‘Since God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it,’ so famously said Pope Leo X. But the Medici pope was only God’s mouthpiece on Earth – and what’s that, compared to a multimillionaire Marxist Greens leader?
Naturally, the leader who demands the common folk slash their ‘carbon emissions’ isn’t about to hold himself to his own lofty standards.
Bit off-brand to see Greens leader Adam Bandt flying in luxury in the business class section of QF1280. This was on Sunday during the one-hour journey between Melbourne and Canberra ahead of a parliamentary sitting week.
No such comfort for Labor ministers Tim Watts and Catherine King, spotted as they were further back cheek-by-jowl in economy.
Let’s not forget, too, that, while he was PM, Tony Abbott and his family likewise flew economy.
No such humility for the leader of the socialists’ party.
Bandt can do what he wants, of course. But isn’t this Mr Eat the Rich? Isn’t he the guy who routinely rails against wealth in all its forms, even announcing a series of “Robin Hood” tax hikes on profit and productivity a week ago?
“The aim is simple,” he said. “To make the big corporations and billionaires pay their fair share of tax to make life better for everyone.”
Well, yes, life’s definitely better in a leather seat with a premium snack. But did taxpayers foot the bill? Bandt ignored Margin Call’s question asking if he paid for the ticket himself, which, if he didn’t, does put him at risk of resembling an enormous hypocrite.
Bandt isn’t, of course, the only supposed champion of the common folk to scarf up the taxpayer-funded goodies.
The only poetic justice here, if at all, is that Bandt ended up seated next to Senator Jacqui Lambie, who’s been torching the Greens with great relish and vigour for months, attacking them for “whipping up division and hate”, displaying “the most despicable examples of leadership”, and for refusing to support her motion to condemn the vandalism of war memorials.
So hardly the comfortable flight he was probably hoping for.
Don’t bet on it. Lambie appears quite comfortable with agreeing with the Greens. She has voted the same in parliament as Sarah Hanson-Young, and Greens co-deputy leader Nick McKim, 54 per cent of the time. She voted alongside hardcore Stalinist Lee Rhiannon an astonishing 63 per cent of the time. Even Mehreen Faruqi sees eye-to-eye with Lambie half of the time.
To her credit, though, at least Lambie isn’t joining in the Greens’ fawning over anti-Semitic terrorists, Hamas.
Local government Greens candidates in one of Sydney’s most populous Jewish areas are putting their names to pro-Palestine pledge cards adorned with inverted triangles closely associated with terror group Hamas’s military wing.
The red triangle is today’s swastika. While it may have other meanings, its meanings in the contemporary context is unambiguous: it’s the Hamas death mark. From Gaza to the streets of Sydney, it only ever means one thing: you’re next.
The Greens cannot not know this. When they put it on their electoral material, it’s no more unambiguous than the National Socialist Network handing out brochures adorned with swastikas.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute's law enforcement and strategic policy head, John Coyne, said it appeared to clearly reference the inverted red triangle, warning against candidates using it. “The use, clever or not, of symbols associated with a listed terrorist organisation is not simply a political stunt,” he said.
“It is a divisive act that undermines Australian social cohesion and legitimises a known terrorist organisation.”
He’s talking about Hamas, just to be clear, not the Greens.
