Tony Abbott says neutral act like Savage Garden should’ve performed at the NRL
Tony Abbott has continued to criticise Macklemore’s performance of ‘Same Love’ at the weekend’s NRL Grand Final.
The rapper sang his equality anthem to a cheering crowd as rainbow fireworks exploded, following a week of controversy about the performance.
Abbott said an Australian act that would not be “contentious” about marriage equality should perform, according to the Huffington Post.
The former Prime Minister said he’s a fan of Australian band Savage Garden—whose gay frontman Darren Hayes has been a long-time advocate for marriage equality.
Savage Garden were a hit pop band in the 90s, with number one singles including ‘Truly Madly Deeply’, ‘I Want You’ and ‘To the Moon and Back’.
Brisbane-born Hayes came out as gay in the early 2000s.
Just last year, Hayes wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, criticising the government’s denial of LGBTI equality and condemning the expense of a plebiscite.
Hayes was quick to respond to Abbott’s declaration that he likes Savage Garden, taking to Twitter to post, “I’m no fan of Tony Abbott.”
Ah, it continues. Last week the No campaign’s position was that an “anti-same-sex-marriage song” should be performed to “balance” Macklemore’s Same Love. They refused to nominate any particular song (presumably there must be some anti-SSM songs, probably country and western religious anthems written and performed by multiple-divorced artists). That way they could just bash the NRL.
There is no way they were nominating Savage Garden before the NRL final and in fact they’d have opposed Savage Garden for similar reasons they opposed Macklemore. The closest they came to anything like a choice was Pauline Hanson’s hilariously improbably suggestion that Johnny Farnham (she said Johnny) be rolled out, presumably to perform a re-written anti-gay version of Sadie the Cleaning Lady.
But now, after the event, they can continue to bag out the NRL and Macklemore and pretend they’d have preferred to see Savage Garden perform so they can appear as if they’re not homophobic.
They can’t keep a straight story, so to speak.