WHAT a way to start the political year – the Feds forced into yet another back down on their obsession to make us pay more for our trip to the doctor; and our local lasses and lads tripping over their own feet on the $50 pokies fiasco.
It’s almost as though they’re all still in holiday mode – more interested in the next TV sporting extravaganza than the job we’ve elected them to do.
Moreover, both stumbles will continue to haunt them in the months ahead. The Abbott Government is determined to remodel Medicare because it’s “unsustainable”, a favourite euphemism of the conservatives who simply want to privatise everything.
Of course, $58 billion for a few fighter jets to fly over Anzac Day ceremonies is perfectly “sustainable”. So, too, the billions spent on bombing jihadists in Iraq, thus ensuring we become prime targets at home. Yet a system to keep us all as healthy as possible is an unnecessary drain on the budget.
AS for the pokies, who could possibly argue with Jon Stanhope in his call for the ALP to sever its connections to the Canberra Labor clubs. But wait a minute. Isn’t this the same Jon Stanhope whose Labor Government was the beneficiary of all that lovely money from the clubs for successive election campaigns?
Good to know he’s seen the light. More power to him.
ANOTHER big local story was the petrol-price biffo out at Majura Park as prices there tumbled below $1 a litre as Woolies went head to toe with Costco. The price war caused traffic jams and the cops had to sort them out. Of course, the rest of Canberra’s servos stoically kept their heads in the sand with prices at least 20 per cent higher.
ANYWAY, we too are more interested in sport than politics in these lazy summer days. Especially as the saga of the wounded leg, which kept your columnist waiting endlessly in the Canberra Hospital emergency department a couple of months ago, seems fated to keep us on the TV couch for another few weeks.
But I have to say that since the initial wait, the care and concern from hospital staff has been exemplary. I can’t thank them enough.
BUT hasn’t it been one of those summers when too much sport is finally enough! The Test cricket was enthralling, marred only by the continued “sledging” by the Australians. The English commentator Jonathan Agnew had it exactly right – it not only dishonoured their little mate Phil Hughes, it should be no part of the noble game of cricket.
Imagine if golfer Adam Scott sledged his opponent as he measured a putt on the 18th hole. Imagine if our own Nick Kyrgios shouted insults at his opponent on the other side of the tennis court as he was about to serve. The sporting public would be outraged, and rightly so. Cricket should be played in exactly the same way.
And so it was before the Chappell era when on field aggression became de rigueur; when winning was so important that they even bowled underarm so a Kiwi batsman couldn’t hit a six.
THE ripples from the shocking events in Paris are still being felt. I refer, of course, to the massacre of those 3000 Protestants by the Catholic forces of the Duke of Guise in 1572. Indeed, when the horror spread to Lyon and the soldiers refused to murder their compatriots in the jails, the government called in the local butchers who went at it with a will, thus bringing “massacre” (slaughter) into the language. Plus ca change.
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