They’re not Menzies’ forgotten people, they’re One Nation’s fed-up people

They're not forgotten, they're fed up!

 

When Menzies spoke of the ‘forgotten people’, he meant the middle class – the engine room of the economy, neither rich enough to live off capital nor poor enough to live off the state.

Under Albanese, that class has been crowded out by a client class of grant recipients, public-sector dependants, and subsidised NGOs for whom government is not a last resort but a business model. To Menzies’ forgotten people that idea was sacrilege. To Labor’s clients it is an entitlement.

Somebody always has to pay.

The people paying, in money and in culture, are ordinary Australians.

When I read Barnaby Joyce’s statements, I cringe a little at the language and the repetition. His message is right, but the delivery is rough. Polish it and you would only sound like the Coalition. And people have stopped trusting the polish.

If Albanese is a ‘global citizen’, we should Section 44 him

The global village idiot gets a gong while at the UN in New York, the socialist capital of the world.

There’s always one… Albo is Australia’s (global) village idiot.

For proof of this, he received the Atlantic Council Global Citizen Award, handed to him at the Waldorf Astoria during UN General Assembly week. Apparently, it indicates Albo is one of the leading and influential they/them statespersons.

It didn’t come cheap. And I’m not talking about the $4,000-a-night ballroom on Park Avenue.

Papua New Guinea’s James Marape introduced our proud houso-boy-turned-Copacabana-PM as a ‘fair dinkum Aussie’.

As I watched Albo stand between Keanu Reeves and a Formula One executive, I could not help but think this is the same old vanguard of the dictatorship of the proletariat that has failed in every instance throughout history.

Once the communist-curious Labor politicians get a taste of wealth and power, they lean more toward entitled champagne socialism than the working-class.

Then the Internationale gives them a gong, and the ego trip sends them off with the fairies.

When it comes to this celebrated global influence, the trouble for Albo is that he isn’t leading a middle power. Which means he can’t lead the middle powers in some type of suicidal empathy. He has reduced Australia to a nothing power.

Vale Gary ‘Angry’ Anderson

My first vision of Rose Tattoo.

Two bands defined my youth – AC/DC and Rose Tattoo. This week we lost the lead singer of the latter. AC/DC ran like a business. Angry never did. This was reflected in the rawness of his voice and his music.

When I first saw Rose Tattoo’s album cover for Assault and Battery, I was in a friend’s house where his single mother was in the process of evicting her biker boyfriend. It was his poster. I’d had a glimpse into the hard life that Angry sang about, and by my mid-teens I was flirting with the lifestyle.

What struck me about Rose Tattoo’s music was the sound of the slide guitar. I’d seen AC/DC’s TNT on Countdown and almost every kid in my primary school was a fan. But not so many knew about Rose Tattoo.

My other primary school music, set against a backdrop of Bon Scott, was never quite loud, fast, or hard enough. I found what I was looking for in Rose Tattoo.

At the age of 11, I started listening to Assault and Battery. At the same time, I became fascinated by politics. As the records stacked up, I was conscious of the union bias and Angry’s penchant for the Eureka flag. Eureka and Ned Kelly are not lost on me as an important part of the larrikin, egalitarian Australian spirit, but I was a little too conservative to jump to the left.

In my late teens, I steered away from Rose Tattoo’s 1984 album, Southern Stars. The title track and another track from the album, ‘Death or Glory’, were a bit too revolutionary for someone who was surrounded by veteran Australian soldiers.

At the same time, I was working as a trolley boy in a major supermarket, a closed shop for the Australian Workers Union. I earnt $30 for my eight hours over Friday night and Saturday morning. My compulsory union fees were $90. I worked the first three weeks for nought. Not once did I see a union rep.

Rose Tattoo and Angry became like AC/DC to me. The classics, the olds and bolds got all the airtime in the ‘soundtrack to my life’. I ignored the rest.

Then Fred Pawle interviewed him during the Voice referendum.

In the interview, I noticed that Angry had a bookshelf full of classic books behind him. But what struck me most was what he said.

He had many union mates. But when he formed his own opinion about the Voice, it differed from the union view. I recall him talking about how many didn’t simply agree to disagree but instead decided they weren’t friends anymore. That brought Rose Tattoo’s later music into sharp relief. I started listening to the tracks I’d skipped in the late 1980s.

I’m still an avid fan. Spotify tells me I am in the top 1 per cent of Rose Tattoo listeners.

I can now listen to ‘Southern Stars’ with a patriotic glow, and when Angry sings of the ‘ghosts of Eureka’, I can appreciate how the young leader of the rebellion, Peter Lalor, became conservative in his politics in later life.

Angry told much of his story to Fred Pawle.

In addition to the music, I was also surprised to learn more about when Angry sings ‘technical school it was a waste of time making robots for some factory line…’ in ‘Scarred for Life’. He was not so much walking away – ‘I got my first tattoo when I was sixteen, the rebel had lost his teenage queen’. It was much more intellectual.

Angry Anderson recalled how he was meant to become a fitter and turner at tech school, but he admitted that he ‘loved English and reading books instead’.

He said he always took ‘two good books’ on tour. He kept returning to Donald Horne’s The Lucky Country and The Secret History of the World. Winnie Mandela’s story inspired a song on Beats From a Single Drum.

Rose Tattoo had an international impact. Guns N’ Roses were inspired by Rose Tattoo and covered one of Rose Tattoo’s songs, ‘Nice Boys Don’t Play Rock ’n’ Roll’. Anderson even appeared on stage to sing it with Axl Rose when Guns N’ Roses performed in Australia.

Rose Tattoo’s European tour confirmed the band’s reach. In Germany, on that farewell run, Angry suffered a cardiac arrest. He was brought home, and died in Australia on Monday 21 September, surrounded by his family. He was 79.

I feel like I have lost someone who guided me through my youth.

‘The Butcher and Fast Eddy’ taught me that a wild man could still have a code. ‘Sydney Girls’ still makes me think of Eliza. Scarred for Life is the greatest driving song I know. I ride because of it. ‘It’s Gonna Work Itself Out’ is stoicism in a four-minute can. And ‘Southern Stars’ is the vow I can finally hear without flinching – here I was born, and here I’ll die!

Thanks for sharing your life with me, Angry. I’m glad you made it home.

Rest in Peace, Mate.