Tolerance
"When we were very young our mothers use to teach us about taking turns. You all remember; if someone was playing with a toy tank that you wanted, all you had to do was to wait until you were ready to have your turn and then beat the snot out of whoever had it and off you go.
Peter Costello wants to have a turn at being Prime Minister but so far has got it all wrong and is waiting in the corner until John Howard gets bored with shooting fish in a barrel and retires.
Some use waiting time to do useful things, like writing hundreds of complaining about the building of a mosque on vacant land in outer suburbia but Peter has gone very weird. He is now making speeches espousing all manner of nonsense.
Recently he was advising us all to get to know our neighbours. Neighbours are for abusing as you back the jeep over their hydrangeas and I know far more than I need to know about the human excrement than live next to me.
He says it would increase trust and tolerance, which is exactly what we’re afraid of. I’m deadly serious, this is actually what he said: “A tolerant society will allow dissenting views, it will allow ethnic minorities to live in peace and security.”
I realise he is trying to carve out a niche for himself, to create some points of difference between him and bullet-proof John but doesn’t he understand what the last 8 years have been about?
We have battled long and hard to increase suspicion and distrust, to foster hatred of difference and resentment of other viewpoints and we are now the envy of bigots around the world.
Soon countries everywhere will be supporting foreign nations imprisoning their citizens without charge, and spending millions of dollars challenging court decisions that oppose the mandatory detention of children in desert prisons.
To be frank, I’ve never trusted Costello, what with his soft-cock sentiments, supercilious smile and that bleeding-heart Mother Teresa wanna-be that he calls bro. When, and if, John Howards retires there is only one man for the job. Phillip Ruddock. Sure he might be slightly mad but at least we know there won’t be any of this tolerance nonsense."
