By Kishor Napier-Raman and Stephen Brook
Donald Trump’s election win last week is already proving a little awkward for the ALP. Former prime minister and now Ambassador to the United States Kevin Rudd swiftly deleted his mean tweets and a 2017 video resurfaced of Anthony Albanese, then in his “Cool Albo” era, telling a crowd at Splendour in the Grass that Trump “scares the shit” out of him.
Awkward questions about Trump followed the prime minister when he appeared at a meeting of about 40 local Labor branch members at the Grayndler Federal Electorate Conference on Tuesday. The location, Annandale Community Centre, was kept a secret until hours earlier because security is tight when your local MP lives in The Lodge.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says Donald Trump’s election victory won’t impact the AUKUS pact.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Asked whether Trump’s victory could affect the AUKUS pact with the US, Albanese assured members it wouldn’t, that he’d discussed it with the president-elect, and would make clear what Australia’s interests were to the new administration if needed.
Choosing his words carefully, Albanese also said while Labor voters might’ve wanted a different outcome at last week’s election, he was willing and able to work with Trump, sources in the room told CBD.
The PM’s inner west Sydney seat is one of the country’s most progressive and the local card-carrying ALP members are no exception. Several local branches have passed motions critical of the Albanese government’s stance on foreign policy issues like the AUKUS pact and war in the Middle East.
In the week since Trump’s victory, three branches – Dulwich Hill, Annandale and Lewisham passed motions critical of AUKUS in light of the incoming change in Washington, DC. A few eyebrows were raised after none of those motions made it onto the agenda for Tuesday night’s meeting.
But the organisers assured us this was because of a one-week deadline for motions, rather than a sinister plot to keep potentially fraught discussions off the table, and possibly embarrass Albo in his own backyard.
Fisky business
The nation’s judges aren’t known for their sense of humour, but ABC comedy Fisk has clearly tickled judicial funny bones that other comedies cannot reach.
So much so that CBD has been supplied a rave review for Kitty Flanagan’s legal comedy from a prominent Federal Court judge.
“I do enjoy an episode of Fisk and find it very true to life, including the attention to detail in relation to my former area of expertise in probate law and the ‘no gavels in Court’ aspect,” judge Jane Needham breezily told CBD via the Federal Court media team.
We cannot quibble with Her Honour’s judgment, which is unlikely to find its way into official case law, but no doubt will be blasted coast to coast by the public broadcaster’s insatiable marketing machine.
Meanwhile, Her Honour was on a roll.
“In fact, Monday, October 21 was declared ‘wear your brown suit day’ in my chambers,” she told us, which fans on the program will instantly understand to be a tribute to lead character Helen Fisk’s terminally daggy brown suits.
CBD first became aware of the program’s judicial fanbase after Needham, who was appointed to the bench in July, dropped a line into a LinkedIn post reviewing legal aspects of the program organised by barrister Craig Birtles.
“Lawyers tend to take themselves quite seriously,” said Birtles, a barrister at Sydney’s Two Wentworth Chambers, with an understatement we find uncharacteristic of barristers.
“I think the program is 10 out of 10, but I don’t think I should rank the way in which they present the law.
“People quite enjoy the show and find it quite funny – as long as it is understood it is a parody … and not reflective of reality.”
Flanagan alerted CBD to Birtles’ posts at the afterparty for a special 10th anniversary live performance of Annabel Crabb and Leigh Sales’ Chat 10, Looks 3 podcast earlier this month at Melbourne’s Hamer Hall.
Liberals for Harris
Well, the Liberals always told us they were a broad church.
And while some on the Australian right were popping champagne corks last week after former president Donald Trump became future president Donald Trump, a handful of Young Liberal office bearers and party staffers appeared in a social media post from a Kamala Harris rally.
Young Liberals attend a Kamala Harris rally as part of a study tour to the United States.Credit: Instagram
In a photograph from one of the vice-president’s final pre-election events, CBD spotted federal Young Liberal president and former Peter Dutton staffer Darcy Creighton and NSW division vice president Georgia Lowden (decked out in a Harris-Walz tee), among a throng of excited baby hacks.
The picture, which has been doing the rounds, whipped up outrage among some party conservatives, horrified that any Liberal could support a Democrat over Trump. But the conservative rage fantasy of their moderate Young Liberal frenemies campaigning for Harris has been shattered by a reality far dorkier.
A crew of Young Liberals travelled to the US on a self-funded bipartisan “study tour” where they watched both Democratic and Republican rallies and met political operatives and stakeholders from across the political spectrum.
Think of it like Brat Summer (or fall) but for political nerds who read the CBD column. Proof that West Wing Syndrome remains strong among baby political staffers, even the conservative ones.
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