When I was a kid it was quite often the case that an Irishman, a Scotsman and an Englishman went into a pub where various stereotypic scenarios led to a punchline. Better a punchline than a punch.

I recall being told the one about the kids at Bondi being menaced by a shark, a man racing into the water and fighting the shark with his bare hands and saving the kids. A passing reporter races up and interviews our intrepid hero who says something like “Cor blimey, guvnor, anyone woulda done it” thereby revealing his cockney origins.

The headline read “Pommy bastard beats into kids pet”.

What would happen these days? Well the pom would get the sack for a start, when the video goes viral, for being on sickleave from his job in Merthyr Tydfil. What, he was Welsh, you say. Well far to many Welsh people here in Australia. Not on a 457 visa I hope. What about his press secretary.

I digress, the reporter in the New Australia would probably get to keep his job, he’d have more sense than to cause offense to visiting heroes in our roxonised society, he’d play a straight bat (Aussie reporters will learn to do that, no need to worry that the art is dying in our cricketers) he would rush in his good news story. The editor would give thanks, something he could report today without falling foul of Conroy’s latest straight jacket.

What are we coming to? Conroy, you will recall wanted to filter the internet, I guess it would slow it all down enough to warrant fibre to the home. Now it’s a press commissar to licence reporters. All because those newspapers that earn a living selling papers and advertising have had the temerity to inform the community that the ALP have cocked up everything they’ve touched, broken every promise that they’ve made whilst led by a backstabbing, lying virago with a very shady past and a treasurer who thinks a surplus is a minus number, and a tax is a saving.

So my message in response is Get Your Hands OFF Freedom of Speech. And get them off my super, as well.

As for our other Welsh would be hero, the shark was a harmless variety and sick, probably dying, the children were in no danger whatever, Sir, you were not only defrauding your employers but attempting to defraud us too. I will be writing to the RSPCA, Hugh Wirth knows what to do with people who molest our sea creatures.