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| I'll grin .. you bear it. | |
There may be no innocent parties in a divorce, but there
are usually winners from scandal. The winner from the
Kernot-Evans scandal is .. Simon Crean! Studying the scores in the Kernot-Evans fiasco:
- Cheryl (still-not-my-fault) Kernot has been been totally discredited
as a politician, human being, woman's advocate and a memoir writer.
- Gareth (thank-god-i'm-not-head-of-the-UN) Evans has been shown to
be an adulterer (entirely his and his wife's business), and a liar (the business of every
Australian during his reign as Attorney General)
- Kim (fat-boy) Beazley has broken even - his refusal to let Cheryl into the
inner leadership circle has been vindicated, but his claim to Cheryl that 'you
just handed me the Prime Ministership' makes him look like a roasted turkey.
- Natasha (everyone-on-the-welfare-tit) Stott Despoja has been forced to wiggle and squirm like school-girl, and say
"no-one's business but theirs". Apparently she feels that lying to parliament
is justified if a woman's virtue is at stake (at least she has priorities, just
no principles).
- John (hiding-his-smirk) Howard has just said 'I have nothing to say on this matter
whatsoever' because he doesn't have to. He looks like the true statesman, but doesn't really want the
issue of 'truth before elections' studied too carefully.
- Mark (mad-dog) Latham and Peter (smirky) Costello haven't been able to work
out how to make mileage out of it at all.
- The Liberal
Party are enjoying themselves, but they didn't know
this was coming, and hence were unable to
use the scandal to cover up a slightly smaller scandal of their own (Like Mrs
Costello's thick ankles).
- The ALP look like a bunch of dishonest scheming school children,
but looking at the polls, this won't make any difference.
Which basically leaves our favorite little rottweiler, Simon
(I'll-grin-and-you-bear-it) Crean. Simon has taken the view that "ye shall
answer to your sins", and that the fundamental principle is to not mislead
parliament. As a result he looks squeaky clean! Even more so than
no-longer-quite-so-honest-John! He still looks ineffectual as a leader, and by taking this position he is the
only politician to have legitimized the media feeding frenzy over the whole
affair, but he has come out of this as a man of principle. I don't know whether the average Australian would leave their teenage daughter
in his care over the weekend, but he has raised his status from the man you
couldn't possibly vote for to the man who you might have to vote for in a
emergency. Now he just has to wait for that emergency. But judging from the
smirking government front-bench, they aren't expecting one anytime soon. Good luck Simon. This is the only correct decision you have made since you
became leader.
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