Get on the beers

The Hop MorrisCan is the latest in Public Brewing Co’s national cabinet craft beer range; a tropical pale ale packed full of Aussie-grown hops and perfect for a lei-persons picnic basket.

The Hop MorrisCan beer.

A new froth Whitlam is about to hit the cool room, and this one is named after “ahh … that fella down under”. The Hop MorrisCan is the latest in Public Brewing Co’s national cabinet craft beer range; a tropical pale ale packed full of Aussie-grown hops and perfect for a lei-persons picnic basket.

The strictly limited prime ministerial sip is made by the brains behind the Dan AnBrews light beer, which was inspired by the Victorian Premier’s sixth lockdown.

“Just like we did with Dan AnBrews, Public Brewing Co has released Hop MorrisCan with entirely good intentions. It’s a tough time for everyone, and we want to put a smile on faces around the country,” head brewer Gab Porto told Strewth.

“We all want to get out to visit family, friends and far away tropical places. While many of us can’t do that just yet, at least we can dream. This is a great beer to share; even if it is over Zoom or FaceTime.”

With Victoria looking at NSW’s record Covid numbers and saying “hold my beer”, we suspect many in Bleak City may be keen to responsibly enjoy a ScoMo four pack ($25) or slab ($120) in a North Face jacket at home, as they wait for the next natural disaster to hit.

The 4.9 per cent tinny of political memorabilia is available for pre-order through the Public Brewery website, or pick it up from their Croydon bottle shop from October 20.

To quote pal Scott Morrison himself: if you have a go, you get a go.

Scott Morrison.

Is Dom, is good

You couldn’t make this stuff up. WhatsApp – the preferred secret chat service used by the NSW Liberals to do the numbers – was hit by a global outage in the hours leading up to the leadership vote.

It started early on Tuesday, about 3am Sydney time and concluded minutes after the state politicians walked into the partyroom meeting on Macquarie Street.

“Imagine spending years to finally get all the MPs on WhatsApp to be able to communicate quickly and easily, only for there to be a worldwide WhatsApp outage on one of the most important days where you need to be able to quickly contact MPs,” Oatley MP Mark Coure complained on Twitter, with added face palm emoji.

(For homework – read the Sunday Telegraph’s yarn about how a random Queensland bloke was accidentally added to a WhatsApp chat with left-wing NSW Liberals about the proposed voluntary assisted dying bill.)

Could this be the perfect excuse for Rob Stokes’s shellacking?

Dominic Perrottet won the secret ballot in a landslide: 39 votes to 5.

“I always said I would give people a choice. They have chosen emphatically, democracy is the winner,” Stokes said as he literally limped away. The Planning Minister recently broke his ankle on a bush run and was forced to commando crawl for help.

Quoth Stokes: “Perrottet will be a magnificent Premier and he has my undivided loyalty and support. And I will use every ounce of strength in my body to make sure he is re-elected as premier in NSW when we go to the polls in 2023.”

Gladys Berejiklian chose not to attend and Ray Williams was denied entry after he returned two inconclusive rapid Covid tests. Williams was sent away for a swab, with a Centre Right comrade subbing in as his proxy.

Rob Stokes on patrol.

Jesus take the wheel

Q: “If you were a female leader, you would be asked how you can manage being Premier and also a parent of six children, so I think it is fair to ask you that today.”

Perrottet: “Well, it is demanding. I mean, being a father, like being a mother, when you have got family commitments, balancing work and family life is a challenge for every single person right across the state, and ultimately, I think what I might lose in time I gain in perspective.”

Isn’t it Ionic

“I mean, commentators can commentate,” Premier Perrottet proposed at his first press conference.

Is that the Catholic Right’s version of “haters gonna hate”?

His Liberal colleagues have already rebranded Monday as “Free-Dom Day”.

We know one thing for sure – his vision for the Harbour City is hardly millennial. He penned an opinion piece for the Nine papers last year called: “Buildings Whose Reduction to Rubble Would Make Sydney a More Beautiful City”.

How subtle!

There were 10 items on the bulldoze list: Blues Point Tower (”the best thing about it is when you’re inside, you can’t see it”); anything brutalist (“from Sirius to the UTS Tower”); the Annexure to Land and Property Information Building (”whatever they were smoking back in the 60s, it must have been strong”); Hospital Road Courthouse (“its red vinyl panels resembling the open wounds inflicted on our city’s heritage when modernism arrived Down Under”); the Cahill Expressway (“like oversized 1970s-style braces on a supermodel. If my last name was Cahill, I’d sue for defamation”); MLC Centre (“built by authoritarian surveillance-state aliens to spy on the unsuspecting pedestrians”); Greenway Apartments in Milsons Point (“If Dickens had written dystopian futuristic fiction, he would have imagined this”); Sydney Aquarium (“Once, walking past, I saw a bottle floating in the water with an SOS message inside. It was from the fish. True story”); the RBA Building in Martin Place (“horrifying stack of giant pigeon-holes”); and finally … Federation Square in Melbourne (“It’s the building so ugly it offends from afar”).

How did his Anglican rival Stokes respond at the time? “Perrottet makes an excellent Treasurer but would make an appalling heritage architect.”

Form follows heart.

Following the leader

Why be premier when you can be prime minister?

Outgoing NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance can’t wait to hit the backbench in the Canberra Bubble™ and hopes “Glad” will be right by his side.

Morrison also fuelled speculation about Berejiklian’s future (federal politics or a plum government posting?) by saying she had “a lot more to contribute” and could choose “what she wants to do next”.

Constance said he would encourage her “100 per cent” to run against Zali Steggall in Warringah.

“I think she’d be unreal. You know, you couldn’t have a more hard-working, deeply principled Australian female politician than Gladys.” Apparently he’s not going to federal politics to become a minister, and would be “very happy” to sit in the background for a “good couple of years”.

The same goes for Glad.

“But do I think she’s got the capacity to be a prime minister of Australia? You bet.”

As for the type of climate team player Constance will be? “I am going to do everything I can til the day I die to make sure that we never, ever see the type of firestorm events that we saw,” the 47-year-old promised.

Andrew Constance.

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