TONY Windsor and Rob Oakeshott are trying to play the victim now but the country independents are simply reaping the whirlwind of the betrayal of their deeply conservative electorates after the August election.
They sold out their constituents in return for flattery and back slapping in Canberra, and now they're feigning shock when they get blowback. Give us a break.
Even though he tried to hide, everyone saw Windsor and his grinning, bearded mate Oakeshott standing there last week, with Julia Gillard, Bob Brown, Christine Milne and Greg Combet, at the press conference announcing the carbon tax that the Prime Minister expressly promised during the election campaign she would never impose.
And he'll be hiding up the back of that sovereign sextet the next time they announce another of Brown's pet policies - euthanasia, same-sex marriage and any number of wasteful crackpot green schemes that are anathema to conservatives.
<----(what a bullshit artist, but we already knew that..lol)Now Windsor is complaining about "shock jocks" and Coalition MPs and nefarious "others" who he claims are "involved in an orchestrated campaign" to inciting US-style violence against him. It's just another smokescreen to hide from the consequences of his actions.
He claimed on Radio National yesterday to have received death threats over the carbon tax, which were being "investigated", though when pressed by interviewer Fran Kelly, he became vague.
Tamworth police have no record of any complaints and the Australian Federal Police last night confirmed they were investigating a complaint lodged by Windsor yesterday, that is, after his 7.30am interview claiming there was an investigation.
As proof of his suffering, Windsor released a phone message he had received: "You're a f ... . . g dog Windsor," said the male caller. "You're a f ... . . g liar, a dog, a rat, a big f ... . . g MP dog doing damn nothing. You wait. You're not going to get voted in again. I hope you die."
Unseemly language aside, if that's the worst threat Windsor can drum up then all he's proved is that he's a tricky wuss.
Take out the swear words and the unpleasant hope that he dies and what you have left is a statement that reflects the feelings of much of Windsor's electorate of New England, which gave Labor just 8 per cent of its vote at the last election and the Greens a paltry 4 per cent.
A big MP who has delivered his constituents and the rest of this hapless nation into the hands of a Labor-Green Coalition Government and a carbon tax that will diminish their quality of life.
The big threat in that phone call was he won't get voted in again. Amen to that, say the two-thirds of Australians who don't support a carbon tax, judging by Coalition polling in NSW last weekend.
In the circumstances, Windsor's constituents have been restrained. He's lucky they are country folk, who tend to keep their own counsel and are not whiny inner-city Greens voters who scream bloody murder if they feel wronged, which is every minute of every day.
DESCRIPTIONS of Windsor as "dingo" and "traitor" are not unknown on Inverell radio station 2NZ either. It ran a phone-in on the carbon tax, and in 30 minutes fielded 111 calls against and only three calls for. Tamworth's Northern Daily Leader ran a poll that found 75 per cent of people were against a carbon price.
John "Wacka" Williams, a Nationals senator and farm machine supplier from Inverell, says New England locals are "very very angry" with Windsor, and worried about increased costs of electricity and fuel and job losses under a carbon tax, which will do nothing for the environment.
"I think people are getting very annoyed with Tony Windsor," he told ABC radio yesterday.
"There is a survey Tony is undertaking now in New England on same-sex marriage, on euthanasia, on a tax summit. Will he do that as far as a carbon tax goes?
Will he ask the people of his electorate because he claims to be the people's representative but he clearly did not listen to his electorate when it came to a decision about who he would put into government after theAugust 21 election.
Will he do the same again and disregard the wishes of his electorate?"
Excellent questions.
Rather than blaming Tony Abbott, and "shock jocks" who he imagines are involved in "a degree of orchestration" of the anger in his electorate, Windsor should face the reality that his constituents all by themselves have been burning with resentment ever since he sided with Labor after the election, and that his carbon tax betrayal is the last straw.
It's the same for Oakeshott, who has been playing a bizarre no-speakies with Abbott, because he is upset that Joe Hockey went to his electorate and told people that a vote for the independents is a vote for Labor.
Well, duh. Oakeshott is living proof of that. What does he have to complain about other than Hockey speaking the plain, unvarnished truth, a concept with which the independents seem unfamiliar.
Oakeshott's conservative Lyne electorate in northern NSW voted just 13 per cent for Labor and 4 per cent for the Greens at the last election, so they are none too happy about his embrace of the Brown-Gillard pact, as shown by the latest polling. His personal approval rating has plunged from 63 per cent net positive support to negative 12 per cent, a 75-point turnaround. Ouch.
In the heart of his electorate, in Port Macquarie, the locals are "white hot" with anger against Oakeshott.
Brett Pye, owner of Pye Providores in Port Macquarie, calls Oakeshott an "idiot" for "siding with such a cowboy outfit as this Labor Government".
After last year's election he put up big signs on his front fence branding Oakeshott "Judas" and "You bloody sellout". He gets frequent compliments on the signs, he says, and not one complaint.
"The number of people that have said 'Good on you' is unbelievable," he says. "I deal with people who work for a living - they understand how hard it is to earn a dollar."
When even the ABC political program Insiders is labelling Oakeshott a "Big Sook", albeit with a question mark, you know his bid for the sympathy vote is falling flat. It's not the fault of Joe Hockey or Tony Abbott that his constituents have turned against him.
The other independent holding the country to ransom is Andrew Wilkie, the former Green who claims to stand for integrity in politics. Yet, instead of chiding Gillard for breaking her election-eve promise - "There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead" - he was busy in Parliament this week lambasting the "racist" Coalition because Cory Bernardi had said something unflattering about Islam.
As for Greens leader Bob Brown, now he's giving Wayne Swan public lectures on how to deal with the Opposition, and boasting about how the Government adopted his carbon tax platform. His cocky performance on Monday in the Senate shows hubris is coming early to the Greens.
Mr 13 Per Cent is ruling the roost, a cuckoo in the Labor nest who has given Gillard a policy and philosophy framework she never had, and the nation a nightmare it never asked for.
This is the whirlwind that the independents have reaped.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/tax ... 6014938584
