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Mr ALBANESE (Member for Grayndler) said:
Today my grievance is against the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) for his failure to provide leadership. You can trim the eyebrows; you can cap the teeth; you can cut the hair; you can put on different glasses; you can give him a ewe’s milk facial, for all I care; but, to paraphrase a gritty Australian saying, ‘Same stuff, different bucket.’
In the pantheon of chinless blue bloods and suburban accountants that makes up the Australian Liberal Party,this bloke is truly one out of the box. You have to go back to Billy McMahon to find a Prime Minister who even approaches this one for petulance, pettiness and sheer grinding inadequacy. …
But the gulf, Mr Deputy Speaker, between the man in his mind – the phlegmatic, proud old English bulldog – the Winston of John Winston Howard – and the nervous, jerky, whiny apparition that we all see on the box every night. When he looks on the box he gets to see what we see – not the masterful orator of his mind but the whingey kid in his sandpit. Spare a thought for us, Mr Deputy Speaker, because we have to watch this performance every day – the chin and top lip jutting out in ‘full duck mode’. This prime ministership is not about the future of our nation. It is about John Winston Howard’s past. …
John Winston Howard grew up in the inner west of Sydney. His father owned a service station on the corner of the street where I now live. These were the halcyon days of little Winston’s life – when the working classes knew their place and when all migrants were British. Lucky John Winston Howard moved further north across the harbour. He certainly would not be comfortable living in the inner west of Sydney any more. A bit too much change for his lifetime.
John Howard has always been proud to call himself a conservative. The problem I think is that he has confused this with preservative. … Because it all started going wrong in the late 1960s. Here is a man who lived at home until he was 32. You can imagine what he was like. Here were young Australians demonstrating against the Vietnam War, listening to the Doors, driving their tie-dyed kombi vans, and what was John Howard doing? He was at home with mum, wearing his shorts and long white socks, listening to Pat Boone albums and waiting for the Saturday night church dance. Yes, it all started to go wrong back in the 1960s. Radical and sinister notions of equality for women, world peace and, dare I say it, citizenship rights for indigenous Australians.
PART TWO
So what do we hear when we listen to John Winston Howard today? We hear the hatred and resentment in his voice – the sort of hatred and resentment we saw at the reconciliation conference last year – hatred and resentment from a man who was never part of the scene, who was not accepted, for whom a different life was too big a leap and who took refuge in a previous generation. You can see it in his instinctive hatred of any progression, and he sees it everywhere – policies of social inclusion, multiculturalism, women’s liberation, Aboriginal reconciliation. In all of them he only ever sees the jump he was too weak to make decades ago.
Now he wants the whole nation to stay back and keep him company. Punch `Howard’ and `multiculturalism’ into the Hansard database. You will find he has never mentioned the word. … This is the man we have leading the country – a man who is so instinctively petty and so bitterly obsessed that he could craft an entire parliamentary career without mentioning the word `multiculturalism’ and what that represents, because it is an idea he is opposed to. He is positive]y Orwellian in his pettiness. This is a smallness of mind, a meanness with breathtaking scope.
It is a small thing really but remember when the Spice Girls came to Australia at the beginning of the year? … What did he say? He said it would not be ‘appropriate’ to meet with them. That is vintage John Winston Howard. If he really did not want to meet them he could have just said he was on holiday at Hawks Nest. But he could not resist. He could not resist telling the youth of Australia that he thought they were infantile and stupid and therefore it would be inappropriate to meet these people. …
This is the man we have leading this country – yesterday’s man, a weak man, a little man, a man without courage and a man without vision. Billy McMahon in short pants. This is the man who has brought the full force of his personality to bear on Australia. Australia is now learning what it is like live life through John Howard’s eyes. This is the man whose only aim in the end – forgetting the prime ministership – was to pay back all those who had tried to stop him along the way.
Australia is a better country than that and Australians are better people than that. Australians are, if we are anything, a courageous people. So steeped in conservative values and fear of what is new is John Winston Howard that, if he were born before the Wright brothers, he would have organised a campaign against air travel of any description on the grounds that it was new and potentially dangerous. He is an antique, a remnant of the past that should be put on display, but not in government and certainly not in a leadership position, for anachronisms belong in museums and historical texts, not in parliament. Australians deserve a courageous leader; they do not deserve the kind of leader that used to dob on them in the schoolyard. They do not deserve John Winston Howard and in time they will put him out to pasture. Roll on that day, come the federal election.
Phillip Stephenson said:
Is Albo the best they can do? His petty and personal attack on John Howard shows he has the mentality of a nine year old. An orator? He’d be more at home doing Dicky Knee impressions. Do you people really want a clown like this leading the Labor Party? He didn’t demean Howard with this petty and vindictive insight into his own personality, he diminished himself.
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algernon1 said:
I was speaking at work today with someone who has Albo in their mobile, and speaks with him. There are many urging him to run for leader but its wait and see. What surprised me was that this person hoped that Rudd lost his seat on Saturday, I didn’t go that far but I’m glad he’s standing down and hope he moves on soon.
Also heard about one of the policies that the Liberals didn’t let out, in the trust me. Aged care is an abomination apparently, goodness help anyone entering an aged care facility with the voice of the 1920’s running the show.
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gerard oosterman said:
The mozzies are sucking blood already.
Don’t look at the front page of The Daily Telegraph today or if you do, pray for Mother England. It’s got Abbott in full frontal bike shot. Where are the censors? 😉
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gerard oosterman said:
Reblogged this as well on http://oosterman.wordpress.com/
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gerard oosterman said:
Yes, but see , understand and watch Australia into the future with another John Howard but under a different name: Abbott. An arch conservative, a man whose mind is pebble- concreted., a Monarchist and chockers of suppositories of suburban wisdom to boot. A doubter on climate change, a doubter on any change; a great believer in man and woman marriage only and giving bicycle seat homilies to les peuples.
There is now a pro-gun man in the NSW senate already advising we should arm ourselves to reduce crime and a rugby player elsewhere. Is it time to look up Norway?
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doctortrish47 said:
Reblogged this on The Accidental Critic and commented:
A wonderful speech in the great Labor tradition.
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helvityni said:
I think Albanese has some qualities of Keating and Whitlam, I’d like him to be our next leader.
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sandshoe said:
I commented to my son to watch Albanese and lo in the afternoon of the same day he had been appointed Deputy. He has come a long way in his his ability to stand up to relentless media hammering and speaks simply. By the latter I mean he is not preoccupied with the dysfunctional elements of a debate but manages topics well under the pressure of the media. He is a diplomat.
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Big M said:
My sentiments, exactly. A small man, with a small mind, probably quite a nice bloke, but ineffectual. I always remember a video of him tripping up the White House steps, probably because he was holding his cap in his hand, tugging at the forelock with the other, kowtowing to the Yanks. He made Bill Clinton, with all of his salacious hanky panky look statesman-like.
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Big M said:
The only parliamentary goings on that was funnier than this, was the infamous ‘I’m sorry the leader of the Opposition is a scum-bag’ apology by Paul Keating, in answer to John Howard (back-bencher, at the time), regarding Dr John Hewson (Lib leader).
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doctortrish47 said:
Love it! Thank you for giving me a much needed laugh after Saturday’s bloodbath. Albo has gone up in my estimation.
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vivienne29 said:
At the Labor launch it was Albo who made me feel good. He is a very good bloke and if we must have a bloke leading he is my choice.
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gerard oosterman said:
I sincerely hope he will be the new man. Also hope Bill Shorten is gracious enough to give him that chance.
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doctortrish47 said:
Bill Shorten won’t play his hand yet – he’s too shrewd and too ambitious. He’ll challenge closer to the next election when a win looks easier.
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sandshoe said:
I second your thoughtful comment Gez re hoping Bill Shorten will graciously concede. Albanese is the popular choice he has handled himself so well.
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vivienne29 said:
For me- Bill Shorten turned to poo when he turned and turned. He looks miserable for it all. I think he stuffed up good and proper.
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sandshoe said:
Shorten does not show the resilience as a public speaker I thought and yes, recently is looking miserable. I was surprised to hear he was contesting. Re calls for Rudd to resign…they are all doing it all over again and surely Rudd will not immediately leave Parliament given he has been elected by his constituency. That makes no sense in the framework of stabilising the party according to the wishes of the electorate.
I have never been comfortable with the proposal to have everybody of the Labor party faithful contribute to chose the leader etc from the viewpoint of time delay and cost. I thought that sounded unwieldy.
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