Scientists are yet to determine exactly what the cause is, but somewhere in the transition to becoming an elected politician, the speech centre of their brain implodes – leaving them only capable of speaking in logically preposterous soundbites, meaningless platitudes and terrible catchphrases about boats or border security.
Because our pollies are locked in a hermetically sealed environment with only each other and their huge piles of money and opinions, no one ever really calls them out on this bullshit. Reporters stand idly by as these ridiculous people smugly trot out insults so unbelievably lame as to be borderline incoherent, it’s criminal.
But everyone once in a while, a hero comes along. This time, that hero was a cameraman.
Relatively new Labor MP Emma Husar gave a presser today, apparently just to gloat about beating the Libs in a poll:
“Well, we have a new poll out today and it tells us what we already knew to be true and we don’t really need a poll to tell us, that Malcolm Turnbull is a dud and the Australian people have responded so.”
All well and good except, as one reporter pointed out, Turnbull is still beating Shorten in the preferred prime minister polls. Her response? Not great:
“Okay, so the polls also said I was going to lose the election, and here I am. So, y’know, polls – they’re a dime a dozen, they come and they go. I don’t put too much weight on them at all.”
So the polls matter when they go the way you like but they don’t when they don’t? That seems pretty laughable. So laughable in fact, one of the cameramen laughed. Husar made a fool’s mistake and asked why:
“It’s just very contradictory. You said you believed in the polls that were good for you, but then not the ones that were bad.”
Well done that man. Have a watch, if you feel like you’ve not experienced enough cringe in your day so far:
“What are you laughing at?” New Labor MP @emmahusarmp is called out by a cameraman during a press conference https://t.co/OSNpPSjYo4 #auspol pic.twitter.com/0MBMIn0BAI
— ABC News (@abcnews) November 8, 2016
Source and photo: ABC.
