Man of few words

IF flexibility is an admirable trait in a politician, Clive Palmer certainly gives us plenty to admire.

IF flexibility is an admirable trait in a politician, Clive Palmer certainly gives us plenty to admire. On the one hand you have his penchant for mouthing niceties about journalists being sentinels at the gates of democracy or some such. On the other hand, you have his increasingly efficient abuse of said sentinels. Earlier this week the dinosaur farmer went to the National Press Club and became ropeable when the press clubbed together and asked questions. It was with particular gusto that he laid into the Courier-Mail’s Steven Scott, who asked about the sticky court case involving Citic Pacific. But the abuse was protracted. Yesterday, Palmer was again refusing to talk Citic on the grounds it’s before the court. In a bid to be helpful, our community-minded colleague Sid Maher pointed out that as it was a civil case before a judge, Palmer was perfectly at liberty to share his thoughts. Palmer’s response was as economical as it was heartfelt: “Stick it.” Imagine Kevin Rudd doing something with just two words.

The power of three

ON a thinly related note, Bill Shorten went on 7.30 the other night and informed LeighSales, “I just can’t give you a three-word slogan.” This proved to be needlessly pessimistic, as Shorten soon went on to urge the nation to “go for growth”. Neatly, he did this three times.

Say it with fruit

IT started with a story about Julie Bishop going “bananas” at Tony Abbott for wanting to send Andrew Robb to hold her hand at a climate conference in Lima. (Not so, says Bishop.) Come question time, serial ejectee Nick Champion did a bit of trailblazing in the field of heckling by waving a couple of bananas at the Government benches. This led to a moment of purest Bronwyn Bishop, who thundered from the Speaker’s throne, “The member for Wakefield and his bananas will leave. … For those people who found the bananas amusing, we know who eats bananas, don’t we?” (At which point, people began helpfully tweeting a photo of Abbott on the hustings gobbling a you-know-what.) She concluded, “After the bananas incident, I’m not amused.”

Play misty for him

IN a week that’s seen Winston Churchill channelled by Labor and Liberal, it was nice to see Barnaby Joyce land one for the Nationals. Sort of. During a press conference, Joyce offered this lyrical if not entirely confidence-boosting assessment of the 12 months just gone: “First year of a government is like a dog fight in fog, where it’s loud, it’s noisy, it’s furious and the targets are shadowy.” This brings to mind the time Churchill compared Kremlin power struggles to bulldogs fighting under a carpet: “An outsider only hears the growling, and when he sees the bones fly out from beneath, it is obvious who won.” Though it could be banana skins flying out.

On sofa matters

FOR those living in the hope that something would one day put in their minds the image of ScottMorrison doing a Tom Cruise and bouncing on a sofa, yesterday was a blessed day. It unfurled in its brief splendour on Sky News:

Kieran Gilbert: “Does it frustrate you though as a minister, who most people say (has) been effective and got your area done, but you are being undermined by mess elsewhere.”

Moz: “Kieran you are not Oprah and I am not on Oprah’s couch so they are not issues that I think are even worthy of discussion.”

Gilbert: “OK, I am certainly not Oprah.”

And with this, the interview drew to a close.

Flights of chancy

ON Wednesday it was rain falling on to the House of Representatives’ green carpet. Yesterday it was paper planes, with a lone spectator in the public gallery launching three at the elected representatives below.

Two made it to the floor before the pilot was quietly ejected.

Back into its shell

THE barnacle metaphor is slowly but surely fading in Canberra. But then, even the most dedicated barnacle buff can go cool on the little suckers, as Jschool director John Henningham reminds us with this bit from Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything: “… it wasn’t until 1842, six years after his return to England, that (Charles) Darwin finally began to sketch out the rudiments of his new theory. These he expanded into a 230-page ‘sketch’ two years later. And then he did an extraordinary thing: he put his notes away and for the next decade and a half busied himself with other matters. He fathered 10 children, devoted nearly eight years to writing an exhaustive opus on barnacles (‘I hate a barnacle as no man ever did before,’ he sighed, understandably, upon the work’s conclusion), and fell prey to strange disorders that left him chronically listless, faint, and ‘flurried,’ as he put it.”

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