Liberal Agrees Tasmanians Are Ostriches

(This is a special article for my Tasmania 2024 election coverage; click here for link to main page with links to other articles)

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It's been widely expected that when Tasmania's supposed AFL team name is unveiled days out from the election (hmmm) the name will be the Devils, Warner Bros' outrageous trademark nonsense based on their cartoons about our animal notwithstanding. Just in case "Devils" isn't available, I've been scratching my head for an alternative, and I've found one.  We can follow the lead of Liberal Bass candidate Julie Sladden and we can call our team the Tassie Ostriches! Here is a jumper mockup.

Background

I have been commenting on Twitter, and in my Bass guide as the Premier continues to defend a candidate who:

* believes that our COVID response, vaccines clearly included, was "not healthcare", was "not saving lives" and "never was".  

* believes (same article) that COVID vaccines are too dangerous and do not work, but also that  Ivermectin does. ("They can't all be wrong")

*has said Tasmania's pandemic response was an "autocracy" and that when Premier Gutwein won the last election with a huge personal vote, he wasn't actually "in charge".  

* has been working, this year, for Russell Broadbent, who believes much of the same and has defected from the Liberals to the crossbench.  

* on Twitter follows Cory Bernardi, David Limbrick, Louise Elliot and the dunce of the Senate Ralph Babet but no individual Liberal MPs.  I will cut her some slack here for such follows perhaps being for professional reasons, but even so ...

* has in recent months, apparently approvingly, liked tweets (not all on COVID issues) not by mainstream Liberals but by Malcolm Roberts (PHON), Julian Fidge (Libertarian), Topher Field (Libertarian), Elliot (ex-Lib), Broadbent (Lib defector), Antic (Lib), Rennick (LNP disendorsed), Hanson (PHON), Deeming (Ind Lib) and Craig Kelly (UAP) and has even liked a tweet by The Real Rukshan cheering Tucker Carlson's suck-up interview of Putin.  

* in no way other than Liberal endorsement appears to me to resemble a remotely mainstream Liberal and who in general (including views on other social issues) seems a much better fit for UAP, Libertarians, One Nation, Aus Christians or "freedom parties", none of those being registered in Tassie.  (This said, her local Council Facebook page seems positive and harmless, and I've seen no reason to doubt that she's a good Councillor).   

* is so much a part of the right-wing alternative media culture-war sphere as a writer and show guest that she has been twice interviewed on the same episode of a radio show as Simeon Boikov (whose other views I am not saying she shares, but this shows the sort of audience that she is reaching)

* is involved (at least as a writer for its website) with the Canberra Declaration movement which proposes ripping up all anti-discrimination and similar laws that limit "religious freedom and freedom of speech", which casts vague but obvious aspersions against same-sex marriage and which flatly opposes abortion from conception.  (She is also a former member of Australian Christians). 

This candidate's selection has been condemned by the AMA Tasmania and still Jeremy Rockliff will not budge!

So what's this about ostriches?

On Friday night I came across an October 23 episode of "freedom movement" video Cafe Locked Out, featuring Dr Sladden, the host Michael Gray Griffith, and Dr Paul Oosterhuis (an anaesthetist of similar views who was suspended in September 2021 over social media posts, was reinstated by the NSW Supreme Court in May 2022, but has now retired from the field.)  

I have been cautious about using the term "cooker" to refer to people who object to COVID vaccines, mandates and lockdowns, as the term can carry overtones of class snobbery, especially when used too indiscriminately.  But parts of this video are gloriously cooked, and if you haven't sampled the freedom movement before, you may find dipping in it eye-opening.  This fringe even has its own songs, and they make Christian rock appear subtle and good.  The video's awash with self-congratulations about how the freedom movement is on the path to victory (though there's a brief debate which this philosophy grad found amusing as to whether "God" has made this certain (Sladden) or would that would be an affront to "free will" (Griffith)).  Griffith and Sladden reverently praise "Forests of the Fallen", a creepy form of often unauthorised protest installation where photos and stories of claimed COVID vaccine victims culled from the internet are posted on stakes in a park.  

But it's the Tasmania-related comments that are of most interest here. At 13:00 Sladden calls Tasmania's mandates response, as overseen by the government she is seeking to join, "quite draconian".  At 26:40 Griffith asks Sladden how she managed to remain sane during the lockdowns, and said that he travelled to Tasmania and "Tassie, no offence, was basically a community of ostriches, I was driving down there, everyone's got their head in the sand, I just saw feather-dancers everywhere I went" (and then goes on to praise exceptions, including the illegal ones).  Through all this Sladden laughs along, and nods her head, says "Yep".  

Sladden says "I've always said, there's a special kind of person that lives down in Tasmania you know [..] you've got to want to be prepared to be about five years, 5-10 years behind the times,"  

She goes on to talk about and praise anti-lockdown communities and rallies in Tasmania, dismissing Hobart as a "mini-Canberra" while referring to pockets elsewhere where people were "very awake".  She refers to rallies in Launceston of "several thousand" (one thousand, at best, in the videos I've found so far).  She describes most Tasmanian newspapers as "pretty closed" and at 30:50 returns to the ostrich theme:

"But yes, Tasmania's pretty special like that, we've pretty much got our heads in the sand, we like to get on with our own lives and not be too upset with what's sort of happening in the rest of the world"

She then goes on about how insular Tasmanians are and were even before COVID:

"people, they just wanted to be safe in their island and, you know, just be able to get on with their lives and I think I didn't realise how entrenched that was until COVID arrived.  Basically I've spent the last few years trying to wake people up"

The cultishness of this aside, it's an insulting view of Tasmanians as people who don't want to know about the rest of the world, and it's extremely disrespectful of other views - if you don't agree with her on COVID, it can only be because you are asleep.   The "sleepers" would include most of her fellow Liberal candidates.

Need I spell out the problems with running even the nicest of "freedom movement" candidates as a potential member of a Liberal Government?   One, MPs who turn up in the right-wing culture war sphere are a known flight or expulsion risk, witness Bernardi, Broadbent, Craig Kelly, Elliot, Bernie Finn for starters. Running such a candidate while claiming to be able to restore stable government, after having a government become unworkable over defections, is just Groundhog Day without the happy ending.  Two, as the most medically qualified MP in a government with constant reshuffles and resignations in this term, Sladden could in theory end up as Health Minister.   In fairness, the odds on the double of her winning and them winning is probably pretty long but we have seen from Lara Alexander that any major party candidate, however badly they poll, can get elected on a recount, so who knows.  

They Don't Do That

People say we do WHAT?  (credit)

Now, ostriches.  In defence of these fine birds I would like to point out that they do not in fact bury their heads in the sand and suffocate themselves in futile attempts to hide from danger.  Only Premiers who are defending lousy preselections do that.  An ostrich standing with its head near the ground could be feeding (with its head not visible from a distance), turning eggs, observing its environment or ingesting grit or pebbles for food-grinding.  An ostrich lying on the ground may be hiding from a predator by pretending to be something else but its head does not go underground.   

The most common response from an ostrich to danger it can't dispose of is to run away as fast as I'll be running from the Liberals on my ballot paper if this candidate is still endorsed at close of nominations.