Gender police caught out
WHAT’s more important – the election or the Ashes?
Sorry pollies I know the long hours you put in but for me the Ashes wins every time.
That’s not to say that I don’t think this election is important.
Indeed, it has been one of the more intriguing contests if only because those of us who care are on the edge of our seats trying to pick a winner.
It is just a shame there has not been more debate around the issues that are important. The fault for this lies with all of us. When a friend in Brisbane asked my wife and I months ago if we wanted to go to the Ashes on November 25, I said we’re in.
So we booked seats long before Annastacia’s unfortunate choice of date.
We did our duty by voting pre- poll last Saturday.
This is the first time we have done this but I think we will do this for all elections.
It makes much of the campaign redundant which has its advantages.
The campaigns are so contrived and the negative advertising is such a turnoff.
Clearly we were not the only ones who voted early because the polling booth was busy.
I’m told as many as 40 per cent of electors vote by pre- poll which is an incredible statistic.
It means at least half the campaign is falling on deaf ears.
In last week’s column I wrote about how the price of electricity would be a defining issue.
Unfortunately I used some erroneous information on the costs of different sources of power which a reader has insisted I correct.
I had suggested data produced by research analysts Bloomberg New Energy Finance finds the levelised cost of newly installed gas generation is about $ 60 per megawatt hour.
I’m told it is around $ 80 and likely to go higher with higher gas prices.
Compare this with new coal around $ 120, solar around $ 80 and wind around $ 60 and set to go lower. THE diversity police are going after Channel Nine for their cricket commentary team.
Twitter went into outrage mode when a photo of the team was posted to promote the Ashes. All the usual rubbish about too many white men and no women on the team led one scribe to pen a long piece about male privilege and took the line up as an insult to our great women’s team.
Come on, the team always has and always should be made up of former captains and champions who know the game better than anyone else.
Is there a role for women? Absolutely. Should they have someone from the visiting nation? Of course. But we are into the silly season when we start picking people on their skin colour or gender rather than their ability to call the game. FORMER Bennelong MP John Alexander’s old joke isn’t news; it’s a dirty trick from the ALP and the media fell for it.
Right from the start, the “joke” was obviously offensive and if he had said it as an MP it would have been the modern definition of a scandal.
But let’s look at the facts. It happened 22 years ago when he was the referee on a TV show called Gladiators. It was clearly said at a private party at a pub which apparently was attended by people who worked on the show.
But the reason it’s not news, is because the video is old, very old.
In fact, it had been on YouTube since 2011. Funny how it never came up when he recontested the seat he won in 2010 in 2013 or in 2016.
The video was used by Labor to send a not so subtle dog whistle to Bennelong’s large Asian community that he is an old- school racist.
Alexander may be many things, but he’s not a racist.
Labor is throwing everything at this seat, not just because they’d like the prize, but because if they can slice his close to 10 per cent margin it will scare the more than 40 government MPs who hold their seat by less than 10 per cent.
Even if they cut his winning margin by half to just 5 per cent that would mean 23 government MPs would lose their seats too at an election. That’s more than enough people to panic and dump Turnbull at the first chance they get. IT’S a disgrace that we are still paying for Nick Xenophon even though he’s quit the Senate.
This week we learnt he’s taken up a job as a staffer for the man who replaced him in the Senate. He’s getting paid $ 1500 a week to work for Senator Rex Patrick.
Does anyone believe Xenophon is taking orders from anyone, let alone the senator he hand- picked to replace him?
Xenophon claims he will quit the new job in the coming weeks, but that’s not the point.
Can you imagine the outrage if Clive Palmer did it, or god forbid Pauline Hanson did if she left her job as a senator for One Nation?
Yet again, we see the press gallery give Xenophon a free pass. This is beyond red hot and should be seen as such by reporters who know better.
Joining Paul this Monday night are Paul Murray LIVE regulars Janine Perrett, Graham Richardson and Ross Cameron.