Howard 'should be run out of town'

[cal04]

LABOR finance spokesman Lindsay Tanner squared off for a gunfight over Telstra today, describing Prime Minister John Howard as a Mexican villain and Liberal backbencher Wilson Tuckey as a pantomime horse as he rewrote The Three Amigos for Parliament's amusement. Mr Tanner went in all guns blazing as Labor attempted to censure the Government for failing to tell Telstra shareholders about the parlous state of the telecommunications giant. But there was no one to shoot.

Even as Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran, the Government's appointed target for the debate, was speaking, barely a handful of Government MPs were there to back their man. At one point, the Labor benches felt so sorry for Mr McGauran that Opposition frontbenchers Arch Bevis and Gavan O'Connor crossed the floor to sit beside him. But Mr Tanner brought the house down with his defence of Telstra boss Sol Trujillo and the three fellow Americans Mr Trujillo brought with him to run the telco – right-hand man Phil Burgess, marketing chief Bill Stewart and chief operating officer Greg Winn. The trio has been dubbed The Three Amigos, after the 1986 movie starring Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short as three not-so-bright actors – Ned Niederlander, Lucky Day and Dusty Bottoms – who blunder into trouble in a foreign land.

The out-of-work trio head to Mexico supposedly to work with a famous actor, El Guapo, who dominates his region. "They soon discover that El Guapo is, in fact, a villainous bandit who is tyrannising the local region, abducting women and tyrannising the local citizenry," Mr Tanner told Parliament. "I think we could ask who is El Guapo in the current Three Amigos story?" Mr Tuckey tried to heckle, but he was silenced by laughter when Mr Tanner retorted: "Wilson, you are his horse, so I think you can sit down." "I think you have probably guessed that I see the Prime Minister in that role, so we ask: What has El Guapo been doing?

According to the Labor frontbencher, El Guapo Howard has been lying to the Australian people by saying Telstra services in regional Australia were up to scratch. Then Mr Howard stripped Telstra of dividends to prop up the share price, before refusing to give the facts about Telstra's true financial position, Mr tanner said. "So desperate is he to sell Telstra, so extreme is his obsession to privatise Telstra, that the Government is now eating its own children," he said. "It is about time that El Guapo was run out of town."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16525305%255E1702,00.html

[velvet]

1. LMAO

"Wilson, you are his horse." Priceless.

[rooboy]

2. This explains the new 'major' press conference about terrorism...

that Howard just held. Anything to change the subject...