What ever happened to David Oldfield?

Readers who have followed David Oldfield’s career, from his work for that fabulous “people person”and on-and-off father Tony Abbott, to his leading light in Pauline Hansen’s One Nation Party, and his recent Membership, representing himself in the NSW Upper House, will be delighted to hear that he has recently emerged from obscurity. He can at present be heard as midnight to dawn host on radio 2GB relieving the redoubtable Jim Ball who is presently on leave, no doubt researching lefties, greenies, Muslims, Sudanese and other groups which he can use to incite his insomniac audiences of losers into fits of sleepy or drunken rage.
Admirers of Oldfield will be delighted to hear that he fits into Jim’s pattern as if he’s been understudying him for years. The other night he and one of his listeners were getting really paranoid about an Islamic  school in Camden which, horror on horrors, had signs in Arabic on their premises. After all, they agreed, this was Straylia, the greatest country on earth, and if the bastards didn’t like it, they should get on their leaky boats and go back where they came from. Etc.,etc., etc. It reminds me of the forties, just after the war,when anyone speaking German or any other European language on a tram, or bus, or even on the street, would sooner or later be tapped on the shoulder and asked, angrily, “Whyncherspeakenglish?”

Perhaps the frustrated callers would foam at the mouth if they were told that the Malek Fahd  Islamic School came ninth out of the top two hundred schools in the recent NSW HSC results.

I’m sure Jim Ball and his disciple would.

THE BRINGER OF APATHY AND CRIER OF WOLF.

Why doesn’t my hair stand on end with fright when I read of Federal Police Commissioner Keelty’s latest warning of imminent terrorist activities? I suppose it was because he began to authorise the running of those old TV ads advising us to “dob in a neighbour if you see something suspicious” a couple of weeks before the election. That was a bit too transparently political!
I would have thought that those kinds of warnings should have come from the Government, not the police Commissioner.
Still, I suppose those brilliant Liberal Party strategists also thought it might look a bit transparent, so Keelty did the job for them. The last arrow in an empty quiver, as it were.
I wonder if I’m the only one who thought we were treated to a bit too much of the Commissioner’s bovine features of late. His questionable role in the matter of the persecution of the young Doctor Haneef and the delivery of the Bali nine to the Indonesian police after Scott Rush’s father, in an effort to save his son, warned the Commissioner that the boy was about to deliver a consignment of heroin to Bali and asked him to have him stopped in Australia.
Now neither Scott or any of his associates were shining examples of clean living to their fellow young Australians, but since manslaughter perpetrators often get something like eight years in Australia, and the Mr Bigs in the drug trade get maybe fifteen – being shot for being caught with a quantity of heroin strapped to your groin would seem a little steep, particularly if you’re only eighteen and dumb to boot.

Maybe Commissioner Keelty should keep his head down for a while and curtail his TV and press appearances to less than a minimum while the storm blows over.
If he feels he’d like to make a political career for himself, he might apply to Brendan Nelson for a job.
I believe the Libs are desperate for new talent.

DR DOOLITTLE, I PRESUME.

Well now that Australia will finally be allowed to get  on with entering the twenty first century away from John Howard’s father’s philosophy and the good old days in Lane Cove when everyone knew their place, let’s look at the shambles that are left of the Coalition.

Oddly enough they elected Brendan Nelson to be their leader (they’re not sure yet because counting hadn’t really finished, and a couple of Senators’ plane was delayed, so they missed the vote).

Peter Costello is sulking somewhere, Alexander Downer wants to be party president but he doesn’t seem to want to be in parliament any more and might very well take his bat and ball and retire to the family manor.  Mal Brough lost his seat. So did Gary Nairn, so did sundry others.

Naturally, Bronwyn Bishop is still there and, wonder of wonders, has been recycled onto the front bench – Boadicea with a triple bypass?  Tony Abbott, that durable person loaded with people skills  is back on the front bench with a job in which he can’t do much harm.  The little doctor showed great tact by maintaining that “it’ll be the making of Tony.”

Mal Turnbull, the only one of the whole bunch who might, when he’s been in opposition for the decade or so it’ll take him to do a Phd in humility, be prime minister material, is meanwhile fuming about playing third fiddle to a medical nonentity and a lady with a peculiar stare no doubt  meant to  hypnotize anyone who displeases her.

The most notable absence is, of course, the “greatest Prime Minister  the country ever had”.  He’s moving back to little old Wollstonecraft without servants, or a thousand dollar wine cellar, or the ocean lapping at his front garden.  He might still need a couple of bodyguards. After all, el Qaeda has a long memory. And sho sent him packing with his tail between his legs? It was a diminutive, attractive , intelligent ex ABC journalist, Maxine McHugh, only the second person evor to take a seat from a prime minister.

And then there’s Phil Ruddock, not a man to meet on a dark night.  He didn’t lose his seat.  Up in Berowra, as in Brendan Nelson’s Bradfield almost all of them vote Liberal no matter if the drover’s dog presents himself. However, he lost his ability to do any more harm to refugees and people like David Hicks, and that must hurt him plenty.

And then  came the antics of Jackie Kelly and her crowd’s antics in Lindsay……enough said.

Probably the most pathetic thing John Howard said to his colleagues after it was all over was: “Dont feel ashamed of my legacy.”

He didn’t explain why not.