let’s take a shower
So, the man of steel has come under heat after revelations that chief head-kicker Tony Abbott sponsored a fund to raise money to assist the prosecution of Pauline Hanson. And this was [part of] his spontaneous response to a question posed on the issue:
this whole thing has got quite out of proportion. No politician has been involved in any way with the criminal prosecution of Pauline Hanson. Peter Beattie wasn’t involved, Tony Abbott wasn’t, I wasn’t, Kim Beazley wasn’t, Simon Crean wasn’t. Pauline Hanson was prosecuted for a crime by the independent Queensland Director of Public Prosecutions and I think all of this suggestion coming from the Labor Party that in some way Mr Abbott was involved in the prosecution is an attempt to represent him as having something that he hasn’t been. So I just think everybody ought to take a shower and sort of calm down and get the thing back into perspective.
I think that is going to be one of the defining statements of his prime ministership, right up there with “every sense of the word“.
PS. Does anyone else think that Tony Abbott looks a bit like Tony Blair?
And by the way, if you follow the first link in this post, you will see a little blog like journalism, where a hyperlink has been inserted into a quote to reference to another related article.
August 28th, 2003 at 10:59 am
There was clearly some dirty politics done (possibly generating the need for the shower) however Pauline Hanson was convicted through the criminal justice system which I still believe is entirely independent of and protected from political interference. She committed a hienous crime in trying to undermine our democratic process and got off reasonably lightly I think.