The phony campaign is underway. How nasty will Spud go?
Tasting notes: a terroir of earthy fear and loathing with less than subtle notes of racism, bottled in Abbottesque carping negativism and belligerence, exhibiting a faux indignation but with projection and genuine hypocrisy teasing the palate.
* * * * *
The bovine dullard is still trying to work out the wrapping on his Rubik’s Cube. His is a personality so uninspiring that undertakers do a stock take whenever he appears on the telly. He has the integrity of wet bog roll, the sincerity of a LinkedIn birthday greeting and a gangrenous level of empathy that would embarrass a mob enforcer. Yet Handsome Pete, the wannabe tinpotato, armed with wishful thinking, is measuring the curtains at The Lodge convinced his ultimate ambition is soon to be realised.
He demonstrably craves the top job with the fervent yearning that is evident in all the malignant creeps and weirdos who sit atop the RWNJ totem pole.
What is it about the nasty, the non-descript, the deluded, the befuddled, the belligerent, the purposefully ignorant that gets them to positions of power and influence in the Tory ecosphere?
All Tories are greedy, egocentric fuckers but with Spud and co is it at a psychopathic level of dedication to self-interest? Self before party before country – “an evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes”. Spud has form – putting national security at risk for personal political advantage. For him national security has always been first and foremost a partisan weapon.
“It’s perplexing how Peter Dutton continues to get kudos for being the go-to politician on the national security beat, when he has so clearly not just ignored the advice of ASIO but undermined the agency’s credibility.” (Laura Tingle).
Spud is to truth what Uri Geller is to spoons. Lying is a tool of trade for most politicians but Brother Scotty and now Spud have elevated their craft to an art form – a genre, a movement even. Clunge? Pap? Ethically Baroque?
In thrall to the bloated grotesquerie occupying the White House the Tories have noted the success of the fabulisms so habitually dispensed therefrom so they’ve decided to embrace the post-truth Trumpian world.
“They’ve got a like mind.” (Empurpled member for New England Englebert Humpastaffer comparing the Spud to the pumpkin-coloured horror).
No more standard pollie porkies and misleading statements – it’s a blizzard of deceit bolstered by a compliant, often complicit corporate media that does not push back. From the teals being secret communist radicals to declaring that the Chinese Communist Party was backing Albanese and Labor in the election (“the statement so toxic that it provoked an unprecedented public warning from ASIO’s chief, Mike Burgess”) there is no outrageous lie that will go unindulged by der fabrikator.
A desire for the trappings of office and a mindset that treats wealth as virtue will get you through a Liberal Party job interview in the Barclay McGain room (no scissors please) at Young Lib HQ – so it’s hardly unique to the lugubrious tuber. However, with Spud they are baked in attributes – his pie floater personality being in awe of the confit d’endangered species canapes and Pol Roger Reserve Brut at Justin Hemmes’ Wage Theft Manor and major miner Big Vag’s various sprawling mansions. Spud is wealthy beyond reasonable aspiration and true to the RW covetous style, too much is never enough, but a PM’s paltry salary is not the motivator. It’s the cachet, his embrace by the exploitative class with their private jets and emotional support yachts. He’ll be accepted as one of them.
His naked ambition and long held acquisitiveness is a symptom of overcompensation for low self-esteem. Performative machismo is also an offset to his insecurities – Spud’s shtick being the tough guy, the uber dude, the hard man. There are though, things that touch his blackened soul, that stir his loins. The clang of a cell door closing on small, brown fingers, the smell of cordite in a Gazan refugee camp, turning off the life support at old folks’ homes, the lapping of waves over headstones in an abandoned Tuvaluan churchyard. “Thug” is a suitable label. Thank you Malcolm.
The pitch and the packaging – Make Australia Afraid Again¹ promising to keep the worthy safe from the bogeyman du jour while honouring his commitment to demonising those who are guilty of subsisting while Black. He’ll maintain the weaponising of cultural division and the manufacturing of outrage against the “woke” and the “inner-city elites” (the versatile pejoratives where his audience decides who that applies to in accordance with their own prejudices).
The muscular bluster from the thin-skinned, glass-jawed tubermensch will no doubt continue as on brand. But the real Spud is a tremulous poltroon hiding from scrutiny and disappearing when under pressure. He’ll turn up for tummy tickles from tame media but it’s Jane “Marg” Hume (I can’t believe she’s not better) and Whiney-the-Poo and Eyesore (Suss Ley and Bridget McKenzie) who he deploys as human shields elsewise. When needs must he’s even resorted to the innumerate Angus “Squizzy” Taylor, Fidel deFigueres Man of the Year.
To date the strategy has been to hope that things got worse…that our bad news would be their good news. Plus an occasional thought bubble (as Albo said “all bubble and no thought”) and a sampling of Trumpisms. They’ve even gone off the boil on nuclear power – a plaintive pitch from Scooter doppelganger Homely Ted O’Brien is all we’ve had of late.
So what would Spud accomplish if, gods save us, he falls into the job?
A nuance-free zone, a lumpen boob of no discernable worthiness, tone-deaf with a robust stupidity that could be used as road base and with a track record of inanity, monumental fusterclucks and dodgy dealings – he’ll move to hasten the shift to the hard right, milk the politics of grievance to cultivate an ascendant authoritarianism, cynically exploit antisemitism as a filtering mechanism to target the muzzies, prosecute the culture wars, persecute the powerless (particularly if of a darkish hue) and work to entrench the neoliberal agenda of shifting public money into corporate hands. The promise of Oz as a renewable energy powerhouse driving national wellbeing will be shot in the head (NBN anyone? Thank you again Malcolm).
All of this will be championed by Sky News, Stokes’ minions, 2GB, 3AW – Bolt, Murray, Credlin et al and the toadies from the Murdoch vomitorium such as the appalling Greg Sheridan. Covered in gravy stains and smelling of stale piss he puts a clothes peg on his foreskin to keep his nutsack off his slippers and the only reason he’s got a chin is so that Rupert Murdoch has got somewhere to rest his balls when he is in town. That’s the quality of the type that fervently champions our Baldrick. FFS!
Sending us broke and backwards, how Trumpy would Spud go?
* * * * *
¹ “John Howard has particularly influenced Dutton’s socially conservative culture-war focus on issues such as race and immigration. While Howard used a dog whistle, he writes, Dutton uses a foghorn.” Lech Blain ala Good cop, bad cop, Inside Story.
“Escalation by escalation, embellishment by embellishment, the Liberal leader is inhabiting the zone of the political fabulist.” Peter Dutton is Australia’s figurehead of fear and fake news, like Trump but without charisma, Katharine Murphy, The Guardian. 14/10/23.
Merivale agrees to no-admission payment of $19.25m to former employees who allege they were underpaid, news.com.au
This article was originally published on Grumpy Geezer
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Brilliant article Grumpy! You nailed it. While Albo has certainly been underwhelming and has all the bad habits of
long term politicians, he is not inherently mean and nasty. And he has a pretty good team. Dutton is so desperate to be PM it’s embarrassing to watch. There is no Labor policy Dutton won’t match. He’s a train wreck and so are his team. It terrifies me that unaware voters may vote for him. There is one satisfying fact: most women loathe him. He’s blessed with the “ick” factor
Enjoyed Grumpy’s oh so subtle and elegant commentary, with its measured, restrained theme. But you have failed to notice some of Mr Dutton’s great advantages – like Gina’s money, and Advance’s machinations.
I call bullshit with a capital B on both comments by Der Spud.
He meant every word of the shot at Albanese then had a “change of heart” when it blew up in his face.
How will he firmly stand up to Trump while he’s on his knees with spread cheeks?
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/dutton-declares-he-will-firmly-stand-up-to-trump-if-elected-20250320-p5ll13.html
And a huge spray of promisory verbal diarrhea with this from Honest Dud, the used car saleman, “…Dutton said “I want the Australian people to know that I will stand up and defend the PBS, which is the envy of the world, against any attempt to undermine its integrity, including by major pharmaceutical companies,” he said.”
This is pure Shakespeare! God bless Grumpy and all who sail in him.
Another essay up to the GG’s usual standards of forensic deconstruction. Please remit copies of this to all political journalists in this country, all politicians within the LNP & Labor parties, maybe pop a copy in the major miner’s inbox as well… this needs to be widely distributed and widely read.
An appalling prospect that this ghoulish thug is competing for the highest political office in the land. Equally, that the punters of the seat of Dickson continue to re-elect him.
“the major miner’s inbox” Canguro? 😬
Grumpy, that was sublime.
I was thinking like Bibi but without the charisma.
Like Trump but without the brain.
Excellent GG.
The named mainstream media collective are off their old and shriveled heads. If der Spud and his wailing droogs get in, their wriggle-room for sensation will have nowhere to go without kicking their pending bankruptcies in the balls. The Duttonate’s bumbling illiteracy, fiscal incompetence and social ineptitude will be increasingly revealed from day 1, as their lies, bile and snark has nowhere to go.
With their collective charisma of a Kool Aid cult, it’ll be a lesson in how to lose friends and isolate everyone. The projection by der Spud of Albo’s ‘weakness’ will soon be revealed as the hyperbole of a ‘dud’ with nothing else to say, and even then, crafted and repeated by the dull snarky amanuenses of the mainstream media collective that capture him.
Albo’s strength has been clear in keeping his ministries and party aligned – an extremely difficult task in these globally unstable times. And by maintaining international respect whilst walking the tightrope above hungry crocodilians at every step, ever pursuing the importance of a multi-polar collaboration. Albo and his team have masterfully navigated the difficult extremities of the global hot wars of climate v energy v environment v economy, and the deadly and extraordinarily precarious proxy wars in the North / Central Africa, Middle East and Northern Europe. Circumstances which the LNP ignored or blundered through, swiveling wildly trying to appease racism and inane populism, whilst at the same time covertly and corruptly dipping into the treasury’s ink.
Almost nobody caring for society or with DEI interests put their hand out during the LNP decade of incumbency, as it was a pointless waste of breath unless one was aligned with the Pentecostal brutality. Since 2022, recognizing Labor’s determination to right the wrongs, everyone has had their hand out. Albo’s team have, in the face of western hemisphere conflict, rising inequity and panic, proceeded with much needed reform, changed direction as needed to face the headwinds, whilst at the same time substantially improving all the key economic indicators by competent detailed management.
All this whilst the desperate and morally insolvent Oz mainstream media collective, seeking sensation, dives down the rabbit hole of inane populism and infantilization, blowing every niggle or misunderstanding into a screech of negativity of grave consequence, whilst at the same time, hushing the incremental positives progressed by Labor. Their cheap lazy behavior shirks the complexities of our interdependent world, and proscribes the dissemination of accurate information, whilst deliberately blurring the lines between news, opinion and ideological bias. They don’t give a fuck about any duty to honesty with the public, opting for short-sighted self-serving propaganda.
These greedy nihilistic slobs prefer to give an undeserved dais and standing to the clown-car of the Duttonate, in the hope that if they nurse it into power, it will save their incompetent sagging slimy skins.
We won’t have the strength and determination of Albo and his team, instead we’ll see the bumbling, stammering incompetence and weakness of der Spud and his team of feckless screeching droogs. Just like we’re seeing in the T-Rump and his flunkies from America. And the price we will all pay will be huge and crushing.