The pond loves a good conspiracy, and it seems that Tony Abbott, and/or his staff, computers, clocks, time stamps, servers and such like provide a jolly good one.
Bernard Keane mounts the case in Time discrepancies and the strange lack of interest in the Ashby affair, (behind the paywall), by wondering abut the lack of interest in the entirety of the Ashby matter:
... strangely, there’s been nothing. No acres of newsprint from that fine forensic mind of Hedley Thomas. No editorial from The Australian demanding Abbott and Brough allow themselves to be grilled at length. No columns in The Age from Mark Baker. No complaints from Jonathan Holmes about the ABC not following the story up. No interviews on 7.30 with discredited figures making wild allegations against Abbott and then refusing to detail them, let alone back them up.
Keane got to wondering after reading this post by Sortius, entitled 10 Hours of Bullshit, explaining exactly how Tony Abbott had been caught with his paw in the conspiracy cookie jar.
The pond was immediately suspicious of this blog - why the previous posts were wild-eyed enthusiastic pieces in favour of the NBN - do it once and do it with fibre (Rational minds need not apply) and You got AON all over my PON!, which speaks of the FUD of conservative politicians banking on the average punter not having a clue.
When I hear ... from people claiming the NBN will be outdated by the time it's finished, I instantly assume they know nothing of communications both historic & research for future comms.
Which somehow reminded the pond of that line, Cars kill people and we don't ban cars, when of course regulators spend many, many hours regulating road rules, road behaviour, issue drivers' licenses, remove the right to drive cars, and so on and so forth, insisting on working brakes and seat belts, and employing all sorts of tricks to stop people driving cars from killing themselves and others, and the moment you hear an unthinking line like that you're dealing with a conservative parrot of the Major Mitchell kind.
Anyhoo, the pond was immediately suspicious of this blog, because it clearly knew too much, and in places sounded far too much like the pond in the grip of an NBN rant.
More to the point, the pond wondered why Keane wondered, when the answer is clear as mud. All the media needed in the matter of Abbott and his clock was plausible deniability, and there's an end of it.
It's as plain as the extended noses on many Liberal politicians' faces - their evasions, equivocations and lies - that in the course of the events going down - right up to the matter exploding in the Daily Terror - they chattered amongst themselves, and occasionally with others, and knew what was happening - parliamentary corridors are the world's best source of gossip, whispers, rumours, saucy fears and doubts and assassins' knives - and all that was needed to maintain the facade was plausible deniability.
As for it being a conspiracy, it was actually a plain as day assault, complete with fibs and denials, as exemplified by Mal Brough acting like a school kid when first caught out in a lie, paws still coated with cookie crumbs (I had nothing to do with it miss, here's my wife, she'll vouch for me).
And once the story broke, there were lines of trumpets and wanton newspaper strumpets ready to sound the alarums about Slipper, and then fall silent as the Aida-like procession finished and the judge spoke ... and no need for entombment alive here.
Is it possible to call The Australian's behaviour a conspiracy? When it's so naked, blatant, obvious and consistent?
On the other hand, you might go completely ga ga, and sound completely stupid, as does pompous prattling Gerard Henderson, by blaming the whole affair on the minority government and "minority obsession".
Yes Hendo truly jumps the seasonal holiday shark of silliness today in Minority rule makes fools of both sides of the house, and conclusively proves that minority rule has indeed sent the commentariat around the S-bend.
You have to start with this bizarre conclusion:
For more than two years, a number of poor political decisions and misjudged statements can be directly attributed to the minority obsession's prevalence. Most recently, some of the assessments of the Federal Court in Ashby v Commonwealth of Australia.
Yes, muh learned judge got it all wrong, because apparently he's in the grip of "minority obsession", a strange new condition recorded and explained by hilarious Hendo, and almost certain to make it into the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
It helps enormously in understanding the condition, and its impact on the befuddled Henderson, if you can reconcile these two statements:
Contrary to some politics-inspired commentary, Justice Steven Rares did not make any findings against the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, or indeed the aspiring Liberal Mal Brough ...
Indeed, and since the matter was actually James Hunter Ashby v C of A and Peter Slipper, that's hardly surprising (and remember the full judgement is here and much more fun than reading the hapless Henderson, while there's a truly inspired court collection of messages compiled here in a pdf which will provide endless holiday reading).
But when we get right down to the bottom of hapless Hendo's piece, what do we find?
Brough is also a victim of the minority obsession. Slipper was never likely to retain LNP preselection and there was not a remote possibility of him winning his seat as an independent. Brough did not need to involve himself in any way in Ashby's campaign against Slipper, which Justice Rares found was essentially motivated by Ashby's own desire for a job as an LNP aide.
Yep, the innocent Brough, who had no finding against him, was actually in it up to his neck, and was himself a victim of that strange new medical condition, "minority obsession" (which of course is much more serious than being in the grip of Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise and that dire, wretched movie "Minority Report")
And after that strangely contradictory diagnosis, hapless Hendo can't resist a "mrrraow" and a scratch:
It is not even clear why Ashby would qualify as a political aide. After all, he spells ''awe'' as ''ore'' and once believed the speaker did not need to be a parliamentarian. Ashby, too, was overcome by the minority obsession. Slipper was never as politically important as Ashby believed him to be.
Yep, it seems if you can't spell, you might be in the grip of minority obsession. Eek, young people and the entire intertubes is or are in the grip of minority obsession (apparently it affects grammar and grandma too).
It turns out that the entire affair was a complete fuss about nothing, and so much a nothing that the platitudinous pompous prattling Polonius felt the need to spend an entire column brooding about it, such that we might call his resulting work, much ado about nothing.
Still, now that minority obsession has such a grip on him, will his other majority obsessions - the wicked ABC, the reprehensible sectarian bias against Catholics, the joy of the outer suburbs v inner elitist luvvies, and so on and so forth endlessly - take a back seat?
No such luck.
In today's work you will naturally find quite a few of Hendo's age old obsessions and bete noirs - the wicked independents, the naughty and hateful Tony Windsor, and the impossible Rob Oakeshott, who both wasted the precious, valuable time of Tony Abbott, not to mention the wicked independents' wicked animosity, perversely directed at Tony Abbott, such a fine upstanding fellow (and pronounced innocent by the learned judge even though said judge was deeply mired in that strange condition "minority obsession"), and ... it almost goes without saying ... the complete irrelevance of Peter Slipper to anything.
It turns out that Slipper was of marginal importance to anybody, anything and everything, and so there has been a great to do about nothing, which means ... if we extend the analysis ... that Tony Abbott and the shadow government has spent an enormous, spectacular amount of time and energy wasting their time ... and ours.
Is that what Henderson meant by "minority obsession"? That Abbott and his team are fixated, deluded clowns in the grip of a negative force field of demonic proportions that has dangerously destabilised their ability to think logically and act sensibly?
That Brough, Abbott, poodle Pyne and the rest of them have been sent barking mad by "minority obsession".
Probably not, probably it was just a half-baked, truly stupid metaphor flung into the mix as a way of baking up the usual bunch of conservative memes ...
And as a way of diminishing the whole saga and flinging it into the bin, where not just Henderson but the entire conservative press would like it to stay ... lest the punters be reminded of Shakespeare:
Officers, what offence have these men done?
Marry, sir, they have committed false report;
moreover, they have spoken untruths;
secondarily, they are slanders;
sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady;
thirdly, they have verified unjust things;
and, to conclude, they are lying knaves.
Indeed, but don't expect an analysis from Gerard Henderson soon inventing a new medical condition, lying knavery ... since soon enough every politician and lick spittle fellow travelling journalist and member of the commentariat would be lodged in the nearest asylum ...
(Below: a Gerard Henderson associate, in the grip of minority obsession, takes a stand).
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