Please

Please

'Mate' is a four-letter word

12 September 2006
Filed under Language, Politics, Text

I realised today - after a small run-in with a delivery-van driver in Swanston Street - that I usually use ‘mate’ as an insult. As in “mate, will you move your fucking van out of the bike path”. The idea that ‘mateship’ is a value to which all arrivals to Australia should aspire, therefore, is something I find faintly ridiculous. Can somebody please shoot Kim Beazley?

Views from the Floor

Adski says:

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. So which politician *is* worthy of our support?

Sometimes I think democracy is fundamentally flawed, and particularly so when Political Correctness is given great weight. Pollies trying to be everything to everyone undoubtedly have their character and vision tempered, diluted and restrained lest anybody be offended.

I'm starting to think anyone who has any vision at all should be cut some slack because no-one seems to display any long term strategy at all.

cc says:

Does anyone else find it at all odd that he wants visitors to adhere to the value of hard work?

As far as I understood it, its illegal for visitors to work, hard or otherwise.

kate says:

Vanstone says Beazley's xenophobic, I say he's been watching Howard a bit too closely.

Frankly it's depressing.

CC, people on Temporary Protection Visas can't work (or have access to welfare, medicare or any number of other things that would help them live a normal life and contribute to society), but other people can.

Speak, friend, and enter


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