The Week - It’s no surprise that the ruling Australian Labor Party just received its worst drubbing ever in state elections in New South Wales, said Heath Aston. The party in that one Australian state is responsible for all of this country’s most outrageous political scandals. In 2006, Aboriginal Affairs Minister Milton Orkopoulos was arrested on child-sex charges; he was eventually sent to prison for molesting teenage boys after plying them with heroin and pot. Then came the “infamous underpants dance” of Police Minister Matt Brown, who resigned in 2008 after admitting to taking off everything but his boxers at a wild party in his office. And last year we saw Transport Minister David Campbell, a married father of two, caught on surveillance video “slinking away” from a gay sauna. Peppering politics throughout this time were the “claims of domestic violence and adultery” that lawmakers hurled at one another. Given these shenanigans, “smaller outrages such as Angela D’Amore’s corruption charges, Kerry Hickey’s hidden love child, and Cherie Burton’s drink-driving hardly raised an eyebrow.” The party has consistently “made news for virtually everything—except good governance.”
It's reasons like this why Australia is my plan 1A if I'm ever kicked out of Massachusetts (yea Mass, not the country, just the state. You think I'm going to live in squalor in some second rate cesspool like Rhode Island or New Jersey? Please).
I shy away from celebrating the guy that went to jail for diddling kids, that's just henious in any culture. But the rest of the shennagins above is exactly what I'm looking for. Just honest to goodness regular guys who decided they wanted to run their country and have a good time while doing it, and won't let a few minor transgressions get in the way. They're like Canada but fun, and without the hint of pretentiousness.
Just an enlightened understanding that everyone's had a few minor transgressions in their past. We're human. Let's not make a big deal out of what someone did or said when they were getting plastered with their friends, chances are you'll be making the same mistake next Saturday.
Like the guy that pulled the classic underpants dance. Do that in America and we're having full scale congressional hearings on what brand of briefs the congressman was wearing. Australia? Sure the guy resigned but they probably threw him a kegger on the way out. That's the country I want to live in.
