It’s not as bizarre as Pauline Hanson’s infamous ‘If you’re watching this now I’m dead video’, but it’s up there.
One of the country’s newest Senators, One Nation’s Malcolm Stewart, has decided to deliver a rebuke to Australian media… from a swing in a children’s playground.
Opening his unusual media appearance with “Ok this is fun”, Roberts warns One Nation followers that his party colleagues will no longer do any media that is not live.
In a post accompanying the video, he writes: “Many of you already know that a few journalists take Pauline’s words out of context and try to smear her, they have tried to do the same with me. I however do thank those of you who have done your own research on what our views are and what we stand for.
“For this reason, we will currently only be doing live interviews so that people have the opportunity to hear our words in full.”
Speaking of misleading, you might have missed this interview with ABC’s Barrie Cassidy a week ago on Insiders, when Roberts delivered his own series of breathtakingly ridiculous statements.
Cassidy asked Roberts about section 18c in the Racial Discrimination Act, which has long been a target of conservatives since Andrew Bolt became a ‘convicted racist’ after falsely accusing Aboriginal people of claiming benefits when they weren’t really Aboriginal.
Over to Malcolm: “This issue is not discussed instead because people are afraid of speaking up. This was all done, as I understand it, to nobble Andrew Bolt, and Julia Gillard did that.”
Right. 18c was actually introduced to Parliament in 1995, by then Labor Attorney General, Michael Lavarch. That was three years before Julia Gillard was even elected to parliament, 15 years before she became Prime Minister, and 16 years before Bolt was successfully sued under the 18c provisions.
It also happens to be about three or four years before Bolt started writing his rants for the Herald Sun (in the late 1990s).
Discussion then turned to foreign owned companies – a favourite of One Nation politicians the world over.
“…. According to Jim Killaly, I think it is, the former deputy commissioner of taxation for international matters and large businesses, 90 per cent of Australian companies are foreign owned and have – since 1953 have paid little or no company tax. So we the citizens are paying their tax.”
Right. 90 per cent of Australian businesses are not foreign owned. Indeed more than 90 per cent of Australian businesses are classed as ‘small businesses’, and they’re predominantly Australian family owned.
It seems likely that Roberts got his information from this site here – blatantpropaganda.org, the article on which links to Reclaim Australia and a now defunct site called taxreform.org
We couldn’t find the details of who owns the blatantpropaganda.org site, but it’s registered in Panama. Enough said.
Finally, in defending his stance on 18c, Roberts theorized that ‘sticks and stones may break his bones, etc etc’
“Barrie, you can call me short, you can call me fat, you can call me a Queenslander, you can call me a cane toad, whatever you want to call me. The only person who decides whether I’m upset is me.”
There you have it folks – ‘Queenslander’ is now officially an insult.