Bat 21
For those who are unaware, the peaceful and tranquil South Coast of N.S.W. is to Canberra public servants what Florida is to snowbirds, what Bali is to cashed-up bogans in search of cheap thrills, and even cheaper Bintang. A place to be used and abused with scant regard for the locals.
A.C.T Labor M.L.A. Bec Cody may not be offended that eighteen years of the same A.C.T. Legislative Assembly has achieved little more than some of the highest rates in the country and a deficit of over $407 million under Labor’s watch, but she was offended when her husband saw a couple of tiles depicting indigenous Australians as he was relieving himself in the gents of the Sussex Inlet R.S.L. recently.
“How dare the quaint area we visit because it has charming decades-old sensibilities have charming decades-old sensibilities?” she seemingly thought, clutching her pearls with more vigour than the old salt by the bar clutching at his Keno slip and no doubt wishing these loud and annoying blow-ins would just f— off back to Canberra.
Cody’s assertion was that the venue had set a bunch of tiles depicting indigenous Australians in the gents as some kind of racial slight. But like Labor’s carbon tax, the M.L.A. carefully omitted any information that might throw her baseless claims into question. For one thing, her husband neglected to photograph other tiles in the same venue.
Are we to presume that the venue also wished to slight Australian fauna and flora as the original landowners? I’ve seen tiles like these all over the land. They often feature wattle, possums, kookaburras… even Uluru. The only crime that venues with them are guilty of is not refurbishing since the seventies. If anyone should feel slighted by them, it’s those who arrived post-1788: the Anglos, the Chinese, the Greeks, the Italians, the Vietnamese, the Lebanese… who presumably didn’t qualify as iconically Australian enough to be immortalised as a time capsule for insufferable Champagne Socialists to discover in 2017. The tiles are perfectly innocent. Next Bec Cody will be seeing Swastikas.
Bec Cody also neglected to mention that she and her husband have a dog in the fight against the R.S.L. Her husband’s motorcycle club have been refused service there several times for wearing their colours. Interestingly, a local tribal elder was a Sussex R.S.L. member until he passed recently, and had no problems getting in and no tile complaints. Perhaps the issue that the club has isn’t with indigenous Australians, but with unsavoury types like motorcycle gangs and A.C.T. M.L.A.s frequenting their establishment and scaring the locals.
It’s your XYZ.