Angus Beef
Where to now with Angus Taylor-Swifty?
Angus Taylor brings quality plumage to the job that has always been his. Despite his wooden, cliché-infused style, the bouffant will concentrate the minds of citizens as they grapple with the question: Can a man who was part of the rot stop the rot?
Taylor-Swifty (as he has come to be known) came out of the womb ready to rule, even if his court is a gaggle of charmless drones – think Gruppenführer Abetz’s love child Jamie Duniam and IPA spawn Sprog Paterson.
It’s not as though our man doesn’t have a significant collection of achievements – including his support for fossil fuels and scepticism about climate change.
Memories are short, so in the national interest Spilled Ink provides a handy recap of his career highlights:
• His earlier involvement with an agricultural company in Queensland, for which the government paid $80 million to acquire the water rights. Barnaby Joyce signed the cheque. The water was supposed to flow into the Narran Lakes.
Two years after the water was cashed out, The Guardian reported that the federal government had not benefited by one drop from the overland flow entitlements of $80 million worth of H2O.
Needless to say, the transaction was done without a tender. One of the ultimate beneficiaries of the sale was Chris Gradel, an investor and old jolly boating colleague of Swifty’s from Oxford and the chief investment officer of a Cayman-listed group (where else?).
This was what Senator Sarah Hanson-Young unkindly called “Watergate”. While seemingly a puzzle within a mystery, we were told it was a case of nothing to see here, move on. No one was caught with their pants on fire, in public.
• Then there was “Grassgate” – the illegal clearing of endangered grasses on a property owned by Swifty and his brother Richard. About 103 acres were affected by whatever version of Agent Orange the Taylors had in the barn.
A number of rare species were threatened by the herbicide, including the striped legless lizard, a bio-environmental relative of David Littleproud.
The Department of Environment ordered the company, Jam Land Pty Ltd, to remediate the damage. Justice Lion’s Den Lee was asked to rule on this and he decided that the damage should be made good and the government’s costs paid.
The Taylors were so skint that they sought help from the Australian Farmers Fighting Fund.
Angus told parliament that he was discussing concerns with native grass legislation with a cockie in the main street of Yass. Actually, it turned out that at the same time as he was in the main street of Yass, he was also in Sydney at the High Value Date Roundtable.
An understandable muddle.
Environment Minister Frydenberg was unhappy that Angus was being bothered by his departmental officials, and he sought ways to water down the compliance action against his parliamentary pal and to keep it secret.
• In his 2013 maiden speech, Angus told parliament how he stood up to the “elites” at Oxford who wanted to do away with the Christmas Tree in the college common room. He implied a “young Naomi Wolf who lived a couple of doors down the corridor” was one of these elites.
“Young Naomi” was not down the corridor from Angus because she had left Oxford years earlier and had never objected to Christmas trees.
• A forged document was peddled from Angus’ office in October 2019 to the Daily Smellograph. The idea was to discredit the Sydney Lord Mayor, Clover (Greenie) Moore, and the Council’s travel expenses and their alleged contribution to global warming.
Angus insisted that the City Council was spending $15 million on fossil-fuelled travel. The correct figure turned out to be $5,933.
The NSW police were called in to investigate, but very soon Brother Scott was on the blower to Police Commissioner Mick Fuller, his neighbour in the Shire, who helpfully brought in the PM’s garbage bins on a Wednesday morning.
Nothing further was heard from the wallopers about the investigation.
• Then there was the egregious misquoting of former High Court luminaries Robert French and Kenneth Hayne to suggest they had reservations about The Voice to Parliament.
Fantastic. Great move. Well done, Angus.
Craven deeds
Jillian Segal has placed her thermometer under the armpit of the nation’s universities.
The “Envoy” wants to measure the temperature of antisemitism at the great halls of higher learning, and to that end hired the former bigwig at the Australian Catholic University, Prof. Greg Craven, to monitor and hand out assessment grades from A to D.
“Conservative” and “Craven” are two words joined at the hip.
All manner of things can potentially be swept up in the crackdown, including “protests, encampments and displays of imagery” by students and staff.
“Discourse” must be respectful, Envoy Segal insists, while “intellectual debate” should be vigorous, according to the document describing a “Report Card Process”.
It will be a tricky business to ensure that “vigorous” doesn’t trespass on “respectful” – but if there’s one person who can manage the boundaries, it’s Inspector Greg.
The policy document comprises various cross-pollinating layers for implementation. There are “priority areas” against which Craven will assess standards; he will also get “feedback” from Jewish students and the Executive Council of Jewry; institutions will be graded in relation to their performance in the priority areas; deficiencies are to be identified and best practice “celebrated”.
Jillian will write report cards and, who knows, some may have their government handouts docked if she gives them a D or maybe a fail.
The Envoy has determined that her “preferred definition” for antisemitism is that laid down by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which has the potential to snare those who don’t tread carefully.
The definition, or something close to it, must be adopted by universities in their constitutions and statutes to be “operationalised” throughout all policies and procedures.
The whole thing resembles a pakapoo ticket of complexity and uncertainty. You can wade through it here …
Universities today. Journalists and media organisations, cultural and artistic bodies, up next.
For now, it’s a thermometer. Very soon, La Seegs will have her Blahniks up the posterior of these bothersome institutions.
Oi, Oi, Oi
The Nobel Prize winner Sinclair Lewis observed: “When fascism comes, it will be wrapped in the flag …”
From Spilled Ink
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