy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is still a decade less than other Australians – he emphasised that it’s nobody’s fault, really, and certainly not the government’s.

Then Shorten got up and suggested that since the report was so damning, how’s about the government think about reversing the half a billion in cuts that had been made to things like Aboriginal housing, legal aid, education, training, addiction recovery, health services and a bunch of other things that relate directly to poverty and poor health?

“Right now, a host of vital organisations don’t know whether their funding will be continued or withdrawn. When people fleeing family violence need a safe place to stay, cuts mean that shelters close. When having a lawyer can determine whether a first-time offender gets a second chance or a prison sentence, these cuts will rob Indigenous Australians of legal aid.”

And that’s when a group of government MPs got up and walked out, because they are very, very cool and awesome.

Those MPs included Russell Broadbent, Andrew Nikolic, Angus Taylor, John Cobb, Ken O’Dowd and Melissa Price, in a move that’s definitely not at best childish and at worst offensively dismissive of one of Australia’s most shameful and inexcusable problems.

Say, why not drop them a line letting them know what you think of elected members of Parliament flouncing out when they have a job to do? They’d probably really appreciate it!

The protest you didn’t know about

Oh, and speaking of Aboriginal issues, there’s a protest camp in Canberra on the lawns of Parliament House, calling for a proper Treaty to be hammered out, which has been largely ignored by the media.

How deliberately have we been ignoring it? To the point of promising media coverage if they didn’t disturb discussion of the leadership spill this week, and then slinking away. Thanks for the truth bomb, New Matilda

Non-Halal Lamb(ie)

The return of Parliament this week means the return of politicians saying demonstrably silly things, and Jacqui Lambie isn’t disappointing with her enduring claim that halal certification is funding terrorism.

Now, just to be clear: there is currently zero evidence to support this idea. But you know what actually, legitimately does fund ISIL? Cheap petrol. So important is oil to ISIL that the current deliberate oversupply from Saudi Arabia is arguably doing them more damage than our air strikes.

So you might think that Lambie would be demanding that BP and Caltex and the other multinational petrol conglomerates provide evidence regarding where they’re buying their crude oil, if she’s genuinely being kept awake at night worried that her dollars are secretly funding terrorism.

Oddly, that didn’t come up. 

“Why isn’t there a legal requirement in Australia for halal certification fees to be disclosed?” she seethed righteously today. “Why is there is no formal reporting or auditing mechanism in Australia to ascertain whether monies paid for halal certification are misused?”

She’s threatening to move a private members bill on the subject, because what else does she have to do?

The cocktail hour: hairy nosed DOOM!

There’s only one preserve in the nation for the endangered Southern Hairy Nosed Wombat, the faunal emblem of South Australia, and it’s shutting in 60 days since the folks that run it can no longer afford to do so.

Wombat Awareness is completely self funded and currently shelters 40 of the fine beasts in Callington, SA. They’ve got to find new homes, or the little guys (orphaned, or injured in bushfires and the like) have a pretty bleak future.

Feel like helping? Why not find out more about what they have going on and see what you might be able to do?

Just look at this little guy! Adorable! And cheers!

Top five articles on smh.com.au on Wednesday:

  1. Accused terrorist plotter a quiet nurse who loved luxury goods
  2. Father ‘struggling’ after daughter shot dead at Hungry Jack’s
  3. Coalition MPs stage walkout after Shorten raising budget in speech
  4. Nearly 100 Sydney children exposed to tuberculosis at childcare centre
  5. Rabbitohs’ victim “received satisfaction” top drop police charges against Sutton, Burgess