Culture

Tony Abbott Awoke To An Enraged Troupe Of Dancing Tampons This Morning

Maybe it's time to just go with the flow on this one.

by Elizabeth Flux  28 May 2015

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For someone who struggles to even let the word “tampon” escape his lips, Tony Abbott’s trip into work this morning was probably about 10 percent more taxing than usual as he battled his way through a volley of protesters dressed up as items “which are one way or another regarded as health products”.

Over the past few days, Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey have been taking part in a particularly frustrating game of yes-no-maybe, punting around the possibility of removing the GST on items for people to bleed into once a month back and forth between them.

Things were looking good after Monday’s Q&A. There, the Treasurer was confronted by Stop Taxing My Period petition founder Subeta Vimalarajah and admitted the tax should probably not be applied to these products. “[I’ll] raise it with the states at the next meeting of the Treasurers in July,” he said, before reaffirming it on Twitter.

Enter Tony ‘Minister For Women’ Abbott. “It’s certainly not something that this Government has a plan to do,” he told reporters on Tuesday morning, effectively quashing any momentum from the night before. Promising a tedious bureaucratic mess shunting between state and federal levels until the end of time, he then claimed it should instead be a state issue as they’re the ones who would be forfeiting an extra $30 million in revenue each year.

“My preference is that the states and territories should make up their minds whether they want any changes to the GST,” he said.

But this is all a bit awkward now, as Triple J Hack then went on to contact each state and territory to see where they stand on the issue. The majority would vote to scrap the GST on these items.

Not only this, he also managed avoid saying any of the following: “tampons”, “pads”, “menstrual” or “bleeding”, with the diligence of someone convinced that merely uttering the unclean words would immediately summon the contents of a sanitary bin to his person.

Despite his best efforts, the unholy demon sticks just won’t stay away.

With hope threatening to go down the toilet, and options being limited to either unfairly paying through the nose or being permanently pregnant until menopause hits, the petition’s creator and a bunch of protesters have turned to plan B: dance protest and “free hugs for tax repealers”.

They also brought this excellent billboard.

“Within a few days of starting the campaign, I had my first 10,000 signatures” Subeta said to the media and fellow protesters. “The fight is not over yet. Tony Abbott backed away from Hockey’s comments at his first chance [but] it would be a disservice to those who have campaigned on this in the past to stop short of that legislative change.”

It’s a great point and she shows a whole lot of passion for it, but why stop at dancing tampons? If the government insists on padding out its budget by taxing essential items, further protests could include literally sending the painters and decorators in, or perhaps recruiting cosplayers to re-enact a very special kind of Red Wedding.

Listen to the dancing tampons Mr Abbott — maybe it’s time to just go with the flow on this one.

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Feature Image GetUp/Twitter.