Gladys’ knight

Fun fact! A NSW premier hasn’t survived a full term since Bob Carr resigned in 2005, after 10 years in power.

Remember when we used to joke about koalas?

Fun fact! A NSW premier hasn’t survived a full term since Bob Carr resigned in 2005, after 10 years in power.

Liberal cabinet ministers, family and close friends are still reeling from the news Gladys “I stuffed up” Berejiklian managed to keep boyfriend Daryl Maguire on the down low for five years … not to mention their pet names for one another.

He called her Hawkiss, an Armenian term of affection.

She described him as her “numero uno”.

Can’t wait for NSW Parliament to sit on Tuesday.

The NSW Premier told ICAC: “More substantially, I’m a very private person and I didn’t feel the relationship had sufficient substance for it to be made public.”

Sounds similar to the reason Mariah Carey gave for not mentioning James Packer in her memoir!

Here’s what one unnamed Bear Pit source told this paper’s own Sharri Markson: “She’s gone for all money. It goes to her judgment. Her moment of strength is now gone. She is f..king finished. ”

But Barry O’Farrell — himself a victim of ICAC’s grapes of wrath — is backing her in. Berejiklian said BOF got in touch from New Delhi to say: “Stay in your job.”

BOF, Berejiklian and Maguire.

Not to be outdone, Victorian Labor MPs are also demanding the resignation of Premier Daniel Andrews after his right-hand man Chris Eccles quit as Premier and Cabinet boss over a phone call.

As fully grown Chaser Boy Dom Knight noted: “ICAC is to Liberal premiers as the Labor Party is to Labor premiers.”

Kicking the court

We believe it was Mark Twain who said: “Dance like nobody’s watching; love like you’ve never been hurt. Sing like nobody’s listening; talk like ICAC is recording everything you blurt.”

On one tapped telephone call, Maguire told Berejiklian about his “little friend with a polished head”.

Get your head in the gutter! The little friend he was referring to was a property developer.

Fed-up federal Liberal Jason Falinski tweeted: “For god’s sake, what probative value does any of this have? This isn’t a corruption body, it’s a kangaroo court. No wonder the media loves it.” That we do!

But our top take went to @chrisjoregan, who tweeted: “To be fair to Gladys, it’s incredibly hard to find eligible men in Sydney who aren’t under ICAC investigation.”

Under oath.

What’s in a name?

More than half of Quiet Australians can’t name a politician who had a positive impact in 2020. That’s according to an IPSOS poll of 1026 people conducted by the McKinnon Prize.

It’s not hard to see why!

Of those that did pick … guess who topped the list?

“Don’t know/unsure”, with a whopping 29.2 per cent!

Followed by Scott Morrison who was named by 26.1 per cent of people.

“None” came in a close third with 23 per cent.

From there it dropped to Dan Andrews, 8.1 per cent; Mark McGowan, 4.9; Berejiklian, 2,4; and Annastacia Palaszczuk, 2.4. Half a per cent named Josh Frydenberg. Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong scored 0.4; Bill Shorten 0.3; and Jacqui Lambie and Pauline Hanson 0.2.

At the bottom of the table with 0.1 per cent of people was NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance, Kevin Rudd, Peter Dutton and Tanya Plibersek.

Unsurprisingly, disengagement is highest in the young, with 58 per cent unable to nominate a single political achievement for 2020.

The survey found more than half of 18-29s consume no news at all or rely on curated feeds from their favoured social media platforms.

When asked to pick positive actions, 31.9 per cent nominated stopping the spread of COVID-19.

Following by “don’t know/unsure” and “none”. Just 0.9 per cent of people picked Morrison’s 2019 re-election as a positive.

Float like a butterfly

The Prime Minister may have been forced to flee in the back of a police car after refugee protesters poured red paint on his car in Queensland, but the real election fight is taking place in the ACT.

Refugee protestors at UQ put red paint on the Prime Minister’s car pic.twitter.com/hKPrjyUZFF

— Drew Pavlou 柏乐志 (@DrewPavlou) October 11, 2020

Literally.

Canberra Liberal leader Alistair Coe held a press conference at a fighting gym, presumably for the pun potential. Donning boxing gloves carrying his slogans “lower taxes” and “better services”, Coe promised to deliver a “knockout blow” to the cost of living by saving average households $1800.

You call those fist names?

How? By convincing “Canberra refugees” to return from NSW, growing the pool of ratepayers by 100,000.

Chief Minister Andrew Barr accused Coe of making “Trump-like statements” in a squabble that’s not quite Thrilla in Manila.

He noted that in the five years to 2019, Queanbeyan’s population grew by 8.1 per cent and the ACT’s 9.6 per cent.

“The whole edifice for this election campaign is based on this inherent contradiction, and people are smart, they see through it,” Barr uppercut.

But who will end up on the ropes come Saturday?

Canberra Liberals leader Alistair Coe delivering the "knock out blow" ahead of next Saturday's ACT election. The gloves say lower taxes, better services. @canberratimes pic.twitter.com/cFkOePRLk6

— Katie Burgess (@katie_b_burgess) October 11, 2020

Up the milk

A particularly patriotic home is for sale in Googong (which avid readers may recall as the NSW home village just outside the Canberra Bubble™ where a bloke yelled at the PM to get off his grass).

It has a lime-green glass splashback behind the kitchen gas burners, with a large Canberra Raiders Viking logo.

Imagine waking up to that everyday.

“The ultimate home for the avid Raiders fan promises to impress, perfect for a first-home buyer, downsizer or investor,” the White Rhino Property listing says.

The asking price for the three-bed, two-bath, two-car house is between $550,000 and $570,000. Remarkably it’s under offer.

What women want

What turns women off? According to Barnaby Joyce — “not answering a question turns women off because it shows you have no economic nous”.

Or so he said when Joel Fitzgibbon refused to tell him what cuts Labor would make to pay for its universal childcare policy.

Family affair

“If you vote for the LNP, you are voting for your town to die,” Bob Katter claimed as he kicked off a drought tour of southern Queensland.

Speaking of Barnaby … Peter Campion, father of Vikki, is running as an independent in the very safe seat of Hill — held by Katter MP Shane Knuth on a margin of 19.7 per cent.

Avid readers may recall Campion told Joyce to “give himself an uppercut” after learning his daughter was expecting a bundle of Joyce with the former deputy prime minister.

Describing himself as an “energy realist, a global warming sceptic and a pro-democracy activist”, Campion’s slogan is — Less government, less tax, get out of our wallets and get off our backs.

“I’ve often been accused of being an LNP stooge,” he told the Cairns Post. “Despite once briefly flirting with the LNP, I have no connection to that increasingly left-wing organisation.”

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