Politics

Everyone Is Making Fun Of Bill Shorten For Trying To Use The Word ‘Noob’

Please, keep him away from Urban Dictionary

Bill Shorten noob

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Bill Shorten has continued on his mission to expand his lexicon and connect with the youth — I guess — by calling another politician a ‘noob minister’.

The former Labor leader — and current Shadow NDIS Minister — sent out a press release this afternoon which attacked the government’s NDIS minister Stuart Robert. You remember Robert as the guy behind robodebt, or the guy who tried blamed hackers for attacking the MyGov website after it crashed due to overwhelming demand.

“Clearly Mr Robert is what online gamers would call a ‘noob’, someone who has absolutely no idea what they are doing,” Shorten said.

“Australians are sick of the endless tech bungles from this digital noob.”

Very handy of him to include the explanation for all the noobs out there who don’t know what he’s talking about.

A little context for this: an audit yesterday found that Services Australia, the agency Roberts oversees, did not have an appropriate framework to manage cyber security risks and did not monitor the costs of the current welfare payment system.

The jury is still out on whether Shorten’s use of the word “noob” is a genuine attempt to engage with the zeitgeist, or whether he knows that any cringe attempt to exploit this kind of language is a surefire way to go viral on Twitter. Either way here I am, writing about it.

Clearly no longer being the Opposition Leader has given Shorten plenty of time to brush up on the lingo — last month he told our prime minister not to be a “simp” for Donald Trump.

Whoever is teaching Bill these words, please stop.