For the mouse-over lot. This is totaly boring to most. I hope Aussies care.
Fuck John Howard! Could he be much more of a wanker?
He is there. Right there. Eparade. GOOD JOB. YAY for him.
Sadly for him he seem to have forgotten that ANZAC isn’t an all Australian thing. Funnily enough it isn’t called AAC day. It’s ANZAC day. Just in case he can’t spell the NZ bit is New Zealand!
Remember us? Yes us just over the Tasman. The NZ in aNZac, or AAC to you.
You slimey FUCK!!! How dare you go have a barbie and snub the NZ ceremony at Chanuk Bair. Yeah we all know that Gallipoli was the moment when Aussies became Aussies…GUESS FUCKING WHAT it is the same here!
We wouldn’t drag you across the world to stand quietly for an hour to remember the Kiwis that were there with your diggers but you are HERE you fucking SHIT! Please be a little more disrespectful cause we couldn’t hear you over your fricking open mouthed suasage snarfing.
Shit Charlie is sitting next to Helen and he just got married. What is your excuse ARSEHOLE!!!
NZ and Aus have always thrived on friendly bullshitting but this is a snub that is hard to ignore.
FUCKING stop buying into the ANZAC name if you want to disrespect the NZ part.
I’ve been hoping beyond hope that Howard would come up with some sooper-dooper reason why his presence at Chanuk Bair would conflict with something of Extreme Importance, that Could Not Be Missed, and would Threaten World Peace or summat.
He didn’t.
So, yer’ right. He’s a fucken wanker, and deserves all the dissing he gets over this. I just don’t understand WHY he would choose to miss the ceremony. Is there some trans-Tasman issue brewing that we plebs haven’t been made privvy to???
I cannot believe that prick would do that. Actually I still cannot believe ther bastard was re-elected. Sitting here in the US I only sort of see any ANZAC memorials by proxy.
Has it ever occured to that motherfucker that NZ gave it’s very fucking best there? 90% casualties. Ouch. And instead of going to Chunuk Bair he goes to a fucking BBQ?
Un-fucking-believable.
I wonder if he got the message about ANZAC day being about repudiating war? Maybe that is why he snubbed, he sure doesn’t seem to be interested in that message at all.
I bloody hope that it what it is about, some ANUS (see how the NZ makes that look better :D) run amok. But shit could he have chosen a worse oment to snub NZ?
I am sure that Australia has been on the same (welcome to me) diet of doco’s of Gallipoli recently.
My child is at an age where he understands what it is all about. When we saw on the news about Mr-Fucking-Howard, he was the one that said “It should it be AAC Cove, it sounds like we wern’t even there”.
It just fucking sucks that Howard doesn’t have the decency to attend the ceremony that makes it ANZAC not AAC. I hope the BBQ was good.
What is really weird is that the decision has been universally condemned by other Aussies including the services yet he still did it. I heard that some services personnel were so embarassed that they intended skipping the BBQ to attend at Chanuk Bair to ensure that the attendance was full. So it is very hard not to see it as a deliberate snub rather than a stupid oversight. Very bloody tacky.
It’s for that reason I think he’s done you a favour. The more New Zealand disassociates itself with Australia, the better off I think you guys will be in the long run.
Well as much as as the Kiwi in me says “YEEEEEEEEEAH” I would be bullshitting.
Perhaps the Australian govt thinks it could go off and make happy with the red, white and blue, forgetting the silver fern, and all would be well. Maybe that IS what John was thinking.
Reality? NZ and Oz are connected. In more ways then one. Shit if we wanted to be a state we would be.
We have ties. Ties that I don’t think either of of us really want to get rid of ( besides the fact that ANZUS spells ANUS since we were booted…ok AUS, but that is boring :D)
It just seems that at the 90th ANZAC day we should be proud of being ANZACs. Not AAC’s or NZAC’s but ANZACS.
Was there ever a better biscuit??
Surely his-Howardness could have had a BBQ an hour later?
Just wanted to say that, even without the words “ANZAC day”, the thread title would have been completely accurate. Howard is a wanker every day of the year. This particular instance is just an especially egregious example of his idiocy. I literally cannot think of a single acceptable reason for his actions on this occasion.
According to this latest NZ Herald article, last year there was a clash of scheduling between the Aussie and Kiwi services, so neither Howard nor Clark could attend the other nations service. This year, of course, things were more spread out – so Howard went off to a beach barbie.
Our politicos in opoosition here reckon it’s to do with defence spending (cause it’s election year for us, and they want that to be an issue to hammer the government with). But I think it’s to do with Iraq, the Coalition of the Willing, and that it doesn’t seem to do for Howard to recognise that New Zealand has done anything other than say no to Bush when it came to invading Iraq.
I’ve noticed an increasing tendency in political statements made in Australia to equal “Anzac” with “Australia”, excising any reference to New Zealand’s contributions to World Wars I and II. Now, we can be pretty one-eyed here too, and we are Kiwi-centric, naturally – but we do recognise that ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.
I think we’ve become an embarrassment in some quarters. I think politicians in Australia have been told to forget we ever fought alongside Australia to help keep our nations free. Certainly, Howard did a great dishonour to the fallen at Chunuk Bair.
I was surprised too. Although Princhester and I generally disagree on Howard politically, I think we agree that this is a fucking strange decision for a smooth career politician - especially a conservative one. In this case I’d go so far as to agree with the “asshole” sentiment.
Sorry Kiwis. If it’s any consolation, a lot of us on the western side of the ditch are feeling pretty awkward and embarrassed right about now. You have a right to be pissed off. Howard deserves a thorough arsekicking for this. I hope there is at least some background diplomatic-level NZ fang-baring. Not a good scene.
Kudos to Prime Minister Clarke for being so gracious about the whole thing. Personally, I’d have told Howard to get fucked.
Absolutely reprehensible. Another Australian chiming in with a ‘I can’t believe our PM is such a complete dick’ apology… I’m horrified he snubbed you guys like that. :mad:
You know, I’m really pissed at the Labour party for making such a balls-up of their campaign that JH managed to get himself elected again. FWIW, I didn’t vote for him. (But I was pretty conflicted over voting Labour, I have to say. Never seen a party work so hard at losing the public confidence. My theory is that it’s not that anyone actually likes Howard, it’s just that the bizarre actions of the Labour party leading into the election made people go with the ‘better the devil you know’ option. )
There is one thing in all this – I have not been pissed off at Australia or Australians in general. The importance of Anzac Day and the significance of same is too well known for most to pull stunts like this.
I’ve reserved my anger for one man in this. Doubly so that he’s done something so shitty as to embarrass his own countrymen.
Wasn’t there a fair amount of Aussie testyness over the ANZUS falling-out as well? A very knowledgeable Wellingtonian informed me that NZ got a good “rapping on the knuckles” for that, though I don’t know what it was he meant, exactly.
Admittedly, though, it’s an astonishingly classless move on the part of any dignitary to snub a ceremony honoring an ally’s war dead, and neither recent history, nor the disagreements of decades ago ought to excuse it.
I’d expect such arseholishness of Americans, but seeing Howard (or any Oz pol) behave this way is a genuine surprise. Am I missing something about Commonwealth politics that would make such gesture more explicable?
The ANZUS problems in the 80s were probably the biggest ever trans-Tasman falling out, but that was at a political level. At a man-in-the-street level, the cricket incident of '81 was worse (but we love our cricket down here).
You’re not missing anything. Nothing that I can see anyway. Howard has simply done something very, very stupid.
