Watch Clive Palmer’s Insane Anti-China Rant, Seamlessly Inserted Into A Scene From ‘Arrested Development’
"They shoot their own people, they haven't got a justice system, and they want to take over this country."
On Monday this week, Clive Palmer went on Q&A and surprised everyone for the first 50 minutes by not being entirely insane. In fact, he was surprisingly lucid: he denied there was an economic crisis in Australia (“we’re the third lowest-debt country in the OECD”), he promised not to support a co-payment or university deregulation, and he argued against proposed changes to youth benefits: “This is not about building people’s self-respect and independence … This a policy designed to increase our crime rate or to increase youth suicide.”
But then Tony Jones asked about Palmer’s legal battle with a Chinese-owned company, and everything went to shit.
In an increasingly loud and incoherent tirade, Palmer began ranting at Tony Jones against China — “the Chinese bastards”, “the Chinese mongrels”; “they shoot their own people, they haven’t got a justice system, and they want to take over this country” — while Penny Wong, whose father is Malaysian Chinese, sat calmly between them, trying desperately to find her happy place.
“It is a warm, summer day; the breeze is dancing across my lovely face; I am anywhere but here.”
It was an extremely awkward moment for everyone on the panel, and everyone watching — an awkwardness that video editor and artist Huw Parkinson has paid homage to, by remixing it into an appropriate scene from Arrested Development.
It’s actually a little too perfect.
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For another from Huw Parkinson, here’s Joe Hockey in True Deceptive.
“I like to think that as long as the gaffes keep flowing (and lets face it, they will), then the videos will keep following shortly after,” Huw says.
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And for more Arrested Development/#auspol mash-ups, which is apparently a whole genre now, you might as well head to Arrested Democracy.
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