Pauline Hanson And The Naked Vicar

Who remembers Pauline Hanson? She's the former fish and chip shop owner who wrapped herself patriotically in an Australian flag and then set about destroying Australia's reputation for racial tolerance with her ignorance and xenophobia. My staff gets worried when politicians start wrapping themselves in their national flag. They reckon it usually means that they don't have any sensible policies, and so it transpired with Pauline.  Anyway, it turned out that she had no idea what xenophobia was until she was told by a television talk show host. She came close to saying that Australian Aboriginal people should go back to where they belong. The sad thing is that when she stood for parliament she won a seat. She's since lost it again and despite a few attempts to regain it only a few extremists voted for her and she went off in huff to Britain because Australia was admitting too many immigrants. She obviously hadn't visited Britain since about 1950. Modern Britain is no place for a bigot. Anyway she's back in Australia now. Apparently she turned on her heel and got back on the same Qantas plane she's arrived on when a nice Sikh man in a turban asked for her passport when she arrived at Heathrow.  But that's the trouble with bigots. Not to put it too delicately, they're as thick as bats' bush chocolate. Certainly Pauline is not exactly the sharpest piece of bush chocolate in the cage. In fact she makes Badger look like a candidate for MENSA.

There can be only three possible reasons for wrapping yourself in your national flag.

1. You are a dangerous nationalist.

2. You are a bigot.

3. Your washing machine is broken and you have no clean clothes.

Therefore it is a great shame that the then Australian Prime Minister John Howard was panicked by her brief electoral success into adopting many of her blatantly racist ideas. She was not against immigration per say, as long as the immigrants - non-white ones anyway, were not coming to Australia. For a signatory to the Refugee Convention like Australia the legislation that the Howard government put in place, like temporary protection visas and offshore processing were illegal because they were a blatant attempt to deter refugee arrivals, especially those arriving by boat. Under the Refugee Convention signatory nations are not permitted to deter refugee arrivals. Neither are they permitted to ship arrivals off to a third nation for processing if that nation is not a signatory of the convention. These poor buggers were dumped in Nauru - a sorry lump of coral in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and while Nauru has since signed the convention, they hadn't at the time that Howard put his arrangements in place. If only our politicians spent a little less time shedding crocodile tears over the poor sods who die making the journey to Australia on leaky Indonesian fishing boats, and more time making it easier for refugees to come to Australia safely.

This so called "illegal boat arrival" was sent to Nauru for processing despite being the first ever cavy to row all the way from Peru to Australia.

To compound this injustice, five years after John Howard was booted out of office Julia Gillard's government has similarly been panicked by the Pauline Hanson influenced opposition party into reinstating offshore processing. It's still illegal, because it's still supposed to be a deterrent to refugees.  Naturally the media and politicians who should know better have been stirring the pot by calling asylum seekers who arrive by boat "illegal arrivals". They are not illegal arrivals. In fact they have a more valid legal status than the system that sends them to Nauru for processing. And all this because of a dumb red headed fish and chip shop owner decided that she didn't like people who are not the same colour as her. I bet you didn't expect all that from a guinea pig did you?

Hey ho. A much nicer human female altogether is my female staff's mum. Badger and I like her very much because she has a pot of parsley at home and always brings us a sample when she comes to visit. She has some pretty good stories too. Stories that often embarrass my female staff. For example when my female staff and her slightly older frantic sister were little my females staff always struggled to get a word in edge-ways because her frantic sister talked so much. This being the case, my female staff had to get her tuppence worth in however and whenever she could. One day while at the dentist, frantic sister was yakking away to the elderly and somewhat prim receptionist as my female staff stood hopping from one foot to the other practically wetting herself with frustration at not being able to find a gap in frantic sister's flow. Then frantic sister took a breath. This was my female staff's big chance. My female staff's mum suddenly had a premonition of what was about to happen but wasn't quick enough to stop it. "We've got Mrs Foops at home, and she lets crackers." was my female staff's contribution to the conversation. Non-Aussies may like to know that Mrs Foops is a traditional imaginary person to whom mishaps are attributed. "Letting crackers" is the passing of bottom wind.
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Not long after that my female staff's paternal grandpa and grandma came to visit from New Zealand.  Her grandpa was a kind but austere man, an old school Anglican vicar. Walking around the outside of the house to put the washing on the line she came across my female staff and her frantic sister standing on a chair peering through the bathroom window. She put her head between the two children's.
  "What are you looking at?" She asked
  "We wanted to see what grandpa does in the bath." Answered the girls, as to my female staff's mum's horror she noticed her father in law soaking in the bath just as he looked up from washing his dangly bits to find the three female members of the household staring at him through the window.

BADGER'S FOOTNOTE.
If I didn't have one white foot Pauline Hanson would probably have me sent to Nauru for processing, whatever that is.