Dumb and dumber

Marita Punshon?I 3 July 2024?I The Spectator Australia

So much has been said about Labor’s immediate response to the Dutton plan for nuclear energy in Australia.

The three-eyed fish, the three-eyed koala bear, the three-headed cow in the paddock: these images were spat into the slums of social media ready to petrify a nation.

They were supposed to turn us off two things: one, Mr Dutton, and two, radiation from nuclear energy.

But they were too cute by half.

In giving us no information, they told us plenty. They were, in fact, very revealing.

For what they showed, is how stupid the Labor Party thinks Australians really are. We no longer need to guess how they think: the Labor Party believes dumb and dumber is good enough. Inane is in, debate is out.

Feed the chooks, so to speak.

Labor has illuminated, exposed, its total disregard for the public’s intelligence.

By resorting to fear and three-eyed fish, Labor, including Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan, told us that they think Australians are compliant, intellectually incompetent, and willing to be led to the ballot box blind-folded, all three eyes covered.

It is not for the first time that they have taken this approach. Their arguments in The Voice referendum were stylistically akin: they blurred the detail, and with saccharine smiles and holier-than-thou attitudes, thought they could guilt-trip equality-loving Australians into signing up for inequality.

With their willing team of corporate and sporting megaphones, Labor thought it was enough to call ‘No’ voters racists. Heck, the Prime Minister didn’t even think he had to read the very document upon which the ‘Yes’ vote was based.

And so it is: Labor and the left believe name-calling, guilt-tripping, and shallow imagery are enough information to give Australian voters.

Who would have thought a smart strategy was to think Australians are stupid?

Sure, no one wants the burden of scouring a Nobel essay for every issue, but sometimes less is not more. Australians innately smell trouble before they see it. If they must, they will go down the burrow and smoke out a solution for themselves.

Australians have been fobbed off on the energy debate: told their power bills would go down because renewable energy is cheaper. Their energy bills tell them differently.

When the maths keeps missing, Australians will start wondering what else they’re not being told. They will swing the saloon doors open in readiness for a factual shoot-out.

The apparent ‘Australians are dumb’ mindset is not only lazy but reflects the broader movement of politics to the tribal left. Where one could once split the debate into Left and Right, Labor has now adopted the Left and Wrong perspective.

Labor’s star sign of arrogance is rising and ruling over the planets of humility and commonsense.

In relation to nuclear, Mr Dutton has put another view on the table – and he is up to debate it. Labor needs to prove him wrong with facts, not memes.

It will be an argument made harder for Labor by the global charge towards more nuclear energy. And of those nations currently using the energy, none has a pond of three-eyed fish because of it.

At least Dutton is saying, let’s have the debate. He has staked his party’s immediate future on it. He has staked his own leadership future on it. In truth, he has staked the future of the nation on it.

Despite the ghastly presence of social media, surely there is still room in Australia for debate, for the battle of gladiatorial wits in the arena of ideas?

If their nuclear response is any example, one can only assume that Labor has completely left that arena, last seen scampering for the exit signs to Easy Street.

Have we got to the point in Australia where leaders are too scared of debate? Or not capable of the debate? Or simply not willing?

After the first Presidential election debate in the United States on Friday, it is possibly fair to say that the American population may also be feeling bereft of better.

But in Australia, even as the nation headed into the last Federal election, Australians were promised by Mr Albanese a government of greater transparency, a government that would do better.

Mr Albanese smiled so angelically and re-assuredly sold the Australian public the image of himself as a political god of graciousness and honour, ready to descend from on high onto the shoulders of Parliament below. He would turn it into a triumph of truth, a heavenly political nirvana. We could all vote feeling at peace. We could breathe political pure air for debate and honesty were to be ours.

But the angel wings have fallen, the halos slipped from place. Ridicule has replaced the promise of respect.

Even on the matter of Assange, the Prime Minister has treated Australians as fools. There he was, photographed taking the call from the just-landed hacker, oblivious to the fact that the very diplomatic system that Assange tried to destroy was the same system that brought him home.

Mr Albanese clearly thought Australians would be impressed by the photograph. Others have since written of the innocent lives allegedly lost because of the Assange ego and actions.

Have Australians been so flogged into submission by trivial memes and the social media mentality that we cannot handle a bigger – and better debate – on Assange, on nuclear, on the war in Gaza, on the truths of Indigenous politics, or on almost any issue?

Strong democracy demands a contest of ideas. It demands respect for its participants, its citizens.

Memes on three-eyed fish represent neither debate, a contest of ideas, nor respect. It’s not good for Australian politics or any debate.

One hankers for the contest, the intellectual savvy. The political guts.

Imagine what Margaret Thatcher might do in today’s political square. What would she argue?

What would Boris Johnson say? While he lacked discipline as an MP and PM, he does not fail in the broader intellectual stakes – for what else has been stonking since his election victory?

Bring back Boris. Reincarnate Maggie.

And stop thinking we’re all dumb.

Author: Marita Punshon