At this stage, “Senator David Leyonhjelm has a bad take on thing” should not be a headline that causes any great amount of surprise.
The Liberal Democrats senator, whose greatest political achievement thus far in his two-and-a-half year career has been the successful importation of a single shotgun, is a known and documented bad man with about as much common sense as a drunk with a firework.
However, as a member of the Australian Parliament, he is afforded a continual amount of media time. Meaning we’ve all got to put up with his shitty, shitty takes from time to time.
And on ‘The Project‘ last night, he spewed out an absolute doozy.
Leyonhjelm appeared as a guest to talk about the Coalition Government‘s highly contentious plan to reform the childcare industry, with a proposed $3billion deal currently struggling to get through parliament. The Department of Education states that the Turnbull Government’s reforms would raise the cost of health care by over 5% each year for the next four years. Opposition claims that would push the cost of weekly childcare up to par with the full wage of some working mothers.
Leyonhjelm opposes the Government’s reforms. But not for that reason. His reasoning is that the Government should actually be looking to spend even less that the reforms are proposing; although to be fair, he seemingly won’t rest until the entire country is run on half a ham sandwich.
But it’s his quips on credentialism that have really gotten people’s backs up. Senator Leyonhjelm thinks it’s frankly unbelievable that people in charge of looking after kids have to go out of their way to get such ridiculous things as “qualifications” in order to do their jobs.
In fact, credentials according to him are something of a pointless process given that the benchmark for childcare work is more or less making sure “there aren’t any pedophiles involved,” according to him.
And oh, did it ever get worse from there.
“A lot of women, mostly women, used to look after kids in childcare centres. And then they brought in this national quality framework and they had to go and get a ‘certificate three’ in childcare in order to continue the job they were doing — you know, wiping noses and stopping the kids from killing each other.”
Ahh yes. Childcare. Nothin’ to it but mucus removal and murder prevention.
At this point it might be worth pointing out that Senator Leyonhjelm himself does not have any children, and once lambasted parents for bringing “wave after wave of these little blighters into the world,” before calling literally all babies “bundles of dribble and sputum.” That’s in Hansard.
If we need to talk about lowering the tax on importing one single shotgun into the country, we’ll happily seek out Leyonhjelm’s opinion. But until then, maybe stay in your lane you weird old creep.
Source: The Project/Facebook.
