I’m thinking it might be fun to turn the liveblogging gaze on Brendan when he replies to the budget tonight.
Update: I think Jason has a point about being a glutton for punishment! Instead, I think I’ll throw the comments thread over to everyone else to live-comment the budget reply. Or perhaps it would be more in the spirit of Nelson if we were to wait til 3am and take our laptops out to the gutter.
In the meantime, Bernard Keane at Crikey has been gazing into his crystal ball:
A distraught Brendan Nelson this evening confronted the Rudd Government over its savage treatment of a range of community groups in his Budget Reply, which will go down as one of the most extraordinary ever witnessed in Parliament.
Nelson rose to the Dispatch Box at 7.30pm, already visibly angry, his eyes red-rimmed, needing a moment to compose himself even before he commenced addressing the chamber.
“I rise to speak against the most outrageous attack on ordinary Australians since Federation,” he commenced, gripping the Dispatch Box so tightly his knuckles were whiter than the pages from which he read.
“I say to this Government about its Budget, on behalf of all Australians, I ask a simple question: for God’s sake, why?”
Nelson, shaking in barely-restrained fury, then launched into a recitation of the Government’s crimes, starting with its assault on ordinary Aussie men.
“These ordinary Australians have been targeted in the most pernicious revenue grab in a generation. Since Tuesday night, I have been repeatedly stopped by ordinary blokes in utes, and they’ve all said to me the same thing – “Brendan, for GOD’S SAKE do something.”
“Hear hear,” the Coalition backbenchers chorused, nodding in agreement.
“Often times when I was a doctor I met young men, ordinary young blokes, who were mocked and jeered by their mates for enjoying a Bacardi Breezer. Mocked just for the sort of drink they liked to enjoy after a hard day. Many were depressed about it and oftentimes I found myself counselling these fellows about how a Ready-To-Drink was entirely consistent with Australian masculinity.
“But now the Government has joined in that mockery, suggesting that alcopops are a girl’s drink, and lifting the excise to curb binge drinking. ‘Brendan,’ these men have said to me. ‘We’re not binge drinkers. We’re responsible. We just enjoy our RTDs.’
“Does the Government REALLY UNDERSTAND what it is doing to these young men?”
At this point Nelson had to stop and compose himself, as tears began to drip onto the pages on the Dispatch Box. Joe Hockey rose and placed a glass of water near Nelson, and gave him a reassuring pat on the back. Nelson gratefully sipped from the water, dabbed his eyes, and resumed.
“But even worse is the Government’s assault on mothers,” he said, his voice breaking. “I say to the Government, for god’s sake, have you at last no shame? To say to a mother, who just happens to be married to someone and they earn $80,000 each, not such a big income when you’re doing it tough, to say to that mother, your baby is not worth as much as other babies, I say that that is shameful, that is wrong. All mothers love their babies. All babies love their mothers. Why is Labor trying to drive a wedge between mother and child?”
At this stage, foam had joined tears in raining down on Nelson’s papers.
“And Labor’s assault on families doesn’t stop there. For families with more than a couple of kids, who have done Australia proud by having three or four kids, now they’ll be punished by having to pay more for a Tarago. For God’s sake, people movers! I…”
At this point, Dr Nelson was unable to continue. He stood downcast for a moment, tears of impotent and sullen rage swelling from his eyes, before turning to his Deputy, Julie Bishop, and thrusting his speech at her. Shadow Treasurer Malcolm Turnbull was instantly to his feet, placing a comforting arm around Nelson, and slowly led his leader from the silent chamber, the latter shaking his head in dismay, sobbing and loosening the tie from around his deeply-flushed throat.
“I say to the Government,” began Ms Bishop, bravely picking up the standard of her fallen leader. “I say to the Government, this must stop, and it will stop. The Opposition will not stand idly by while men in utes, mothers…”
However, at this moment, she was rudely pushed aside by a returning Malcolm Turnbull, who brushed Nelson’s notes off the Dispatch Box. “Right,” he said loudly, before being in turn pushed aside by a furious Bishop. “We discussed this in the party room, Malcolm,” she was heard to hiss sibilantly. “I take over if he’s too upset. We agreed on that.”
“You can do Lateline ,” said Turnbull. “Don’t make a scene. This is our big moment. You and me, we can do this.”
Turnbull turned and faced the stunned Government ranks. “I turn now to the outrageous attack on the tax-deductible component of capital-protected loans used to buy shares. Dozens of financial services companies are now having to re-tool their end-of-year financial products to adjust to this outrageous example of the politics of envy…”
At this point the House dissolved into uproar.
That’s just deliciously cruel.
If I have to listen to ONE MORE tool (or tool-ess) whining on the radio about “if you earn one cent!1! over $75,000 you lose the baby bonus…” - Note that that’s 75,000 for half the financial year. If you can earn that much as a household in the six months just after one member’s had a baby, you are seriously comfortably off.
See also. [link]
Honestly, these people need to get a grip on reality.
just delicious, for mine
Dude you can’t be serious about liveblogging Nelson. You are a glutton for punishment. Good luck, sir!
Ah, it’s all become so much better. Jut saw on Channel’s 7’s 4.30 news footage of a cnosiderably younger Nelson addressing the House on the (AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHH)*H*O*R*R*O*R*S (SHOCK!!!) of -
Guess What, Folks? That’s right …
ALCHOPOPS!!!!!!!!!
WOOOOPS!!!
What, no mention of petrol prices, groceries, interest rates? Or of sitting in the gutter in Kings Cross at 3 am in the morning?
And it only mentions that he’s a doctor once.
Update: I think Jason has a point about being a glutton for punishment! Instead, I think I’ll throw the comments thread over to everyone else to live-comment the budget reply. Or perhaps it would be more in the spirit of Nelson if we were to wait til 3am and take our laptops out to the gutter.
Edging most dangerously into slash fanfic territory there towards the end …
Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
To inject a semi-serious note here, the main reason that the ute-driving demographic has been getting stuck into premixed rum’n'cokes is precisely because they have worked out cheaper than buying a bottle of spirits and 2l of coke. Certainly cheaper (in terms of bang for your buck) than beer.
Mark - LOL on the Brenny comment.
May I retort that while all of us have our laptops in the gutter, some of us are looking at the stars (excepting the few of us who are looking at Brenny instead).
Brendan is staring meaningfully into the camera, speaking straight to the nation’s heart. Hope youse who complained about Swanny staring down are happy.
this is the “undeserved election loss reply” not the “budget reply” thus far
Agree, Amanda. He’s gone on rave mode.
“fewer social engineers” Brendan, not “less social engineers.” Shame.
The Nation Must Hold Up The Five Fundamentals To Beat Back The Nine Undesirables And The Three “Mehs”.
All that nodding, in sequence, behind Bren, reminded me of clowns in an amusement park.
“to stand up for oppressive burueaucracy” - oops!
they don’t go quietly this mob.
the highest taxing and highest spending govt in oz history - i.e the Howard Govt will now die in a ditch before allowing a tax on pre-mixed drinks.
glad they still have their priorities Right.
should read - the Howard Govt, now Opposition will die in a ditch….
sorry, just taking my cues from Brendan…they are still the guvment.
And therein lies the rub!
How’s Brendan going to deliver his capital gains changes, for instance?
As they used to say about Goldwater - in your gut you know he’s nuts.
Somebody should have run a self-contradiction meter.
“In my medical career, I dealt with the human cost of alcohol abuse”.
“Binge drinking is going down among young women”
“The kids will just switch to other drinks!”
“I will convene a binge drinking summit”
“I am being decisive not holding summits!”
Oh, and he’s angry.
Sky had a compile of Crean, M*** L*****, the Beaze and Rudd budget replies and they were much rowdier than this one (I watched most of them at the time, is there anything less likely to stick in the mind than a Budget reply speech? A Rove monologue perhaps? The name of last seasons’s Big Brother winner?). But the Govt this time around were absolutely silent even when provoked. Nice discipline.
Now Steve Fielding is on with his pet jerry can. Sheesh.
The 5c/L cut to the fuel excise is perhaps the dumbest policy of all. How’s that gonna help climate change Brendan?
Hell, what’s the prob with an “oppressive burueaucracy”?
That is what has made this country great!
23 carbon
bugger the climate mate - it’s every man and his bundy for themselves!!
Bernard Keane appears to have been reading Zoe’s blog (see date on linked entry). There’s no acknowledgement or anything, but, well …
I feel a new chapter of my proposed book Femmobolshoblogohemisphere: Blogging and Gender coming on.
Carbonsink: but, like Brendan said, Australia can’t fight global warming alone, and if we get it wrong our economy will die! Much better to increase demand for petrol by lowering the excise.
Quiggin has nailed him on the alco-pops.
[link]
Old habits die hard, he just couldn’t help attacking our ‘underqualified’ teachers.
They just don’t seem to get the basic idea that if teachers are underqualified, orthe health system is failing its because THEY failed to do something about it!
Update: Nelson transcript here.
The thing I love most of all about the Opposition’s rabbiting is that they’re getting stuck into Labor for the very things they had over 11 years to fix. Julie Bishop’s little dummy spit on Lateline last night was a case in point, when she wasn’t waxing lyrical about how safe Brendan’s position as Poisoned Chalice Holder was.
When she was asked why the Rodent government hadn’t lowered the excise on fuel while they were in power, we got the tired old excuse of the $96 billion they had to pay off, which only gave them 7 years to do something about the cost of fuel. And all said with hardly a blink and a completely straight face. Mind you the lie detector had to be retired when it blew a fuse.
Then the fake outrage about the alcopop non-issue and onto the Medicare/private health cover bull. Apparently, changing the 1% threshold has removed choice from the health insurance equation, because now people can choose whether to have private insurance or not and because you’re now free to choose whether you want private health cover or not you’re being denied the freedom to choose private health cover…or not. I know I felt pretty dizzy after being exposed to her extraordinary logic and had to choose whether to have a good lie down or not.
Pavlov’s Cat, thanks for the insinuation of plagiarism. I wasn’t aware of “Zoe’s blog” before tonight and certainly don’t nick people’s ideas (at least, not without attribution). My editor gets the credit for suggesting the piece on Nelson’s reply.
Regards
Bernard from Crikey
Bernard, if the idea was a coincidence then I beg your pardon. I accept that it’s an idea more than one person could have, and I was mainly intending to draw attention to Zoe’s brilliant post, which deserves as many readers as it can get — particularly as many of the regular bloggers and commenters here have known (of) Zoe for years.
Known, and loved her.
Dr Cat, we linked to Zoe’s aforesaid post in several of our budget posts here at LP. (Prior to this one.)