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Doug Pollard interviewed Tony Abbott on his radio show earlier this week (Joy 94.9). Â It was a really good interview, the rabbit seems quite honest in his answers. Â Of course the rabbit recently said that he felt threatened by gay people, and that we challenge the natural order of things.1
So, I guess he decided to front up and talk about his ‘poor choice of words’ Â with Doug. Â He tells us that Cardinal Hell isn’t such a bad bloke, essentially he is forgiven because he’s just doing his job (whatever) and how he has a lot of really close gay friends (so do I, got straight friends too… what’s your point?).
Doug asked him how he felt about couples that end up in aged care and often are the subject of discrimination as they get split up.  They may have spent years together, in a loving relationship, until they get into a home.  Rabbit said that it’s obvious that you don’t want to see people being split up, he thinks it’s obvious that that would be most unfortunate and he says that he wants to see a practice that works for people (he doesn’t say which particular people).  Then he says he has to consider it, how it’s best done in practice before being prescriptive.  he wants to consider how ‘we get the practice right’.  What are you?  Stupid?  You said how obvious it was that they shouldn’t be split up – so it should be obvious to you that you don’t split them up, for fuck sake, what is there to consider?  The feelings of all the other happy couples who are of different sex?  Please.
Doug asks him if he would support federal anti-discrimination law.  The rabbit says he would have to consider it.  The rabbit will support ‘good law’  He says that he’d have to be careful that it didn’t have unintended consequences, I think that’s code for Cardinal Hell wouldn’t like it, so I wouldn’t support it.
Doug covers the whole relationship marriage thing and the rabbit trots out his the normal conservative attitude that marriage is between a man and a woman. Â The rabbit talks about the importance of relationships, how they should be celebrated and recognised, he says lots of very nice motherhood statements, but then just can’t bring himself to say that he thinks marriage between gay people is an ok way to do the recognising and celebrating.
Much the same for gay parents, he still has the notion that a child should have a mother and father, but can only say that that’s the best for the child, when in fact he acknowlegdes that gay parents are just as loving and caring as any other parent.
He messes around, makes all the right noises, but ultimately he still thinks that gay people are second class citizens that shouldn’t be discriminated against, it’s ok to remove some, but not all, of that discrimination, but they are still them and not real citizens.
It’s disgusting.
Oh, nice job Doug.
Thank you Bruce – interesting that you actually wrote a post about it whereas Andrew Bolt took the lazy way out – he just posted the transcript. A clear admission, for once, that he had nothing worth saying 🙂 . If you want a vivid picture of Australian homophobia, take a look at the comments. Meanwhile, a-rama-llama-ding-dong, baby!!