Damn it! I’ve been careful to avoid Australian news for a significant time to prevent my blood pressure rising at the utter cockwomblery of Australian politics in this General Election year.
I’d managed it quite successfully too but then somehow the news about Senator Nova Peris slipped through the filter.
In case you don’t recall, Nova was a “captain’s pick” a few years ago. We wrote about the shameful racism and the dilution of democracy involved at the time.
Guess how it ended?
She’s standing down after just one term.
Why?
Because, as we pointed out previously, she’s completely unqualified and inexperienced to fulfil any position of responsibility. There’s no malice meant in that statement, it’s just a fact. It was true at the time of her appointment as the Labor (sic) candidate for a safe seat, was true throughout her three years of mediocracy and entitlement and is demonstrably true as she steps down.
In a tearful presser, Nova warns us away from judging her unless we’re Aboriginal women because how on earth can we know how difficult things have been for her?
There’s some merit in that statement; I’m not an Aboriginal woman with absolutely no experience relevant to politics so, no, I don’t know exactly what her struggles have involved. I have, however, once taken on a job for which I was completely unsuitable and I recall how every day I sat at my desk scratching my head wondering how the fuck I was going achieve the required outcomes without looking like a complete bumbling idiot.
In the end, I pushed my CV out to the market and got a new job. Just like Nova.
It’s worth watching the press conference where SuperNova and Manboobs emote together for a very important reason; it sums up the sorry state of Australian political thought and discourse.
Taking some of Nova’s statements one by one;
“Three years ago I walked into Parliament as the first Aboriginal woman”.
Not so much walked as chauffeur-driven in a taxpayer-funded Bentley. You got handed the job on a plate.
“Until you are an Indigenous person, do not criticise me for the decisions I’ve made”.
Until? Unless, surely? Ok, that’s grammatical pedantry but let’s take the wider sentiment; you’re saying that a public figure is beyond criticism unless the critic shares an ethnicity with them? Is there a hierarchy to this criticism ban? Can or can’t a Chinese critic criticise, say, a Lebanese public figure? This opens up many more questions around the pecking order of valid criticism and how to establish ethnic rank.
“This decision I have made has been on family and I have to look after my children. Aboriginal people haven’t had to share true moments with their children and I hold that dear to my heart”.
Putting aside the terrible grammar and syntax errors, what does that even mean? It sounds very sentimental and lovely though.
“I’m a 45-year-old woman and I’m sure you don’t go around every single day time of your life justifying the things you have to do”.
Actually, yes I do have to justify pretty much everything I do. Either to my employers or to my family. It’s not a particularly difficult burden to bear though, as I’m not in the habit of doing things that I find hard to defend (these days). Anyway, if I were a politician, I’d expect it was a significant chunk of the damn job description.
“I am a politician but I am also a human”.
Well, I think the jury is coming back in to the court room on that first point and it doesn’t look like they’ll deliver a verdict you’ll be particularly fond of.
“Aboriginal people have no inherited wealth, they have inherited pain, but we have a vision”.
There we have it. It’s somebody else’s fault. There’s boat loads of people living here who don’t have inherited wealth but are somehow getting on just fine in a world where they aren’t owed a living. Consider this; maybe the only difference between them and you is that they’ve not been indoctrinated in a culture of victimhood, apathy and handouts.
All the time, of course, the Leader of the Opposition was nodding along trying not to wince at the mangled language and the cognitive dissonance demonstrated by every sentence.
It started badly, it was a disaster in the middle and it ended badly.
Perhaps we could give people jobs based on merit in future. Just a thought.