As Labor filibustered to stave off a division on Senate voting reform overnight, the monologues their upper house members conjured up were variously boring, nasty, and funny at different times.
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Greens Mining Spokesperson Jeremy Buckingham has circulated a spoof media release to the New South Wales Parliamentary Press Gallery, helpfully rebranding an adversary “The Shooters and CSG” party.
The Shooters and Fishers this week provided crucial support to a government Bill designed – in the words of Premier Mike Baird – to “crack down” on people who engage in non-violent direct action protests against coal and coal seam gas companies.
“Given that we always vote in the interests of the coal seam gas industry, [we]have decided to formally change our name to encompass CSG, so that voters know we will always support the coal seam gas industry,” *said Robert Brown, Leader of the Shooters and Fishers Party.
It’s an acrimonious relationship that cuts both ways. As the Bill was debated in Parliament this week the Shooters took to Twitter to snipe at the Greens MP, but its demands that Buckingham #StopTheLies have clearly met with limited success.
How can you tell Jeremy Buckingham’s lying? His mouth is open! @GreensJeremy #nswpol #StopTheLies pic.twitter.com/T8q3PUeM29
— Shooters & Fishers (@sfpAustralia) March 17, 2016
It’s not all fun and fantasy, though. The Shooters and Fishers Party did recently try its own, genuine exercise in rebranding. Just last month, the party applied to the electoral authorities to have its name changed to the “Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party”. At the time, the Party issued a media release which argued farmers – “like Shooters and Fishers” – were being “oppressed” by all the other parties. How were they being oppressed? Well coal seam gas, for one!
Buckingham has strong relationships with farming communities fighting coal seam gas and coal around the state, and was naturally unimpressed. He suggested it was just a vote-winning ruse, and now it seems that the Shooters and CSG party is in furious agreement: “We’ve dropped plans to add ‘Farmers’ to our name after we sold out farmers’ interests at the first opportunity. We buggered our credibility and realised nobody would fall for that shonky ruse anymore,” Shooters Leader Borsak said. “We were enjoying the prawn cocktails and free plonk at the Minerals Council Function when Mike Baird announced new laws to punish the farmers and other anti-mining protestors, and were pleased to get into bed with the National Party to ram those laws through the Parliament last night. “We’ve also dropped the word ‘Fishers’ from the party name, given that we never bother to do anything for the fishing community anyway. “Do you know how hard it is to shoot a fish?” The more pressing question right now, quite obviously, is whether the gun-toting party will refrain from shooting Jeremy Buckingham… On an unrelated note, here’s a Christmas message from back in time, before the Shooters and Fishers became the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers, or even the Shooters and CSG Party.
#MerryChristmas from Robert Brown & Robert Borsak – our two MLCs in the @NSW_UpperHouse #nswpol pic.twitter.com/X4PElSZtxg — Shooters & Fishers (@sfpAustralia) December 25, 2015
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It’s been an ugly few days in Canberra, with Labor and the Greens clawing at each other over the latter’s decision to join with the Coalition and rush senate voting reform through parliament, a change that will stop preference harvesting and endanger the future of micro parties.
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Rapper and comedic actor Adam Briggs has been having a good run of late. Off the back of his impressive hip-hop releases the Yorta Yorta man has been starring in the ABC’s Black Comedy, plus calling out racists online and having Invasion Day chats with Aamer Rahman.
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For a man of 81, Reverend Fred Nile’s backflip yesterday was impressive.
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