There'd Be Outrage Aplenty Had Abbott Said It

Considering it was made at a public event, Tim Mathieson’s joke about getting an Asian woman doctor to do your prostate exam was in poor taste and certainly ill-considered. Its only real humour was in the number and types of people who would have been upset by it.

A simple apology should and apparently will suffice. He can let the tut-tutting, eye rolling and moans of “what a goose” go through to the keeper and it will all blow over, as it should.

Now imagine the reaction from the ALP and Greens had Tony Abbott or Shadow Minister for Health, Peter Dutton said it.

Would Julia Gillard have accepted the apology? Not bloody likely.

There would have been shrill screeches of confected outrage and more dishonest accusations of misogyny. Penny Wong and Tanya Plibersek would have added racism to the list of charges.

As with all moral policing, of which political correctness is a part, it’s the hypocritical double standards which reveal its bankruptcy.

That the ALP feel the need to use such tactics against their political opponents reveals their own.