His Kevin" Bloody" Wilson outburst caused maiden aunts throughout the nation to faint on reading about his foul- mouthed tirade. Then he brought on a renewed outbreak of the vapours when he strongly supported his use of such gutter language . Furthermore, he said strong language was not uncommon in robust Labor Party discussions.
Not here in the staid Territory ALP , naughty Kevin. This Little Darwin scribbler , though young at heart and still in possession of most of his marbles, is slightly past his use by date and had a full and frank star chamber exchange with the NT ALP secretary, Mark Whittaker. Whittaker is an import from the Qld ALP, where even a deaf member of the party would know that a salty oath is often heard at party meetings . In a strange previous episode , Whittaker took me to task for having once, through a slip of the tongue, called one of Chief Minister Henderson's advisers Gavin instead of Gareth , which had apparently caused an international incident with the warlike Welsh nation . I have to admit that forgetting names is a sign of senile decay . Anyway, at our jolly get together, Mark informed me that a man of my age should be expected to speak in a more gentlemanly fashion. Really ?
My response to this odd reprimand was incredibly restrained for me , probably because my wife had seen flames emitting from my nostrils before I set out for the tete- a -tete ( this is a delightful French expression for head butting , I think) , and she requested me , using strong diplomatic language , to be kind to dumb animals and not to swear .
Golly, gosh, I am sorry , I told Mark, the campaigner for a new age of genteel NT political debate . Chastened , I departed the scene, without upending him in a nearby flower pot or pouring my café latte over him. Obviously , I am going soft in a growing number of vital parts of my body.
My response to this odd reprimand was incredibly restrained for me , probably because my wife had seen flames emitting from my nostrils before I set out for the tete- a -tete ( this is a delightful French expression for head butting , I think) , and she requested me , using strong diplomatic language , to be kind to dumb animals and not to swear .
Golly, gosh, I am sorry , I told Mark, the campaigner for a new age of genteel NT political debate . Chastened , I departed the scene, without upending him in a nearby flower pot or pouring my café latte over him. Obviously , I am going soft in a growing number of vital parts of my body.
In Queensland , where I had some involvement in the ALP, attending branch meetings at which strong language was often used to describe individuals and groups damaging the Labor Party , I asked a friend who was on the personal staff of a minister what his opinion was of a certain other minister . “He’s a f***ing log ,” was his reply, which accorded with my assessment, having winced at his public pronouncements and the ham- fisted and aggressive manner in which he - a former unionist- addressed workers with justified complaints. That log is now confined in an establishment where his every move is regulated.
UPDATE: No sooner had we posted the above item than we received a phone call from a regular reader of Little Darwin who keeps a forensic watch on Territory politics and has a fabulous data bank. This person suggested the reason why Mark Whittaker chided me for wrongly calling one of the CM's advisers Gavin instead of Gareth is because the local media gets his (Whittaker's) surname wrong from time to time. He pointed to an NT News story in March this year , written by Ben Langford, headed TAXPAYERS COUGH UP FOR HENDO'S MAN , which announced that in a move to avoid a factional fight in the ALP ( hopefully, no bad language was used in this fracas ) , former MLA ,James Burke , of the Left , would get a job in the CM's Palmerston office on a salary of more than $163,000 , opening the way for Mark Whitaker (sic) , of the Right, to become the ALP secretary. Wonder if Mark rang up reporter Langford and reprimanded him for getting his moniker incorrect ?
