UK's Andrew Gilligan Outed as Pauline Hanson Supporter

With lips quivering in that inimitable manner that makes her appear so brittle that she may shatter at any moment, or at least burst into tears, Pauline Hanson lashed out in the media at the preferential voting system that today denied her a seat in the NSW upper house, the Legislative Assembly.

For days Pauline was ahead on first past the post votes. As absent votes were counted she slipped into second place with a Green and a Liberal MHR finally seizing the last two spots.

Seats in the Upper House are worth their weight in gold and are the cushiest lurk in town . A 6 year term at about $180K  per annum and if you win a second term you qualify for a lifetime pension, gold travel passes and all sorts of goodies.

Pauline has cried foul on the AV system and questioned it's relevence-the same system that millions of Brits will vote for or against in an historic referendum in May.

An unlikely supporter has come forth in the form of Andrew Gilligan writing in the UK Telegraph. In a piece titled "AV- it's nothing to shout about" he gives  a few examples of NSW politicians elected under the AV vote :

"At a drunken party in his parliamentary office, the Police Minister, naked but for a pair of “very brief” underpants, climbed on top of a female MP and pretended to have sex with her. The Health Minister, who was 53, used his office to entertain his 26-year-old mistress. The Ports Minister visited porn sites on his official computer.

The Regional Development Minister – known to the local tabloids as “Sir Lunchalot” – charged taxpayers for a holiday to Dubai and Italy. The Education Minister promised to “stand by” her husband after he was arrested buying ecstasy. Several ministers were implicated in a corruption scandal involving a female town planner who approved illegal high-rise buildings in return for sexual favours and designer handbags. And the Aboriginal Affairs Minister? Well, he is doing 14 years after his conviction on multiple counts of child sex abuse."

Ouch !

(He missed out on the replacement Police Minister who was recently embroiled in a sandal involving a gay bath house)

Gilligan actually gives a pretty balanced run-down on how AV voting works in Australia despite being an obvious opponent of it. He also gets stuck into Question Time in Canberra and the insults that fly back and forth.

But are our politicians any worse than their British counterparts in the insult department ?. We sought out our resident parliamentary insult expert , the great Mungo MacCallum who provided a list of some of the choicest terms used by the master of put-down, former PM Paul Keating who referred to various Opposition members as :

harlots, sleazebags, frauds, immoral cheats, blackguards, pigs, mugs, clowns, boxheads, criminal intellects, stupid crooks, corporate crooks, friends of tax cheats, brain-damaged, loopy crims, stupid foul-mouthed grub, piece of criminal garbage, dullards, stupid, mindless, crazy, alley cat, bunyip aristocracy, clot, fop, gigolo, hare-brained, hillbilly, malcontent, mealy-mouthed, ninny, rustbucket, scumbag, scum, sucker, thug, dimwits, dummies, a swill, a pig sty, Liberal muck, vile constituency, fools and incompetents, rip-off merchants, perfumed gigolos, gutless spiv, glib rubbish, tripe and drivel, constitutional vandals, stunned mullets, half-baked crim, insane stupidities, champion liar, ghouls of the National Party, barnyard bullies, piece of parliamentary filth, lick spittal dogs vomit.

Keating once labelled Treasurer Peter Costello as "all tip and no iceberg"and described John Howard as a 'like a desicated coconut":
When the Opposition attacked him over his late filed tax return Keating said they were "playing the man not the ball" . A Liberal MP exclaimed ": "Oh, for goodness sake, Mr Keating! Only last week you called the Opposition front-bench 'sleazebags'!"
Keating replied "But that was a generic term, describing the Opposition front-bench as a whole. I wasn't insulting any particular person."

We nearly lost Pauline for awhile. She sold up a year ago and emigrated to the UK claiming Australia was full of Muslims and other undesirables ( a DNA ancestry test once revealed her origins as being central Turkey) but soon returned claiming that Britain was "full of immigrants". The irony was lost on her.

Here's Pauline in her famous 'I'm dead' video :

Punishing Prince Andrew

Our tale yesterday on April Ist was slightly misleading. We meant to say HRH Prince Andrew should be appointed as Governor of NSW.

It's the ideal punishment. Four years opening endless garden fetes and charity bazaars, signing local government bills into law and meeting new Cabinet Ministers of the Coalition-with a threat of a further 4 year appointment should he not mend his ways.

Our apologies to the one London tabloid scribe who sent a fierce email castigating the Shuttle for the 3 hours he spent checking on the tale. The other two British newspapers were much more jovial about it.

The crafty Madame Arcati spotted the ruse immediately. One would have to get up early to  pull the wool over her eyes unlike the Times of India which ran the story on page three.

The excellent website Anorak.co.uk was sensibly sceptical.

Anorak also got stuck into our good pal the multi-millionaire adventurer  Dick Smith with his "2 children only" policy and pointed out who would never have been born under such a rule- Don Bradman and Ned Kelly being just two.

Unfortunately they linked to that opinion writer for hire Andrew Bolt, climate denier pal of the dotty Lord Monckton and right wing mouthpiece for the Melbourne Herald Sun. Andrew is also a stolen generation denier who makes Pauline Hanson look like an old lefty.

He once famously challenged left wing Professor Robert Manne of La Trobe University to Be a Manne and name just ten (sic) stolen children whereupon Manne produced 4 pages of names.

Bolt has spent the last few days in the Federal Court where 9 Aboriginals have filed a claim under the Racial Vilification Act over his columns and blog in 2009 when he got stuck into mixed blood indigenous folk who identify as Aboriginal.



Andrew Bolt

 In one piece titled White Is The New Black Bolt suggested “white Aborigines” were illegitimate and therefore not eligible for prizes and benefits"

As one of the claimants pointed out "what prizes and benefits does one get for being black ?"

Yesterday Bolt lost his cool under questioning in the witness box  and slammed the claimants who he said brought the anti-discrimination case brought against him as an “unforgivable travesty” designed to “smear me.”

That brought a swift rebuke from Justice Bromberg and Andrew was forced to apologise. Bolt actually said at one stage "some of my best friends are are gay Aboriginals".

It's not looking too good for Bolt.

Today former Former Federal Court Judge Ron Merkel who is acting for the nine prominent members of the Aboriginal community linked Bolt's writings to the eugenics movement saying :

“Mr Bolt’s assumption is because you’ve got mixed descent or you are white you have a choice to renounce who you are,” “But they never had the choice that Mr Bolt ascribes to them…throughout their whole lives they have identified as Aboriginal persons.”

“That’s the real sting that you’ll see in these articles.”



James Murdoch

 Which brings us back to Anorak.co.uk and their "third child" syndrome.

On Wednesday News Corp announced that James Murdoch is now Deputy COO, Chairman and CEO of News Corp International which makes him 3rd in line and the presumed heir to Rupert Murdoch

James, 38 is the Third Child of Rupert Murdoch and the former Anna Murdoch !

Former Foes Love-In & Germaine Greer Speaks Out

From a political standpoint they are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

 Bob Ellis, poetic writer, darling of the left and a speech writer for the Australian Labor Party and the conservative Catholic politician and Federal Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott.

In Ellis's new book  Suddenly Last Winter-An Election Diary Bob gets stuck into a few Labor Party heavies while announcing his admiration for Abbott.

On Prime Minister Julia Gillard  he says she is  "not well informed". He says Gillard is part of a Melbourne clique called the Mouse Pack, a reference to the size of their intellect.

Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald  Ellis said : 

" She hasn't I think read a novel or seen a film that has subtitles and I doubt if she has read Encounter or The New Statesmen or Vanity Fair or The London Review of Books or The New York Review of Books and therefore she doesn't have a hinterland. She has not much except a kindergarten sandpit response to things-'Nyah Nyah you're just jealous because I'm Prime Minister and you're not' "

" Civilised people already have their hands over their faces when she speaks!"

Ellis has form in courting those from the right. Often spotted lunching with Christopher Hitchers when in town or the famed right leaning poet Les Murray. And he has expressed an odd admiration for the xenophobic Pauline Hanson who Ellis swears attempted to pick him in a Surfer's Paradise bar long before her political career took off

But it's the astonishing turn around in his relationship with the political love-child  of the strange Catholic theologian and political fixer B.A.Santamaria and Margaret Thatcher-Tony 'Mad Monk'Abbot that is raising eyebrows.

Several years ago Tony Abbot and his wife along with a  fellow cabinet minister Peter Costello and his wife sued Ellis and Random House over Bob's new book Goodbye  Jerusalem and Ellis was badly bruised to the tune of a $277,000 libel payout that came right upon his uninsured Palm Beach home burning to the ground in a bush fire.

Ellis says he has just about forgiven Tony Abbot  over that episode and invited Abbot to launch one of his books a year ago which Abbot did.

The Opposition Leader who once studied to be a priest openly admires  the philosophies of the late B.A.Santamaria who railed against Communism and socialism in the 1960's, split the Labor Party and  in the 1930s supported Mussolini and Franco.

"resembles F.Scott Fitzgerald"

But Ellis reckons Tony Abbott  may be a closet socialist :

"He is no more a Liberal than I am . Liberal is the name of the suit he is wearing. He is actually a Catholic socialist. He's DLP [Democratic Labor Party] and always has been."

Ellis goes further in his SMH interview : "The person he most resembles, I've just decided, is F.Scott Fitzgerald. The classic good looks, big flashing smile, easy Irish eloquence, angelic writing style, self-doubt, Catholic guilt, hot temper, Gatsby-like yearnings for past relationships long gone and luminous in remembrance, fondness for football and self-flagellation and his need for a son, all bespeak a literary genius drawn by life and lesser pursuits into spiritual shallows and drunken remorse like Scott, poor Scott."

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Writing in the UK Guardian newspaper Germaine Greer has slammed American architect Frank Gehy's plans for the new University of Technology describing the building as "five scrunched up brown bags"

The building (pictured) is to replace the ugly concrete bunker that stands on the proposed site and when the model was release the UTS Vice Chancellor Ross Milbourne said "We've got the Opera House, and it's hard to say we are going to beat that, but from what I've seen we'll have an equally outstanding icon at this end of Sydney." 

Responds Greer:" The Sydney Opera House may be one of the best known structures in the world, but it is also a worse building than anything Gehry would want to put his name to. The original design by Danish architect Jorn Utzon was rejected by the Australian judges in 1956, only to be reinstated. By the time the opera house opened in 1973, it was more than 10 times over budget. Utzon struggled to protect his vision of a building made of sails until 1966, when he was obliged to close his Sydney office and return to Denmark, because the New South Wales state government would not meet his fees. Government architects took over the project.

 The full story is here.

A Rose By Any Other Name...

As the dust settled in Perth's Langley Park earlier this week and the billionaire's protesting over  a new mining tax were safely ensconced in their limos, our thoughts wandered to the whereabouts of the wondrous Rose Hancock Porteous , Perth socialite who thrilled and delighted a nation when as a humble maid for the late mining magnate Lang Hancock, she married  the ailing tycoon when he was 74 and she 38.

Rose, in a city that was not easy to shock with the antics of an Alan Bond who first snared a nation by winning the prestige America's Cup in 1983 outraging the conservative New York Yacht Club that had held the trophy since 1851, and then snared tens of thousands of investors in dud schemes, or a Laurie Connell who launched a merchant bank with a few hundred million dollars borrowed from the state government which all disappeared in a puff of smoke, Rose Hancock was breath of fresh air edging out Bond's wife "Big Red" Eileen as the western city's major society queen.

Rose & Lang

Rose and Lang built a love nest for themselves-Prix L'Amour, a 50 room gala palace overlooking the Swan River and in the upper class Perth suburb of Peppermint Grove where champagne and caviar parties  abounded and swells from all over the country, bussed in on Rose's private jet, danced the  night away-whilst Lang languished upstairs in an oxygen tent.

Lang's daughter Gina Rinehart from a previous marriage never saw eye to eye with Rose and bitter legal fights followed Hancock's death and stories of dodgy wills abounded and there were tales of Lang being poisoned and so on.

Prix L'Amour

But Rose got Prix L'Amour and a tidy sum  and married a real estate agent William Porteous 3 months after Lang's death and together they razed Prix L'Amour to the ground, sold off blocks of the land for tens of millions and built themselves their own smaller love nest in it's place. Drug charges followed and court battles over legal fees but our Rose survived it all.

Now news comes that Rose has had a stroke and is recovering at home. Her facebook page has remained strangely silent with the last post being on the Dec 9th 2009 saying "So many lovely fans!". The previous one on May 17th she says "oh I still love my Willie!", presumably referring to husband William who is caring for Rose at home.

The Shuttle encountered Rose a few times when she travelled to Sydney. The first was at the premier of the FoxTel cable TV show "Beauty and The Beast" where she was a panelist along with others like Ita Buttrose and  the One Nation politician Pauline Hanson. Hanson made a derogatory comment about Asians at which point Rose stood up and swore at Hanson in Filipino and stormed out, clambered into a Roller and tore off in a cloud of dust!

Now we've uncovered a wonderful video of Rose on youtube as she castigates her staff while getting ready for one her legendary lunch parties. Enjoy-