Why do homophobic conservatives love Savage Garden so much?

In November triple j announced they were changing the date of their annual Hottest 100 countdown after conducting a survey of their listeners. It’s a good move, and one welcomed by a lot of people, but not everyone is coping.

First we saw Triple M absolutely freak out about the absence of a musical countdown on January 26 to the extent that they came up with their own, called the “Ozzest 100”.

Now Cory Bernardi of all people has launched his own countdown, complete with an “Australia Day Spotify playlist”.

According to the website for the Australian Conservatives, the political party Bernardi now heads after he defected from the Liberals, the countdown is a direct response to triple j’s decision to move the Hottest 100.

“As taxpayer-funded Triple J and their ‘Hottest 100’ abandon our national day for political correctness, we’re inviting you to cast your vote by telling us your favorite [sic] 3 tracks from our #AC100 playlist,” the website says.

Hot tip: if you’re trying to launch an “official Australia Day playlist” to show off how bloody true blue and Aussie you are, you could at least get the Australian spelling of “favourite” right.

Bernardi, or at least one of his staffers, have actually gone and created a Spotify playlist made up of 100 songs. While most of the songs are the kind of thing Triple M would play 17 times a day, there are some pretty odd choices in there for an arch-conservative like Bernardi.

The playlist kicks off the usual Aussie pub rock classics like ‘Down Under’ by Men At Work, Cold Chisel’s ‘Khe Sanh’ (which is hardly a conservative song) and Great Southern Land by ICEHOUSE. But, in an interesting choice for someone as notoriously homophobic has Bernardi, he’s put Peter Allen in at number five with ‘I Still Call Australia Home’.

In position 20 we have an absolute deadset banger in the form of ‘Advance Australia Fair’ performed by the Sydney Youth Australia. Immediately after that is ‘Absolutely Everybody’, but not performed by Vanessa Amorosi. For some reason Bernardi has gone with a cover version, even though the original is sitting right there on Spotify. Does he have some beef with Amorosi? Who knows, but we need to get to the bottom of this.

The playlist also includes Paul Kelly and The Living End, neither of which we can imagine sharing Bernardi’s views on Australia Day. He’s even gone so far as to include Yothu Yindi in the playlist which seems very… off.

While most of the songs are from a bygone era, there are a few more contemporary hits (relatively speaking) in there from Birds of Tokyo, The Temper Trap and Angus & Julia Stone.

But hands down my favourite is the inclusion of Savage Garden. Darren Hayes, the former lead singer of Savage Garden, was a prominent campaigner for marriage equality and wrote to the Prime Minister asking for it be legalised back in 2016. Despite Savage Garden’s clear politics, both represented through their music and in Hayes’ public stances, conservatives seem to love them.

Last year Tony Abbott admitted to being a Savage Garden in the midst of the plebiscite debate, for which he was entirely fairly roasted.

To really make things awkward for Bernardi, Hayes has recently tweeted his support for changing the date of Australia Day, making Savage Garden’s inclusion on his playlist even weirder.

Change the fucking date. Respect the Australians who had their people slaughtered, their families torn apart and their culture systematically under attack. (rephrased my previous tweet – 'erased' was the wrong word choice. Apology for any offense caused). https://t.co/SHWkYLK2EJ — Darren Hayes (@darrenhayes) January 16, 2018

Of course people have taken up Bernardi’s invitation to vote for their own favourite tracks and the results are… very good.