Smart and experienced local political observers, like the ABC’s Laura Tingle, have thought long and hard about Scott Morrison’s “Quiet Australians”. They even went to the field to learn straight from them what makes them tick.
Readers might remember. During his election speech, Morrison appealed to the vote of those Quiet Australians to explain his May 18 surprising election victory (a little earlier he had also appealed to God’s miraculous intervention):
“It is those Australians that we have been working for, for the last five and a half years since we came to Government, under Tony Abbott's leadership back in 2013. It has been those Australians who have worked hard every day, they have their dreams, they have their aspirations; to get a job, to get an apprenticeship, to start a business, to meet someone amazing. To start a family, to buy a home, to work hard and provide the best you can for your kids. To save your retirement and to ensure that when you're in your retirement, that you can enjoy it because you've worked hard for it.
“These are the quiet Australians who have won a great victory tonight. Thank you.”
On the other hand, that night’s losers, by implication the Loud Australians, didn’t even deserve explicit mention in that speech.
You see, unlike Morrison’s silent voters, time-constrained by life’s struggles, those night’s losers use their considerable spare time to protest noisily, for they do not work hard, have no dreams or aspirations, care not about meeting someone amazing or starting a family. Strange people, indeed.
----------
Today some of those traditional COALition silent voters came out in force.
Go ahead, watch that video. I am sure they are everything else Morrison says they are, but quiet they definitely are not. And they are right to make noise. Indeed, they sound every bit as loud as their Loud Australian counterparts. Maybe even federal Agriculture Minister Bridget McKenzie (COALition) could agree.Protestors shout #cantheplan and police move out to form a line in front of the parliament. pic.twitter.com/bcLOJcUcME— Gabrielle Chan (@gabriellechan) December 2, 2019
 |
| (source) |
Come to think of it, other quiet Australians didn’t seem too quiet back in April either.
 |
| (source) |
----------
Instead of spending so much time and effort with the Quiet Australians theory, maybe Tingle should give Morrison’s God explanation some thought. It seems to make at least as much sense.
----------
Incidentally, Malcolm Turnbull also was in the news. Apparently, he called on liberals in the COALition to be loud, not quiet, on climate change.
I cannot but applaud Turnbull for that. Too bad he didn’t set much of an example when he was Prime Minister.
----------
As the surroundings of the Warragamba Dam, southwest of Sydney, burn and Sydneysiders are smoked alive, the Air Quality Index webpage -- and only the Air Quality Index webpage -- of the NSW Department of the Environment website is offline and has been offline since at least noon.
Funny, isn’t it?
(Gladys Berejiklian, the NSW Premier, is another liberal in the COALition.)
----------
UPDATE (05/12/2019):
The noise Loud Australians manage to make seems to fall many decibels short of the kind of noise Quiet Australians can make:
 |
| (source) |
And Michael “Big Mac” McCormack never shouts “lunatics”; Christian “Sore Loser” Porter never whispers his favorite the word -- “thugs”. Nobody, least of all Anthony Albanese, demands anybody’s expulsion from their parties. Opinionated pundits for once have no opinion. You see no Victorian riot cops pepper-spraying those Quiet Australians. Batons don’t fly, arrests aren’t made.
Quite to the contrary, that kind of noise actually seems to work just fine … for them:
 |
| (source) |
No comments:
Post a Comment