The evidence that it is hurting: everyone in the Coalition is showing clear annoyance and irritation at persistent questioning about it. Tony Abbott last night, Joe Hockey during the day yesterday, and this morning the heavily South African accented Mathias Cormann on Radio National.
Cormann amuses me - he is like the perfect antidote to the annoyance I am sure many Australians have felt over the years towards Scottish or English accented unionists, some of whom have gone on to political careers (hello, Doug Cameron.) They have often provoked the reaction that they were importing their aggro, working class warfare from the UK to a country that didn't want it.
Well, fortunately for Labor, we now have a Coalition spokesperson who comes with an accent which, especially when they get agitated, I think people associate with sentiments ranging from "I am born to rule and you aren't" to "release the hounds - we must have law and order."
And to make it funnier - I see that he is actually from Belgium and only sounds South African because
As far as I am concerned, he should be on TV and the radio more often...
But back to the Tony Abbott's parental leave: there must be many, many teeth grinding about this policy amongst Coalition strategists - it is wholly of Abbott's creation, never been widely supported within the party, and he has been so persistent about it for so long, it is politically impossible for him to back down now.
A perfect, and completely unnecessary, self inflicted wound.
Update: Delicious. Despite Henry Ergas' attempt to put lipstick on this pig of a policy, Judith Sloan calls the scheme "crazy", and Sinclair's inevitable gut reaction against anything involving money being handed to a government means he's been helping the bad PR for it as well.
3 comments:
From your wiki-link, " Corrmann participated in a one year student exchange program at the University of East Anglia in Norwich in 1993-94, where he first learnt to speak English."
From memory, the University of East Anglia is in the UK.
Gawd: that'll teach me to read and post too quickly!
But he does sound South African, doesn't he??
Or is it only me.
that is very black and white
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