Another week, another epic take-down.
Last week on The Weekly Charlie Pickering skewered Cori Bernardi for his anti-Halal stance. This week, he’s taking on Tony Abbott and the marriage equality debate.
On Tuesday, just days after Ireland voted in favour of same-sex marriage, Bill Shorten and Tanya Plibersek announced they would introduce a bill for marriage equality to parliament next week.
Still not sure? 18 arguments against gay marriage – and why they’re bollocks.
In response, Abbott has hinted he might allow his party to have a conscience vote on the issue, which maybe might lead to a different, bipartisan bill being put to parliament in the future. This is potentially good news, but it will take time. It certainly won’t be next week.
In an attempt to push things along a bit, Pickering tried to reach out to our Prime Minister with some arguments in favour of marriage equality that he could understand.
He got him with economics and snappy three-word slogans.
“The best way to give small business a boost is to legalise gay marriage,” he said. “Think of the added income we’d get. Every weekend it would be like a thousand tiny Mardi Gras.”
After trying to convince Abbott that we can “gay our way back to surplus,” he hit at his nationalistic nerve, pointing out that Australia has fallen well behind the rest of the world.
“The countries we used to make jokes about, have left us behind,” he said. “Now when an Englishman, an Irishman and an Aussie walk into a bar, it turns out we’re the punchline.”
Watch him deliver several here:
More from Mamamia on the marriage equality debate:
Tony Abbott is changing his tune on same-sex marriage.
Tonight, we are one gigantic step closer to legalising gay marriage.
Top Comments
Look this is going to happen anyway now but there will always be people who have strong views against same sex marriage on both sides of politics and in the public in general. I think it's just as important that the 72% of us who are for this don't ridicule, tease or point and laugh at those who are against this because it's hard to own the moral high-ground when you're acting like a dickhead.
Remember that the last four PMs (2 Labor, 2 LNP) have been vigorously against same sex marriage (although Rudd changed his mind in his second coming BUT still did nothing about it when in power) and the current opposition leader was also firmly against it until Ireland passed it. I don't know whether Shorten has truly changed his mind or this is a political opportunity or even whether he always thought this way but feared the Union heavies who were against it. Even if this is a, "I'm sinking in the polls so I need to push Abbott on a subject that I know 72% of people disagree with him on," we need to take this opportunity to get this law changed and the best way to do this isn't ridiculing those against it ... it's talking maturely and honestly about same sex marriage and how it really doesn't mean the world is going to end.
Charlie Pickering is funny, ridiculously intelligent and gets his point across in a non-aggressive or abusive way. Bravo!