Hard to see how Ashby, a man of thirty-four, can make a charge of harassment stick on the basis of his evidence, which is very bad dialogue indeed. Like ‘Look, look, I’m titty-fucking your mother’, it resembles nothing said by any human being since early Pleistocene times.
‘Have you ever come in a man’s arse before?’ is something Slipper is said to have said over morning coffee to a presumed heterosexual. The operative word is ‘before’, which means, must mean, that Ashby has come in a man’s arse quite recently. It cannot be read in any another way, in my view. If he had said, or have been reported to have said, ‘Have you come in a man’s arse?’, this would be a reasonable thing to ask if one were a homosexual talking to another homosexual, or bisexual, over coffee in the morning. But ‘before’ can only mean he, or they, have just done it. Very hard to read in any other way. In my view.
Ashby’s alleged response, ‘That’s not the kind of question you ask people, Peter’, supports, I think, this conjecture. The answer of an aghast heterosexual would have been ‘no’, followed by the knocking over of the chair as he left in a huff the anxious yearning predator in the coffee shop and paid the bill and hailed a taxi. It’s like a question I once put to a woman I knew well who had been married thirty odd years. ‘Have you ever had an affair?’ I asked, sensing something in her demeanour that hinted this. ‘I can’t answer that, Bob,’ she said, extremely pissed off. Which meant the answer was yes.
If Ashby is a practising homosexual, and he accepted work in the office of a man who was married but known, or widely rumoured, to be a closeted, or cautious, or wide-ranging secret homosexual and did so at the age of thirty-four, it is reasonable I think to ask, was an office wooing like this always thought by him to be out of the question? Many, many marriages, after all, have started in precisely this way. Many, many doctors have married nurses after workplace encounters and a fumble at the Christmas party, or even, as MASH attests, in the surgery. Offices are intimate places, and things happen.
What, then, is the charge precisely? That he was threatened with the sack if he did not come across? Nothing in the emails suggests this. That he came banging at the door at midnight? This is not alleged. That he hinted some things in texts and emails? Shock horror.
I think, but of course I do not know, that it might have been different had he been eighteen; or, let’s face it, fourteen. Then his employer could have been seen to be using the power of his office in a coercive or a bullying way; like, say, Charlie Chaplin over his teenage leading ladies.
But a man with homosexual experience who is already thirty-four — at his age the flamboyant bisexual Lord Byron had only eighteen months to live — expects to be come onto, surely, from time to time, depending on how he dresses, moves and speaks. And expects, in return, to have the right to say no; which Slipper, though persistent (if his account is true) did not deny him, the right of refusal, or so I thus far understand.
The Liberals are ill-advised to take this on. The personality of Christopher Pyne, and Billy McMahon, and the former Deputy Leader Neil Brown, suggest, but do not prove, there may have been similar wooings in MPs’ offices in the past. And this may come out now, inconveniently.
It also ill accords with Tony Abbott’s recent genial acceptance of his own sister’s life choices despite his Church’s insistence that she must repent, or fry in Hell. And his own daughters’ characterisation of him, for whatever jokey private reason, as a ‘lame gay churchy loser’.
It is not a good time, I would think, for him of all people to seem to be a hypocrite.
Some knives are being sharpened, and his own chequered sexual history, including when he was a trainee priest (as discussed in Michael Duffy’s book) will tell against him.
He should be careful, very careful.
And so it goes.
Name:
Tony Abbott has nothing to worry about. A moral man cannot be sullied by the grubs that surround him.
Quite right, Frank :
“My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure.”
Tony Abbott? or was it Sir Galahad . . .
If that’s how morality is currently being defined in Liberal ranks, I have to wonder what the term “ethics” might be code for. Probably inter-office live ferret insertion or some such.
LOL, Frank,you do have a sense of humour after all: Abbott is a moral man!
Are you saying Tony Abbott’s immoral, Helvi??
Morality refers to standards adhered to by a specific cultural group, having to do with mannerisms, custom etc. It is ethics that refer to a universal set of principles that are theoretically applicable across all cultures. Is anyone actually claiming that Abbott is ethical? How well he conforms to Frank and Loula’s religious views (word to the wise – not very well) is irrelevant to anyone not themselves of that view.
Loula, how moral is any politician? I allways believed that Bob Brown was one of them.
The only religious view I’ve shared is that I believe in God. So not sure how anyone would know whether someone “conforms” to my views or not. Perhaps Reader1 is now a MindReader.
Disagree with that morals vs ethics lesson.
Don’t presume to know how “moral” any politician is – particularly on the basis of innuendo. I was amused at Auberon Waugh’s suggestion that they must all have a personality disorder.
Disagree with the dictionary, it’s got nothing to do with me.
You’re an idiot, Bob Ellis.
Say why.
Please say why.
always seems to me that the right wing side, is so cruel and so determined to do what they want -bringing people down over personal moral issues. Slipper is a marked man because of his switch – the libs just can’t hack it or tolerate it.
always seems to me that the ALP is more gracious about people’s faults
Indeed. I don’t think Mal Colston truly appreciated the depth of the Labor Party’s own graciousness until his own defection.
The ALP was very gracious about Mal Colston when he ratted on them. Right!
Mal, hiding in Right.Yes.
So were those days past.gone but not forgotten.
We will hound him till the day he dies – Robert Ray and the forgiving understanding left approach to a deserter.
Mal was self serving as his vote. Oligarch’s puppy in a mess of corruption and cronyism. Tit’s on a bull.
You’ll always find Liberal in Labour,you’ll never find Labour in Liberal.
Except for Malcolm. Or Brendan.
“Roberta”‘s Song for Robert:
“I heard he I heard he sang a good song
I heard he had a style
and so i came to see
and listen for a while
and there he was this [old man]
a stranger to my eyes…”
…tarnishing, tarnishing, tarnishing…
Bob Ellis, this stuff is you at your sly, sleazy worst. I thought the issue was alleged sexual harassment – not a chance to expound on bi-/homo-/flamboyant-poetical- sexual proclivities.
The Human Rights of Slipper’s wife in all this don’t rate a mention I see.
To Loula :
I have never met Ellis; he does not know me from Adam.
I insist that you retract the word minion immediately, or you will acquire an enemy, Loula. This is the last opportunity.
You, Loula will reap the whirlwind. Fuck off.
Doug, don’t you mean she will reap what she’s sowed? Or she’ll be caught in a whirlwind. And by ‘fuck off’ do you mean perform sex and leave or perform the act on you because you’re “off”? Charity, in other words.
Can you dumb it down for the rest of us please.
A terrific insight, Bob. You really have demonstrated a poetic and analytical flair for the anal shenanigans going on.
I note how you took umbrage at my suggestion Mr Mel Gibson may enjoy some rectal penetration, and now you’ve provided a scintillating and racy insight into the fake Slipper staffer’s account.
I trust I am not your only reader to find this prose rather arousing and stimulating? Bum-fuckery seems to be your forte.
Perhaps you could contact your good mate Mel and ask him to star as the Speaker in the screenplay you will pen, ‘The Passion of the Clacker’.
A great read, thanks.
You’re boring me, Terrance. This whole leading with the attitude thing is getting old. If the Liberals don’t want their ferret enjoyment practices getting out there, then they should be mindful of that when going about their muckraking and whipping up of moral hysteria.
Thanks for your enlightenment Mother Theresa. If you’re bored poppet, why don’t you read excerpts from your autobiography, it sounds like a classic of the genre.
And this fixation with buttocks – Bob defends anyone from Left, regardless of which team they play for. I’m certain he knows of a few MPs supping from both the honey jar and the fudge pot; a few good Labor types banging away like tomorrow never ends, a few Liberals with questionable taste in penguins, a senior journo who likes leather, and not just to wear.
And so to Slipper – who knows where the man’s cod piece goes, and honestly, who cares. But a claim of harassment is a serious matter, and to pretend otherwise is curious. If, for example, a young Parliamentary Adviser went to Fair Work Australia with an allegation that Mr Pyne attempted involuntary fulfilment, would Bob Ellis argue that News Ltd should not report this? Should a case like this be suppressed and should allegations of harassment in the workplace be reported or not?
If it was your son or daughter who was asked to clean the pipe or empty the seed drawer, would you defend the alleged perpetrator or the alleged victim?
Your concern for Ashby’s welfare is incredibly touching. We could all hitch our star to your moral compass, Terrance. It would guide us along the evolutionary yellow brick road, straight to the promise land of Menzies House. Where life is beautiful all the time.
What would be more interesting of Terrance’s question Reader1 is for how long news.com knew of Mr Slipper’s well known and long standing and reported persistent habit’s prior to getting hunted to boost Labour’s prospects.
The media is very choosy on who and the reason’s why of applying the righteous public lash.
The gardens are really quite lovely, full of an array of natives – you should pop over and fertalize them sometime.
I’d choke on the atmosphere. I need fresh air.
Look, if anything happenes Reader1, I’ll make sure a team of young Liberal men is on hand to give you mouth-to-mouth, or Slipper-to-staffer as we call our First Aid program.
Look, I’ve grown fond of Slipper over the months, he can give me “mouth” to, ahem, “mouth” if it were ever to come to that. But as for any of the pubus’ they have appearing on The Drum, I would literally rather die. Nothing could be that bad and I’ve drunk the tap water in India.
Cast iron undies for me. I hope i’m never found unconscious in his path.
What a nightmare coming around to that face standing over you.
The biggest lie told of me by Terrance — soon to be banned for life plus eighty-two years, he knows not the day nor the hour — is whatever those of the Left do is fine with me. I attacked and sought to destroy Rudd in June 2010. I called for Gillard’s deselection in January 2010. I wrote a book attacking Keating’s economics in 1999. I attacked Tripodi, Obeid, Roozendahl, Iemma and Keneally in 2009. I cursed Blair in print for seven years and Hillary Clinton for three months. I sided with the Social Democrats against Labour in the UK in 1983. I stood against Labor as an Independent in 1994 and 1998. I spoke up for the Monarchy against the Republicans in print and at public meetings for eighteen years.
I was/am a friend of Jim Killen, Peter Collins, Chris Puplick, Fred Chaney, Kamahl, Robert Menzies the actor, Mel Gibson, Gary McDonald and, for a few hours, Joh Bjelke-Petersen. This is a monstrous libel and I could go him for a quarter of a million plus costs and I’m sick of him. He is an ignorant, malicious and chronically mendacious drunkard and, almost certainly, a dud fuck with both sexes. I wish him ill fortune, bad weather, air sickness and banana skins and he will never dine at Macchiavelli’s with me, I swear, in my present lifetime.
He should, as we preverts like to say, go to buggery.
I have sent this libel to my law firm, Gherkin, Jerkin & Merkin (and Sons).
Your mother says I’m not a dud fuck, and I have a receipt to prove it.
See you in court.
PS > I will see you at Aussie’s during Budget week? I owe you a coffee I think …
Cheers
Well, you’re buying.
Of course
You do know I love you Bob? I just can’t help myself sometimes. I am addicted to banter and the joust, and I am like Grasshopper.
A double soy mocha?
Commuted to two months.
Don’t push it.
Bob – sooner or later you will be sued for something you write here. Someone you wound will strike back.
I hope you have had good legal advice about putting your assets beyond reach. Bankruptcy and loss of everything would not be a good thing to happen at your age.
I know you are not about to change what you write so please see someone competent about protecting your assets.
Bob never criticizes the left – true or not?
See above, you moron.