Politics

The Most Cooked Political Moments Of 2019, From Egg Boy To Uluru

2019: The year of egging racists.

by Rachael Conaghan  6 December 2019
Egg Boy and Fraser Anning, #auspol

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This week marked parliament’s final sitting week for the year, so what better way to celebrate than to gaze fondly back at some of the most ridiculous moments from #Auspol in 2019.

The fact it was an election year has made it all the more *special.* 2019 has been nothing if not entertaining, until you realise these people are supposed to represent us — and then it just gets depressing.

So without further ado, here are some of the biggest schadenfreude moments in auspol.

Angus Taylor’s “Great Work”

Liberal MP Angus Taylor has had a shocker of a year.

Putting aside the fact he’s currently under police investigation — read more about that here — he was caught out for a pretty embarrassing social media faux pas.

While on the campaign trail in April he uploaded a Facebook post promoting some extra carparks for his local community (elections aren’t always riveting).

He then used his official MP account to tell himself what a good job he was doing (instead of, presumably, using some fake account to make it look like he has more friends than he does). Look, self care is important guys.

The best part? He used to be the minister for cybersecurity. Fantastic. Great move. Well done Angus.

Pauline Hanson Gets Stuck On Uluru

Oh, Pauline.

After campaigning tirelessly in support of quiet Australians’ rights to trample all over a sacred monument, she thought she’d prove her point by trampling on it herself.

Luckily for the rest of us irony exists, and she got stuck up there.

ScoMo’s Shoegate

Scott Morrison really set the tone for the year with this one.

What he was trying to achieve, we don’t know. All we know is someone took it upon themselves to (terribly) photoshop a pair of white shoes onto ScoMo’s feet in an official photo.

Just … why?

Scott Morrison Greeting A Korean Woman… In Chinese

Scott Morrison was in full campaign mode in the lead up to the election, putting in appearances and greeting voters across the country. It was all going so well until, well, this.

So. Much. Cringe.

I mean… he had good intentions?

This Political Mascot’s Weird Horny Dance

Remember Captain GetUp? The political mascot created by conservative group Advance Australia as a fake ‘superhero’ for activist organisation GetUp?

Well, do you remember the video of him grinding on the face of independent candidate Zali Steggall?

Yeah, everything about this one is weird and gross.

Steve Dickson’s Freudian Slip

In April One Nation’s Steve Dickson resigned after video emerged of him being a giant, disgusting sleaze in a US strip club.

He was filmed groping a dancer, asking her to slide her hand on his dick, calling women bitches and making other gross and misogynistic comments.

As if that wasn’t enough, he made this slip up in his official resignation statement.

Watching Tony Abbott Bet Against Our Future (Literally)

In May, Tony Abbott bet a woman $100 that the climate won’t change in the next ten years.

Would love to know how he’s feeling about that now as Australia literally burns around him with unprecedented ferocity.

Honestly, there is nothing else I can say about this.

May this live in infamy forever (or at least until the world disintegrates around us).

Our Political Leaders Rush To Defend A Paedophile

Honestly, if only they would show this much understanding to refugees or people on Centrelink.

Disgraced Cardinal George Pell is a convicted paedophile, found guilty of molesting two teenage boys. For most people, this is enough to cut ties.

Not only did our former PM John Howard not do that — he wrote a character reference for him AFTER his conviction, calling Pell a person “of both high intelligence and exemplary character”.

On top of that, we now know Tony Abbott has been visiting Pell in prison and still considers him a friend.

Please excuse me while I throw up.

Fraser Anning Gets Egged

No list would be complete without this.

It really does seem like a lifetime ago that we were given the pleasure of watching egg yolk drip down the back of Fraser Anning’s head, but in fact it’s been nine long months.

Will Connolly — aka egg boy — renewed my faith in humanity back in May when he decided he was sick of listening to Australia’s most racist Senator blame New Zealand’s terrorist attack on the victims.

You all know the story, but if you’d like to watch the video again here it is in all its glory, complete with a mob of bogans crash tackling a 17-year-old:

So that’s it for federal politics in 2019. May the next decade bring us some semblance of normalcy.