By Kishor Napier-Raman and Noel Towell
Just a year ago, former prime minister Scott Morrison said he wasn’t interested in legacies.
Remember me? Scott Morrison wants you to and he’s talking up his achievements.Credit: James Brickwood
Now he’s exiled to the backbench after leading the Liberals to a historic election drubbing Morrison is making it clear he wants a legacy after all – that of a practical, can-do realist on foreign affairs who stood up to Xi Jinping’s China like no one else.
This Morrisonian brand of historical revisionism was on full display when the ex-PM appeared on a podcast hosted by former Australian scribe and Liberal policy adviser Paul Maley to discuss AUKUS, foreign policy and China.
“We stood up to them across a broad range of fronts,” he told Maley. “This did really discombobulate what the Chinese government thought about Australia.”
The only one truly discombobulated here is Morrison. That the relationship with Beijing started thawing the second we got a new government in Canberra is more than mere coincidence.
Elsewhere, we get more examples of the tactless, bulldozing approach to diplomacy that helped usher in that historic deterioration in Sino-Australian relations.
Morrison chuckles as he dismisses “the rather blatant commercial perspective of France” on the AUKUS agreement, with apparently little recollection of Emmanuel Macron accusing him of lying over tearing up a submarine deal.
He also claims CCP “operatives” were interfering with a 2017 Bennelong byelection by ... speaking to Chinese-Australian voters in Chinese.
Perhaps had his own party done the same, they might not have lost the seat in 2022.
It’s all peak Morrison – a disinclination to take responsibility for failures, and a scarcely believable degree of magical thinking around his own successes and how they are perceived.
That’s quite the legacy.
Casual Crowe
Trust Melbourne’s restaurateurs to consider themselves too good for Hollywood royalty.
Russell Crowe is too casual for Melbourne’s eateriesCredit: John Shakespeare
Poor old Russell Crowe and his partner Britney Theriot fell foul of the tough door policy at Japanese-fusion joint Mr Miyagi (a culinary red flag if ever there was) last Friday, when, feeling a little peckish after a spot of tennis in the 37-degree heat, the pair were refused entry because you’re not allowed in there wearing sporting attire, or something.
Crowe – who’s the epitome of chill these days – took the rejection in his stride, his people tell us, and decamped with Theriot to another nearby establishment.
Fortunately for all concerned, there have been back-channel contacts between the star and the restaurant in the hopes of everyone coming to an amicable understanding.
Mr Miyagi owner Kristian Klein told us dress standards were tricky to enforce and the staff member who made the call on Friday hadn’t recognised Crowe, leading to a “very unfortunate situation for everybody”.
“We’d love for him come to dinner, we’d love to have him back,” Klein told CBD.
Rude food
As “Australia’s only national food critic”, John Lethlean built a fearsome reputation on the culinary scene, delivering cutting commentary in News Corp publications on any food, service or attitude not in keeping with the steep bills at the high-end eateries that are his preferred victims.
But aspects of Lethlean’s verdict on Perth’s Shui seem to have crossed a line, with its publisher, News Corp-owned food site Delicious, abruptly pulling the review down and asking the writer to remove his own Instagram post promoting the review.
Delicious wouldn’t tell us why they removed the review, but a quote from the piece reproduced in Lethlean’s social media foray provides a clue.
“And the maitre d’/meet and greeter wears an outfit that threatens to expose more than just her inexperience when she bends over to set a table. A new review up @deliciousaus of Perth newcomer @shuisubiaco,” Lethlean wrote.
There was quite the backlash building as Wednesday lunchtime approached with hundreds of online posts appearing decrying the treatment of the Shui staff member and demanding an explanation and apology from Delicious.
Lethlean told us from Canada that the publisher asked him to remove the Instagram post – whether he was happy about it or not was hard to tell from a text message – and referred our other questions to Delicious editor Kerrie McCallum.
We’ll let you know when we get a response.
The owners of Shui were contacted for comment.
Trough times
Staying on culinary matters, authorities at Canberra’s Parliament House have moved to turn down the heat on some trouble cooking at the staff canteen – affectionately known as The Trough.
There have been rumblings that the buffet has lost its sense of culinary adventure, with the days of prawn and bacon goulash or potato and porcini soup just a distant memory.
Instead, day after day the cafeteria serves up the same food – Korean fried chicken being a particular staple – alongside beef short rib and shin, roast potatoes, steamed vegetables and chicken schnitzel – “pan-fried cardboard” complained one of the big house’s inmates to us.
We asked the Department of Parliamentary Services what was cooking and they told us it just so happened they’d been hearing the same thing as we had and had decided to shake things up a bit, starting on Wednesday.
“DPS will be offering more variety and options in our menu, starting today, the Staff Dining Room menu will be updated every Wednesday,” a spokeswoman said, in a statement later circulated to the building’s occupants.
“The offering will include vegan, vegetarian, and low gluten options across the menu, along with all the favourites that are consistently popular.
“Some items have become a regular feature because of the popularity.”
Bring back the biff
The NRL season hasn’t even kicked off yet, and the biff is well and truly back. But this time, it was the journalists, not the players, making fools of themselves.
Like so many good beefs, it began on Twitter. For months, Roar.com league reporter Mike Meehall Wood had been rather candid in his opinions on similarly outspoken NRL360 host Paul Kent.
Some samples include tweets lambasting Kent’s “gutter, clientelist journalism,” and, in what we hear was the final straw, another accusing him of “dog whistle bullshit” when talking about Pasifika players such as Jarome Luai.
It was all a bit of harmless Twitter sledging, until someone made the mistake of putting the two in the same room at the Kayo season launch at King St Wharf on Wednesday.
Cue a very conspicuous screaming match, which some witnesses told CBD culminated in Kent, one of the angriest men in sports media, shirtfronting Wood and dragging him outside.
Wood did not return CBD’s calls, while Kent was in no mood to chat on Wednesday afternoon.
“I don’t wanna talk about it ... just look at what he says.”
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