Bring out your dead

As Gladys Berejiklian perp-walked into her Willoughby office on Wednesday, flanked by federal Liberal MP Trent Zimmerman and a swarm of cameras, two things caught Strewth’s eye.

Alice Workman

4 min read

9:43PMOctober 06, 2021

Gladys Berejiklian.

As Gladys Berejiklian perp-walked into her Willoughby office on Wednesday, flanked by federal Liberal MP Trent Zimmerman and a swarm of cameras, two things caught Strewth’s eye — a lone piece of chicken and avocado sushi, sitting unwrapped on the ground among the bunches of mourners’ flowers and a handwritten sign that said “Romani Ite Domum”. The phrase translates to “Romans Go Home” – a reference to the Monty Python movie The Life of Brian (1979). And here we thought our “Nobody expects the Independent Commission Against Corruption!” gag was going to be the tragicomic highlight of the week. The scene in question features Brian (Graham Chapman) trying to prove his worth to revolutionary group the People’s Front of Judea by painting an anti-Roman slogan “Romanes eunt domus” on the walls of governor Pontius Pilate’s palace in Jerusalem. When he’s caught by a passing centurion (John Cleese), Brian fears he will be killed on the spot. Instead, the centurion reprimands Brian for his graffito’s faulty Latin grammar — which translates to “People called Romanes they go to the house” — and forces Brian to write out the correct phrase 100 times as punishment. “Hail Caesar, if it’s not done by sunrise, I’ll call your balls off,” the centurion says. Fruity language aside, it doesn’t take an arts degree to work out what message the modern-day messiah Brian, or Briana, was trying to send to the former premier. But will she see it? Berejiklian promised reporters she would “read every single card and every single message” in her new-found spare time. To paraphrase Reg, leader of the People’s Front of Judea: Apart from icare, koala wars, bushfires, stadium wars, the Ruby Princess, pork-barrelling, WestConnex, the ICAC and light rail, what has the Coalition government ever done for us?

Someone left a tiny piece of chicken sushi at the Gladys shrine. ðŸ§#auspol #gladysberejiklian #sydney pic.twitter.com/i67JFzR7Gr
— Jason Om (@jason_om) October 4, 2021

Mark it up

“The NSW government has been very poor financial managers, they now have massive deficits and massive debts, they managed Covid very badly and you can see the consequences … To be frank with you, I’m tired of listening to their whingeing” — WA Premier Mark McGowan.

Electric dreams

Dominic Perrottet may become the first Australian Premier to own an electric vehicle after a rather enjoyable test drive of Matt Kean’s Model 3 Tesla. The white Elon Musk mobile ($67,798 drive-away) was on display at Government House on Tuesday, when the 40-year-old Treasurer opted against a chauffeured car and drove himself to the swearing-in. (This was hours before Kean helped to save a man’s life by calling triple-0 and performing CPR in the middle of a Sydney CBD street, before the ambulance arrived.) In an interview with EV podcast The Driven last month, Kean said the millennials have been hanging out in lockdown, within their Hornsby local government area. “We’ve been catching up, doing a bit of walking and whatnot, and he actually asked if he could have a drive (of the Tesla) the other day. And I’m not going to get him in trouble, but it’s fair to say that he enjoyed the very fast experience,” Kean explained. “And he says to me, ‘I’d love to get one of these things’. So I’m doing a bit of environmental or EV diplomacy with my colleagues at the moment. And hopefully they can see that (EVs) are fun vehicles, they’re cost-effective and they’re a great product.” Not that Perrottet could fit his wife and six children comfortable inside a Tesla. He might have to import an eight-seater Triton Solar SUV from New Jersey in order to take advantage of the $3000 rebates and stamp duty exemption on offer to electric vehicle drivers in NSW.

Matt Kean.

All bets car off

“We know, whether its renewing your driver licence on your phone, you can’t do that in any other state in this country. The digital drivers licence, they’ve got one in Adelaide but it’s pretty poor. Like most things out of Adelaide” — Perrottet in 2020.

Dominic Perrottet.

Park that thought

There’s been a U-turn on EVs within the federal government as well. Quite the change of speed since Scott Morrison claimed 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 Prime Minister: “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.” Michaelia Cash vowed to “stand by our tradies” and “save their utes” … an outburst described by Malcolm Turnbull as “peak crazy”. In August, ScoMo “clarified” that his “end of the weekend” comment was not a criticism of EVs but of bad Labor policy. Sure! The Liberals’ lane change has been taking place slowly. The first indication came earlier this year when Strewth revealed Finance Minister Simon Birmingham had 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. We hear the Tesla Comcar is hot property and has left other drivers green with envy in the queue outside the House of Representatives. Katie Allen has also purchased her own “Liberal blue” Tesla in preparation for the next election campaign, but her hopes to test its limits with a trip from Melbourne to Canberra before the end of the year looks likely be stymied by the Dandrews Delta strain.

Scott Morrison.

Laboring the point

File this one under Joel Fitzgibbon Taking Credit For Things. “Look, I’ve shown great leadership here, haven’t I?” the retiring Labor member said when asked about this week’s events. “You know, I pulled the pin and they’re all following me out the door. I’m not sure what’s going on. But there’s nothing wrong with a bit of rejuvenation.”

Joel Fitzgibbon.

No fly zone

Bob Katter was right! Queensland is one scary place. Case in point. A spider scrambled up the chest of Jim Chalmers as the Labor frontbencher held a press conference at Burpengary in Moreton Bay. Luckily, Chalmers’s office preserved the leggy event for the world wide web in the form of this transcript.

Journo: “You’ve got a spider on your collar, FYI. Just on your chest. Big bang. Right. There. There we are.”

Chalmers: “I thought you were giving me some kind of signal.”

Journo: “I wasn’t saying wrap it up, I didn’t know what kind of spider it was. All right, I’m going to claim I saved your life.”