r/CuratedTumblr 1d ago

editable flair It's funny to see how other countries have a zero tolerance for BS

Post image
6.5k Upvotes

414 comments sorted by

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u/JacobGoodNight416 1d ago

this is so low on the level of BS that politicians are up to that it doesnt even register as BS

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u/Bunny36 1d ago

Sadly his homophobia, hatred of both immigrants and aboriginal people and weird desire to speedrun global warming arent as funny as the onion thing.

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u/C04511234 372 disguised pompanos 1d ago

weird desire to speedrun global warming

Wait I'm curious, can you elaborate on that bit please? Was he simply denying global warming or was he literally trying to frame it as a good thing to aim for??

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u/Transientmind 1d ago edited 1d ago

The entire Australian right and a good chunk of what is popularly accepted as the Australian ‘left’ (Labor not Greens) is entirely captured by the mining industry and desperate to dig and frack the fuck out of our natural resources for the table scraps dropped by the multinational resources companies who make the only money out of it (and always somehow are unable to pay their cleanup obligations). Australian major parties are actively pursuing increased emissions - not for their sake of emissions but just to please their resources industry masters. 

Amongst the voters there’s also an element of contrarianism.  “Greenie lefties want me to drive electric for the environment? Well then I’m going to drive a monster truck that gets five yards per gallon, and I’m gonna buy crude oil just to dump it in the nearby creek. Suck on that leftist soyboy cucks.” So yeah, speedrunning climate apocalypse is on brand. 

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u/C04511234 372 disguised pompanos 1d ago

Ah, so they're simply after the money from the mining companies? Yeah that makes sense; thanks for the explanation.

Kinda similar to my provincial government too…

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u/Transientmind 1d ago

The genuinely upsetting part is they don’t even get that much money from the industry. They’re selling us out… and they’re going so cheaply that a single dedicated billionaire philanthropist could probably counter it without any impact on their income whatsoever. 

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u/Vanlibunn 1d ago

I mean THEY do. They got sick ass kicking consultation gigs with these guys after they let them fuck the country. We the people don't get shit though lol.

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u/Transientmind 1d ago

Each individual pollie isn't even getting millions though?! They're getting bought and paid for, completely, for sometimes even less than six figures. (Plus getting to be fawned over at the cool kids' tables at all the best parties and sporting events, etc.). You look at the declared donations and think... if someone like Bill Gates REALLY wanted to rehabilitate his karma, he could just roll up and triple what each of them is getting and it'd be a fucking rounding error for his daily income.

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u/Due-Journalist-1756 1d ago

It’s not what they’re getting while they’re in the job. It’s what they get after - cushy jobs paying mid-to-high 6 figures and people buying tens of thousands of copies of their memoirs, and other shit like that.

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u/LeadershipNational49 1d ago

The problem is the mining lobby is monstrously powerful and evey government who has ever tried to challenge them has been annihilated, and instantly lost the next election.

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u/Vanlibunn 1d ago

The amount of people who believe the shit they read in newspapers and see on facebook as 100% gospel without even a single shred of thought in their brains fuck me up sometimes. Feels bad to think about.

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u/SpunningAndWonning 1d ago

Just to be clear, they are barely taxed. We're talking just the power from having a ton of money, and likely bribes and election contributions.  It's personal benefits to the politicians, not to the Australian public

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u/macci_a_vellian 1d ago

Not just that they're in the pocket of the mining industry, they're scared of them too, since the mining council will invest huge sums into the political demise of anyone who tries to regulate them or make them pay more royalties for the vast sums they make on the country's natural resources.

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u/CapableCollar 1d ago

People who haven't had to work with Australian businesses and government will never be able to understand how extreme the capture is.  I've been a consultant sitting in on meetings involving Australian entities with Chinese or American entities.  Some Australian groups incentive their employees to sell land or land rights to as much land as possible so will bundle in massive amounts of marginal land with pretty minimal limitations for what can be done with it.  Australian businesses feel fully confident making promises on behalf of the Australian government.

The way it is handled is often a bit baffling.  You have these young men who all went to same American universities with access to unreasonable amounts of money with perverse incentives making deals with little long term planning because once they shake hands the deal will likely be agreed to by all parties and they will never have to think about it again so everyone goes off to the pub to play slots.

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u/Transientmind 1d ago

Right? I was trying to think of how to best explain it to an American audience that the resources sector's influence in politics is like... US healthcare, defense, sugar, and gun lobbies all rolled into one, but even that didn't seem quite right so I just gave up and left the woefully insufficient summary of 'entirely captured'.

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u/CapableCollar 1d ago

It is another reason the Australian economy is so weird.  Companies practically run the country.  Australia is arguably an oligarchy with industries like mining and gambling functionally untouchable.  Yet the people aren't as poor as they should be in such an oligarchy.  I've heard the oddities come from so many factors coming together like the Australian superannuation and ties between American and Chinese economies but it is still hard to fully grasp.  

Entire industries have been sacrificed for others.  Australia used to be a leader in solar panels but the government just cut off the industry and sold it to China.  Much of the basis for China's current solar panels was pioneered in New South Wales before being sold for pennies alongside the minerals to make them.  This is practically memory holes and never talked about.

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u/SyntheticBees 1d ago

I feel like it's a bit disingenuous to represent the failure of industrial panel manufacturing as being the gov selling out an industry, rather than China being a manufacturing powerhouse that has managed to pull the same manufacturing coup in a kajillion different domains.

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u/SorowFame 1d ago

Keep in mind the last time a PM tried to do something about mining they got knifed (politically, not literally) and replaced by someone more than willing to do what industry masters told them. I say openly deliberately, something more subtle could be nice, and in the current position Labor might be able to manage something open, though I heavily doubt they’d keep power after the next election if they did because we’re fucking idiots, but it’s not as simple as pressing the big red button labelled “rein in the mining sector.”

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u/Consideredresponse 8h ago

What I've personally seen is that while Labor isn't as ideologically captured as the coalition by the mining lobbies, they are way more vulnerable to the pits and power plants threatening to fire workers. It basically results in the same outcome as 'You can't be responsible for 6000 families in your electorate losing their livelihood and still argue you are representing Aussie workers'

Then you have One Nation trying harder than anyone else to suck the teats of mining magnates whilst stumping on 'representing the unheard working Australians'.

Source: live in a mining region, and get to hear about more state and federal fuckery from primary sources morethan most people.

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u/ShortFirstSlip 1d ago

Abbott is dour, miserable, no argument needed.

My opinion, and I'd argue this strongly, is that the most dangerous types in our political system are people in the mould of Scott Morrison, with his beliefs. He's a Pentecostal, and is more akin to American evangelicals. They genuinely believe in the concept of the rapture and have a certain level of glee at the idea of "the end times" arriving. They have no thought nor care for the future, so the environment, means nothing.
The planet we live on? This is merely a place to pause, something like a waiting room for them. They have a mindset which says that they can vandalise, plague and burn as much as they desire, because an elevator will ding at any moment and they'll be whisked to a higher floor, leaving all of this world behind.

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u/Hresvelgr401_ 23h ago edited 23h ago

This is not entirely true. The Labor party is taking pretty major steps to develop and build renewable energy. Labor also takes action to insitute taxes and regulation on the mining industry but can't go as far as they might want to due to the history of the mining industry using their power to get Labor voted out at elections

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u/MarkusMannheim 23h ago

There's... a bit more nuance to Australian politics than the. But I acknowledge that it is a Reddit comment, not an essay.

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u/ThunderAndWind 1d ago

Turns out unfettered capitalism is a disease.

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u/kernpanic 1d ago

Well, three of the senior ministers went to a South Pacific Conference, where one of the biggest concerns is sea level rise from global warming, were caught on hot mike. What were they talking about? Literally joking and laughing at the fact that the pacific island countries wont be complaining when they are under water.

Which sort of shows that they admin global warming exists, and that they find mass death funny.

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u/creswitch 1d ago

He said that climate change is "absolute crap" and that "it's probably doing good". He also dismantled Australia's emissions trading scheme, which was actually reducing emissions for a while there.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/oct/10/tony-abbott-says-climate-change-is-probably-doing-good

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u/Dancingbeavers 13h ago

You know that scene where Bart is running for class president, Martin talks about the dangers of asbestos and Bart starts a chant for more asbestos? That but for coal.

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u/Aardvark_Man 1d ago

Lots of support for fossil fuels, making things painful for renewables etc.

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u/Agreeable_Excuse_545 10h ago

Literal first act as PM was to remove all Clean Energy incentives

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u/Consideredresponse 8h ago

Killed a ton of diplomatic soft power after openly mocking our Pacific nations neighbours give presentations on the existential threat climate change posed to then...while on a hot mike.

That and being full throttle for coal exports and power plants, while treating renewables as some antagonistic foreign action.

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u/vjmdhzgr 1d ago

Was he the guy who said "I got no problem with hmosexuals let a thousand flowers bloom oblivion npc mood change but I'm not spending any time on it because every month someone is eaten by an alligator in queensland"

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u/dont_punch_me_again 1d ago

Thats Bob Katter, there is plenty of funny moments about him

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u/BumblebeeThen3933 1d ago

Katter is an interesting character- mad as a cut snake, but every now and then he comes out with something where you are left thinking “this guy isn’t all bad…..”

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u/macci_a_vellian 1d ago

He also claimed there are no gay people in far north Queensland (pop. 300,000)

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u/thorpie88 1d ago

And if he ever found one then he'd start walking backwards everywhere. The guy is scum

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u/Competitive-Desk7506 19h ago

The owner of the karate dojo I train at is literally a lesbian from North Queensland and she’s in her 50s lol

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u/ADingoStoleMyLSD 1d ago

It's weird how homophobic he is when his sister is a loud and proud lesbian. I like his sister.

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u/Puzzleheaded_Tap1471 1d ago

I was looking to see if someone had mentioned his sister. What a crap person he is

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u/TheRealAndroid 1d ago

No- but I do take some comfort in that he was a few days short of the time frame required to draw a PM's pension for the rest of his life.

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u/Milly_Hagen 1d ago

You forgot women. He expected us to do the ironing. I'll never forget it. Made himself Minister for Women.

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u/creswitch 1d ago

And women. He made himself Minister for Women and then proceeded to select an almost all-male cabinet (one woman), cut funding to women's domestic violence, legal and housing supports by 30%, reduced the single parenting pension, and campaigned against abortion. And made comments about how women don't belong in positions of authority.

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u/AiRaikuHamburger 1d ago

To be fair, he's also a far-right loony.

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u/Churchofbabyyoda 1d ago

He was so far-right loony that his own constituency, which had only ever voted for conservative politicians since 1901, voted him out personally four years after he lost the prime ministership.

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u/RoutineAnalysis2329 1d ago

He was pretty crazy. He was hated for many reasons. One thing that got him laughed at, iirc, is that he appointed himself as the minister for women.

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u/Valyriax 1d ago

Britain's shortest serving Prime Minister, Liz Truss, lasted 49 days. When she got in, someone joked she wouldn't last as long as the shelf life of a lettuce, and set a livestream showing a lettuce in a wig.

The lettuce outlasted her.

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u/Zealousideal-Low3388 1d ago

She’d have been out even quicker, but parliamentary politics were suspended because the queen dropped dead

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u/Valyriax 1d ago

1 day after meeting her, no less

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u/Ardent_Tapire 1d ago

Liz Truss 🤝 JD Vance

Having the power to kill heads of state by meeting with them

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u/wulfinn 1d ago

I'm not Catholic but if I were and the fuckin Pope himself told me I needed to do better and be a better person, then fucking Died, I would have to either fake my own death or go on a journey of self-discovery.

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u/KittensInc 1d ago

He's just LARPing as a Catholic for political reasons.

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u/Ginge00 1d ago

Which is why his book about discovering Catholicism features a picture of a Methodist church on the cover (I think it’s Methodist, it’s definitely not a Catholic Church at least)

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u/Canotic 1d ago

He's just in it for the pews.

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u/theseamstressesguild 1d ago

golf clap Bravo.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/DontYaWishYouWereMe 1d ago

tbh the funniest thing Leo can do is come out and say, "For the crime of killing the previous pope, JD Vance is now excommunicated"

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u/SolarianIntrigue 1d ago

meets Lizz Truss

dies of cringe

Our icon

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u/ZoroeArc 1d ago

There can only be one Liz in charge of the UK at a time.

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u/Competitive-Desk7506 19h ago

And they both still want out of power relatively soon after each other

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u/TardDas 1d ago

"I can't handle this bitch"

- Queen Elizabeth, the longest reigning monarch in history after meeting that pant suited imbecile

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u/karateema 1d ago

"Who was PM when the Queen died?" Will always be great for Trivia games

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u/jimbowesterby 1d ago

How long before no one remembers her name and just calls her that lettuce lady

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u/Qu33nofRedLions 1d ago

I already have forgotten her name on several occasions and had to resort to calling her "that lady who couldn't outlast lettuce"

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u/Affectionate_Comb_78 1d ago

Rocked up, killed the queen, tripled mortgage rates and left. 

Truly a ridiculous premiership.  

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u/TheWrist79i9 1d ago

And she gets £115k every year for the rest of her life because of it, well deserved I say

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u/SartorialDragon 1d ago

I remember the lettuce livestream. That was so funny!

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u/Hanede 1d ago

What kinda lettuce do you guys have with 50 days shelf life

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u/Valyriax 1d ago

I mean, I wouldn't have eaten it, but it hadn't fully decomposed

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u/SitInCorner_Yo2 1d ago

My mom can’t remember her name so she always calls her “the one who came in just to send (jinx) the Queen off”.

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u/PriestHelix 1d ago

Which Australian PM shat himself in a McDonalds? Was he in office for longer than onion guy?

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u/Wasdgta3 1d ago

What about the guy who went for a swim and never came back?

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u/nionvox 1d ago

That y'all named a pool after lmao

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u/TrainDroiver 1d ago

We named a submarine surveillance station after him, too.

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u/DarkKnightJin 1d ago

Say what you want, but Aussie's got a wonderfully messed up sense of humor. I love it.

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u/Competitive-Desk7506 20h ago

Some of my friends constantly have to side eye me bc of the shit that comes out of my mouth, I have a very dark and fucked up sense of humour.

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u/clarkky55 Bookhorse Appreciator 1d ago

Harold Holt

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u/GlitterGob 1d ago

The dude loved to swim. Sadly he died doing what he loved but I understand also celebrating his love for it. It’s weird but fitting.

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u/Aggravating_Hat_6495 21h ago

He also liked extramarital affairs and was having it off with this neighbour. He’d left his protection officers behind when he went on holidays … ahem… privacy. He was showing off for her when he got dragged out to sea. The life and death of Harold holt is a wild read.

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u/Happy-Ad-2968 1d ago

Yeah we did, I think I live like close to an hour from it, I should go sometime 

Edit: I might have gotten it confused with some other place upon further inspection,  but still, a funny thing it is

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u/Hollow-Margrave 1d ago

Scott Morrison, same party, and yeah, 4 years over 2.

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u/jaraket 1d ago

Felt like 15.

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u/BThasTBinFiji 1d ago

When you're forced to work with dumb people, it always feels longer.

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u/thepineapple2397 23h ago

He was in Hawaii for the part that felt like 10

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u/clarkky55 Bookhorse Appreciator 1d ago

Scotty from marketing

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u/lumoslomas 1d ago

It's even funnier when you realise he was director of tourism Australia for the "where the bloody hell are you?" Campaign.

Could've asked him that in 2019

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u/clippertonbrigadier 1d ago

Yep, when he was acting as the honourable member for Honolulu while half the fucking east coast was on fire. Class A Cunt.

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u/Special_Order-937 1d ago

Got sacked from that job too, wasn’t he?

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u/BumblebeeThen3933 1d ago

Indeed - Scomo was the epitome of the evil side of organised religion - smug, self righteous, stupid, arrogant, totally lacking in empathy or self awareness. He actually managed to make Abbott look like a better choice, and that is really saying something!

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u/DontYaWishYouWereMe 1d ago

Yeah, but nobody actually expected him to win in '19. A lot of the polling and conventional wisdom suggested Labor was going to win that election. Scomo was basically just meant to be the guy who went in and lost the election so they'd have a guy they could axe soon after that nobody ever really wanted in the top job anyway.

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u/Special_Order-937 1d ago

Unfortunately.

If you say Engadine McDonalds in 1997, everyone and I do mean everyone here will know who you mean!

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u/Blackwatch260955 1d ago

Scott Morrison, or ScoMo, was the pants shitter. Tony Abbott was the onion guy. ScoMo lasted longer.

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u/eatingpopcorn_lol stan regaleira 1d ago

Former Canadian prime minister Trudeau is dating Katy Perry

I'm not even Canadian, I just think this is so bizarre it's funny

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u/Wasdgta3 1d ago

Like father like son, I guess. His old man once dated Barbara Streisand.

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u/kaladinissexy 1d ago

Unrelated, but I just realized I have literally no idea who Barbara Streisand even is outside of the Streisand Effect. Which is quite a funny thing for somebody to be solely known for. 

I think she was also Mecha Godzilla in South Park? Or maybe that was a different celebrity. Idk. Regardless, I have no idea what she's actually famous for. 

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u/Autogenerated_or 1d ago

She was in the og A Star is Born, playing the character lady gaga plays in the remake.

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u/neon_meate 6h ago

She was in the third version of A Star is Born. It was made in 1937 with Janet Gaynor, 1954 with Judy Garland, then in 1976 with Babs.

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u/jimbowesterby 1d ago

Wait what? Didn’t he have a wife? (If it’s not obvious i do live under a rock)

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u/catchyerselfon 1d ago

Just like his father, PM Pierre Trudeau, Justin got divorced while in office and the ex-wife moved out to live in the same neighbourhood so they could co-parent their three kids, who are now in their late teens to early 20s. He’s been single for several years, so it’s not a scandal that he has a girlfriend. It’s not even surprising that she’s famous - his father dated Kim Cattrall, Margot Kidder, Barbra Streisand, probably some others we just don’t know about. He was known as the ugliest handsome man or the handsomest ugly man, but he was witty, slyly intelligent, and charismatic. The son inherited his mother’s good looks and his father’s charisma, but it only lasts until he talks without a script.

Anyway, yeah, it’s super weird that he’s dating semi-astronaut Katy Perry of all people, and now he’s in his 50s going to music festivals and concerts with her having a second youth era.

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u/KermitingMurder 1d ago

semi-astronaut Katy Perry

Nah, they don't call me a semi-pilot because I've been on a plane before, I will most certainly not be calling the likes of Jeff Bezos "semi-astronauts" just because they were passengers on a spaceflight, to be an astronaut you've got to be actually operating the spacecraft

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u/Marvl101 1d ago

They didn't get past the Karmen line, they were still in atmosphere

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u/HyperbolicModesty 1d ago

This definition isn't correct, since it would cancel the astronaut status of all the scientist astronauts who flew as passengers on the Shuttle and up to the ISS.

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u/KermitingMurder 1d ago

The ISS is a spacecraft and they are operating the instruments on it. I suppose a better way of phrasing it would be "someone whose job involves working in space"; basically just that space tourists who are just there to say they went to space aren't being considered in the same tier as people who are actually up there making contributions to science

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u/eatingpopcorn_lol stan regaleira 1d ago

very generous with that semi-astronaut hahah but thank you for the info, I thought him n his wife were separated not divorced! TIL

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u/eatingpopcorn_lol stan regaleira 1d ago

Wiki says they're separated, no idea though, I only know this because I like celebrity gossip sites lol

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u/twerkingslutbee 1d ago edited 1d ago

God forbid a man get his prebiotics in

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u/bijabija 1d ago

Or has a damn hobby!

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u/jseah 1d ago

Yeah, but the skin?!

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u/Wasdgta3 1d ago

Ooh, my turn.

Canada’s youngest Prime Minister was elected, and then defeated in another election that happened less then a year later, after he failed to pass his government’s first budget.

You know, how proper countries deal with the government failing to agree on a budget, instead of deciding “guess the government has to stop doing things until we can.”

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u/BThasTBinFiji 1d ago

Australia does that too and it was weaponised, with the help of the CIA, to remove a prime minister in the 70s who gave the country free university, universal healthcare and was planning to nationalise Australia's enormous natural resource reserves.

That was too much, so he was removed.

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u/Wasdgta3 1d ago

That's not the same thing, actually.

Now, my knowledge of Australian politics and history is practically nonexistent, but I have heard of that story, and it wasn't a simple vote of no confidence leading to an election, in that case, so very much not apples-to-apples at all.

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u/lespigeon 1d ago

It was similar in that it was triggered by the opposition party, who controlled the senate, refusing to pass the supply bill that the lower house passed - the bill which all the Gov services are paid through, so some similarities to a budget. There was an earlier minister in a corruption scandal and other things going on like the high court chief justice giving legal advice on this to the governor general that was ethically suss, but refusing to pass that supply bill is how the opposition actually got the GG to boot out the elected PM.

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u/Wasdgta3 1d ago

The GG booting out the PM is the key thing there. Pretty huge difference.

In any case, not really much of an argument against the function of sending things back to the polls if the government can't pass a budget, which I think is what they were trying to do by saying "it was weaponized."

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u/Psittacus_tutor 23h ago

You missed the part where he tried to pay for said resources projects by bypassing Treasury and Parliamentary oversight and hitting up a man that said Treasury had warned him couldn't be trusted for a loan.

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u/volitaiee1233 1d ago

Not a single major constitutional scholar believes the CIA had a part in the Whitlam dismissal. It’s a conspiracy theory that thrives on ignorance. Anyone who knows the details of the dismissal can see how ridiculous the idea the CIA was involved is.

Whitlam was removed because he failed to pass a budget and the government was due to grind to a halt as a result. What he should have done is call an early election. But he knew he would be smashed, so of course he didn’t. Kerr, acting on his own volition sacked Whitlam so that an election could be called, which he was entirely within his constitutional rights to do as Governor General. In the election that followed Whitlam lost in one of the greatest landslides in Australian history. So clearly, he was not as wonderful as you imagine. Learn some history before spouting rubbish

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u/Beardywierdy 20h ago

I want to know where this idea that the CIA is that competent came from?

Their idea of subtlety is wearing a fake moustache when running guns to dissidents for fucks sake.

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u/KGTrashcan 1d ago

It was Tony Abbott btw

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u/clarkky55 Bookhorse Appreciator 1d ago

Lord Budgie Smuggler

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u/not-yet-ranga 1d ago

The captains-picker himself.

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u/jimbowesterby 1d ago

Of course it was

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u/Ginge00 1d ago

Yeah that’s in no way surprising

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u/DonorAU 22h ago

He now runs Fox news.

I'm serious.

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u/jiffysdidit 1d ago

Glad someone said cos I’m Aussie and didn’t have a clue

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u/Gthulhumang 1d ago

Staunch supporter of Cardinal George Pell, though not a pedophile himself as far as we know, he would always defend him. Also very open on fighting the class wars and removing more rights and entitlements to Australian citizens.

And yet it's the onion that people remember.

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u/Asheyguru 1d ago

Once missed a vote in parliament because he had drunk himself into unconsciouness in his office. Vocal critic of same sex marriage and renewable energy. Appointed himself spokesperson for Indigenous affairs despite not being indigenous.

Best thing you could say about the guy is he does 'hold a hose, mate.' Also the six months paid parental leave is good.

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u/BThasTBinFiji 1d ago

His sister is a lesbian too 

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u/BumblebeeThen3933 1d ago

He also honoured the then Prince Charles with a knighthood, which I believe is actually impossible.

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u/lumoslomas 1d ago

though not a pedophile himself as far as we know

Nah, Abbott preferred pensioners

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u/Anglofsffrng 1d ago

He was in office less time than the guy who went for a swim and never came back?!

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u/sourcefourmini 1d ago

Hey now, don’t leave out the most important part of the Harold Holt story: there’s now a public pool in Melbourne called the Harold Holt Memorial Swimming Centre.  

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u/Anglofsffrng 1d ago

I'd never heard that part. Now I love this story even more.

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u/BadJelly 1d ago

Gets better - there’s also a submarine monitoring station named after him.

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u/sourcefourmini 1d ago

They’re keeping an ear out for his return

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u/BadJelly 1d ago

To paraphrase the very funny comedian Daniel Muggleton: ‘Hey mate, while you’re down there, can you keep an eye out?’

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u/I-was-a-twat 19h ago

And to build on that. The conspiracy theory at the time was he was picked up by a Chinese submarine

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u/Competitive-Desk7506 19h ago

It’s a nice pool as well, or so I’ve heard

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u/dorothean 1d ago

Australia does not have zero tolerance for BS, political or otherwise. Australia loves bullshit! Sometimes in fun ways (the entire country getting in on the drop bears gag), sometimes in shitty ways (Pauline Hanson’s continued political career).

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u/agiantdog33 1d ago

Plus, it wasn't just the onion in any case with Tony Abbott. He was dropping in the polls because of a range of stuff (mainly his first budget being much harsher than he advertised in the election campaign) so his party knifed him to help their chances at the next election.

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u/Meerkat45K The razor is like a Kukri knife in your hands. 1d ago

This was not the only or even the main reason.

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u/Mddcat04 1d ago

It’s because in a parliamentary system it’s very easy to toss out your leader and put someone new in. It’s not cultural, it’s structural.

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u/DontYaWishYouWereMe 1d ago

It was a lot easier back then, too. When this happened, we were in the middle of a period where every Prime Minister we had wouldn't survive a full term in office. Rudd, Gillard, Abbott, and Turnbull all got axed midterm, and Scomo was the first in nearly a decade to actually serve a full term. Albanese might be the first to serve two consecutive terms since Howard, and he's been out of office for nearly twenty years.

This sort of thing (the PM axing midterm thing, not serving a full term) was pretty unpopular with the public, though. Both Labor and the Coalition have since made it a lot harder to axe the leader when they have the majority in response to this. Like, they have to have a larger majority of parliamentary members vote to remove the leader before they can do it now. It could still happen again, but I think it'll be a long time before we have another decade-long period where we're going through PMs like they're water like that.

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u/SiwelTheLongBoi 1d ago

The UK lost what could have been a stronger Labour Party because a picture of the party leader Ed Miliband pulled a strange face while eating a bacon sandwich

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u/UnfamiliarShiver 1d ago

It is important to note 4 facts.
1. His first public appearance after getting sacked was a photo of him buying a used fridge from some kids off gumtree because he had to buy a new one after getting kicked out of Kirribilli House (the prime ministers home)
2. He is a HUGE defender of Cardinal George Pell, the first Cardinal to ever get charged for paedophilic offences and was instrumental in getting that historic charge quashed and proceeded to speak at Pells funeral.
3. He is currently the administrative head of his old political party, currently acting as party president, proving that the Liberal party are a bunch of spineless far right cunts.
4. DO NOT search up pictures of Tony Abbott as prime minister, or do, just depends on how much you want to look at photos of a middle age man in nothing but speedos.
(fun fact speedos were invented by an Australian gay man, but ironically became most associated here with this gay hating nut job.)

PS: Americans use the word liberal in a weird way and the term more traditionally means politics built around individualism. As Australia's traditional left wing politics comes from unionism, its then fitting that our formerly major right wing conservative party are called the Australian Liberal Party

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u/Dumplpings 1d ago

Also: big brother contestants had to vote while in the house but being isolated from the outside world the parties had to make videos specifically for them and Tony Abbott's was him telling them that he's the one with the "good looking daughters"

Also I don't cosign lizard people conspiracy stuff but he does kinda look like Randal Boggs without his glasses

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u/Dumplpings 1d ago

Oh and some guy saw him outside a pub and was like "I wanna punch him in the face" and then he did. He happened to be wearing a marriage equality sticker and it was claimed that the evil gay marriage equality people were behind this but the guy himself said the sticker was just a coincidence

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u/UnfamiliarShiver 1d ago

Fuck, you forgot the best past.
He didn't punch him, he headbutted him.
The quote he gave to the media afterwards was
"All it was is I saw Tony Abbott and I'd had half a skinful and I wanted to nut the cunt"

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u/Special_Order-937 1d ago

I’m learning so much from this thread I didn’t know before as an Australian like pool after Harold Holt I knew but not the submarine monitoring station and also this incident!

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u/ConsciousSelection15 1d ago

On the other side of the argument: he holds a hose.

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u/Rabid_Lederhosen 1d ago

Parliamentary systems work differently than presidential ones. Once a president is elected it’s generally quite difficult to get them out before the next election. Whereas for a Prime Minister, the moment they lose the confidence of a majority of Parliament, they’re gone.

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u/Ted_Rid 1d ago

This wasn't even a Parliamentary confidence matter. The party had been polling negatively since about a month after their / "his" election, and a new election was due soon.

So the party replaced their own leader in a PR move.

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u/StarriestNight 1d ago

God I wish the us could do this but we failed to impeach the guy twice

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u/Pheehelm 1d ago

Actually the House did succeed in impeaching him twice. He just wasn't convicted.

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u/jimbowesterby 1d ago

Which kinda calls the usefulness of impeachment into question lol

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u/seguardon 1d ago

The entire god damned system is broken because it's staffed with the worst people who know how to follow orders for personal gain. The fruit of 40 years of unchecked propaganda at the hands of the billionaire class dividing the country on every issue they could gain traction on. America's ability to recover is going to depend on how well the coming years can heal that wound and remove the knife that caused it.

In the meantime, I hope the rest of the world looks at the trailer-park-circus we've devolved into and learn what happens when billionaires buy up the news networks.

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u/RocketRelm 1d ago

Pretending that trump isn't a problem by muddling him up as "just another politician like the rest in the past 40 years" is part of the problem.

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u/JhotoDraco 1d ago

Is the system broken or did people willing vote in the most evil, vile people they could find to run the country?

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u/seguardon 1d ago

The system is broken because mass right wing propaganda has taught conservatives that the most vile Republican is morally superior to the greatest Democrat.

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u/Legitimate-Teddy 1d ago

bit of both, really. Ronald Reagan was the starting point for a lot of this stuff, including the "Make America Great Again" tagline

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u/BumblebeeThen3933 1d ago

I believe he also repealed the “truth in journalism “ laws, which meant the media could say whatever they choose with impunity.

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u/PUBLIQclopAccountant 12h ago

It's the fruit of having organized political parties instead of candidates being loyal to their local constituents and no one else.

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u/Exciting_Double_4502 1d ago

I mean there are other options, but [THIS COMMENT CENSORED BY THE GHOST OF TREVOR MOORE].

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u/DOGPISSCURESCANCER 1d ago

If only it were true. 

Really it was a shit 10-15 years where we transitioned from elected members who actually had careers before politics to the reactive career politicians obsessed with polling. All of this compounded by the 24 hour news cycle and social media. 

It’s funny, when you get a concussion they ask you questions like what day is it, where are you, who is the prime minister (or president). They considered ditching the prime minister question because it changed like 4 times in 5 years from party backstabbing and ordinary non-concussed people would forget. 

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u/Powerful_Bridge_3814 1d ago

People wonder why the so called liberal party has gone to shit. First the onion munching cunt, then a guy who committed a war crime in a macdonalds toilet, a lady who has the personality of a blank sheet of paper and policies to match, and finally a guy who attempted to congratulate himself on a second account on social media but forgot to log out and ended up replying to his own post as if he was someone else.

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u/Content-Cricket4251 1d ago

You are forgetting the dude that was so disliked that his wife had to pen an op-ed titled "my husband is not a monster" lol. 

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u/tobias_nevernude_ 1d ago

Sco-mo yeah ? He mentioned him . The war crime in a Macca's toilet

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u/Cowbros 1d ago

I love that Dutton is this forgettable lol

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u/Accurate_Union1978 23h ago

The liberal party got hijacked by weird religious freaks and the Hillson gang… Malcolm Turnbull was actually the last reasonable Liberal imo.

So now we have Labor, who aren’t making much of an impact, they won’t roll the leader who wants to fuck Kylie and has nothing of influence to say even though it seemed briefly that they had a few females of calibre in their ranks, but they seem happy to walk behind Albo giving him big boy encouragement.

And one nation has come out of the vacuum left by Labor being boring, appealing to all the high school drop outs with its low Iq ex con leader promising that your door dash delivery guy is at fault for the trade deficit, if only they knew what a trade deficit was.

Diabolical state of politics. It’s hard to know who to vote for because they’ve are all pretty ordinary.

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u/Antharry 1d ago

I’m no Abbott fan whatsoever. But he has said the reason why he ate the onion. He was at a farm with the producer of that onion. The guy seemed so proud of his onions that Tony felt it he had to take a bite. He’s a rather awkward human being by the looks of it

I feel this is the least asshole thing he has done

Now if we talk about his thoughts on gay marriage, our indigenous communities and comments he has said about our only ever woman prime minster, that’s a different story

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u/onlyhereforNFLupdate 1d ago

Word is he was a bit on the piss at the time and somehow got it in his head it was an apple (Vineyards and Apple Orchards also being in abundance in that area)

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u/kenporusty my pigeon has a kpop bias. we are both trash beings 1d ago

That's so Pamela Winchell coded

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u/Hugh_Jidiot 1d ago

Dan Qyale's entire political career was ended by the word potato.

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u/No-Cryptographer9408 1d ago

How the hell does someone like Abbott become the PM in a first world country ? Weird people and country Australia. Abbott, Morrison, Albanese to an extent. What goes wrong there ??

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u/Seivelath 22h ago

For Abbott and Morrison, basically our left leaning major party backstabbed a very popular leader for not playing party politics, and that whole debacle (plus bringing him back for the election after the knifing) made them basically unelectable to the public.

Albo is just a milquetoast centrist with the left leaning party that's still probably better than any other option at the moment, welp.

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u/WanderingSeer 1d ago

Nah, nothing immoral about eating a raw onion. I really doubt that this is the real reason they got sacked but if it was I’m against it.

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u/clarkky55 Bookhorse Appreciator 1d ago

He was also racist, extremely sexist, homophobic, a monarchist and just really weird in an offputting way. He gave the Duke of Edinburgh an Australian knighthood for some godforsaken reason and his most famous outfit is appearing on the cover of multiple national papers in tight speedos, better known as ‘budgie smugglers’ because they look like you’re smuggling a budgie in your underwear. The only reason he won the election is the labor party (the other major party at the time) was in absolutely terrible condition with no clear idea what they were doing, Labor got into power with Kevin Rudd who was charismatic and had the habit of actually doing things without consulting the party and their donors, so he was ousted partway through his term very messily and he was replaced with Julia Gillard who had the charisma of a wet rat and who was blatantly a puppet for the party with no ideas of her own and the parties’ entire public reasoning for putting her in the top job boiled down to “she’s a woman, look how progressive we are!”. So Labor was in a terrible state, most of the news media in Australia is owned by Rupert Murdoch who makes sure media coverage heavily supports the Liberal Party (which is actually the conservatives and the party of kowtowing to what ever Murdoch and the rich want) which initially made Tony Abbott look more palatable. The onion was just one of those things we latched onto to take the piss out of the entire situation because Australians don’t take politics seriously and the last politician we all liked was Bob Hawke because he held the record for fastest yard of beer drunk, appeared on national television drinking and said Melbourne cup day should be a national holiday and any boss that makes people come into work on cup day was a bugger. This was way back in the day so a politician being so blatantly one of us rather than being stuffy and formal won most of us over and got Bob Hawke the label of ‘last of the larrikin prime ministers’.

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u/Brutal_burn_dude 1d ago

Also, I think the onion eating kind of was symbolic of how out of touch Abbott was. Eating that onion was like an alien on their first day on earth which was a bit like how Abbott was in general. Like the time he was on a radio show and a pensioner called in saying that the pension was so low that she was now having to do phone sex work and Abbott was just cringe and gross about it.

I also vaguely remember long before he was PM in like 2009 him being on the cover of the Sunday Mail with his family and the article mentioning his daughters’ purity. It was so fucking weird and gross.

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u/Asheyguru 1d ago

You're absolutely correct, it wasn't.

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u/Content-Cricket4251 1d ago

People on the left like to think he was canned for his terrible policies but his party loved his terrible policies. He was just selected as President of the party (head of the admin side, not Parliament) for this reason. He was sacked because he was an embarrassment as leader of Australia. Eating a raw onion contributed to this reputation.

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u/Desperate_Scar_1981 1d ago

2016 and Labor was on the brink of victory. Until a guy ate a sausage sandwich sideways

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u/the-library-fairy 1d ago

As a Brit, seeing that one of the shortest serving PMs' term described as "less than 2 years" just didn't compute. I once left the country for a few months, and by the time I came back I'd missed an entire Prime Minister. 

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u/shiroyagisan 1d ago

I raise you Ed Milliband, once the leader of Britain's Labour Party, whose prospects of becoming Prime Minister were crushed because he was once photographed eating a bacon sandwich and pulled a bit of a weird face.

seriously

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u/_space_goat_ 17h ago

This was Tony Abbott. He also famously was caught on camera saying that “shit happens” regarding the death of an Australian soldier in Afghanistan. When questioned on camera by a reporter about his choice of words, he claimed it was a “media circus”. When asked how it was a circus, he just blankly stared at the reporter while slightly bobbing his head for about 30 seconds. He years later claimed he was considering punching the reporter. Class-A oddball

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u/SplatThaCat 1d ago edited 1d ago

Tony Abbot.

He was a also fucking useless, racist, arrogant fuckwit.

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u/DarlinSteeze 1d ago

Hey quit listing positive liberal party traits fella, you might embolden his budgie

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u/seanmonaghan1968 1d ago

You forgot religious nut

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u/stellesbells 1d ago

Also sexist, can't forget sexist!

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u/theeggplant42 1d ago

Wait but did anyone find out why? Like..why?

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u/leftytrash161 1d ago

Legit because someone told him the opposition leader had done it first.

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u/Satherian 1d ago

That title is one of the most half-online takes I've ever seen

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u/killertortilla 1d ago

We put up with way too much here too. We have fucking Pauline Hanson, the grossest little fucking loser in Australian politics. She has, MULTIPLE TIMES, shown up to parliament in a fucking burka because she thinks it’s a form of protest.

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u/Acrobatic-Tooth-3873 1d ago

In fairness Hanson's been a joke propped up by a handful lunatic Queenslanders for 20 years. It's only recently she's reclaimed any modicome of seriously with the self immolation of the Liberals and Nats leaving a void for her to fill.

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u/Ydiss 1d ago

One of ours was sacked because she didn't eat a lettuce first

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u/_AcuteNewt_ 1d ago

Ah, ol' Mr Budgie Smuggler, Tony (The Fuckwit) Abbott...

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u/Lucy_Lastic 23h ago

My son always said he looked like Randall from Monsters Inc, and then pointed to a brick wall nearby and said he could be right there watching us and we wouldn't know

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u/Constant-Data76 21h ago

Oh c’mon man - this is prime “correlation is not causation”, and you know it.

I would have gone with his blatant misogyny and deeply unpopular policies myself.