Clive Palmer’s up and down

As people will one day say of rollercoasters, ‘It’s a Clive Palmer of a ride.’

As people will one day say of rollercoasters, “It’s a Clive Palmer of a ride.” Tuesday night found the member for Fairfax dining with Mathias Cormann at Canberra’s Ottoman restaurant. It was, as you’d imagine, a cheery occasion as the pair put paid to a NSW south coast lobster. Alas, yesterday morning, Palmer declared himself ill and cancelled a press conference.

It can’t have been anything related to Neptune’s bounty as Cormann was fine. Perhaps it was this august organ’s front-page story (“Palmer faces up to ‘drop-dead date’ amid legal push for fast cash”). He’d recovered by question time, during which he got a range of treatment from Malcolm Turnbull. The PM buttered him up (albeit as a way of clubbing Labor): “The member for Fairfax who is still the only person on that side of the chamber who has come up with an original idea.” Then, following Palmer’s question about flogging ports to the Chinese, the PM went down this path: “ I remember the halcyon days when (Palmer) was one of the leading friends of China. He was a Chinese friend. I remember when the honourable member was going to build a sort of new version of the Titanic in China. And now those were halcyon days but sadly many love affairs come to an end and clearly the member for Fairfax’s love affair with China has also come to an end.” As if to balance things, Palmer helpfully put a James Ashby-Peter Slipper-shaped bomb under the studied insouciance of Mal Brough. He said a number of things under the magical shield called “parliamentary privilege”, something Strewth doesn’t have. (The closest we got was the time a parliamentary vending machine accidentally gave us a free Mars Bar. Though it was probably less tasty than the Peta Credlin-baked chocolate cake Tony Abbott brought in for his mates.)

The big blue

In an undoubtedly welcome break from legal biff with Palmer, China’s Citic has painted one of its hefty Pilbara dump trucks blue as part of efforts to promote mental health initiatives. They’ve also come up with a new shade of blue Hi-Vis, one of which has been sported by Trade Minister (and mental health campaigner) Andrew Robb. Alas, he probably won’t go as far as Ian Macdonald and wear it in the chamber.

Rhymes of the heart

You’ll be pleased to know our Bruce Billson poem(Strewth, yesterday) was read aloud to its subject the other night by RN Drive host Patricia Karvelas. “You’ll have to imagine it in James’s voice, because he feels more romantically towards you than I do,” Karvelas instructed. “Do we need to dim the lighting?” Billson chuckled. The poem was duly read, and frankly we’d be happy to put Karvelas in charge of all our future audio recordings. “He’s a beautiful man,” Billson said with some accuracy, before going on to display his mastery of the segue: “There was an awkward moment in Canberra where I was sandwiched between (Fairfax Media’s) Matthew Knott and James. Frankly, they did hang on a bit long, and I was keen to not hang on (in parliament) a bit long as well.” Amen.

A bear in where?

Speaking of ABC Radio, Strewth heard rumour about, how shall we put it, human resources issues involving local radio in Brisbane. Being a professional organisation, they’ve established a dispute resolution process. Here’s where it gets creative: the HR person responsible is allegedly taking a teddy bear to meetings and, whenever someone wants to talk, they have to hold the teddy. No, not Big Ted. And yes, better than having to hold a live bear. But still … We put it to Aunty, hoping for at least a derisory snort. Instead we got a spokesperson for ABC People saying they’d never comment on the events of internal meetings. This, frankly, transcended our expectations.

The PM collection

George Megalogenis’s latest tome — Australia’s Second Chance — received its latest launch in federal Parliament House yesterday at the hands of Malcolm Turnbull. He’s just the latest in a succession of prime ministers who’ve sent Mega’s work out into the world. In 2012, the freshly ascended Julia Gillard launched The Australian Moment which, like Australia’s Second Chance, happened to be published at a time of abrupt leadership change. Kevin Rudd launched the updated The Longest Decade in 2008, the original having been blessed in 2006 by John Howard and Paul Keating (sadly at separate events). Keating, being Keating, used his speech to both (a) sledge Mega, and (b) remind the nation he suffers from no self-esteem issues: “Would I write a better book? Well, of course I would. I write better than George and I know more.” Unquote.

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