Are you there, Tone? We assume that, like everyone else, Tony Abbott spends a lot of time Googling his own name. So if by chance you happen to be reading this, Mr. Prime Minister, start taking notes.
Our humble, strange, very dryly humoured cousins from across the Tasman in New Zealand have this unnerving habit of doing a lot of things way better than us – Beers (Tuatara and Epic cannot be beaten), the integration of Indigenous culture into sport, progressive social politics, bands featuring the Finn Brothers (Split Enz > Crowded House, run at me).
And yet another they kick our arse at well and truly? Their Prime Minister bloody well knows how to make a Captain’s Pick.
In Australia, the so-called Picks have represented a series of highly contentious, boneheaded choices made by Tony Abbott with seemingly no regard for political hierarchy, despite all public opinion to the contrary, and done seemingly just because he damned well could.
None of these picks drew more ire than the now infamous Knightmare saga that saw Abbott not only reinstate the system of Knights and Dames, but award a Knighthood to the Queen’s husband, Prince Phillip – a non-Australian citizen, a symbol of a Monarchist past increasingly losing its relevancy, and a known and noted curmudgeonly old bastard.
In New Zealand, however, Prime Minister John Key has gone down the same path. Except instead of giving a Knighthood to an unelected sponge, he’s offering it to the outgoing captain of the All Blacks, Richie McCaw.
THAT IS HOW YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO USE KNIGHTHOODS, YOU GIT.
Not to give them to hobbling old men who’ve spent a lifetime suckling off the public teat and who don’t even have room to fit the new title in amongst the 40-odd others they’ve managed to accumulate, all because at night when you go home you like to pour a snifter of brandy in the sitting room and stare lovingly at the British Passport you keep locked in a safe away from public view.
NO. You give them shits to large brooding men with flat skulls who bring you home WORLD CUPS. People who have dedicated their lives to sport, and in the process become unifying figures beloved by all; record-breaking warriors with storied careers.
You give them to people who might not even ACCEPT the damned things.
McCaw was previously offered the title after winning the 2011 World Cup on home soil, but turned it down. So Key today offered it to him again.
“Whether he would take one, I don’t know. The offer was there before and I can’t imagine anything has changed.”
We’re not saying, Tone, that you have to give them out to *every* sporting hero this nation produces.
We’re just saying that Sir Ricky Ponting has a bloody good ring to it.
Photo: Mike Hewitt via Getty Images.
via New Zealand Herald.
