American political commentator and journalist Tucker Carlson found plenty to laugh about during his time in Australia.
Carlson’s signature laugh was present throughout his speeches during a two-and-a-half-week tour of Australia’s major capitals.
Appearing Monday in Melbourne, Carlson wasted no time in finding the humorous side of being in Australia with what might have been a display of a national accent.
“I love Australian whoops. I don’t know anything about what you’re saying, but I know I would agree with you,” he said with a chuckle.
Carlson said he had fallen in love with Australia and particularly Australian cities, which he said “worked” unlike those in the United States.
He said he would like to live in Australia, but one of the biggest obstacles was the country’s high cost of living.
“I would live here if I could afford it, but I can’t,” he said with a laugh.
Previously in Sydney, Carlson was looking at house prices as he was considering buying property in Australia, but soon realised that even someone with his bank balance could not realistically afford to buy a house in Australia.
The American political commentator found plenty to laugh about on stage with his remarks about Australia
Carlson (centre) arrives to address the Australian Freedom Conference at the Hyatt Hotel in Canberra
“It was a lot more than I could afford and I have a decent job,” he told the crowd.
‘How can anyone live here?’
He said when he asked a Sydney local the question, he was told many had left the city altogether or ended up homeless.
“I said, ‘That sounds like a crisis,'” Carlson added.
“Why is this happening? Immigration. There is only one reason, and that is the reason.”
“But nobody wants to say it like that because it sounds like an attack on immigrants. And that’s how they shut you up. They say, ‘Shut up, racist.'”
Carlson said he generally supported immigration, but that prices would rise rapidly if there was not enough housing for a growing population.
“If your children find it too expensive to buy a house in the country where they were born, you are erased, that’s all. Your lineage is over and that’s what’s happening,” he said.
“If your children can’t afford a home here, then there’s only one person to blame, and that person is the people who run your government.”
Despite his American loyalty, Carlson said he would move to Australia but “can’t afford it”
Speaking about Australia’s political parties during his speech in Melbourne, he said he could not understand how any of the Labor politicians were actually workers with trades.
“There are no workers in the Labour Party leadership, none of them have ever had a job. They are all parasites living off the taxpayer,” he said with an exaggerated laugh.
“The laziest people in the country call themselves Labour Party members.”
Carlson also found amusement in what he called the “endless bullying” of politicians and bureaucrats, using cigarette purchases as an example.
“What the hell do you have in your cigarettes? I don’t even want to smoke them looking at them,” he said with a smile.
“You’re making me not want to smoke. Every pack had like a rotten tongue or something.”
“I’m a grown man who pays his taxes. I should be able to do that. Can’t you smoke a Marlborough without getting a lecture?”
He also thought Australia’s high energy prices were ridiculous considering the country has vast deposits of domestic resources.
He said the valuable commodities were being used to produce renewable energy, which “we then buy back” from China.
“Whoever thought that hates you,” Carlson said.
Carlson ridiculed Australia for selling its natural resources “to a far away country to make something that doesn’t work and pay more for it.”
The political commentator also criticised the country’s welcoming ceremonies.
“That’s crazy on its face. The fact that there are high energy costs is reason enough to get rid of the people who run the country,” he said.
He later said with a smirk that China did not believe in green energy “for a second” and that they were buying Australian coal to build renewable energy infrastructure and said “white people want wind farms, let’s build more.”
Carlson was impressed by the many advantages Australia offered in terms of space, ample resources, relative lack of poverty and an educated population.
He thought Australia should “rule the world” and wryly suggested that obtaining nuclear weapons would “make that point clear”.
“They probably don’t, they don’t even have guns, they’re probably not buying nuclear weapons, but they should get both,” he said with a slight chuckle to himself at the different approaches to gun rights in Australia and the United States.
During his appearances, the political commentator also touched on Australia’s history and welcoming ceremonies, which show respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
He told those in the room that they had “nothing to apologize for, at all” when it came to the “sins” of their ancestors, referring to white settlers.
“And yet, at every turn, they make you apologize,” he said.
‘I have never seen a society under more attack than the one you live in now, and with less justification.
‘Every time a commercial airline lands, every time there is any kind of inauguration ceremony, they send you the message that you are in a foreign land.
Carlson spoke at the Australian Freedom Conference at the invitation of mining billionaire Clive Palmer (the two men are pictured together)
He also mocked the ABC and its reporting priorities.
‘This morning I watched your ABC’s in my hotel room for about 20 minutes, until I got a barf bag.
“It was one of the most grotesque moments… I couldn’t even believe it was real.”
‘I sympathise with you, the ones who work for these (media) companies that are really corrupt, and in some ways you know it but you don’t want to think about it because you have children and a mortgage.
“I get it, I’ve been there,” he told the crowd.
“But let’s be honest, everyone else knows what it’s about, everyone else knows how corrupt you are, so there’s a reason they despise you.”
Carlson also found the humorous side of local pride in having convict ancestors.
“And every time I ask someone why their ancestors were sent here, I always get the same answer: Do you know what it is?” he asked.
“Stealing a loaf of bread. I don’t believe it for a second. It was like armed robbery, but they say, oh yeah, stealing a loaf of bread.”
