National Hypocrisy Week

This week is National Hypocrisy Week culminating in the annual ‘Jeff Kennett Hypocrite of the Year’ award, named in honour of Jeff’s 2011 feat of calling for less restrictions on poker machines while simultaneously chairing the anti-depression initiative BeyondBlue.

Past winners include such Australian luminaries as Alan Joyce, Gina Rinehart and Rupert Murdoch. This year has seen some of the strongest entries yet. So without further ado here are the results:

In third place is the loaded dog himself, our illustrious Prime Minister Tony Abbott, with his claim that the Government’s proposed metadata retention laws were “absolutely critical” to fighting online child pornography. Unlike most things he talks about Tony Abbott is quite knowledgeable about child sexual abuse in Australia having once provided a character reference to a Catholic priest charged with, and later convicted of, sexually abusing an altar boy. Bonus points go to Tony for keeping a straight face while telling journalists that “no crime is more abhorrent than crimes against children”, provided, of course, those crimes take place outside of an Immigration detention centre.

Second place also goes to Tony Abbott for helpfully providing the ALP with their next election campaign slogan:

“We are a free and fair nation. But that doesn’t mean we should let bad people play us for mugs, and all too often, they have.”

There’s another thing he forgot to mention when he was Opposition Leader.

(Drum roll)

And the winner is…