Why Does Tony Abbott Like St Kilda?

Ok, I thought I’d start off with a joke.

No, not the one about what’s the difference between Pauline and Jacinta? Answer: Pauline was suspended from the Liberal Party for having the same policy ideas that people are now making Jacinta Nampijinpa Price leadership material… Obviously that’s not really a joke. It’s more an indication of how far the Coalition has drifted to the Right since 1996.

To be fair, it’s not that the Liberals because the Liberals opposed the things that Pauline was saying in 1996; it was that she was announcing their policies before Howard had time to win the election before implementing them. Any good strategist knows that you wait until closer to the election before announcing your policies and in the Liberal Party’s case, that was after the election.

However it is interesting to look back at how things change. Once upon a time Tony Abbott was all about stopping the boats and those “illegal immigrants”. Now that we don’t seem to have any illegal ones to worry about, we can move on to those legal immigrants… And not because we’re racist. No, it’s just because we like people who fit in and if we have too many migrants we can’t fit them in and that’s not racist, that’s just practical, isn’t it? I mean it’s not like we’re picking on any particular group apart from Indian immigrants and I think you’d agree that’s not racist… It’s just that they might vote for Labor now that we’ve insulted them.

Anyway, the joke:

“Why does Tony Abbott like St Kilda?” 

“Because they only have one flag!” 

Ok, I didn’t say it was funny. I just said that it was a joke and it’s probably upset a lot of St Kilda supporters as well as people who don’t follow AFL and don’t realise that it refers to premiership wins…

Personally I find the brouhaha about Australia only having one flag more of a joke. Of course one can point out that each state has its own flag. One can also point out that there are all sorts of flags for different groups and different occasions. However this is the sort of spurious argument that would make Charlie Kirk proud…

Oh, is ok to suggest his argument style was at times “spurious” or is that part of the “we mustn’t be negative because he was shot and it’s the people who criticised him that caused the gunman to do that and we need to be careful about what we say unlike the radical left how are all responsible for his death and must be punished” concept that’s sweeping the US?

I’ll just leave any suggestion that Kirk may have not always engaged in anything but an attempt to speak the truth at all times, and point out the obvious fact that people saying that Australia only has one flag are sort of missing the fun to be had when you put up an image of one of those demonstrations supporting “our way of life” where I noticed several, including a couple of Eureka flags being held by people who hadn’t got the memo about there only being one flag.

Of course, you could also put up an image of the Australian flag and ask a question in the style of how many squares to you see in this picture. Unless you look closely it’s easy to miss the ones that aren’t obvious.

Let’s play, shall we?

Ok, I’m sure you all got a) the Australian Flag and b) the Union Jack in the corner but how many got the

c) English flag (Red Cross on white background)

d) Scottish flag (White Diagonal Cross on blue background)

e) St Patrick’s flag (Red Diagonal Cross on white background)

Ok, they’re all hidden in the Union Jack but that’s the challenge, isn’t it? To see what’s there hidden just underneath all that racism…

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