Jacinda Ardern’s fiance Clark Gayford gets his just desserts

Scott Morrison and wife Jenny, left, with Jacinda Ardern and partner Clarke Gayford on Friday. Picture: Adam Taylor

Fruity Kiwis

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and fiance Clark Gayford were in town over the weekend.

Gayford, host of TV show Fish of the Day, spent Friday at the aquarium with Jenny Morrison while their spouses butted heads over Kiwi deportations.

But it was an incident on Saturday that nearly brought Australia-New Zealand relations to the brink of no return.

Gayford posted a picture of a “Make your own pavlova” that was sent to the couple’s hotel room in Melbourne.

The deconstructed meringue, fresh fruit and sauces came with an instruction card that read: “We invite you to indulge in a traditional Australian dessert, the Pavlova, a decadent treat best enjoyed at times of celebration.”

Gayford tweeted: “Sense of humour or diplomatic incident?”

This was placed in our hotel room in Melbourne.

Sense of humour or diplomatic incident? pic.twitter.com/kFcIO83SYk

— Clarke Gayford (@NZClarke) July 19, 2019

The origins of the dessert have been hotly contested across the Tasman for bygones.

Professor Helen Leach wrote in her book The Pavlova Story that the first true recipe came from New Zealand in the 1920s and was named after Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova.

But in 2015, New Zealand researcher Dr Andrew Paul Wood and Australian Annabelle Utrecht claimed they’d traced the origins of the dish back to a German torte, which eventually travelled to the US and became the Strawberry Pavlova around 1911.

Australian’s first family, the Morrisons, are mad for a pav. Scott encourages Aussies to turn on their oven and whisk those white peaks during the heady days of the 2018 Strawberry needle crisis. Jenny even cooked a marshmallow pav from the Australian Women’s Weekly cookbook for Prince Harry and wife Meghan during their Royal Tour.

Frankly, Strewth doesn’t care what country it comes from as long as there’s no Kiwi fruit on the final product.

Next they’ll be claiming Lamingtons! Oh wait, they already have. According to the University of Auckland, Queensland Governor Lord Lamington pinched the recipe from the “Wellington — a double sponge dessert, dressed in shavings of coconut intended to imitate the snow capped mountains of New Zealand”.

Losing touch

When selecting a replacement for the person responsible for losing the unlosable election, do you even consider one of the few other people who chucked away a poll? It’s a possibility, as Labor hunts for someone to fill Noah Carroll’s shoes. Former Victorian state secretary Nick Reece is in the running to become the 12th national secretary of the Australian Labor Party. Reece was in charge of the failed campaign to get John Brumby elected premier in 2010. Reece only survived as Victorian secretary for a year, before moving on to run strategy for then prime minister Julia Gillard. Reece’s successor in Victoria was Carroll, who took Labor back into government under Daniel Andrews in 2014. Reece left Gillard to teach in the School of Government at the University of Melbourne. He’s also a City of Melbourne councillor and “one of the original Melbourne MoBro’s” for men’s health movement Movember. Labor leader Anthony Albanese’s preferred candidate to head up national campaign operations in this time of self-reflection is Paul Erickson. A fellow member of the left, Erickson was Carroll’s assistant national secretary and is now acting in the top job. He already lives in Canberra and in sitting weeks shares a flat with an old friend from the Victorian left, Andrew Giles, the member for Scullin. Erickson’s supporters say he’s a hard worker, but one MP pointed to his past support of hard-left British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who Erickson described as “within the mainstream of post-war social democracy”. Not sure how the Quiet Australians would feel about that. Better or worse than Reece’s recent op-ed piece entitled “Jacinda Ardern prime minister of Australasia? If only it was that simple”? In that, he proposes that the New Zealand PM could lead NSW and Victoria and Scott Morrison could be PM of “Queensland and beyond”.
Bit harsh on Albo and no mention of South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory or the ACT. But what of the Labor right? A senior faction member told Strewth they don’t have a serious candidate.

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