ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr has kind-of clapped back to an article by The Betoota Advocate, which said what we’re all thinking by talking shit about how boring and irrelevant Canberra is.
On Monday, Betoota reported about the ACT’s border reopening to people from Brisbane with the following headline: “Canberra Reopens To Brisbane, In Case Anybody Cares.”
The article itself pretended to quote Barr ranting about how Canberra actually isn’t that bad – it’s got Questacon, after all – and adding that “Canberra reminds me of Brisbane in 1988, when they had the expo.”
The final line of the article once again joked about how nobody gives a shit about Canberra and its travel restrictions, reading: “The rest of the Chief Minister’s press conference will be played on ABC2 at 2am AEST.”
Ouch.
However in the comments of the Facebook post, Barr himself actually replied… and it was actually pretty banterous.
By invoking Shakespeare‘s “To be, or not to be” soliloquy from Hamlet, Barr graciously copped the sledge while also managing to hold his own against the Betoota boys.
“[Whether] ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune… or a 2AM ABC2 press conference?” he wrote, with pondering emojis.
People were pretty geed-up in the comments.
“Oh you’ve truly made it now, Andrew – featured by the ‘Toot!” said one person.
Plenty of others just commended the Chief Minister on his bant game.
Anyway, it’s nice for someone to play along with The Betoota Advocate rather than take things a bit too seriously, like one New York Times reporter did earlier this year.
While the website might have won that particular round, in this case with Andrew Barr, it’s clearly 1-1 for the time being.
