In news that’s going to surprise very few of you, the National Party doesn’t exactly have the highest opinion on young people. In fact, as far as party leader and Deputy Prime Minister of Australia Michael McCormack is concerned, they’re very much a problem the party would prefer not to have.
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McCormack has quite sensationally referred to young people – specifically first-time voters – as “one of the biggest problems” facing the party as we swing towards the upcoming March 18th Federal Election.
The 2IC of the entire goddamned country made the quip last night in Cowra while addressing party members in an RSL function room.
According to reports, McCormack hit out at young voters and wrote off concerns regarding the Nationals’ preference deal with One Nation as nothing more than a “journalist obsession.”
McCormack took aim at the youth of Australia – who are enrolled to vote in this election at a record percentage of 88.8%, with 1.69 million voters aged between 18 and 24 – asserting that they are a giant problem for the National Party, and that they’ve “never known how good they’ve got it.”
One of the biggest problems we’ve got in this election is the fact that we’ve got a lot of young people voting for the first time – and this sounds dreadful – who have probably never known how good they’ve got it.
Some real Scooby Doo villain-level shit, right there.
Later, McCormack asserted that concerns regarding the Nationals’ preference deal with One Nation, specifically regarding the very real moral dilemma of cozying up to right-wing lunatics purely for the sake of vote-grabbing, were nothing to worry about and were only the result of some sort of media beat-up.
I’ll cop the criticism and I’ve copped plenty over the past few days; ‘oh, you’re voting in racists, how can you do it?’ Well, you know what, it’s only a journalist obsession.
Elsewhere, McCormack predictably showed little love for the Greens – Sarah Hanson-Young, in his words, was “a complete loser” – and lambasted the diverse roster of senators representing Labor as both people “you wouldn’t have home for a barbecue,” and “unrepresentative swill.”
Again, that’s the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia talking there. Leader of the extremely normal National Party.
Great stuff, genius.
