Let's vote this Celebrity Survivor off our island
There has been a lot of criticism of David Oldfield over the years, and the latest thing he's being hammered in the press is perhaps his most innocuous. He's taken two days off from Parliament to film Celebrity Survivor in Vanuatu. But personally, I welcome the idea of David Oldfield not being in Macquarie St, having input into anything resembling policy. In fact, I can't think of anything better NSW taxpayers could do with Oldfield than dump him permanently on a remote island.
Oldfield, of course, was Pauline Hanson's svengali for a time before he dumped her to run for the NSW Upper House on the One Nation ticket. He then cynically spun off One Nation NSW into its own independent entity, meaning it didn't go down the gurgler when Hanson herself did. In so doing also achieved something that his notional leader never did – getting elected on a One Nation ticket. Given that pedigree you can see how badly Oldfield must have wanted publicity if he was willing to travel to an island where he'd be surrounded by people with dark skin.
At a time when our sensitivity on racism issues is appropriately high – ask Dean Jones – I hate to see a man who was once involved with a controversial hate-speech site (muslimterrorists.com) being given this kind of soft publicity. Seven put Pauline on Dancing With The Stars, and Oldfield is even more noxious. Pauline may have been prejudiced, but she was also naive. Oldfield saw a successful brand and used it to catapult himself into a cushy position. I wonder he was ever even particularly sympathetic to her politics, as opposed to seeing them for the electoral gold they briefly were.
As for Celebrity Survivor, it sounds fascinating. I'm particularly keen to see how self-styled white witch Fiona Horne uses her magic in extreme conditions. If she's starving, surely she can just conjure up a three-course dinner?
She's accused the host Dicko of being sexist, which has – suuuurely coincidentally – gotten the show lots of handy publicity. What are the odds of Dicko having problems with his attitude towards women? Pretty high if you ask Paulini.
Imogen Bailey, the FHM modelette, rushed to Dicko's defence. (Oddly enough, as a swimsuit model, she isn't so sensitive about issues such as objectificatio.) Apparently she fought with Horne throughout the series, and may well have narrowly avoided been transformed into a toad. (That is, of course, unless the white witch thing is rubbish. What are the chances?!) It'll be fascinating to see Bailey in an environment where she's not surrounded by hyperventilating adolescents. Expect lots of glistening swimsuit shots and not a great deal else.
So – Celebrity Survivor looks quite compelling. I just don't think David Oldfield should be on it. He's not a celebrity, he's either a fascist or a cynical opportunist, or most likely a mix of both. Only an incredibly small, and fairly misguided, proportion of NSW ever even voted for him. The bar for celebrities in reality TV is usually set incredibly low, but Oldfield is well below even that. I can only hope he doesn't outwit, outplay or outlast. My wish is that, as he will be after our next state election, he's just plain out.
Dominic Knight