Sorry to harp on about the hapless Prime Minister again but there is no other story in this crazy country at the moment. He’s eaten a whole raw onion, peel and all, in public; a display of machismo when he visited an onion farm in Tasmania. Even the farmer was surprised. Also since the last issue of Noseweek, he’s called the way Aboriginal people live in remote communities/outstations a “lifestyle choice” which governments can no longer afford to fund via infrastructure and other benefits. It is forced removals Australian style, with plans to effectively “close down” 150 remote communities. It was “not the job of taxpayers to fund lifestyle choices”, said Tony Abbott.
Voters in Western Sydney have dubbed Abbott “incompetent, an international embarrassment and a fool” in a focus group. As a commentator in The Guardian Australia pointed out, the tragedy is that Abbott’s quirks are being made manifest on the Australian psyche: “Abbott has been able to make Australia a little more like himself: a bit more self-involved, a bit more threatening, a bit more masculinist, a bit more difficult for outsiders to understand, a bit creepier, a bit more weird.”
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