Tuesday, 28th of February, 2006

Well, I don't know a huge amount about Anthony Albanese, but he does tend to speak up more than your average Australian Labor Party member, and about the right things too. What with most of the top bods in that party being basically dead in the water, while Howard's mob get away with absolutely anything, Albanese is at least standing up for some things…
Today the SMH reports the wonderful Tony Abbott showing his racist colours in Question Time:

"I'm reading in The Australian last Friday, he's (Mr Crean) still got the Greek branches but he's lost the Spanish branches and he's lost the Vietnamese branches as well as the Cambodian branches.

"And I couldn't help but think – are there any Australians left in the so-called Australian Labor Party today?"

Why do the Libs keep coming out with this shit? Because they can.

Opposition frontbencher Anthony Albanese, whose inner-Sydney electorate of Grayndler has a large non-English speaking population, immediately objected.

"My point of order, Mr Speaker, is for the minister to withdraw that extraordinarily outrageous slur on every Australian who doesn't have an Anglo-Celtic name in this country," Mr Albanese said.

"We've heard the dog whistle from this mob one after the other, but this minister as usual has gone too far and I ask him to withdraw it."

Speaker David Hawker said he did not find the comment offensive.

"Well Mr Speaker, I did and 46 per cent of my electorate will find that offensive as well," Mr Albanese said.

Says a lot about the speaker too. Abbott, of course, thought he was being funny, but it doesn't take a linguistics or psychology degree to realise that when he says "Australians" he's betraying, if not his true feelings, then at least some deep-seated assumptions about who "real Australians" are. And they're not pretty. But then the contents of Tony Abbott's head could never be pretty.

So thanks, Anthony Albanese, for showing him up, and while we're at it, let's all enjoy again his wonderful tirade against John Howard from April 2001, linked from this old post of mine.

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