We need to talk about @GregHuntMP: Facebook blues

GregHuntBanner

By Anon (name supplied)

February 9, 2014

I’m Greg Hunt’s friend on Facebook but he thinks he’s so cool he acts like I don’t exist. When I try to talk to him he ignores me and sometimes he pretends he didn’t hear what I said by editing my comments.

I’m not the only one. He’s been deleting people’s attempts to talk to him for a while, especially since he became Minister for the Environment.

This poor lady says she was abused trying to ask him questions over the phone so she took to Facebook in a fury.

Margi Wombok Minister Greg Hunt MP: I just rang wanting to speak with you and instead spoke to one of your Ministerial staff members – this staff member’s outrageous tone and dismissive and aggressive manner was shocking. He challenged everything I brought forward in an extremely unfriendly, rude and arrogant tone and then started to back peddle by putting things on Labor’s Environment Ministers and then asked if I had raised these concerns with the previous Environment Ministers. I answered honestly stating that I had indeed and his response: “Oh, of course you did…”

He then challenged me to name one – to which I replied, “Tony Burke and Peter Garrett”, he then laughed, called me a hypocrite and hung up on me… This is how arrogant and dismissive your staffers are and it shows how little you and your team care about the Australian people’s concerns over dredging and dumping on the fringes of the Great Barrier Reef. Is this something you are proud of? Do you think your staff should be able to speak with such flagrant disrespect and insolence to legitimately concerned members of the public who are simply trying to convey their opinions to you as our elected Representative (not that I would ever vote LNP or Labor)?

You and your staffers are PUBLIC SERVANTS and should serve the public and represent our interests, not those of corporate lobbyists who clearly have thrown financial incentives at you to make such an environmentally backward decision. Does it mean nothing that 60,000+ people rallied and protested recently to stop the destruction of the GBR? Does it mean nothing to you that you have received more than 100,000+ emails and petition signatures asking you to protect the Great Barrier Reef? Or the hundreds and hundreds of phone calls made to your Canberra and Melbourne offices asking you to stop this insanity? Why call your position an ‘Environment Minister’ when you clearly are the ‘Minister for Economic Interests at the Cost of the Environment’? Shame on you! I don’t know how you can sleep at night. January 15 at 1:05pm · Edited · Like · 2

I thought this lady was one of those toothless tree babies from Tassie but she’s not the only one living in the few trees left there.

Hundreds of people, like this guy, are also angry at Greg.

Jason Collins Margi Wombok I tried emailing, writing a letter and phoning and never got a single response from Greg Hunt or anybody on behalf of him. The person that answered the phone blatantly lied to me and still 5 months later no response. Virtually every comment on facebook is deleted. What a joke of a democracy we live in.Yesterday at 3:42pm · Like 

The few people who defend Greg from the frothing hordes are quite strange. Like this guy for example Owen Loney who wrote:

Owen Loney The Coalition alternative…the common sense alternative July 18, 2013 at 5:50pm · Like · 1

Owen Loney Only the Coalition has the best environment policies
July 27, 2013 at 12:21am · Like  

Capture_2014_02_09_11_55_18_569

He has 14 friends on Facebook and he’s weirder than most hipsters. Mr Loney doesn’t do two-way conversations ignoring this reply to his comment completely:

Robert Byrnes Owen Loney, you are living in a fantasy world! you’d be struggling to identify a single environmental organisation in this country that agrees with that post of yours. as for you, Greg Hunt, if your party achieves government you’ll have a daunting responsibility: will you be contributing to the risk that the planet will lurch into catastrophic climate change that could threaten our entire way of life? your party’s approach to climate change cannot be taken seriously by any thinking and well-informed person. August 8, 2013 at 12:13pm · Like · 1

Then things got ugly in 2014 with Greg’s ‘allegedly’ close supporters turning on him, in public. This guy probably deserved a reply and definitely a grammar lesson:

Mark Stokes I am a liberal supporter, i live in Greg Hunts Flinders electorate in the township of Rosebud, i have handed out “how to vote cards ” for you Greg , at Rosebud Primary School, on election day and i have always voted for you, but two days ago i asked you to reconsider your decision not to send an Australian customs vessel to monitor the Japanese whaling ships.

I asked you because i have had a gut- full of lame Labor governments do nothing and promise everything. I believed in you Greg, when you made your election promise , as i thought you would finally stand up to the Japanese Government , and let them know that Australia will not stand by and allow them to kill whales in Australian sovereign waters or protected whale sanctuaries, but to my disgust i see you deleted my post on your Facebook page . I do not understand why you would do that,, you led me to believe that your constituents opinions are important to you. I believe that sending a surveillance aircraft would not act as a deterrent .

Greg, to say i am disappointed with your attitude , in -action and back flip on this issue would be an understatement, thank God Julie Bishop has a back bone when dealing with “Mobile” Chinese borders. it’s a pity she isn’t dealing with the Japanese whalers.”scientific ” researchers !
January 8 at 1:31am · Like · 17

Again a strange man stepped in to defend my mate Greg:

John Smith You are doing a good job Greg. It is such a shame you have all these people on here spoiling the post. Keep up the good work. Its good that you and the lnp can bring some reality to Australia after 6 years of no common sense.
November 26, 2013 at 10:52pm · Like

Unfortunately Mr Smith also has a disturbing lack of Facebook friends, in fact he has NO FRIENDS which makes Facebook sort of pointless. How much does he suck? Well his posts of tractor pictures (seriously) may mean he’s an ex-tractor fan.

Capture_2014_02_09_11_55_29_871

All this brings me back to why I wanted to talk about Greg. He seems to be part of an embarrassing government. An article titled: Is Tony Abbott’s Australian administration the most hostile to his nation’s environment in history?

Capture_2014_02_09_11_54_38_28

If Greg is the minister in charge of this area, I’d like to know how we got a point where the Poms are calling us hostile to the environment. Did someone change the rules for the ashes making it a literal competition?

Lots of people were asking Greg about this yesterday but for some reason he couldn’t hear them.

Mark Calderwood And that’s about 40 comments deleted today. Again. Explain yourself.
4 hours ago · Like · 4  
Cheryl O’Connor Love how comments keep vanishing from your page. You can hide or delete all the comments you want but acts of environmental vandalism done out of nothing but greed and the people who object to them will remain. Or is your government now attempting to silence the people who you are employed by the people to represent? Given the total disregard for the will of the people and our environment it appears so. Why is the government appearing so intent on dividing the people, silencing independent media and the people and making the people so angry and upset that they do take to the streets? What is the bigger agenda here?
11 hours ago · Like · 1

Again just one strange ‘person’ came to Greg’s defence. This guy Denis Bradd who has less than 30 friends. His timeline is bare except for posts about slot machine apps. One of his friends works for ASIO according to Facebook which somehow can tell who are secret service agents are. That’s not surprising considering the NSA revelations and the recent “Persons of interest’ show on SBS. All that made me think differently about political activism, I hope my instinct is wrong on this one maybe he just needs a hobby.

Capture_2014_02_09_11_55_39_329

So what’s my point?

If social media has the potential to democratise the world why would politicians refuse to engage with people online?

Using old spin and PR releases won’t work in cyberspace. The old push it out one-way communication is trolled instantly and it’s painful to watch how ineffective it is.

I hope Greg grows a personality and starts acting like a friend soon or he might have to deal with more than just a few hundred comments hitting him weekly.


Support an independent media voice. Support No Fibs Citizen Journalism.
Monthly Donation



Comments


  1. Gregory is applying his own version of poetic licence, the little rotter.


  2. I too have had similar probems with my local member having raised a number of issues. Admittedky the electorate in which I reside (Lyne) was very well represented by the previous member (Mr Oakeshott) but with the present member (D Gillespie) he and his office staff have ignored correspondence and on the occassion of his ringing his office, his staff member, a certain David Dawson even hung up on me.


  3. What can You say about Mr. Ghunt ? Learning is one thing, acting on it is another. Greg Hunt has lost the plot as other Liberals have done.


  4. Budget is coming down in May, I can see Joke Hockey stopping all the rots of Big Business. He will stop all the overseas Tax Havens and give the little guy a break. What is that I see, a winged piglet passing by my window. Thank You Liberal ? voters for the crap you have caused.


  5. Well, social media’s potential to democratise is limited – as this piece shows (it also gives control).

    And why aren’t the pollies interested? Because they aren’t much interested in democracy. Every time you have a policy they believe in opposed by a large group of citizens you will hear remarks to the effect of, “let us make the decisions, we need to be able to govern, just sticking to voting and let us get on with ruling”.


  6. In the dim dark past,when I was a teenager the rhyming slang we used for someone like the current Minister for the Environment was “a Joe Hunt” nowadays it’s “a Greg Hunt”.


  7. Its not only Greg Hunt. Ann Sudmalis, Gilmore MP, still hasn’t answered questions sent to her back in August 2103 despite me repeating the questions monthly.


  8. Try commenting on newmans page, he doesn’t just delete the comment he bans you totally.


  9. Well, if we keep bothering them on facebook I wonder how long before the “Facebook” becomes evil and they try and kill it off. I notice the Murdoch press has been heralding its demise a lot lately is this the beginning?