Sinister semiotics

November 28, 2025

Further to the recent article from Marian Sawer and subsequent letter from Margaret Callinan it is worth taking a look at the front cover of this week’s edition of The Spectator Australia entitled ‘Drill, baby, drill.’

It features a pasquinade of a distraught looking opposition leader attempting to construct her own gallows using a substandard drill with menacing caricatures of Angus Taylor and Andrew Hastie hovering in the background.

The sinister semiotics is reminiscent of those deplorable red top rag headlines – Gotcha (The S*n, 1982) and The Truth (The S*n, 1989), which were published by the scrofulous Kelvin McKenzie several decades ago.

If this is an example of how the Liberal Party and its media liaison representatives are reacting towards its own troops and current leader, it beggars belief what pernicious tactics would be engaged against its many adversaries.

Over in the US, it is debatable whether Agent Orange, the bully of humility would even stoop so low, but as the late Aneurin Bevan once proclaimed, “Politics is a blood sport.”