Tony Abbott Compared Bill Shorten To Nazi Germany’s Joseph Goebbels

Never assume a day in Australian politics can’t exceed your lowest expectations. In Question Time this afternoon, Tony Abbott reprised his “call the ALP Nazis” tactic, seemingly for the hell of it, by jokingly labeling Opposition Leader Bill Shorten the “Goebbels of economic policy”.

For those playing at home, Joseph Goebbels was Adolf Hitler’s Propaganda Minister for twelve years. He was one of the people most responsible for turning antisemitism in Nazi Germany into a national pastime, and was one of the biggest supporters of the Final Solution.

You can quite clearly hear Bill Shorten calling Tony Abbott “disgusting” in that video, which for once isn’t just Question Time theatrics. The comment particularly incensed Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, who can be seen in the video standing up and shouting at Abbott. Dreyfus is Jewish. In fact, Dreyfus’ grandparents were forced to send their kids — including Mark’s father George — to Melbourne in the 1930s, out of fear of the Nazis. Dreyfus noted in his maiden Parliamentary speech that three of his great-grandparents were killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Shortly after furiously reacting to Abbott’s jibe, Dreyfus was kicked out of Question Time by Speaker Bronwyn Bishop for disorderly conduct.

Real-talk, for a minute. I try to keep up with all the terrible, screwy stuff the Prime Minister says and does, and put a light spin on it — a lot of it is weird and silly, like the onion thing this morning, but ultimately harmless. But stuff like this is vile. It’s not even that he did it — it’s conceivable that someone could say something like that in the heat of the moment, and if they were genuinely sorry about it it’d be forgivable, too. It’s that he did it deliberately — he’s done it before, don’t forget — and he so clearly thinks it’s funny. Bringing up the Holocaust to upset someone is a trick perfected by teenage YouTube commenters; it’s so far beneath the dignity of anyone with a speck of decency, let alone the Prime Minister of Australia. Stuff like this degrades us.