Shorten would have known that an investigation was unnecessary, but here was a chance to embarrass one of the government’s biggest names and he wasn’t going to miss it. What’s more disappointing is that Bill Shorten, on the same day he stood arm-in-arm with queer Australians, joined in on the fun, calling for an immediate investigation. It's obvious to anyone watching his juvenile conduct over the past 24 hours that it's not national security concerns driving him but homophobia. It Wasn’t Just ConservativesĬory Bernardi is a grub. With Bernardi’s track record, that’s not unexpected. He gets to make snide gay jokes and target a political enemy at the same time. In the past he’s linked marriage equality to bestiality. Bernardi’s views on queer rights are well known. “We need to know how deep and far this penetration … has been.”Ĭory Bernardi on claims hackers liked an explicit gay pornographic video using Christopher Pyne’s Twitter account. If so, I urge to watch the video below, and take note of Bernardi’s grin at the end. You may be thinking that Bernardi’s response is justified, given Pyne’s claim to have been hacked. Here was a chance to make a political enemy deeply uncomfortable on the national stage, to embarrass him personally, and to do it all under the guise of “national security”. As soon as he could, Bernardi called for an investigation into the apparent “hacking” of Pyne’s account, saying it had grave national security implications.īernardi knew exactly what he was doing. Since leaving the Liberal Party, Bernardi has often targeted Pyne with personal attacks, questioning his integrity and suggesting he’s not a true Liberal. The two have a long history in South Australian politics, where they represented the moderate and ultra-conservative wings of the party. Predictably, one of the first people to take advantage of the situation was Pyne’s bitter enemy, Liberal Party defector Cory Bernardi. You have to wonder if this incident would have received a similar reaction had it been another politician, or had it been straight porn that was liked by Pyne’s account. Pyne’s support for marriage equality and his sometimes effeminate mannerisms have made him a target of this kind of snide innuendo in the past - Julia Gillard once famously labelled him a mincing poodle in Parliament. Earlier this year, his enthusiastic support for marriage equality cost him dearly within his own party. He has been on the right side of the marriage equality issue for a long time now. If, for example, one of the leaders of the No campaign was caught watching gay porn, it might be ok to talk about that in public.īut Christopher Pyne is not that politician. In that case, the politician’s hypocrisy deserves to be exposed.
One of the few exceptions is when an anti-gay politician is caught doing very gay things. It is rarely ever acceptable to talk about a person’s sexuality against their will. We don’t know anything about their relationship, and we have no right to. Pyne is married to his wife, Carolyn, and has four children. So, Uh, Do These “No” Voters Think That Gay People Don’t Fuck? Maybe it was an accident - it’s not that hard to inadvertently hit like on a tweet, especially at 1.30am. Maybe Pyne actually does enjoy watching some gay porn at the end of a long day.
Maybe someone with access to Pyne’s account decided to cause some mischief on the day LGBTIQ+ Australians were celebrating their greatest victory.
Look, we don’t know what Christopher Pyne is into, and it doesn’t really matter. The real story here is in the ugly and vaguely homophobic reaction to the like, and the fact that it has come from both ends of the political spectrum. It’s a line I’m trying to walk now as well, and I don’t know that I’ll entirely succeed.īut other elements of the response to the incident deserve their own examination. There was genuine news value to the story, and most outlets stayed on the right side of the very fine line they were being asked to walk. It doesn’t contain state secrets.Īt Junkee, we chose not to cover the story yesterday. It’s a publicly available Twitter account. Pyne’s claim to have been hacked may or may not be true. He claims someone tried to access his Facebook account this week as well.