It will surprise no one that Australian Conservatives Senator Cory Bernardi and MP for Goldstein Tim “Freedom Boy” Wilson do not see eye to eye on a number of issues — the most obvious currently being marriage equality. While Wilson used his maiden speech in Parliament to pay moving tribute to his fiance, Ryan (“I know you have sacrificed so much for me to be here today, and we are only at the end of the beginning. For seven years a ring has sat on both of our left hands, and they are the answer to a question we still cannot ask”), Bernardi’s public statements on marriage equality are … a tad less romantic (“The next step, quite frankly, is having three people or four people that love each other being able to enter into a permanent union endorsed by society or any other type of relationship … In the future will we say, ‘These two creatures love each other and maybe they should be able to be joined in a union’.”).
So in response to news that Bernardi was robocalling nearly a million people to advocate a No vote, we hardly expected Wilson to be supportive. But he went a step further than critising the tactic, suggesting there was something more nefarious going on. In a tweet (swiftly deleted, but captured by The Courier-Mail‘s Paul Syvret) Wilson unloaded: “@CoryBernardi isn’t just using Robocalls to get people to vote ‘no’, he’s using it as a cloak to identify potential members & donors too”.
The deletion was noticed by other journalists, including Fairfax’s Adam Gartrell, who asked Wilson why he’d deleted the tweet. Had Wilson jumped the gun? Not a bit of it, Freedom Boy clarified, he was just “trying to get more in, [and] thought I could be tighter”:
Sure enough, Wilson’s original tweet was promptly replaced with a more fulsome take, adding that the ACL had done the same for the whole campaign:
Does Freedom Boy have some insider knowledge about the Bernardi campaign? Apparently not — he just knows. Crikey checked in with Wilson to see what had led him to the conclusion the robocalling had an ulterior motive. He gave us a word one answer: “Logic.”
Freedom Boy credits Bernadi’s actions with being logical?
No doubt the Bernardi robocalls brought joy to many lucky people who were given the opportunity to hang up while his message was mid-flight.
If the call gives you an option to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ at the end of it, it’s clearly ‘logic’ to assume the yes voters will be retained for future reference. I’d say there’s no risk in that conclusion.
@ Zut Alors: mid-flight? It didn’t get past the safety video.
Wilson might be on to something, but more likely, Bernardi is looking to get the outcome he wants, so he can crow about it. He’s calling only landline numbers, and so reaching only those households who still have one (about 50% now) and whose occupants are the ahem, mature aged demographic. And he knows how they are most likely to vote…..
I got the robo-call from Bernadi on my mobile last night. I nearly threw it across the room, I was so angry.
I am 76. I do not have a landline phone. Everyone I know, whose age is within a decade of mine, including those who are regular church attenders, has already voted yes. I am finding this postal survey quite annoying as assumptions are being made about those of us who are older. I guess it helps us sympathise with our LBGTIQ family and friends.
If that is his version of being ‘tighter’ then the proposed doubling of characters for twits will not benefit his attempts at elucidation.