This was published 4 years ago
The day the nation's politicians found reason to hide behind masks
By Tony Wright
Politicians, the unkind suggest, spend their professional lives hiding behind masks, lest ghastly intentions be revealed.
And so it has come to pass.
Parliament House in Canberra was a-swirl with masks as politicians, parliamentary staff and the media mixed for the first time in months, fear of a pandemic infecting the rarefied air and suppressing great egos.
Who was grinning; who was scowling and who was practising the art of factionally-aligned whispering? No one could tell.
Here was the Finance Minister, Mathias Cormann, having done a media appearance, struggling with a hook of a pesky mask attachment.
Here was the Agriculture Minister, David Littleproud, self-consciously sporting a mask printed with the map of his Queensland electorate of Maranoa.
And here was the renegade Joel Fitzgibbon, fresh from predicting his party could split, using his choice of mask to prove his loyalty ... to his Newcastle Knights rugby league team.
Most of the MPs and Senators cast aside their disguises and their vanity veils when they entered the Parliament's grand chambers for what passed as debate, but even here there remained a distinct otherness to proceedings.
Great screens sat above the benches, allowing those who couldn't fit in the carefully socially-distanced House of Representatives and Senate to take part in a kind of virtual democracy.
How excruciating it must have been for the electronic participants.
How does one toss a half-smart interjection by Zoom?