SYDNEY: Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott has commenced a hunger strike that he says won’t end until “my tragic death or until the federal government’s National Redress Scheme withdraws wild and absurdly false accusations of rape and indecent touching against that saint on earth Cardinal George Pell”.

“Food will not pass my lips until that scheme withdraws completely its disgraceful accusations against the greatest man I have ever known,” Abbott said in a statement released overnight in his former electorate of Warringah.

Abbott is clearly devastated by the overnight news that the national redress scheme has accepted as fact that two boys aged eight and nine were abused in the Victorian goldfields town of Ballarat by Pell when he was the diocese’s episcopal vicar for education.

The scheme has accepted that Pell groped one of the boy’s genitals at a swimming pool in the town. In the other, the redress scheme accepted that the boy was anally raped in a school gymnasium. Both have been awarded compensation payments.

Abbott’s overnight statement repeated comments he made at Pell’s funeral in early 2023 when he praised the cardinal as a “saint for our times” and railed against child abuse charges that had been made against Australia’s top Catholic.

At the funeral, Abbott described Pell as “one of our country’s greatest sons”, a “great hero” and a “saint for our times”. He called for “Pell study courses, Pell spirituality courses, Pell lectures, Pell high schools and Pell university colleges, just as there are for the other saints”.

Abbott’s statement called on other Pell devotees to joint him in his hunger strike, including Pell funeral attendees David Flint and John Howard.

“It was the greatest privilege and by far the finest moments of my life,” Abbott’s statement concluded, “ to have kissed Cardinal Pell’s ring on more than one occasion.”

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Trump doubles down on crash cause

WASHINGTON, DC: President Donald Trump has doubled down on claims made at a White House media call that former Democrat administrations and diversity hire (DEI) policies were to blame for the fatal collision between a passenger plane and a military helicopter over the US capital.

Although the president didn’t mention handicapped black and Hispanic lesbian women directly, he said diversity hire policies had put into airport control towers criminal unidentified illegals who “didn’t have a clue what they were doing”.

“Common sense told me that and no-one in the world has more common sense that I have,” the 47th President sniffed.

“These people are crashing our planes and raping and murdering real Americans and eating their cats and dogs,” Trump said to titters of largely supportive amusement from the assembled legacy media.

Musk pulls savings out of the air

WASHINGTON, DC: Head of US President Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, (pictured far right) says he has overnight identified US$150 million in savings to be made immediately in the federal budget.

“I plan to recommend those funds be saved by closing down the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) which has traditionally investigated air crashes in the USA,” Musk said.

“President Trump has proved that a large and unwieldy bureaucracy with hundreds of staff are simply not needed to identify the causes of both fatal or non-fatal air crashes that helps prevent future incidents.”

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Elon Musk said his plan to scrap the NTSB would be “just the start” to improve the efficiency of the air safety system in America.

“I also see no reason for spending billions of dollars each year on a national air traffic control system,” Musk said.

“We should leave that to the states, or better still, scrap the system altogether. Why do we need a lot of cumbersome red tape like uniform federal air flight rules?

“We should just leave it to the free market to govern aircraft take-offs and landings and to ensure correct aircraft separations in flight,” he said.

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How Patel kashed in at the FBI

WASHINGTON, DC: US President Donald Trump’s nomination for Director of the FBI, Kash Patel, has explained how he came to be in the running for the job.

Appearing before a congressional vetting committee whose members will approve or reject his nomination, Kash said a close friend of his had originally expressed interest in the director’s job.

“Donald Trump is known to both me and my friend, whose identity I will not reveal,” he said.

“I told my friend that if he really wanted to be FBI Director and, as we both know very well how the President operates, he should simply ask Donald if he’d accept cash for the job.

“That’s what he did and, well, here I am,” Kash told committee members.

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