Kristina Keneally has inherited a fine Brandis bookcase

Labor senator Kristina Keneally has inherited one of George Brandis’s bookcases but is yet to fill it completely.

The bookcase: Labor senator Kristina Keneally and Labor member for Holt Anthony Byrne.

Whatever happened to George Brandis’s custom-built bookcase? The $7000 taxpayer-funded “Brandis Library” (as it was nicknamed by Labor staff), purchased in 2010 to house the then opposition legal affairs spokesman’s $13,000 worth of taxpayer-funded tomes, has been inherited by Labor senator Kristina Keneally as the present occupant of the deputy leader of the opposition office. That’s not to be confused with the second $15,442 taxpayer-funded Brandis bookcase, which had to be built in 2014 after the Coalition won government and the first was deemed too large to move to his new Parliament House digs. Have similar shelves been built for the high commissioner to the UK? Keneally hasn’t filled all the library space yet but she has made room for the Walkley she won for her role in Sky News’s 2016 election coverage. But where’s the Logie? Keneally technically has claim to the gong picked up in 2017 by the then David Speers-led team for the same campaign. In a snap of the notorious wooden furniture tweeted by Labor MP Anthony Byrne, Strewth also spied a collection of rosary beads on a higher shelf (pun intended). We’re reliably informed the staunch Catholic has a-mass-ed them from various cathedrals around the world and added some family heirlooms, including her great-grandmother Dora’s.

Of lesser priority

Remember when Scott Morrison said fixing laws that discriminated against LGBTI kids was his top priority? “I will be taking action to ensure amendments are introduced as soon as practicable to make it clear that no student of a non-state school should be expelled on the basis of their sexuality,” the Prime Minister said on October 12 last year during the heady days of Philip Ruddock’s review. Cut to this month, when no changes have been made (or proposed in the draft religious discrimination bill). Attorney-General Christian Porter’s office told Strewth he has referred the matter to the Australian Law Reform Commission, which was due to report in April next year. But after the terms of reference were changed, the ALRC tells us that’s been pushed back to December next year.

Christmas clarity

Anyone looking to do an Israel Folau at their work Christmas Party, take heed. When asked how the religious discrimination bill would affect a “controversial statement made at a Christmas party”, Porter replied: “Well, it would depend on whether or not a Christmas party is in the context of work, and that would depend on how it’s organised and when it was held and who organised it … So the terms we’ve used are that the statement of religious belief which activates this protection is something that is said other than in the course of the employee’s employment. In most instances, something said at an office Christmas party would likely be in the context of someone’s employment. But, of course, something said at home or posted on Facebook on Saturday afternoon is going to be clearly outside the course of an employee’s employment. But not every Christmas party, depending on the circumstances, is going to be in the course of employment.”

Smoke screen

The smokescreen across Sydney now has a soundtrack. Composer Robert Davidson has set teen sailor Greta Thunberg’s UN climate speech to song and strings in a piano-led piece called Crystal Clear, first performed at Sydney’s City Recital Hall in October. Megan Washington intermittently sings along as Thunberg declares: “How dare you continue to look away, for more than 30 years the science has been crystal clear … and if you choose to fail us, I say, we will never forgive you.” What’s next — a remix with Tina Arena? As the Harbour City disappeared under smoke and Greens MP Adam Bandt nicknamed the PM “SmoKo”, some online trolls jumped on Morrison’s comments from May that his government will “burn for the Australian people every single day” (which we understand was a religious and an Arena reference). We know, there’s more to this wide brown land than Sydney. As The Financial Review’s Phil Coorey (emulating Ralph of Lord of the Flies’ “sucks to your ass-mar”) tweeted on Thursday: “Amazing how shit only gets serious when Sydney is affected.”

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