Thursday, July 08, 2004

Still no election but plenty of fightin' talk

Still no election called but we could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. This will he/won't he thing is becoming as tedious as Freddy Fittler's endless Origin comebacks.

John Howard today promised a "fair and decent society" should he be re-elected. (As some wag at work said: what, he'll only commit to that if he is re-elected, he doesn't want it now?) Howard went for the touchy-feely things today, 'fairness', 'decency', the environment, water. He seemed to be doing his best to emulate the Greens but it sounded rather strained. His examples of David Hookes' death and the sexual abuse claims on footballers as being indicative of a "coarsening of the culture" I found rather strange. So, in the past no one had died because they got drunk and got into a fight and footballers have never been accused of sexual abuse. Perhaps he meant that the fact these things became public had coarsened the culture.

It is the PM's idea of 'decency' that bothers me though. As some of us will recognise, decency is indeed relative. I think it's decent that I live in a stable relationship, that I love my child and hope to do the best by him. I think Johnny may have other ideas about the 'decency' of this set-up however.

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