You can get it leadin’ a nation…
UPDATE: New footage has appeared of Tony Abbott downing a beer at a Sydney pub last night. And this time, it’s a close-up.
It comes to us courtesy of the Australian Women’s Weekly who happened to be on the spot when this all went down. Their story is here.
Apparently it all came about when a University footy team had their presentations. A player told The Weekly, “I walked over to Tony and said ‘Will you come over and have a beer with the best players as part of the presentation. You don’t have to say anything, you don’t have to skoll, but if you could have a drink with them, they’d love it.’
“He said ‘absolutely no problem.'”
Mamamia previously wrote:
Our sisters over at The Australian Women’s Weekly have obtained exclusive footage of the PM draining a beer in one go at a Sydney pub overnight (they have better social lives than we do).
Someone yells, “skol!”, which every Australian knows is not a question: it’s an instruction.
No matter who you are:
The link to the Women’s Weekly story is here.
He was very thirsty (Memo to Shane Warne: this is what thirsty looks like). A spectator told Women’s Weekly: “He drank from head-to-toe the entire schooner, dribbling little bits on his shirt… and then tipped it upside down on his head. He was proud as punch.”
Last year the PM increased the tax on beer and wrote an opinion for the Courier Mail in which he condemned Australia’s binge drinking culture: “The [problem is] the binge drinking culture which has become all too prevalent among youngsters… Our challenge as a people is to ensure that we get the balance right again.”
It’s about balance, people.
And I think we can all agree that there is nothing more challenging than getting the balance right between the ratio of beer to lemonade in a cheeky shandy (is it too early in the day for a shandy? I’m asking for a friend).
Regardless of your view on the PM’s thirstiness, somewhere in this wide brown land, Bob Hawke and David Boon are quietly changing their political allegiances…
