'Guns for Votes'

The Australian Broadcasting Commission has been under pressure to 'convert' to the right-wing paradigm that has consumed Australian political discourse over the last decades. Despite extreme cuts and constant political verballing, vestiges of independence have remained. However, reading this pathetic piece of political journalism on the ABC's website regarding the (in my opinion) intellectually and politically self-serving and hubristic David Leyonhjelm's love of guns, I fear that those last vestiges have finally been eroded.

This article is without an opposing view, does not even follow the basic tenets of fair journalism, and functions as an almost light-hearted romp with the senator as he goes in to bat for gun 'fun'. As the American election has taken the right into its fascist soul-lands and found it both ripe and willing, so has Australia lurched further and further into a far right inhabited by racist apologists, exploitative industrial-military 'libertarians' and religious bigots. This is the worst Australia of the many Australias I have experienced in my lifetime.

The weapons that have destroyed liberty in the United States for so many victims will also completely destroy liberty for many in Australia. These bastards who trade in 'talk' and 'votes' and 'opinions' care only for themselves, not for you. Yes, 'people kill', but guns make it a whole lot easier for them to do so.

I grew up with an understanding and familiarity with guns, and turned away from them in my youth in a very literal and specific way. My poetry is opposed to violence in all forms, though it often 'illustrates' it. Guns are not fun — we are only taught that they are fun. And when they become semantic ploys of right-wing libertarians, they are distributed as tools of ideological conflict. Tools that maim and kill.

John Kinsella