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YOU know there must be a budget lurking around the corner when Tony Abbott reintroduces something as left field as the imperial honours system out of the blue.
It’s not like it was on the tip of everyone’s tongue a fortnight ago.
But there you go.
A fortnight ago George Brandis hadn’t stood up in Parliament and told us we’ve got the right to be bigots either.
And Australia hadn’t got the lead role for the most unlikely search for a black box in the history of crashed air planes.
Made me think it will be an ugly budget coming up.
They call it smoke and mirrors, don’t they? Distract people with one thing while doing another?
And if I hear another journo stand solemnly in front of a camera and tell me they still have no idea where Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is, I’ll ditch in the ocean myself.
Better the plebs vent their spleens on Andrew Bolt getting a knighthood than focus on their increasingly bleak futures.
But who can blame the government for not wanting to talk about the budget?
Unemployment on the rise, deficit on the rise, jobs heading offshore, mining booms going pfft, Arthur Sinodinos going pfft.
In short, Liberal policy – to blame everything on Labor until after the budget – is working perfectly.
Why brag?
Better the plebs vent their spleens on Andrew Bolt getting a knighthood than focus on their increasingly bleak futures.
Chances are the plebs might blame the government, and the government doesn’t want that.
A lot of commentators thought it ‘‘anachronistic’’ and ‘‘archaic’’ and ‘‘retrograde’’ that Andrew Bolt, Alan Jones and Gina Rinehart, might get the chance to become a knight or a dame.
The truth is, a lot of commentators were saying Andrew Bolt, Alan Jones and Gina Rinehart were ‘‘anachronistic’’, ‘‘archaic’’ and ‘‘retrograde’’ before that.
Now Mr Brandis has cleared the air and it’s OK to call them all those things and heaps worse.
All in the interests of libertarian debate, of course.
It’s funny how a political conversation gets started.
One moment no one’s talking about knights and dames.
The next, people saying it’s easier to understand ‘‘sir’’ and ‘‘dame’’.
That’d the problem with the Order of Australia awards; you never know until you get to the end of a name, whether or not a person is important.
And even then you’re not sure how important because the letters kind of read like a TV guide. You know: AC (Companion of the Order); AO (Officer of the Order); AM (Member of the Order); and OAM (Medal of the Order). If you’re a ‘‘sir’’ or a ‘‘dame’’, they say, it’s clear you’re a VIP of some sort.
Not sure what Sister Margaret Culhane (OAM 2012), or Geraldine Doogue (AO 2003) or Tim Fischer (AC 2005) or Jimmy Little (AO 2004) or any of the other Order of Australia recipients say about that.
Sounds like Tony didn’t ask either.
Probably for the same reason he doesn’t want to talk about the budget.
But on face value, it does sound a tad disrespectful, at the least.
In New Zealand when they backflipped to the old honours system, everyone who’d won an award under the previous set-up got the option of accepting a knighthood or a dame, or not.
Surely we should protest.
Weren’t the Order of Australia awards introduced in 1975 to show that as a truly multicultural nation we were emerging from our colonial attachments to Queen and country to stand on our own two feet on the world stage?
Didn’t that mean something back then? Doesn’t that mean something now?
Shouldn’t we reach for our pitchforks?
To tell you the truth, I haven’t seen too many garden implements raised in anger yet, except down the backyard in our vegie patch where the kookaburras have been pillaging the worms.
Now every time I hear the kookas cackle, I think of Tony.
He’s certainly wedged his rivals.
Not the least ex-governor-general Quentin Bryce, whose job it was, until only two weeks ago, to confer the Order of Australia awards on the next round of winners.
Now she’s a dame, not a GG, and out of two jobs.
Not since Cheryl Kernot was lured from the Democrats over to Labor has such a potent progressive symbol been so effectively defused.
On the other hand, what brave soul would deny Labor leader Bill Shorten’s mother-in-law such a richly deserved and allegedly more easily understood plaudit at the end of her distinguished career?
Even though she was the one who suggested, while GG, that the nation should revisit the republican debate.
The MIL has seemingly gone MIA. And the connection to the Labor leader is reinforced every time someone mentions it.
I can just picture Tony rubbing his hands and licking his lips in delight.
And the more I picture that, with some red budgies thrown in, the less I want to picture it.
A bit like the budget, really.