On Monday night, Al Jazeera published the findings of a three-year investigation into the National Rifle Association’s manipulative media practices.
As part of the investigation, One Nation’s Queensland party leader Steve Dickson and Senator Pauline Hanson’s chief of staff James Ashby were filmed discussing weakening Australia’s gun laws during a trip to the US last year.
In the footage, Ashby can be heard saying that $US20 million in donations from the NRA to One Nation would give the party parliamentary influence in Australia.
On a separate occasion, Dickson tells NRA officials that for the world to look to Australia as a model for gun control would be “poison”.
“If we don’t change things, people are going to be looking at Australia and go ‘well, it’s OK for them to go down the path of not having guns, it’s OK for them to go down that politically-correct path’,” he says.
On Tuesday, however, they both provided a perfectly reasonable explanation for their behaviour.
Guys.
They were drunk.
Get over it.
"The conversations that have been recorded... I’ll be the first to admit, we’d arrived in America, we got on the sauce, we’d had a few drinks and that’s where those discussions took place," Ashby told media in Brisbane.
We feel so... silly.
Look.
We've all done things we regret while drinking. We get it.
We spoke to Australian women about the silly things they've done while drunk. Here are 44 of them - none of which, surprisingly, involve conspiring to soften Australian gun laws:
- Eaten an entire BBQ chicken
- Thrown up in a bush while blaming it on food poisoning
- Peed in a bush
- Left a tampon in longer than I should have
- Woke my dog up for a chat
- Bought 11 McDonald's breakfast wraps at the drive-through, proceeded to eat none of them
- Gone online to secretly buy the same top my friend was wearing when she went to the bathroom
- Texted my high school boyfriend to see if he wanted to have sex
- Thrown up in a taxi
- Thrown up on my partner during sex
- Cried for no reason
- Fallen asleep with a takeaway burger up my sleeve
- Left a party to get McDonald's drive through in an Uber and returned to the party
- Stalked my ex-best friends online and cried about the fact they weren’t my best friends anymore even if one of them bought a kitten that I was allergic to and that’s what turned them all against me. I hated the kitten.
- Thrown up spaghetti bolognese whole in a club
- Stole a coat from Opera Australia (sorry)
- Taunted vegans who told me they don’t eat honey
- Stacked it down a flight of stairs and smashed my face open
- Woken up my toddler for a chat
- Tweeted
- Tried for an hour to take a contact lens out when it wasn’t in my eye to begin with
- Pretended I was an under 18 tennis champion to pick up a guy
- Cried and said my dog couldn’t ever look at me as her mum again because my drunkenness was embarrassing
- Thrown up a tequila shot in my mouth and swallowed it again
- Stole a cat (for like half an hour)
- Sent thirsty tweets to Ludacris
- Ate leftover pork roast in bed after a night out, and woke up in the morning confused that my doona smelt like meat.
- Gone for a jog
- Had unprotected sex
- Licked cocaine off a toilet seat
- Crashed a house party thrown by university students and danced in their lounge room (in my thirties)
- Gave myself a black eye after slipping on the bathroom mat and hitting the sink in the dark
- Booked a last minute holiday online TO ANOTHER COUNTRY then sobered up while on the flight
- Missed an 8am flight to Portugal and then projectile vomited at the airport
- Opened my mate’s back pocket and vomited in it
- Consumed beer from smelly shoes
- Got up to sing Karaoke then half way through the song forgetting why I was on the stage and leaving
- Ran around London naked
- Got angry at a guy I was kissing for not remembering my name when I never told him and also never knew his name
- Took a stray dog home and made it sleep in my bed
- Sang enthusiastically, but poorly, at the company Christmas party, which was then played the following day on the big screen to everyone while I rocked up late looking for a Berocca confused why everyone was cheering
- Went to a bar with my current boyfriend but accidentally then went home with my ex boyfriend
- Lost my house key on Christmas Eve and couldn’t get into my flat, went back to the pub to find it and the bouncer wouldn’t let me in so I TRIED TO FIGHT HIM
- Got kicked out of the Logies after party
Ladies, pls.
But at least none of them involve gun laws, or chatting with the NRA.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Top Comments
These women sound like a bit of fun.
I have never even considered gun laws while drunk. Although I have fired a shot fun at a can while drunk and I'm almost certain thats against some gun law or another.
It is gobsmackingly ludicrous and they are running our country. They are on good salaries running around being irresponsible and stupid. There are people in the community working very hard for very little return.