Enough Talk: Hastie And BRS To Settle Differences At Local Paintball Skirmish, Winner Gets Canning

ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact

There have been inches and inches of online conjecture, memes and opinion regarding the seemingly degraded relationship between two men this week and it's time it came to an end.

Andrew Hastie and Ben Roberts-Smith, both decorated former members of the elite special forces regiment, the Special Air Service (SASR), are due to settle their differences at a Perth paintball facility in coming weeks and the winner is going to get the federal seat of Canning, according to said online conjecture.

In layman's terms, much of what the SASR does is just like a game of paintball skirmish except there's a bit more at stake than a few welts and giggles among friends. Both men have been trained in the art of close quarters combat, which in terms of transferable skills, makes a game of paintball the best arbiter of who deserves to represent the people of Western Australia's gooch.

While Hastie and BRS are yet to agree to this and lawyers are still working out, by the hour, if this is even constitutionally possible, online commentators are quickly picking a side, as they do best.

There's also the issue of Australians convicted of serious offences being ineligible to enter parliament. But nobody has been convicted of anything at the moment so that's not a problem.

It's unclear if this will ever take place or if this is just more worthless conjecture about a topic that only a handful of blokes in the defence force can ever really understand the context of or if this adds something to the online debate over who is right and who is wrong, which is made up entirely of people who have no idea what they're talking about.

More to come.