Mysterious ways

It was, we guess, only a matter of time before Clive Palmer pushed us to seek out the wisdom of a 17th century Puritan.

Palmer United Party memorabilia.

It was, we guess, only a matter of time before Clive Palmer pushed us to seek out the wisdom of a 17th century Puritan. This push came in the form of a tweet from Palmer yesterday afternoon. And we quote: “Who wants a hot dog? I love a hamburger. I love a lettuce.” At first we got snagged on weighing up whether it was one of Palmer’s edgier poems, a question, a brief manifesto or just a hint dropped by a peckish man. Here were three parts, but we were buggered if we could get a grasp on the sum of them. Who better to help us out than Thomas Watson and his guide to understanding the mystery of the Holy Trinity, as laid out in his work A Body of Divinity: “There is not more or less in the Trinity; the Father is not more God than the Son and Holy Ghost. There is an order in the Godhead, but no degrees.” Armed with this wisdom, it is now possible to approach the tweet and see the parts — all separate, yet all together and equal, each one bereft without the others — and finally see the powerful whole. And then exclaim: “Oh God.”

Verbal fertiliser

Once upon a time, the folks at The Late Show ran some footage of English cricketer Mike Gatting coming a cropper, whereupon his lips very distinctly shaped a popular one-syllable expletive that starts with “f”. Viewers were invited to guess what Gatting had said (choosing from a multiple choice list that included “drat” and “oh bother”), bung their answer in an envelope and post it off to the “Mike Gatting Goes F*ck competition”. Which leads us to yesterday’s exchange between noted coal-caresser Scott Morrison and radio personage Ray Hadley, an exchange that contained traces of that most crucial ingredient we know as Barnaby Joyce.

Hadley: “All right, just one final thing. This stuff about Wilmar, and it’s not your doing, it was done by someone else, someone gave this Singaporean company permission to buy these eight sugar mills.”

Morrison: “It was Wayne Swan from memory.”

(If it were a pantomime, we’d probably all be encouraged to boo at this point. But we digress.)

Hadley: “It was a long time ago wasn’t it, 2010 ... So it’s not your fault. But they’re acting like a real pack of bastards at the moment, and Barnaby said to me this morning, and he used some language I’ve never heard a deputy Prime Minister use in relation to what he wants to do with them.”

Morrison: “I’ve probably heard that language from Barnaby before.”

Hadley: “I’ll clean up and say I’m sick of this crap, and he didn’t use the work crap, he used another word that means crap.”

What did the Deputy PM say? Send your answer on an envelope to the “Barnaby Goes…” (This item has been edited for space.)

His inner Donald

A surprising thought yesterday from US strategic analyst Eric Garland: “Australia’s Malcolm Turnbull, the most Trump-like politician on Earth, called him a nancy for not being able to deal with the media.” We tried to get a sense from the Prime Minister’s Office just how Turnbull felt about being labelled not only “Trump-like” but “most Trump-like”. By last night we had yet to hear back. Perhaps they were all unconscious on the floor, waiting for smelling salts. In the meantime, Turnbull’s comment about not be able to deal with the media went like this: “A very great politician, Winston Churchill, once said that politicians complaining about the newspapers is like a sailor complaining about the sea — there’s not much point.” As Strewth dutifully reported on the weekend, it was in fact Enoch Powell who coined that one. So we can only assume the PM strove to get this one right yesterday: “Christian Porter, the Minister for Social Services in my government, has often said to me ‘Complaining about Australia’s Federation is like complaining about Switzerland’s mountains’.”

Oh the humanity II

On the weekend, Strewth shared this news: “It has been left to federal Liberal MP Tim Wilson to represent our entire species. Do a Google search for ‘human’ or ‘homo sapiens’ and Wikipedia flashes up ‘Human, primate’ next to Wilson’s beaming dial …” We assumed it was just a blip but, happily, it is still standing. Today we are all Tim, and Tim is all of us.

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