Millinery tale

CAN it be a year already? Tony Abbott’s memories of his former life have grown sufficiently hazy.

CAN it be a year already? Tony Abbott’s memories of his former life have grown sufficiently hazy to allow him to offer up sombre lamentations this week about an opposition that (a) disrupts a government “at every turn”, and (b) neglects to make a positive contribution. Five stars! But while it’s fun, it’s not as punchy as earlier Abbott outings, such as during last year’s bushfires when he took a shot at UN Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary Christiana Figueres. Figueres said the fires were “absolutely” linked to climate change, prompting Abbott to suggest she was “talking through her hat”. Figueres has just been interviewed by Al Jazeera’s Andrew Thomas. She hasn’t changed her mind, but she did offer this: “I happen to love hats! And so I don’t take any offence because I think hats are actually quite beautiful. And I have a quite large collection of hats so I don’t take offence.”

Anyone? Anyone?

THINGS weren’t quite so chatty for shadow treasurer Chris Bowen yesterday, his press conference transcript ending thus: “Happy to take any questions. All right, great, thanks for coming.” You can almost hear the soft pfft of tumbleweeds passing.

State of the union

WE are, from time to time, reminded to concentrate on the things that unite us. This happened with a rare degree of success on the Today show:

Karl Stefanovic: “The Greens are urging Australians not to call Islamic State terrorists. Are you comfortable with calling them terrorists?”

Tanya Plibersek: “Of course they are terrorists. They’re using death and fear to try to control a whole population.”

Malcolm Turnbull: “They are the absolute definition. What planet are the Greens on, that’s a good question.”

Stefanovic: “We all have agreement — we don’t know what planet they’re living on.”

So some good came of it.

Crossing the loin

THAT we have underestimated the excitement ahead of the G20 was made clear by a press release yesterday headed “Passion clashes over G20 at pubic meeting”. We suspect there is an “l” missing, but perhaps not. It promises, “It should be an exciting evening.” Still on the press release front, a possible metaphor for what’s coming out of the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption: “The NSW government has failed to adopt a widely supported weed reform package proposed by NSW’s independent commission, environmental groups said today, thus guaranteeing the state’s weed problems will continue to grow.” Though, as Freud nearly said, sometimes a weed is just a weed.