Based on an article By Tim Robertson
Mr Harbourside Mansion's diatribe was the silliest thing I have witnessed, his Abbott like performance was like a plastic man trying to be a man of steel.
It didn't ring true, even though it seemed to enthuse his colleagues, particularly Barnaby who's blood pressure appeared to reach boiling point.
The accusation by Turnbull that the Oppositional Leader doesn’t know his place; that he is a ‘social-climbing sycophant’. He, in other words, aspires to be like the very man spluttering the invective. What he was saying was that Shorten, because of his class background and work as a union organiser, is delusional in the same way that The Great Gatsby is, in other words it doesn’t matter how high he rises or even if gets his own harbourside mansion, he’ll never be Turnbull’s equal.
For most people – the people who just want a 'fair go' – the speech was more of the same infuriatingly meaningless drivel that’s long characterised question time but that has, in recent years, subsumed politics entirely.
They weren’t arguing over any substantive policy issue that promises to make the lives of those trapped in the wasteland between their respective worlds any better. They were arguing, instead, over the sliver of imagined difference within their own political caste.
While this difference is supposed to be all consuming to the 'fair go' and Gatsbys of this world, for the "fair go's', drowning in debt and trying to keep their head above water in a world of growing insecurity and precarity, it’s inconsequential.
These disputes are chronicled, analysed and, based on what was said and how each party responded, predictions are made. Journalists are much closer with the Gatsbys than they are with the 'fair go's'.
That closeness colours their judgments; they’re too involved in this world to see just how morally depraved it is. They may question certain things, but they are incapable of seeing that the very foundations on which it’s built are rotten and no amount of manicuring at the edges can redeem the whole decaying project.
This disconnect from reality, the unquestioning acceptance that politics is something confined to the exercise of state power and the received wisdom that the masses ought to simply tolerate whatever self-serving, half-baked policy is implemented on their behalf. This is what leads to tweets from the 'fair goers' who are totally sick of this sort of behavior from either party.
Wake up! You lot who's lives are spent on 'The Hill', you work for us. If we wanted children we'd have voted for children. By the way most children are better behaved.
