Australian PM criticized over latest Nazi reference
Print Edition
Australia’s gaffe-prone prime minister yesterday took back his second Nazi-related comment in a month after he compared the opposition party leader to German World War II-era propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
Tony Abbott told Parliament that Labor Party leader Bill Shorten was “the Dr Goebbels of economic policy.”
Abbott immediately said he withdrew the comment, as opposition lawmakers yelled in protest.
Speaker Bronwyn Bishop ordered Labor lawmaker Mark Dreyfus — one of only three Jewish lawmakers in parliament — out of the House of Representatives for rising from his seat to angrily berate the prime minister.
Fellow Labor lawmaker Michael Danby, also Jewish, left the chamber with Dreyfus in solidarity.
“There are no Nazis here and we shouldn’t be making comparisons with the paradigm of the ultimate evil in politics to heighten political differences,” Danby said later.
Dreyfus described Abbott’s reference to the Nazi as inappropriate for a prime minister.
Abbott last month apologized for describing a 10 percent reduction in defense industry jobs under a former Labor government as a “holocaust of jobs.”
Earlier this week, Abbott received an unexpected rebuke from the Irish prime minister this week for a St. Patrick’s Day video message broadcast online by his Liberal Party.
Wearing a green tie, Abbott apologized to Ireland because: “I can’t be there to share a Guinness or two or maybe even three.”
Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny told the Irish Independent newspaper he had seen Abbott’s comments and did not agree with them.
Kenny told the newspaper he advocated responsible celebrations and rejected “a stage Irish perception.”
Some of Abbott’s colleagues openly questioned his political judgment in January when he said on Australia’s national day that he had granted Queen Elizabeth II’s husband Prince Philip an Australian knighthood.
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