Japes on a train

THERE’S something callous about the way federal Labor is starting to ignore Tony Abbott and shift its firepower to Malcolm Turnbull.

THERE’S something callous about the way federal Labor is starting to ignore Tony Abbott and shift its firepower to Malcolm Turnbull. Even Mark Butler, who always seems such an amiable fellow, was sinking in the slipper, slinging about words such as “dirty deal” and “how on earth will the Australian people be able to trust him on anything else?” It’s not just Labor, of course. 2GB broadcaster Ben Fordham caused excitement when he tweeted, “Interesting fact — Julie Bishop and Malcolm Turnbull have arranged to meet at his Sydney home today.” Turnbull soon tweeted a droll au contraire: “You need to improve yr surveillance! I am on the train to Tuggerah. PoliticsinPub Nth Wyong 2nite.” True to his word, he included a photo of himself on said train, smiling the smile of cat that’s not so much got the cream as taken control of the entire dairy. Scenic snaps from the trip followed and, at last, Turnbull’s arrival at Tuggerah. Bishop for her part tweeted, “Wrong information!! In Canberra this morning flew to Sydney filmed by Channel 9 now with Fiona Scott MP.” Fordham bravely persisted, but Turnbull gently urged him to let it go. Out of this, we regret to say, a major news story was born.

Mal & Bish in da house

BUT fret not, Ben, Bishop and Turnbull will be together in a posh house in Sydney’s eastern suburbs this Sunday. The occasion is a fundraiser brunch at Rosemont, the historic Woollahra home of Lady Margot Burrell. Tickets are a very reasonable $100 each, eliciting from our colleague Ean Higgins the most natural response: “Hey, I could go to that.” Easier said than done. Higgins started by ringing Turnbull’s office to express his enthusiasm to Turnbull’s press secretary, David Bold. Bold, presumably busy with One Or Two Other Things, did not ring back. Higgins’s next port of call (yes, that is a telephony pun) was the NSW division of Robert Menzies’ illustrious party, where a woman heard him out and promised to check. She didn’t ring back. Undeterred, Higgins put in a call to Turnbull’s electorate office, where a woman politely explained she couldn’t tell him anything about it as it had been organised not by Turnbull but by the Bellevue Hill branch of the Libs. A discussion followed, the short version being that she would not give Higgins the number for the Bellevue Hill branch as it was private. She resisted even when Higgins revealed he used to be a local resident and might even want to join the party. (We should mention Higgins is occasionally spotted in a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Union thug”; it’s possible Turnbull’s staffer could sense this.) This small saga quietly chugged on, drawing in other players including a Liberal Party media officer who said she couldn’t give information as the event was private but promised to make inquiries anyway (Higgins is ready to take your call!); and upper echelon Wentworth Liberal Sally Betts, who wouldn’t even give a starting time as it “wasn’t a media event”. During this time of chronic leaking, how reassuring to see such a tight ship; Scott “Operational matters” Morrison can eat his heart out! As a very hopeful Lady Burrell told Higgins, it will be “a very low-key affair” and “I don’t want the media here”.

Phone of contention

JOE Hockey has continued his lonely struggle to set things back to the Way They Were following a little technological hiccup while on the mobile blower to ABC News Radio’s Marius Benson:

Benson: “Joe Hockey, good morning.”

Hockey: “Morning Marius. Sorry about that.”

Benson: “That’s OK, these things happen. It is a confusing time.”

Hockey: “No it isn’t, no it isn’t. It is coming down to phone coverage, sorry.”

Meanwhile, just to keep things on an even keel, 2CC’s Mark Parton asked Labor’s Richard Marles, “Does Bill Shorten have your full support?” Seems he does. Phew.

The truer hole truth

NOT many can claim to have sent the wrong politician down a wormhole. Yet, in a probably pioneering moment, we did just that yesterday by suggesting it was Ian Macfarlane who’d time travelled and sent out a press release dated from a month earlier. It was in fact his colleague Ian Macdonald. How Macdonald slipped our mind is a mystery; the sight of him being berated by Bill Heffernan for wearing a hi-vis vest in the Senate is attached to our memory like a barnacle.

Take it as red

BRAVO 3AW’s Tom Elliott for bravely, if unexpectedly, trying to resurrect Soviet Five-Year plans, tweeting, “Tom’s solution to fixing our country: We need a benign dictatorship, we need a committee of proven, talented people, give them five years.”

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