Slipper resigns...

[MagpieBat]

On ABC News 24 right now.

[David]

Oh, bugger. Not because it's not necessarily the right move (it was probably a little dubious that he was ever even there to begin with), but because it validates Tony Abbott's absurd behaviour in the house of reps today. That man needs deterrents, not encouragement!

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-09/peter-slipper-resigns-as-speaker/4303966

[stui magpie]

Resigns from the role of speaker. He will stay in the house as an independent.

Until the next election when he'll be arseholed out of parliament.

[David]

[Tannin]

Bit of a shame, really, as his performance as speaker was outstanding. All these years as a complete dud even by Liberal backbencher standards, all the shonky deals and the twists and turns and finally, he is thrust into a very responsible job and turns out to be really, really good at it .... but has to step down.

If you wrote the Slipper story as a movie plot line, no-one would believe it.

[Bruno]

Gillard has let her mania with Tony Abbott cost her again.

Today she chose to focus on Abbott when it was clear to anyone with half a brain and a teaspoon of political nous that she should have focused on Peter Slipper.

Slipper has now gone but Gillard gets zero credit for it.

She will always be the Prime Minister who was okay with having a Speaker who referred to female genitalia as ''shell-less mussels''.

As I said in the other conversation about this topic, she can't throw stones at Tony Abbott about being sexist when she wasn't willing to move on Slipper.

Her speech was nothing but hot air.

[Tannin]

^ So which parts of Abbott's misogyny do you reject and which parts do you support and agree with?

[Bruno]

[stui magpie]

I'll bite, I don't believe Abbott is a misogynist.

[Tannin]

So you reject Abbott's view of women as people who do the ironing?

And you reject Abbott's violent attack on a female opponent at university?

And you reject Abbott's view that abortion is "the easy way out"?

And you reject Abbott's statement that women are psychologically unsuited to leadership?

Good for you!

[David]

Don't be such a hypocrite, Bruno. If I referred to penises as looking like — hell, any sea creature you can think of that seems remotely fitting — would you accuse me of hating men or being anti-male?

You mustn't have been around many gay men or, well, anybody much interesting if you can't handle a bit of vulgar discussion about genitalia.

The irony is that Tony Abbott's comments in the past — spoken by someone in a role of political office — arguably were quite sexist. Slipper's text messages — keeping in mind that I think it's totally despicable that a man's private text messages should be used against him in parliament — weren't even vaguely sexist. I mean, calling Mirabella a 'botch' (?) wasn't very nice, but she's been called much worse on here.

[Tannin]

^ Sea urchins, I presume. Unless you've only got one of them, of course.

[Bruno]

[David]

Bruno, this is the incident he's referring to:

http://magpies.net/nick/bb/viewtopic.php?p=1288896

I'm not sure that's necessarily evidence of sexism, admittedly. I get the impression Abbott was all for equal opportunity on the subject of which gender to throw punches near.

[Bruno]