As a community, we owe each other respect
Andrew Bolt
Herald Sun
October 16, 2013
Sure, we've tolerated for an absurdly long time the pushy politicians, activists and special interests helping themselves to our wallets and our freedoms. Too rarely have they been called out for treating the rest of us as mere props or money-trees. Or as fools who'll accept rubbish excuses while the imposters just help themselves to what isn't theirs.
But this week we haven't just had former Labor president Michael Williamson plead guilty to defrauding his Health Service Union members of $1 million, on top of his $500,000 a year salary. We've also heard a cacophony of oinking and snuffling and bellowing from people with a truly outsized sense of entitlement and no seeming shame about it.
Some examples?
Mining "billionaire" Clive Palmer owes $6 million in carbon tax penalties on his businesses. But lucky him. He now has three senators he says not only want the carbon tax scrapped but all costs of the tax to date refunded - which, coincidentally, includes the money Palmer owes us. Palmer yesterday denied his senators had a conflict of interest in demanding something so useful for their boss, whose businesses reportedly face cashflow problems. Yet one of his senators, Dio Wang, is managing director of Australasian Resources, which Palmer owns most of and has bailed out in the past three months, with cash injections totalling $421,000.
Just help yourself, boys.
On Sunday former Speaker Peter Slipper spent a very friendly 14 minutes on the ABC's Insiders explaining that if Prime Minister Tony Abbott could claim expenses for attending community sports events, where he raised money for charity and campaigned for votes, then Slipper should not have been charged by police over his own expenses.
How could people have been so mean to this man, making just an honest mistake as he accidentally spent our money on his pleasures? Not raised in the interview by either Slipper or the taxpayer-funded reporter is that Slipper's own claims involve a private trip to a string of wineries, with the driver then allegedly asked to split the charge into four smaller amounts and disguise the destinations in a way that suggested Slipper had just been shuttling around Canberra instead.
Just help yourself, too, Peter.
Then on Tuesday, independent State MP Geoff Shaw brushed past protesting taxi drivers to go up the stairs into Parliament House. Protesters chased him, shouted abuse, grabbed him and tried to block his way. Shaw pushed one as he tried to get past. Newspapers then portrayed Shaw as a thug and the Opposition demanded he be expelled from the Liberal Party.
New rules, you see. Protesters have the right to decide who may enter Parliament.
Also in Victoria, about 40 protesters this week pushed and shoved police trying to protect a company involved in work on a road project they didn't like. One woman hurled herself at least four times at the police and dramatically fell twice in front of the TV cameras. She was given medical treatment while fellow protesters complained to an Age journalist about police brutality.
Not mentioned in the journalist's sympathetic report was that four of the five protesters she quoted - including the "injured" woman - were actually from the radical Socialist Party and the fifth is a self-confessed "professional protester". None were actually directly affected by the project. Most were instead Marxists activists looking for their revolution, wasting police time and our money as they scared workers in the office and grappled with police to create some made-for-television drama.
In Melbourne on the weekend, 3000 Christians, including children, marched against abortion laws that permit even the killing of healthy babies just weeks from birth. They were attacked by about 100 socialists and feminists, who pushed some people over, hit and kicked a politician in the crowd, threw eggs and water bombs, destroyed the marchers' balloons, yanked placards and banners from the marchers' hands, set fire to one placard, screamed in the face of people praying, shouted "I love dead babies", chanted "f---" and gave the finger and blocked the march route.
No socialists were arrested, of course. They have a new right to physically stop others from holding a march.
If we are a community, it is because we realise what we owe each other. What I've seen this week are people insisting we give them far more than is theirs to demand and giving in return far less than they owe in money or respect.
Since when did we tolerate such folk in our faces?
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