Apparently Alexander Downer reckons he’s “never known such a bunch of cry-babies as the Labor Party”. I laughed when I read that, because last night I watched Downer’s amazing performance on the SBS World News. Here’s a summary:
Mean old Peter Beattie is bagging people, Kevin Rudd is smearing people, the media is writing mean headlines, Kevin Rudd is sneaky, “This is pathetic. It’s pathetic… it’s pathetic”, Labor is smearing people again, and Kevin Rudd is smearing people.
As Tim Dunlop wondered, “Can accusations that Mr Rudd is a poopy pants be far away?”
But the most interesting line in the SBS interview was this one:
STAN GRANT: But there are valid questions in the handling of this [the Haneef case] — the fact the SIM card was not found in the car, as was told to the court, the fact we now hear police had written personally names in Dr Haneef’s diary, the fact this has been so public that there have been allegations of leaking. It’s a wonder we’re not a laughing stock, isn’t it?
ALEXANDER DOWNER: No, but we don’t want to become a laughing stock by becoming like America, where the media are the judge and the jury.
Get that? Our foreign minister just declared that the United States of America is a laughing stock. Why do you hate our greatest ally, Alexander? This knee-jerk anti-Americanism is not a good look from a cabinet minister. We know that their legal system is no laughing stock — just ask David Hicks.
Oh, why does Mr Downer hate America so?
It’s because their top chaps don’t wear Old School Ties, so you don’t know whom to trust, isn’t it?
If you think Downer hates America now, wait until either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton become President.
Compared to Downer, the Iranian mullahs will look restrained.
Incredibly funny stuff. Poor Dolly he can see the international travel and hobnobbing with Condi slipping away.
Has anyone, apart from some minion in DFAT or an already wounded John Hewson, ever lost anything after being savaged by Alexander Downer?
Say this aloud, in an alarmed tone of voice: “Look out! It’s Alexander Downer!” - nah, doesn’t work for me either.
Don Watson said it best, of Keating….
“Hewson was his natural enemy. Downer was his natural prey.”
That was just the most incredibly wince worthy child like display I’ve ever seen by a politician being interviewed. I mean Stan Grant is OK but nowhere in the league of Kerry O’Brien (i.e. the old unshackled Kerry) or Jana Wendt in her heyday, who would have cut a performance like Dolly’s last night to ribbons.
Dolly is really losing it and is more shrill and petulant than he has ever been, just what is up with him?
Downer’s never been any bloody use to man or beast. When precisely has he said one sensible & memorable thing on any topic?
He’s just on tenure: the one leadership deal Howard has stuck to - the one that put him in office without a shit-fight in 95.
ALEXANDER DOWNER: No, but we don’t want to become a laughing stock by becoming like America, where the media are the judge and the jury.
Good Lord!
The Man from Mayo has just changed his stockings.
And in front of the media too.
What a hussy!
Alexander Downer set to music:
http://vx.autonomous.org/mp3/vxdub/victor_xray_government_in_competence.mp3
To use a Keatingism, it was like being flogged with a piece of warm lettuce…
I thought Downer was one of the better performers of the Federal Government this year. You mean there are worse than him in cabinet?
I think hes probably reffering to (this is the only channel I know that does it there may be more) Fox and some of its terrible court coverage. They bring in lawyers, ex-coppers, and any other takling heads and speculate wildly on specific cases all the time.
Id never seen anything like it, but photos of suspects, not even charged, details and allegations about evrything under the sun. At least our media tends to wait till a trial is in progress. The hanouf thing is what you tend to see in the US media all the time, here its an abberation.
Papers and TV in Australia will continue to push it though. Id give us 10 years before it gets that bad.
I read somewhere that Lord Dolly of Downer was once in the diplomatic service.(What sins did the voters of Mayo collectively commit that he was visited upon them? Or was it the idiot son syndrome? His father was a fine person AND politician, without being oxymoronic.)
He & Krudd must have come into contact in their respective careers which could explain a lot… and their regard for each other.
Sure he’s an international embarrassment (we’ve been regaled with tales of what o/s govs. thought of the Rodent but what would they say about him?) but, amidst such a plethora of pusillanimous poltroons, he can be ignored by satirists, had we any.
Coincidentally I just bumped into Mr Downer when he was having a coffee at the European on Spring Street, (Melbourne). His conversation was inane enough to not be worth reporting on (mostly gossip it seemed) but I was struck by how softly spoken and how plummy he sounds in real life. Like a camp upper class English twit. Quite distinct, far more so than on TV.
Is there some type of winter recess bet going on among Cabinet to see who can act the goose better than the rest? Abbott is out there telling the public that they need to take a good hard look at themselves, Howard is tripping over, Andrews is overriding the courts, Vaile is contradicting Andrews, Costello and Howard are having a Clayton’s leadership battle, and so on. This seems like the most bizarre implosion by a government I have ever seen.
Downer’s only crowning achievement is his hair! He never has a bad hair day. Never. He must spend a fortune on it to say nothing of lots of time.
Unfortunately the face under the hair is weak and nondescript much like his political performance!
Ptobias,
Howard is at least is consistent. He tripped on the stairs to a podium coming into governmant, and now, for balance, he has tripped on the stairs on his way out.
Downer is right. We are becoming a nation of hysterics where trial by media and stupid blogs looking for a bit of sensation outdoes a bit of old fashioned patience and care in making judgements.
The Haneef issue makes the hysterics at LP look bad and marginalises you. A bunch of housewives nervous about the vacuum cleaner getting under your skirts.
Daniel the last commentator who comments on Downer’s hair and Wilful who describes him as a ‘camp upper class English twit’ are about the strongest in a batch of totally adolescent , infantile wanks. You are pathetic.
Don’t make me laugh hc, wasn’t it Andrews who refused to accept the umpires decision on bail? Wasn’t it Andrews who told us that deportation regardless would be the outcome. More like trial by Executive Arm of Government than Media I’d have thought.
Far more pathetic, infantile, and adolescent[1] than someone who thinks “You’re - you’re - you’re all a bunch of GURLS, so NER!” is a stinging insult?
[1] I [heart] this particular mixed metaphor. Ta.
Go easy on Alex, he’s been really busy getting his under-achieving child a scholarship and job in his department.
lauredhel, How can you resist the testosterone driven wit of the Mature and oh so macho Government cheersquad.
… compellingly self-revelatory…
Does hc recommend the upright model?
If you don’t like it hc go and read something you do like. I’m sure this would be more your style than real world debates.
Go easy on Harry. E’s me mate.
Yes Harry, I believe you are correct.
And he also very juvenile.
Does anyone take Downer’s comments seriously?
Downer was at it again in the intro to the 7:30 Report. They started with a Dolly sound bite on that biography. I would love to quote what Dolly waffled on about but it was so disjointed and nonsensical that I can’t remember even half of it to put it down.
Read the 7:30 transcript when it is published on the ABC website. It really was Downer at his
bestworst.Andrew E:
I very rarely literally laugh out loud online, but that time I really did.
Yep, I encountered him many years ago when he attended a performance of something I wrote that was at the Barossa Music Festival, which all the Lovely People of Adelaide habitually attended. He was suitably sycophantic in the face of someone who actually DID something.
His accent was quite the Duchess of Kent. I gather, however, that subsequently he had lessons in how to sound a tad more Australian.
Still, under moments of pressure, he does lapse. Every now and then the British Public School Boy in him rears up. Shabby. He loves the word “shabby”. “I think Mr Rudd has shown up to be a pretty shabby sort of an operator.”
But it’s fine really. The chaps and I will go off and have lashings of ginger beer, and everything will be just beano again, eh wot?
Dolly in full flight
I see from the link posted by Free Dr Haneef at 7.07pm that Dolly’s daughter has now joined daddy in the family business.
Is it just me or is there a whiff of nepotism in the air?
Since you have all beaten me to the now (deservedly) mangled corpse of LP, will content myself instead with the observation that Mayo is the family seat for the Downer family
A Downer was Premier of SA in the eighteen eighties and I think had something to do with Federation conferences and Downer’s dad was in the Menzies ministry before becoming High Commissioner in London, so many of you will realise by now that, more or less, there’s “always been a Downer”.
PS, Downer also has a ephemeral secondary claim to fame for admitting to having smoked pot as a student, but “not breathing in”.
Atticus:
My impression of that interview was that Downer was actually speaking his own mind this time and not clearing it first with the King Of What’s-Left-Of-Australia …. wonder if we’re in the running to get a South Australian contender for prime munster?
Just a follow up on my Cuban doctors in PNG report recently (in which we learned - despite Ostraya ‘never having greater global influence’ etc - that PNG told Downer to get stuffed when he tried on scotch it)
This is even better: Cuban-trained US doctors graduate http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6914265.stm
The Cuban “health” system is a Potemkin Village.
StevePotemkin - Battleship or satirical short story?
Cuba has a lower child mortality rate than amerika, alife expectancy higher esp for ..err..non Blancos and higher literact rates.
And is still able to export teachers, doctors & engineers to other countries still in the thralls of the IMF & World Bank.
In two words Amphibious: Bull Sheet.
That’s three words and a colon Steve.
Amphibious:
Believe SteveAtThePub was referring to the fake hollow villages erected on the orders of Potemkin to give his travelling monarch a false impression of great prosperity throughout the realm …. however …. SATP is probably a bit envious of the basic level of medical care in Cuba.
Christ people who deny obvious and well-founded facts in the service of ideology really annoy me.
satp, whatever Cuba’s other failings (which I agree are considerable), it is a fact that they have a higher life expectancy than the US (especially than some US minorities), a fact that they have a much lower infant mortality rate and a fact that they have lower levels of morbidity. The first two of these, in particular, are not stats that could be faked for long without detection. And they also have a considerable cash-earning industry in training medical personnel from other countries (mainly in Latin America because of the language) - again not something easy to fake.
Sheesh.
Potemkin Village?
I believe Steve was referring to an inportant part of Communist practice, from the early Soviet Union onwards.
1. Invite selected symapthisers to visit an otherwise closed nation.
2. Put on faked showcases (e.g. happy villagers, productive modern factories, happy farm workers, etc) with countrymen acting parts under duress. Some of the actors actually very badly off but smiling for the cameras and visitors.
3. Await glowing reports to appear, produced by duchessed writers, etc back in Europe, USA, Australia etc.
4. Repeat process in
Eastern Europe,
“Peoples” China,
North Vietnam,
Cuba,
Kampuchea (rarely),
Libya under the younger Gaddafi,
Iraq under Saddam,
Libya
etc
etc
Sickening.
But distressingly effective.
How gullible were the visitors? And how gullible are so many of us still today?
A little more scepticicsm, friends; a little less blind faith!
cheerio,
Ambigulous
Ambiguous:
Add Java to the list. And to answer your next question: there are very few Commies left in that part of the world. (They all got killed off by Suharto.) That’s not a Potemkin village operation. Solid foreign policy move by Cuba.
Potemkin villages are named for Prince Potemkin, the very pre-Soviet toyboy of Catherine the Great.
As much as it pains me to agree with someone called ‘derrida derider’, and as much as I am anti-Castro (and deeply suspicious of Chavez, I might add), Cuba’s success in these areas is difficult to deny. The good reputation that Cuban health care has in parts of Latin America, even those places in Central America where neoliberalism is ascendant, suggests that this is not something that is simply being made up. Part of Castro’s success in holding power has resulted from addressing the needs of the poor at the level of basic health and bodily well-being, which is more than can be said for previous regimes. Now if only that care and attention extended to the right to democratically elect their government etc…
Thanks Colonel Nathan,
Prince Potemkin…. and then a similar practice followed by the Bolsheviks in power.
It’s interesting to see a national custom continued, perhaps enhanced, “after the revolution”.
e.g. Soviet secret police akin to Tsar’s secret police
Mao acting like an Emperor of old
Castro as President-for-life (remember those tales of how awfully dictatorial was his predecessor Battista?)
Kim Il Sung handing power to his - wait for it,…. collective leadership?? elected successor??? - no, to his SON of course !! The exquisitley coiffed and rational Kimbo Junior (mini-me)
Margaret Thatcher attempting to be Winston C, after las Malvinas were invaded
+++++++++++++++
Now, closer to home: what national characteristics of Australian history do we see exemplified in our national and state leaders?
convict/thieving
squatters/ land grabbers
indigenous persons dipossession experts
beer-guzzlers
wharfie/union coercionists
battling against drought + flood + bushfires/hardy innovators
cricketing legends
????
Ambigulous
Interesting question, Adam, although you didn’t phrase it as such.
Would you rather be, say a poor black American with your (barely) functioning democracy, virtually non-existent health care and limited prospects, living in a crime and drug ridden ghetto, or a Cuban.
We tend to automatically assume that the right to democratically elect a government should be of paramount significance to all, and maybe it is. But when the ‘democratic’ system is so compromised, and living standards for some, so desolate, you’ve go to question that assumption.
I always thought they were Mr Ed villages.
Adrian, how many poor American blacks have been prepared risk drowing to “make it” to Cuba to live a better life under the superior Cuban system?
And now the Haneef charges have been dropped:
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22143907-661,00.html