It’s my favourite time of the year again: the time when Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm gets so angry he has to retreat into his vault full of porn and fireworks to kiss all of his guns until he calms down.
That Bond-villain-looking motherfucker is Australia‘s staunchest defender of free speech (except maybe for the editorial staff of ‘The Australian‘, now that Bill Leak is people investigated under 18C), and in true libertarian fashion largely pursues this crusade by defending the gross bullshit they spray on the side of Wicked Campers vans.
The mechanical deathtraps are wildly popular – driven all over the country by sweaty groups of shirtless, muscular Belgians until they either explode or reach 1,000,000 kilometres on the odometer, at which point the odometer is reset to 0 and the process is repeated.
Their whole marketing ~thing~ is based on having the dumbest shit possible spray-painted on the side; while they used to get by with the sort of vague hippy nonsense that would delight the kind of people who live in Byron or Nimbin, at some point they made an inexplicable shift into rampant misogyny – apparently there’s some overlap between backpackers and total bros.
If you’re unfamiliar, here are some examples:
What an incredible combination, sexist and deeply unfunny, amazing.
Well that sort of bullshit is not long for this world, at least in Queensland, with roads minister Mark Bailey today introducing legislation into parliament that allows the government to de-register vehicles that refuse to remove offensive slogans.
This might seem like it has a fair bit of potential for abuse, but the definition of what constitutes offensive material will be determined by the Advertising Standards Board, so cops can’t just randomly de-register your car because you spray-painted “cops are pigs” on the side.
As I urge everyone to do whenever I get the chance, please watch this video being absolutely brutalised by The Chaser over his wildly inconsistent attitudes towards free speech and those damn campers:
Flawless.
Source: Huffington Post.
Photos: Wicked Campers.
