Poirot,

Thanks, I normally put some effort into the titles.

While I would probably have avoided the phrase, the reality is that the tirade it provoked from the PM was a pure playing of the gender card, and while it gained her some Kudos from feminists, in reality it left her looking weak, and unable to address the issue.

Given her already poor standing with men, playing the gender card to deflect criticism will simply reinforce it.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/loathing-for-abbott-the-reason-for-vote-20121010-27dko.html
The link supports the advice I posted earlier.
It too says that Slipper was always going to be told to leave.
Not forced out by a Kangaroo court.
Such at the hands of a Lynch mob lead by a person of the poor standing of the Temporary Leader of the opposition would have forever stained this country,s Parliament.
The best result has been achieved in the right way.

Can anyone point to any criminal offence that Peter Slipper has been convicted of?

Nope !!

This means we're a bunch of moralising, holier than thou judges and total hypocrites! What man, in his private moments with other men, HASN'T used the "c" or "f" word ever, what man HASN'T sworn, what man hasn't had fun using sexual innuendo and descriptions in discussions with other men? Peter Slipper has done what close to EVERY other man in Australia has done .... his mistake was he left a "written" trail.

This enabled all the hypocrites, who have used similar phrases themselves all their lives, to come out and self righteously judge him as some sort of pervert (for political purposes of course). I've read the texts, they are mere silly, blokey swearing and sexual innuendo .... the type of language used by probably 90% of Aussie blokes at various times. And many of the texts are so utterly innocuous you'd have to be Jesus Bloody Christ himself to take offense.

We've turned into a nation of self righteous, judgmental fundamentalists and hypocrites .... where the real crime is to get "caught".

Yes, well said DaimontPete.

We have such an enormous tendency to get hung up on minutiae, blow tiny things out of all proportion without realising the hypocrisy, and ignore the elephant in the living room.

Slipper, Thomson, Nuttall, Rudd’s dismissal, etc, etc. All of these things get commented on and analysed to the Nth degree.

Meanwhile, the really big things that actually do matter to our country and our future, go virtually unthoughtof.

The donations regime, which means that big business is effectively buying the politics they want. And the enormously antisustainable direction that this is taking us is. THIS is what really matters.

But alas, very few people who are interested in politics are at all interested in this sort of thing.

Pete now apply that logic to The Parrot's current troubles.

The language doesn't phase me it's the truley bizarre stuff about clams. It sends my weirdo meter through the roof.

'We've turned into a nation of self righteous, judgmental fundamentalists and hypocrites'

Turned into?

Look you have to put it in context.

Blame the government tactics. As a government that has spent the last couple of months building a case of Mr Rabbit being a misogynist, and being responsible for comments a shock jock with the same politics makes, they have set the context.

Hoist by their own petard, and Slipper is the sacrificial lamb.

<<“Die of shame”>>

What the hell was Abbot thinking?
Doesn’t he possess half a brain?
Didn’t he knoooow what he was saying?

To use that ill phrase, that vile phrase “die of shame”!

The fact that it might have been used some 300 times before in the current parliament is toootally immaterial [see footnote 1]

Didn’t Abbot know that the mere mention of that “vile phrase” would evoke deep and dreadfully painful emotions in Ms Gillard (and allow her to play-up the offended princess -- to the max ).

Didn’t he know the nit picking nature of the lefts Sancho Panzas who hang off his every word looking for an pretext to waddle into battle.

Hear ye, hear ye, let it be known that hence forth -- under threat of tarring & feathering --“ die of shame” is to be struck from the English language.
And no one, I repeat, ABSOLUTELY NO ONE, is permitted to use it –or even allude to it
The one small exception to this rule being: unless of course the left is ever in need of it to browbeat its opponents.

1. “CHRISTOPHER PYNE: Tony Abbott's used that phrase dozens of times. It certainly wasn't in his mind at the time that there were some parts of it that Alan Jones had also used” http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2012/s3607394.htm

PS: Can you envisage this lot giving up power peacefully if they are voted out?
Any adverse election result will be presented as a misogynist plot!