Incidental music

CHRIS Bowen visited the NSW seaside town of Kiama yesterday, when he transcended the prettiness to mete out a dose of hurt.

SHADOW treasurer Chris Bowen visited the NSW seaside town of Kiama yesterday, when he transcended the prettiness to mete out a dose of hurt. “For Scott Morrison to claim he’s the pensioners’ friend is outrageous,” he explained at one point before elaborating: “His claim to be the friend of the pensioners is nothing more than a sick joke.” And no, Tony Abbott wasn’t let off lightly, either: “I’m not going to take any lectures from this guy, who went around the country making all sorts of outrageous promises, not acknowledging the real impact of his own plans, not being honest with the Australian people about his plans.” Alas, if there was so much as a molecule of temptation to deliver these words next to Kiama’s famous blowhole, Bowen resisted, plumping instead for a spot on the footpath by the shops. Along with the regular mosaic of traffic noise, there was also a saxophonist somewhere off camera, playing something from the maudlin end of the nostalgia spectrum, the sort of tune you may pop on when the dregs of your wine are becoming salted with tears. The indefatigable Bowen ploughed on, but we found ourselves thinking back to what Paul Keating once said: “I find it very difficult to do something with music in the background. In fact, I can’t do something with music in the background. I always have to listen.” And so it was that Bowen’s words blurred in our ears and all we could hear was a melancholy sax making its way through what turned out to be A Day in the Life of a Fool. (We recommend the Frank Sinatra recording, though we gather the Miriam Makeba version is also a cracker.)

Out with the old

GIVEN that the announcement of Philip Ruddock’s job description alteration happened at the media equivalent of the witching hour late on Friday afternoon, it was still occupying journalistic minds yesterday. As one hack inquired of Tony Abbott yesterday, “(Ruddock) starts this week out of a job, reportedly for his failure to be in touch with the backbench disquiet. Doesn’t a failure to heed those matters reflect poorly on the Prime Minister as well?” Was the PM going to have a bar of this? Like fun he was: “I just don’t accept that anyone is out of a job because the job of being a member of parliament is an incredibly important job — a very, very important job.” Well, there is that. “But what I did before Christmas was renew the ministry. What I did late last week was renew the whips team and that’s what governments do from time to time.” Mercifully, this drive for renewal doesn’t appear to extend to the Speaker’s throne. Our esteemed colleague Jon Kudelka, meanwhile, has pondered what the odds are of Ruddock getting an ego-cushioning knighthood. He kind of has already, having been made ... ahem ... Sir Plus-to-requirements. (Yes, we will take a long, hard look at ourselves at some point. We really will.)

No day left behind

MEANWHILE, the PM has demonstrated that no matter what is swirling around him, he’s still paying attention to the details of the human condition and all that shapes us. Such as the existence of leap years: “We have the best and the most professional police and security agencies in the world and 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 or 66 days a year, they are working for us.”

Graphic language

JULIE Bishop’s fondness for emojis has been taken to its logical conclusion by Buzzfeed’s Mark di Stefano, who conducted an interview by smartphone with the Foreign Minister, in which she responded entirely in the jolly emoticons. (Our relationship with Indonesia, for example, gets a thumbs up and a tick, poignantly balanced by a not-so-smiley face.) Strewth is optimistic by nature, so we’re predicting a political interview in semaphore by Easter (we’re counting on Warren Truss here) and, possibly on the night of the federal parliamentary press gallery Midwinter Ball, one conducted in armpit-fart morse code. Hey, we can dream.

It’s been real

BILL Shorten stuck to English when he visited a Cairns primary school. “Seeing these trusting, optimistic little children,” he said with the air of someone about to Set Them Straight, “reminds us of what’s important in the political debate about the future of this country.” Happily, he soon indulged his penchant for straightening his face and getting huffy about someone other than his own party for having leadership wobbles: “We saw the unedifying spectacle of people debating and shadow boxing about who would be in charge of the current Liberal National government.” This stubbornly refuses to get old. One member of the fourth estate drolly alluded to the own goal of a certain former Labor PM: “Are we now seeing the real Tony?” Shorten wasn’t going to be drawn down memory lane to “Real Julia” that easily: “The real Tony Abbott unfortunately is the same as the real Julie Bishop and the real Malcolm Turnbull.” So there.

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