Despite the wonderful outpouring from across Australia towards the two members of the Bali nine who face possible execution by firing squad, some Australians are quite openly saying they deserve it and their deaths are as nothing to those that would have been caused among innocent victims had the heroin made it to Oz.
Such claims sicken me. Get a grip, people.
I wish people wouldn’t take illegal drugs, you wish people wouldn’t take illegal drugs. But they do in Australia, in their millions. And they do in Indonesia.
In the face of that demand, prohibiting those drugs has never worked, doesn’t work, and never will work. Killing people that import it and export it, ditto. It is just barbaric, state-sponsored murder.
As to lives saved by stopping the importation of heroin, no. The momentary dip in supply changed naught in the demand, so the only effect would have been to lift the price, making it more profitable for the drug tsars.
An impossible circle, until we treat drugs the way they should be treated – as a health problem, and not a criminal problem.
MORE THAN A TITTER
An amusing yarn in the Tele this week had a collection of the 10 favourite heckles Australian comedians have received over the years, but it still didn’t come close to what I reckon is the best of all. See, back in 2001, Judith Lucy and I were among a group who appeared in a series of Channel Nine Super Debates. One of the topics was “That the Aussie Bloke is a Hopeless Joke”, and in the course of her electrifying speech she recounted how, many years ago she was dinkum doing a Saturday-night gig with the famed lesbian comedian Sue-Ann Post, oddly enough at a local Aussie Rules club in western Victoria. It was getting late by the time Sue-Ann Post came on, and her solid-male audience was nothing if not well-oiled.
“Show us yer tits!” they roared.
“A professional, with great experience dealing with unruly crowds, Post ploughed on into her routine regardless and was soon getting good laughs. And yet some of the crowd would not be quelled . . .
“Show us yer tits!” they insisted.
Again, Post ploughed on and again soon had more of the crowd with her than before. Still, however, the most drunken of the lot would not be denied.
“SHOW US YER TITS!“
This time, Post could stand it no more and roared back at the hecklers, “Oh, for God’s sake, I’m a lesbian!“
Stunned silence, only broken when a few seconds later a 17-year-old boy from up the back forlornly called out, “Oh, go on, show us anyway?”
THE STANDOUTS
Because Mrs TFF is doing the whole red carpet thing at the Oscars tonight for her network, TFF has been dragged to the Orpheum to see all the main Oscar contenders over the last three weeks, and now know what should win. The two absolute standout are the Imitation Game, on the World War II cracking of the Enigma Code, and The Theory of Everything, about physicist Stephen Hawking. Run, don’t walk, to see them both.
THOSE CUTS
Told yers. Having seen both episodes of Channel Nine’s House of Hancock, my view is the same as most: the person who came out of it worse was not Gina Rinehart who launched all the legal action, but Rose Porteous. As to what Ms Rinehart succeeded in having cut from the second episode, I am reliably informed – albeit not from within Channel Nine – that they concerned a sexual harassment case brought against her by one of her security staff, and some scenes at the end where the makeup and prosthetics were so overdone she looked grotesque.
GAG OF THE WEEK
A car full of Irish nuns is sitting at a traffic light when a bunch of rowdy drunks pulls up alongside of them.
“Hey, show us your tits, yer bloody penguins!” shouts one of the drunks.
Quite shocked, Mother Superior turns to Sister Immaculate, “I don’t think they know who we are, show them your cross.”
Sister Immaculate rolls down her window and shouts, “Piss off yer drunken misbegotten bastard sons of tinted dried up grandmotherly whores before I come over there, tear youse each a new arsehole and then bite yer poxy balls off!”
Sister Immaculate looks back at Mother Superior, quite innocently, and asks, “Was that cross enough?”
THEY SAID IT
“Our job is not to worry and fret about ourselves, our job is to worry and fret about you.”
Tony Abbott to a Western Suburbs meeting.
“Can you carry a big heavy box over slippery rocks and slushy snow whilst dodging penguins?”
Part of a job advertisement for someone to run the world’s most southerly post office, on Goudier, an island “the size of a football pitch” just off the Antarctic peninsula, at Port Lockroy, a former British scientific base.
“I chose not to answer the question. I should have answered the question. In hindsight it was a mistake not to answer the question.”
Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen insisting – hand on his heart and hope to die – that he did know the level of the tax-free threshold, under persistent grilling by Alan Jones.
“We will be making our displeasure known, we will be letting Indonesia know in absolutely unambiguous terms that we will feel grievously let down.”
Tony Abbott, telling Indonesia that Australia won’t be happy if the Bali nine ring leaders are executed.
“Shut down Manus.”
Sky-writing sign over the Opera House to mark the first anniversary of asylum seeker Reza Barati’s death at the centre on February 17, 2014. Three artists, who are not associated with any refugee or political groups, crowd-funded the idea for the skywriting and raised $9700 online in a week.
“It’s not just a business decision, it’s a personal decision. I’m as appalled as everybody else. A clear message has to be put through that change has to occur. It sickens me, my staff and a lot of people in the public. I’m an animal lover and it’s knocked me around personally a fair bit.”
Ray Borda, managing director of Macro Meats Gourmet Game, which has pulled its sponsorship from all greyhound racing in Australia.
“Their preparedness to try and maintain their brand position is incredible. They’re obviously very worried by virtue of the sense of consumer backlash against them because they’re seen as the face of 10 teaspoons of sugar in a can.”
Rob Moodie, professor of public health at the University of Melbourne, on Coke’s 25 per cent fall in profits last year. Rah!
“You smarmy prick.”
Paul Murray on Sky News, back announcing footage of Opposition Leader Bill Shorten defending Chris Bowen. Waaay too strong, Paul. Alan Jones at his worst, would never speak like that on air, preferring to save such remarks for Young Liberal functions.
“She’s part Aboriginal but has a great personality . . .”
Staggering line, from the show Two Broke Girls, which aired on Channel Nine on Tuesday night.
Twitter: @Peter_Fitz