more dissing of the mad monk....
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/tony-abbotts-discordant-dame-decision-20140328-zqo4p.html
Tony Abbott's discordant dame decision
As Joe Hockey and Malcolm Turnbull sat down to dinner together in Canberra on Tuesday night, they joked that they were the last two republicans left in Canberra.
One way or another, most of Australia has been laughing at Tony Abbott’s discordant decision to revive knighthoods. Was the announcement dated 2014 or 1420?
The titles will end with his prime ministership. They are a personal fetish visited on an uncomprehending country.
The Labor senator Sam Dastyari had Liberals and Greens alike laughing along when he opened a speech to the Senate with the words: “Hear ye, hear ye. My lord, lady and lieges, I’m shocked and horrified that people are ridiculing the bold and inspirational leadership of the people’s Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Abbott of Warringah.
“While some may claim that returning to knighthoods is taking the country backwards – I can think of no more important policy for our realm right now.”
Sir Anthony himself admitted to the journalist Michelle Grattan that he’d had a chuckle himself at some of the cartoons sending him up.
But the larger point of Hockey and Abbott’s jibe attests to the futility of the move.
Which prime minister after Abbott will continue the practice? A Labor leader certainly won’t. Bill Shorten, saying Abbott had put Australia into a “time warp”, has made his position clear.
But neither would Hockey, at the moment probably the person in the government with the strongest claim to succeed Abbott.
Turnbull certainly wouldn’t: “It’s an interesting time to see knights and dames coming back and it’s good to see the broad acceptance of it in the community,” the former leader of the republican movement said to much hilarity at a function in Parliament House this week.
