Timing, as the saying goes, is everything. It’s what sets gifted comedians apart from utter hacks, and it what transforms a terrible idea into a genuine undeniable insult.
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, it’s fair to say, is not a man with a perfect sense of timing – as shown in his attempt at topical humour on the hilarity of climate change-related sea level rise from September 2015.
So it’s not all that surprising that Dutton should be reportedly consulting with the Australian gun lobby about making guns more readily available, on the same day that US high school students walk out in their thousands in protest at their government’s inaction over gun control following the massacre at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Florida.
On Thursday it was revealed that Dutton met with folks from the Shooting Industry Foundation of Australia, who threw hundreds of thousands of dollars at minor rightwing Queensland parties ahead of the state election that the Liberal National Party did not win, and representative of Nioa, one of the largest firearms exporters. That, incidentally, is run by Robert Nioa, son-in-law of Queensland independent MP Bob Katter: you know, the one that had the election ad about shooting Labor and LNP politicians dead? That one.
According to SIFA the meeting was to discuss formalising the establishment of a firearms advisory council. And if the members of the council are a lobby group, a gun importer and right wing political figures, no doubt it’ll have a balanced, nuanced view of the issues around gun control.
It’s not the first time that the Liberals have cozied up to the gun lobby in recent times. Tasmiania’s Liberal government were returned earlier this month and promised to relax the states’ laws… on the night before the polls, after not mentioning it at any time beforehand or putting it on the party’s website. You know, in a way that’s definitely open and transparent and not even a little bit cowardly.
It’s worth understanding why Dutton is pandering to Australia’s gun lobby. While it’s nowhere near as powerful as the US equivalent, it’s currently funding pro-gun minor parties like the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.
So there’s an incentive to re-route that flow to the Liberals, because and a) the Liberals would like to stop money going to parties that might take upper house seat they consider rightly theirs, and b) all money is good money.
But even so: if you’re going to announce a plan to weaken the gun laws that have kept us mass-shooting free for decades, choosing today of all days to do it shows remarkable tone deafness.
Mind you, as the video at the start of the story reminds us, that’s pretty much Dutton’s stock in trade.