Politics

Bill Shorten Tried To Prove He’s Cool By Referencing ‘Squid Game’ & It Went As Well As Expected

"Australian politics this week is just like [checks Netflix weekly top 10 list] 'Mean Girls'. Also 'Stranger Things'." – Bill Shorten next week, probably.

by Michelle Rennex  20 October 2021
Bill Shorten Squid Game Climate Net Zero

Want more Junkee in your life? Sign up to our newsletter, and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook so you always know where to find us.

Bill Shorten, the real-life version of the ‘How Do You Do, Fellow Kids?’ meme, has used Squid Game in yet another questionable and out-of-place reference to prove he’s hip.

In case you’ve forgotten, last year the former Opposition Leader was dragged to hell and back when he told Scott Morrison to stop being a “simp to Donald Trump” and when he genuinely tried to call another politician a “noob minister”. My skin crawls at the memory.

Well, lucky for us, Shorten has continued his streak of cringe references to appeal to the youth with his latest zinger that compares the political stalemate over net-zero emissions to Squid Game. 

The Netflix show reference occurred in a video Shorten uploaded to Twitter, where he criticised the debate over the Prime Minister’s plans to adopt net-zero by 2050 ahead of Cop26 — a plan that the Nationals can’t seem to agree on.

“At the moment, you’d have to draw the conclusion that the coalition between the Nats and the Liberals is a very unhappy marriage,” Bill Shorten said. “It’s become like the Squid Games of Australian politics, except without the nice tracksuits.

“The fact of the matter is that our climate is changing… and I think we’re now playing catch-up with the rest of the world,” Shorten continued. “It’s not leadership to tell people that you never have to change, not telling people the truth about the future and just saying you can conduct business as usual for as long as you want.

“Leadership is actually saying to the people ‘this is where I think the world is going and this is how we get the best deal for our people as the world changes’.”

Now if the Squid Game reference made any sense in this situation, I’d give Shorten props because his message is right. Our climate is changing and Scott Morrison needs to step up make the necessary changes before it’s too late.

However, Squid Game is literally a show about people in extreme debt being forced to play deadly kid’s games in a last-ditch effort to be able to survive in the world and NOT a story of “unhappy marriage” between squabbling rich, white men.

Plus, this whole thing gets even weirder when you realise this isn’t the only Squid Game reference Shorten made on the same topic, which really begs the question of whether the former Opposition Leader has actually ever seen the show he continues to bring up.

While chatting to Sky News, Shorten reiterated his point that Australia is lagging behind on climate action and blames the Squid Game-style stalemate between the Liberals and Nationals for it.

“History waits for no one, certainly not the Morrison Government. Australia is now well behind many other parts of the world on taking meaningful action on climate,” Shorten said. “Now I am watching the Liberal Party and the National Party act like an episode of contestants of the Squid Game. It’s remarkable.”

And you know what else is remarkable? Just how little Bill Shorten actually understands about the references he continues to bring up.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see which TV show Bill Shorten name drops and incorrectly references next.