Fuck You, Matthew Guy

So the story is that the Victorian opposition has promised to sack councils that refuse to celebrate Australia Day on January 26.

So what is there to say to that proposal but: fuck you, Matthew Guy.

Seriously. What sort of petty, whiny, snivelling, attention-starved, developmentally-arrested, bantam-hearted creep is presuming to call himself the leader of the opposition in this blighted state?

There always comes a moment when a right-wing politician goes full fascist, and Guy has chosen to do it the municipal way: removing democratically elected representatives from office for failing to hold a sausage sizzle on the right day. Anyone with half a brain and a lizard’s sense of moral fibre would call out the cut-price Mussolini for what he is and tell him to fuck off back to the Lobster Cave. Unfortunately the Liberal Party is blessed with neither a surplus of brains nor a surfeit of morality. In fact, neither is the Labor Party, and if Dan Andrews vows to match this dickwitted policy I wouldn’t be at all surprised.

But nobody who has retained the basic decency required to stay out of state politics should consider lending their support even for moment. Even if you don’t want the date changed (I think you should, but that’s another argument), even if you enthusiastically celebrate every January 26, you should recognise this for the grotesque mockery of the concept of public interest that it is. It’s an appeal to instincts so base they can only be expressed by digestive noises. It’s a whistle to make dogs gnaw off their own legs.

And if you want a true-blue fair dinkum patriotic reason to oppose this horrific idea, it’s completely un-Australian.

I mean, in a way. In another way of course it’s incredibly Australian. What could be more Australian than demanding the authorities punish those different to ourselves? What could be more Australian than seeking an official ban on anything that makes us uncomfortable?

But if we choose to aspire to something close to the idealistic image of Australian character — if the way we like to see ourselves can stand as an inspiration in any way — then it’s un-Australian as hell to pass a law mandating celebration of nationalistic pride.

Every now and then an opportunity comes along for us to act as if that whole “Australians are anti-authoritarian” thing isn’t a laughably transparent fiction. Here’s one of those opportunities! An opportunity to say fuck you Matthew Guy, and fuck you to any politician who presumes to command their fellow citizens to perform patriotism in a state-approved manner.

Or we could all decide that the true defining trait of Australians is a meek submissiveness to authority, allied to a feverishly insecure need for ostentatious nationalism and an erotic attachment to conformity. There’s plenty of evidence for this already, if we’re honest.

But let’s be optimistic, and hope there are still enough thinking human beings left in Victoria to make the “fuck you” loud enough for Matthew Guy to hear in his sweaty little shell-likes.

If I were really optimistic I’d hope that, should Victoria be punished so severely by the Almighty for the sin of keeping The Footy Show on air that Matthew Guy actually becomes premier, councils all over the state collectively cancel Australia Day celebrations in solidarity with each other and with the principle of freedom of conscience. But I know that calibre of spine is too much to hope for en masse.

All I ask, for now, is that Matthew Guy — the man who wants to crack open our education system and dribble “Australian values” all over our children like so much rancid spittle; the man who clutches his pearls and hops from foot to foot on a kitchen chair squealing about imaginary African gangs, when he’s not enjoying seafood dinners with luminaries of actual gangs; the man whose every pronouncement stains the public record like a damp patch on a thirteen-year-old’s mattress — is left in no doubt of his superfluousness to the human race.

Fuck you, Matthew Guy.

If you would like to support me in my idiotic desire to make a living as a writer, you can subscribe to my Patreon. If you wouldn’t like to, you can pretty much continue as you have been, really.