Look here, Senator Abetz …

One day last week – I think it was Thursday – I settled in front of the box with my lunchtime cuppa and toastie, ready for a few minutes of mindless, brain-numbing schlock. I was channel surfing absentmindedly, looking for some over-botoxed ladies or women in labour (I love those warts and all childbirth shows) when my gaze alighted on the po-faced countenance of Tassie senator extraordinaire, Eric Abetz.

It was the ABC 24 hour news program – not normally my viewing taste, but I couldn’t resist cranking the volume and listening in. Uncle Eric, who is, I understand, the Minister for Employment in the Abbott government, was quietly outraged by the scandals plaguing the union movement in Australia. Former HSU boss, Michael Williamson, had just been sentenced to five years in jail for decades’ worth of fraudulent misuse of union funds, and Eric was making a big, tasty political meal of his downfall.

‘Corruption in the union movement is systemic’, he opined scathingly, ‘and it must be dug out’. The Liberals have a plan to do just that – quelle surprise – but Senator Abetz wouldn’t be drawn on the details, apart from announcing that his party wants to pass legislation to regulate organisations – establishing a registered organisations’ commission – and the pesky Labor/Greens senators are standing in its way. Nothing new there.

And he wants a Royal Commission into the foul activities permeating unions in this country. He also congratulated the whistleblowers in the HSU case and roundly denounced the treatment they received at the hands of their dirty compatriots. It was ‘shameful’, he said.

I’ll just stop to remind you that the person being interviewed was Senator Eric Abetz – from Tasmania – and he was railing most eloquently against systemic corruption. WITH A STRAIGHT FACE!!!

Perhaps he could turn that concern to his home state. There’s plenty to talk about here. Like an ‘Integrity Commission’ that isn’t worth pissing on, and systematic rorting of forestry payouts, and jobs for the ‘maaates’, to name but a few examples.

And we now have a Labor opposition leader who’s been through two Supreme Court trials on criminal conspiracy charges, and was convicted of drink driving. That same newly-minted opposition leader has just had another whoops-a-daisy moment at a set of traffic lights in downtown Hobart. This man is singlehandedly offering his party’s political opponents material on a plate. We’re just waiting for Eric and his lackeys to take a bite.

After the stern but concerned performance I witnessed on the telly, I fully expect the good senator to bring his quest for truth, justice and transparency homeward. I also expect everything that drooped after the fourth baby to bounce right back any day now – I call it optimism. Some would call it blind idiocy, but who knows – Eric might surprise us all.

The Subversive Voter is known to the Editor