ANY goodwill between Frankston Labor MP Paul Edbrooke and narrowly defeated Liberal candidate for Frankston Sean Armistead has disappeared in the wake of comments made by Mr Edbrooke in Parliament.
The pair had been on friendly terms in the immediate aftermath of Mr Edbrooke’s victory in last year’s state election with Mr Armistead calling the Labor man “a gentleman throughout the campaign”.
When speaking about the state budget in Parliament late last month, Mr Edbrooke turned his attention to Mr Armistead’s Facebook page which, he claimed, “has more pictures of me on it than mine has”.
Mr Edbrooke said Mr Armistead is “an aspiring politician waiting for his party to feed him a rubbish opinion. I note that he now suffers from relevance deprivation on Facebook.”
Mr Armistead, who missed out on winning the seat of Frankston by less than 200 votes, has taken to social media to continue to push the Liberals’ cause in the months after the state election.
In Parliament, Frankston MP Mr Edbrooke listed Labor projects such as the TAFE Rescue Fund as showing “it’s on like Donkey Kong in Frankston” while talking about Mr Armistead’s Facebook page.
When contacted by The Times Mr Armistead said he found Mr Edbrooke’s comments “bizarre”.
“I think it’s bizarre that the member for Frankston is wasting Parliamentary time carping about me as a former candidate,” he said.
“In my mind it really shows how inexperienced or naïve he is as a new member of Parliament.”
He said he would continue “to hold him [Mr Edbrooke] to account” when he believed Labor is not delivering on its pre-election promises to the Frankston community.
The phrase “It’s on like Donkey Kong”, a reference to an arcade game first released by Nintendo in 1981, commonly means “that it’s time to throw down or compete at a high level; something is about to go down” according to online slang words dictionary Urban Dictionary.
Former N.W.A. hip hop group member Ice Cube coined the term “It’s on like Donkey Kong” in his 1992 rap song Now I Gotta Wet’Cha.
