Anthony Albanese adds to mullet’s growing popularity

Forget ‘Hot Albo’, Strewth is honoured to present to you ‘Mullet Albo’.

Anthony Albanese at the 1986 NSW Young Labor conference at Bondi Pavilion.

Forget “Hot Albo”, Strewth is honoured to present to you “Mullet Albo”, pictured at the 1986 NSW Young Labor conference at Sydney’s Bondi Pavilion in some rather short shorts. Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese confirmed to Strewth he did sport the fishy hairstyle. “I absolutely had a mullet … and an earring!” he told Strewth enthusiastically. Given Scott Morrison’s success in finding and successfully interacting with a mulleted man in Tasmania (who later filmed a promo video for the Liberals), maybe bringing back the mullet could be an active option for the Albanese listening tour, which is headed to Launceston today. Never forget, Josh Frydenberg declared in April that the last time Australia had a budget surplus under Labor he had a mullet (circa 1989) and supplied this paper with not one but two topless photographs of himself (featuring tennis racquets) with the once fashionable do.

Good deals

It appears the Liberal Party is capitalising on ScoMo’s new catchphrase by releasing “how good is Australia!” mugs. The navy mugs are being flogged for $35 a pop, $5 more than the US presidential-style “Morrison McCormack ’19” and the “Strong economy, stronger borders, stronger coffee” mugs. Meanwhile, on the ALP’s merchandise page, the $15 Labor leaders stubby holder and coasters four-pack have this curious note highlighted in yellow: “Please note: backordered items will not be delivered prior to Christmas.” Fair enough, it is only six months away.

Snow blind

New Labor deputy Richard Marles was a bit shook up on Melbourne’s 3AW last week.

Neil Mitchell: Do you really collect snow domes?

Marles: I do. I’m feeling a bit embarrassed at this moment and it’s something that happened back in 2000 but, once people know that you collect them, they start to breed. Because people will come and bring them from various places and they turn up on my desk. So I now have, I think it’s almost four or 500 of them in my parliamentary office.

Mitchell: So, if the election was a snow dome, what would it be?

Marles: That’s a kind of esoteric question which I’ll need to think long and hard about it.

Mitchell: It would be a bit of a blizzard.

Marles: It would certainly be a blizzard, that’s true.

Going cold on Gore

Speaking of blizzards, Strewth may have got to the bottom of the cold snap in the past week when temperatures dropped to single digits in Queensland — it’s all Al Gore’s fault. “The Gore effect” is “a perceived connection between occurrences of unseasonably cold weather and some events associated with global warming activism, particularly those attended by former vice-president of the United States and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Al Gore”, according to the boffins at Wikipedia. So, it’s no coincidence that temps dropped as the 71-year-old arrives Down Under. Gore is running a three-day strategy development session in Brisbane this week as part of Queensland’s inaugural Climate Change Week. This very real and not at all ridiculous conspiracy ranks as Strewth’s second favourite theory behind the “Ting Hai effect”, in which there is a sudden and unexplained drop in the stockmarket whenever a film or a television series starring Hong Kong actor Adam Cheng is released.

Budget crunch

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern handed down her “wellbeing budget” last week, with one slight problem — the single mum in the stock image on the cover says she had to move to Queensland because she couldn’t afford to live in New Zealand. Vicky Freeman told the New Zealand Herald she wasn’t political but if she had to choose she’d vote for the Greens.

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