Birmo goes electric

There’s been a U-turn on EVs in the Morrison government! Strewth can confirm Finance Minister Simon Birmingham has leased two taxpayer-funded electronic vehicles.

There’s been a U-turn on EVs in the Morrison government! Strewth can confirm Finance Minister Simon Birmingham has leased two taxpayer-funded electronic vehicles — a Hyundai Ioniq and Tesla Model 3 — to chauffeur politicians around the Canberra Bubble™. It’s part of a two-year trial by the Finance Department to “assess the viability” for future Comcar fleets. Park that thought. Didn’t Scott Morrison claim Labor’s 2019 election policy — that EVs should comprise 50 per cent of new car sales by 2030 — would spell “the end of the weekend”? Cried the PM: “The sort of vehicles that Bill Shorten wants you to drive, you can’t get one for less than $45,000 and it won’t tow that boat, it won’t tow that trailer.” Employment Minister Michaelia Cash vowed to “stand by our tradies” and “save their utes” ... an outburst described by Malcolm Turnbull as “peak crazy”. The wheel started turning last year when former finance minister Mathias Cormann scrapped the ageing white Holden Caprices in favour of a dark grey mix of Toyota Camry Hybrid sedans and luxury BMW 6 series GT sedans. We have been assured the new EVs comply with the “Australian Government Fleet Vehicle Selection Policy” that ensures each car has a five star safety rating, provides value for money and “addresses environmental considerations”. The Tesla Comcar is hot property and has left other drivers green with envy in the queue outside the House of Representatives. The cars will undergo on-road (business as usual) and off-road (closed circuit track) assessments in Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne over the two-year trial to ensure there is minimal disruption to politicians’ needs by the EVs’ “charging requirements”. There are 14 charging stations within a 15-minute drive of Parliament House, and Finance plans to work with the CSIRO to “share information and improve understanding of charging infrastructure and technologies”. What does Labor’s newbie energy spokesman Chris Bowen make of the new car smell? “Not shy of a headline or climate fear-mongering for political gain, the PM spent the whole last election claiming that electric vehicles would ‘end the weekend’. They’ve trashed the development of an EV industry here and due to inaction, Australia now has the lowest uptake of EVs in the developed world.” Gas who?

Moving on up

Spotted! Two Palestine posters in the living room of former ambassador to Israel Dave Sharma’s recently listed Paddington terrace. The Liberal member for Wentworth’s four-bedroom home (and its recently installed fireplace) comes with a $2.8m price guide, ahead of a March 6 auction. Sharma and wife Rachel Lord are upgrading to a $4m forever home — a five bedder with a pool, garage and retreat for his three daughters — close to Centennial Park … making him the new neighbour of Liberal senator Andrew Bragg, who bought a three-storey $4.6m terrace in 2019. It was Sharma’s art collection, featured in BresicWhitley’s sale snaps, that caught our eye. “They are tourist posters from the British Mandate period, before Israel was a state, when the whole territory was called (including by Zionists) Palestine. So it is not a political statement,” he told Strewth. Sharma purchased one of the pictures after spotting it in the home of conservative Israeli MP Naftali Bennett.

Palestine posters adorn Dave Sharma’s living room wall.

Year of the Ox

Anthony Albanese has short-changed his colleagues. Literally. The Opposition Leader was spotted handing out lucky red envelopes for Chinese New Year to Labor pollies in Parliament House this week. Instead of being stuffed with cash, as is tradition, Albanese filled his envelopes with chocolate gold coins — a halfpenny, a 20c piece and a round 50c. How cheap! Mystery still surrounds the contents of Albanese’s fortune cookie from Friday, which caused a roar of laughter when opened in front of Graham Richardson, Joe Hockey and Ben Fordham at a long lunch at infamous Sydney eatery Golden Century on Chinese New Year’s Day.

Binders full of women

How long does it take to write to a complaints procedure? That’s the question being asked by Labor politicians and staff after the latest airing of Parliament House’s toxic laundry. It’s been over a year since Albanese’s chief of staff Tim Gartrell started working on a new protocol for sexual assault and harassment, at the recommendation of the party’s female staffer network. Strewth has been told that it is in the “final stages of consultations” and a version will be going to national executive in “coming weeks”. We’ll believe it when we see it (are leaked it). What we can confirm is that many eyebrows were raised when Kristina Keneally was sent out to deliver these Labor lines on Monday ...

Q: “Have you ever been aware of allegations of women on your side of politics being assaulted since you’ve been in this place?”

Keneally: “I have not been aware directly of any allegations, no. But what I can say ... is that when I came to the parliament several years ago, back then as a member of the press gallery, I was taken aback by the culture here. And it made me wonder what it must be like, for younger women and women who are not in positions of power and influence here in this building. What kind of culture is this?”

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