Housing Minister Clare O\u2019Neil has lambasted Opposition Leader Sussan Ley for her attack on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese\u2019s leadership over his decision to wear a Joy Division band T-shirt five days ago.<\/p>\n
Ley made a speech in the House of Representatives yesterday afternoon to condemn the T-shirt, accusing him of \u201cdisplaying the wrong values\u201d.<\/p>\n
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Joy Division\u2019s name comes from the phrase used to describe groups of women kept as sexual slaves in concentration camps during World War II, and Ley argued the prime minister\u2019s decision to wear it would exacerbate the pain of Jewish Australians already dealing with rising antisemitism.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Neil slammed Ley\u2019s comments this morning on Seven\u2019s Sunrise. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve seen the Coalition walk down some pretty remarkable dead ends since I\u2019ve been in politics, but I really think this one takes the cake. I\u2019m just so staggered.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, this week, our government is introducing landmark reforms to bulk billing. We\u2019re putting new contraceptives on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. We\u2019re building more homes. We\u2019re working to get energy costs down, and the Coalition is focused on a T-shirt that the prime minister is wearing. That is all you need to know about Australian politics right now, a government focused on the things that matter to Australia, the Coalition off on some weird frolic that makes no sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Appearing alongside O\u2019Neil was Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie, who split from Ley on the issue, saying she was more concerned about the government taking \u201ctough action\u201d on antisemitism in Australia.<\/p>\n
\u201cListening to Claire, you\u2019d think that this government was taking tough action on homegrown antisemitism … Look, there\u2019s a lot to legitimately criticise the prime minister about trillion dollar debt, skyrocketing house prices and job losses in our heavy industrial sector wearing a T-shirt is not one of them … So yeah, get on with acting on antisemitism,\u201d McKenzie said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Housing Minister Clare O\u2019Neil has lambasted Opposition Leader Sussan Ley for her attack on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247305,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-247304","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}