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By now we’re sure you’ve seen the ad for Australia put forward by the Labor party.
Somehow, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten described it as simply “a bad oversight” and tried to palm it off with a ‘me no know nothing about ads’ approach by telling reporters “I am not in the ad making business ”.
This is true. However, he was standing literally right next to a dozen white people while telling businesses to hire Australians like them, who are easily identifiable as Australian because they’re white, duh.
Crossbencher Derryn Hinch described the ad as stupid and blinkered.
“It could be an ad for the Klu Klux Klan,” he told ABC radio.
“Didn’t Bill Shorten look at it the first time and say ‘hang on where are the multicultural people here?'”
Didn’t he indeed, Hinchy.
Resident DJ and Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese has jumped ship and blasted the ad.
“I think the ad’s a shocker and it should never have been produced and it should never have been shown,” he said on Monday.
“It’s not the sort of ad I want my party to be promoting.”
Nor is the used car salesman aesthetic, we assume, but that seems to be a secondary issue.
Bill Shorten released a kind of apology on Twitter, without the taking responsibility or saying sorry part typical of actual apologies.
Some people.
SBS World News is reporting that the ad was never meant to be seen outside of Rural Queensland.
A somewhat flawed plan due to the internet existing and the eventual dissemination of the ad unavoidable, but Shorten did say he wasn’t in the ad making business so maybe he didn’t know.
Liberal junior minister Craig Laundy told reporters Shorten would have known the ad’s content and authorised it – an indisputable analysis seeing as he was in the ad.
“Bill Shorten wants to, on the floors of parliament, say one thing on the topic of One Nation yet when he has the opportunity he releases a xenophobic and targeted campaign in that state – it’s hypocritical,” the Sydney MP added.
People on social media were quick to express their grievances with the ad.
Oh, Bill.
