There are poor-hating hypocrites and then there is Bronwyn Bishop.

Brownyn Bishop thinks dole bludgers are flying helicopters to their drug dealers, or something.

Huffington Post reports:

Former MP Bronwyn Bishop, who was forced to resign as Speaker of the House of Representatives after using taxpayer funds to take expensive helicopter rides, claims "many" people with depression are "rorting" the welfare system, and are "drug addicts".

Yes Bronwyn Bishop, whose "own abuse of the parliamentary expense system was so egregious that it spawned its own '-gate' suffix in Choppergate". Brownwyn Bishop, who:

...was forced to resign as Speaker in 2015, after she chartered a $5200 helicopter flight from Melbourne to Geelong -- which would have been a 90 minute road trip in her Commonwealth car, also paid for by the taxpayer -- for a Liberal party function ...

She also famously billed the taxpayer $88,000 for a 15-day official visit to Europe in 2015, and nearly $43,000 for an 11-day trip to Asia.

Leaving aside the surely self-evident point that Bronwyn Bishop manages to slander an entire group of people without any recourse while simultaneously stigmatising people who use and abuse intoxicants while proposing stripping them of their only source of funds in a move that probably wouldn't help them or society too much... it is worth noting Brownyn Bishop's achievement here.

This is a country with a very long tradition of politicians with six figure salaries, almost unending perks and gold-plated pensions cynically bashing welfare recipients while slashing taxes for the rich. After all, Bishop was just echoing similar comments by ex-PM and loyal backbencher Tony Abbott, who made repealing a mild tax on mining companies a centre-piece of his campaign for power.

There is nothing new about some cynical pollie going bludger-bashing with ridiculous ill-though out logic in a bid to set different sections of the working class against each other, score some cheap points and -- most importantly -- get the Murdoch press tabloids and shock jocks off their backs because if they DIDN'T say this shit, the screeching would be about THEM. It is basic self-defence for a major party politician to bash the defenceless before the right-wing media bashes them for not bashing the defenceless.

That is all to be expected, it is how our political system functions. Murdoch mags and shock jock screechers wail, and politicians join in on harmonies.

So far so "Australia Is The Greatest Country In the World Or It Would Be If Not For All the Bloody Bludgers and Bleeding Heart Pollies Wasting Our Hard Earned Tax Dollars, Christ Some Of Us Actually Work For A Living (TM)". 

No, what is impressive about Bronwyn Bishop's intervention is the hypocrisy is so insanely intense that it manages to be unavoidable. And if there is something the mainstream media of all stripes like to do, it is avoid political hypocrisy, if only because otherwise they'd talk about nothing else and there'd be no time left for the cricket scores.

It takes some extreme bullshit for the stench to be even noted. Others in her position would take their parliamentary pension and just shut the fuck up. Not Bronwyn Bishop. Fair play, I suppose.

'You tell me anyone without a job should go out and die...' Brownyn Bishop's comments are hardly new, but fucking evil enough to drive me to post a song by anarchist industrial band iNsuRge, who I haven't listened to since about 1997.