I’ll be the first to admit it: I’m no poet. I don’t have the language to describe love in all of its forms. But I can tell you this: somehow, against all odds, so slowly that I myself could not identify it, I have fallen in love with Rod Culleton.
Our romance was very much not written in the stars: I’m 26, in Queensland, and already in a relationship, he’s 52, in Western Australia, married, and, up until very recently, was a senator for the party heavily favoured by Australia‘s racists.
He is, in the strongest possible sense of the word, a character. He seems to have no real plan but throws himself into everything he does, before shortly and explosively fucking it up. He didn’t espouse One Nation‘s party line at any point, he mostly seemed interested in using his new-found political power to try and sort out of his own personal problems, which did not at all happen.
Before politics, his public life was punctuated by scandal. After politics, his public life was entirely scandal, punctuated occasionally by the times that the media was asleep or had the day off. His exit from politics has arguably been even more exciting than that.
Culleton, who was elected to his seat in 2016, had a short but very colourful run in the senate, which was categorised largely by a series of gaffes, legal battles and interpersonal altercations with One Nation leader Pauline Hanson.
Almost ousted over the fact that he was technically ineligible to run at the time he was elected due to a larceny charge, he ended up getting booted from the Senate thanks to an untimely court-ordered bankruptcy filing, which also makes you ineligible to hold a seat.
Although many people would be very upset, Culleton has taken the development with dignity and grace. Haha, just kidding, no he hasn’t. His first course of action was to try and write to the Queen to get her to intervene (note: it did not work).
Now, he’s taken the bold strategy of just sort of pretending he wasn’t fired? He told a press conference that he will continue to occupy his office in his electorate but will be taking a period of absence of his own volition:
“I am not going anywhere. I’m actually going to concede to a self-imposed moratorium, myself, as a senator. I will not be attending any functions, although I haven’t had time to do that.“I have been working very hard, and I see that as not a priority in the first three years to become a senator, in my duty to serve Western Australians.”
When asked by reporters whether his salary or the salary of his staff would continue to be paid by the Senate, he refused to answer their questions and promptly left. What a man.
Source: ABC.
Photo: Channel 9.
