“A working-class hero is something to be,” John Lennon once sang; however, what Lennon knew about the actual working class would have comfortably fit on a postage stamp. But Australia has a real working-class hero now, in the form of a street sweeper who told the finger-wagging wokesters in HR to get stuffed – and won.
Shaun Turner, the employee of Australia’s wokest council (which takes some doing) who won his unfair dismissal for objecting to an ‘acknowledgement of country’ at a toolbox meeting, has become something of a folk hero. Because he dared take on the woke oppressors, and won, by saying what plenty of people think but haven’t been allowed to say. Because he stood up to the most vicious bullies on the face of the planet: middle-class, middle-aged, university-educated white women.
Mr Turner, a 60-year-old married father of three who voted Liberal at the recent election, dislikes Anthony Albanese and Dan Andrews, and holds what he calls “centre right” views. When asked, he says “of course” the country has become too politically correct.
“I just feel like if you were a pale, stale male you can’t go to work now and have a laugh,” he said during an interview at his home in the northeast Melbourne suburb of Research.
Turner is, basically, a working-class Australian. Like most of us, he is appalled at what’s happened to the country our parents and grandparents fought for.
The council worker, whose father served in World War II, told the meeting that “if you need to be thanking anyone, it’s the people who have worn the uniform and fought for our country to keep us free”.
Like the majority of working-class Australians, Turner once supported unions, but no more.
Despite being a one-time union delegate, he is no longer a union member.
“Unions fight for things that have nothing to do with them,” Mr Turner said.
As any union member would know, the big unions use members’ money to continually lobby for far-left causes. The minority of workers who remain union members only do so, I suspect, for the member benefits, such as legal advice. Even that’s becoming a dud proposition, though, unless you toe the political line.
He said the Australian Services Union was a “great help” when he was under investigation by the council but he represented himself during the case, claiming that after he was sacked he was told “the union’s solicitors didn’t want to take the case”.
Also resonating with many Australians is Turner’s disgust with a supposedly centre-right coalition that has abandoned its principles to try and play catch-up with the Greens.
“I also had a friend who asked someone from the Liberal Party if they could help and they didn’t want to get involved either,” he said.
Mr Turner said he voted for the coalition at the May election due to his low opinion of the prime minister. “I voted for Dutton because Elmer Fudd was the other person,” he said.
“I thought Peter Dutton would be stronger on defence, stronger on crime. He had all those things going for him but, to me, Peter Dutton was an ugly man. He didn’t resonate with female voters due to his looks and he was made out to be scary.
“People say looks don’t count for anything. People lie. If Peter Dutton looked like Robert Redford, he would have sh-t the election in.”
Like many working-class people, he also has little truck with the party that, in defiance of all evidence, still has the cheek to call itself the ‘party of the worker’.
As for Labor, Turner said Mr Albanese was appealing because “people like hearing the word free”. “They’re going to get free childcare. Nothing’s free. The taxpayer pays it. I pay for someone else’s kids to go to kinder now,” he said. “I can’t go to the doctors and just take my Medicare card. It doesn’t happen these days.
“It’s like Dan Andrews. How did Dan Andrews win again?
“You can lock playgrounds up. You can tell people they’re not allowed out. You can sell us off to Belt and Road. Given the decisions, it was amazing that bloke won the election again. I know the Liberals in Victoria are hopeless and too busy fighting among themselves.”
Australians are also sick of local councils who are far more invested in climate change and supporting Muslim savages on the other side of the world, than they are in the stuff they’re paid to do: collect the bins and mow the lawns at the local oval.
“It’s like councils who stick their nose in where they shouldn’t be, like worrying about whose flag we are flying, like Gaza and what’s going on in Palestine. All of a sudden we are all wearing Palestine colours.”
If we want our country back, it has to start somewhere. Why not with a street-sweeper with a bit of bloody commonsense?
