Well. John Oliver has decided to go Clive Palmer and, mate, what took you so long?
The Last Week Tonight host appears to have stumbled across the shit-show that is Australia’s election campaign, which is highly embarrassing. For all of us.
He began with the Steve Dickson scandal, a One Nation candidate, whose political career came to an abrupt end after footage emerged of him groping and making disparaging comments about a woman in a US strip club.
Footage of Tracey Grimshaw saying, “It’s a bad look and very bad judgement for a man that campaigns on family values,” was aired, before John Oliver suggested that perhaps that kind of behaviour is a bad look for literally anyone.
Everything you need to know about the Australian political scandals that have plagued this election. Post continues below.
But then he turned to Clive Palmer, the head of his own United Australia Party, and DAMMIT who told John Oliver about Clive?
He drew comparisons between the candidate and the United States’ President, Donald Trump, describing him as a “brash businessman pushing a populist anti-establishment post”.
Yep. Pretty much sums him up.
Oliver drew on infamous footage of Palmer on the Today show last week, where he yelled at Deborah Knight for no reason.
“We’ve got to stop the FAKE NEWS,” Palmer shouted, before throwing around slogans like, “God bless Australia,” and “Put Australians first”.
He went on to remind Knight of how rich he is, and how that means he doesn’t “give a stuff” what people think about him – which feels like something you should definitely care about if you want an entire nation to vote for you, but okay.
But Oliver then turned to Palmer’s… billboards… which definitely have some copyright issues.
His slogan is simply, “Make Australia great!!”, which seems oddly familiar.
“Notably,” Oliver says, “It doesn’t say ‘Make Australia great again’.” Unlike Trump, it looks like Palmer would like to make Australia great… for the first time.”
You can watch the segment right here. Post continues.
Luckily, no one seems to have told Oliver about the time Clive Palmer texted everyone trying to convince us to vote for him, before promising to stop the unsolicited texts if we just elect him. Please.
Or about the ads, which were clearly filmed in one take, given Palmer stumbles over his words and isn’t entirely coherent.
Or the rogue poetry he shared on Facebook a few years back, with such gold as:
Black dog
Black dog
Bark
Bark
White moon
White moon
Shine
Shine
Mother
But I never left you
…. Cool.
Can we all agree we’ll keep those details to ourselves? Thanks.
For more…
11 embarrassing things election candidates have been caught doing in the last week.
Election 2019: Who you should vote for, based on the issues you care about.
Top Comments
I'm a huge fan of John Oliver and his brilliant show.
The writing is complex and his delivery is high-charged and rapid and I just know he's teaching our satirical presenters a few things about "keeping it edgy".
Satire is vital these days - it's possibly the best delivery of the truth when it's covering politics & social matters.
Some of us are watching the Trump saga playing out and I've found that the YOUTUBE monologues of Stephen Colbert & Seth Meyers for eg are capturing the nonsense wonderfully.
There are also worthy shows such as Ari Melber, Rachael Maddow, Jesse Dollemore, The Young Turks, David Packman, plus other shows on CNN and MSNBC.
Dopey buffoons like Clive Palmer, Trump & Hanson are incapable of following the content of such shows.
Sometimes it seems that interested Aussies know more about world politics than they
could ever grasp..
Considering that Oliver and all those other sources you cite all stated over and over again that Trump would never be President, perhaps you should consider expanding your viewing outside of the Leftist bubble.
Can someone please teach Clive that the word “billion” exists, while we’re at it? He was telling Deborah Knight that he was worth “four thousand million dollars”, and one of his ads was complaining about the “55 thousand million dollars” spent on the NBN. Does he think that a thousand million sounds like more than a billion? Does he really think he should be in government - and responsible for spending our tax dollars - when he doesn’t even know the correct words?
I think that when pollies throw around the word "billion" that most people don't actually consider exactly what that means. I seems like Clive is trying to clarify this.
I find the following comparison really interesting/helpful.
"1 million seconds is 11.5 days and 1 billion seconds is 31.5 years"
That’s a very... generous interpretation. It may be what he’s trying to do, but unless he explains that to people, it just makes him look a bit thick.
To give the benefit of the doubt. There have been two definitions used for some time, though the US definition is now recognised internationally.
1000 Million in US English
One million million for (old) UK English
Yeah, I checked to make sure I wasn’t going crazy, but for decades, it’s been widely accepted as 1000 million.