RATs in the ranks

Barnaby Joyce has pinpointed the problem in the RAT race.

Barnaby Joyce.

Barnaby Joyce has pinpointed the problem in the RAT race.

“Corporations and businesses who buy up more than they require,” Joyce moaned on Monday. “I don’t know why they do it, but they do.”

That’s right, the newly engaged deputy prime minister (and former accountant) has blamed the rapid antigen tests shortage on offices stockpiling for their staff.

Offices including … his own department!

Over $147,000 worth of RATs were purchased last week by the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications, according to tender documents seen by Strewth.

Is that why people refer to Joyce as the best retail politician in Australia?

The mandarin’s bulk buy included $61,000 worth of testing kits from Develin’s City Chemist in the centre of Canberra. No wonder there were no nose ticklers on the pharmacy’s shelves when this column inquired midway through day one of the government's free pensioner program.

It sounds like the plot of a particularly harrowing hoarder flick, the Night of the Long (Wait for) Nasal Swabs.

The deputy prime minister’s office said the testing kits will be made available to health services in Australia’s external territories, including Jervis Bay territory, “where the department provides various state government-type services”.

“All purchases have been made through normal market-based tendering processes,” a spokesman said.

This wasn’t Joyce’s only viral faux pas; it was a day ending in “y”, after all.

He was forced to apologise after claiming “people aren’t dying” from Covid-19.

For the record, Tuesday marks two years since the first Covid case was confirmed down under. Since then, Australia has recorded more than 1.6m cases and over 3100 deaths.

Josh Frydenberg.

Hide and squeak

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg found himself on the receiving end of a rare Michael Rowland zinger during a spot on ABC News Breakfast.

“The NSW branch head of the Pharmacy Guild says that 90 per cent of the chemists won’t have the stock (of RATs),” Rowland remarked. “These things will be as rare as Carlton premierships, won’t they?”

Ouch!

Blue blood Frydenberg brushed off the free kick at his favourite AFL team.

But Rowland wasn’t the only satirical mouseketeer to make a cheesy nibble.

“In so many communities around Australia, it is easier to catch Covid than it is to catch a RAT,” Anthony Albanese claimed.

What’s next … will the Labor leader quote his favourite philosopher Soc-rat-es?

Anthony Albanese.

Apple doesn’t fall far

As aspiring Porpoise Spit politician Bill Heslop profoundly opined in Muriel’s Wedding, “you can’t stop progress”. No matter how many federal ministers meddle.

A ticket of two gay Moderate men was elected to head the federal Young Liberals at a meeting in Hobart on Sunday, defeating the conservative candidates 31 votes to 13.

Tasmanian Clark Cooley took the presidency, with Queenslander Nelson Savanh to serve as his veep.

Cooley, an auditor for Deloitte and former federal staffer to assistant minister Jonathon Duniam, was a previously a member of the Apple Isle’s Right faction. After defecting to the Mods, he gained support from WA, NSW, SA, Queensland and some of Victoria’s delegates to win the online vote.

Congratulations to our new Federal President @ClarkCooley, and Federal Vice President @NelsonSavanh elected this weekend at the Young Liberal Federal Convention in Hobart. pic.twitter.com/niGDTcYYiP

— Young Liberals 🇦🇺 (@YoungLibs) January 23, 2022

Avid readers may recognise Savanh’s name. He and husband Zack Kennie were married by LNP frontbencher-cum-celebrant Jarrod Bleijie at a Sunshine Coast ceremony last year … a tad ironic, given Bleijie was Campbell Newman’s attorney-general and abolished civil partnerships in 2012.

As one fresh-faced Modern Liberal noted to this column, it’s a historic moment for the movement – electing a gay president from a state that decriminalised homosexuality merely 25 years ago.

But you know what they say, you can take the politician out of student politics but you can’t take the student politics out of the politician.

Strewth’s spies report that Monkey Pod powerbrokers – Victorian MP Michael Sukkar, ACT senator Zed Seselja and Queensland senator Amanda Stoker – took time out of their busy ministerial schedules to furiously hit the phones, in a failed bid to round up numbers for the Right’s ticket: the ACT’s Connor Andreatidis and Victorian Elliott Howitt-Ross.

Andreatidis works for Stoker and is president of the ACT Young Liberals, who raised eyebrows last year when they sold a lump of coal from the Carmichael Bravis mine (previously known as Adani) for $2600 at a fundraiser.

Andreatidis also received a slap on the wrist from the prime minster’s chief fixer Yaron Finkelstein, after posting a picture to the ACT Young Liberal’s Facebook page suggesting Scott Morrison should lose his job for supporting a net zero target.

The snap of Malcolm Turnbull said: “We rolled Turnbull for less.”

So, why do the federal heavyweights care about student politics? The Young Liberal president and vice-president both score a vote on the powerful national executive, where last month Morrison threatened to move a motion to override the federal preselection process.

That and former leaders tend to end up in the corridors of power. See: Foreign Minister Marise Payne, Immigration Minister Alex Hawke, and former A-G Philip Ruddock.

You had me at Merlot

What better way to kick off a three-day convention than a wine tasting at MONA!

At $25 a head, the knees-up was one of the cheaper items on the Young Liberals’ social calendar this past weekend.

There was the $60 Welcome Drinks at Henry Jones Art Hotel; the $170 Gala Dinner at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, headlined by Eric Abetz; and another $60 Farewell Drinks at the Crowe Plaza’s new rooftop bar.

Plus entry to the convention itself at the Hotel Grand Chancellor.

The price of doing democracy?

.@YoungLibs FedCon Gala Dinner at TMAG with @SenatorAbetz ! Thank you for your continued support of our Movement. #politaspic.twitter.com/rZod843yOM

— Clark Cooley (@ClarkCooley) January 22, 2022

Food fight

Following Strewth’s stargazing column analysing the year ahead (with a little help from Mystic Medusa), here’s something a tad more concrete for the sceptics.

Scott Morrison is pencilled in to address the National Press Club next Tuesday, to kick off the unofficial election campaign.

We can’t wait to see what NPC executive chef Daren Tetley whips up for the hungry hacks attending the Prime Minister’s soldout speech.

Tetley is known within the Canberra Bubble™ for his cunning culinary creations. When French ambassador Jean-Pierre Thebault appeared in November, the $85 three-course diplomatic feed started with a baguette and whipped sea salt butter.

The main was a “rockpool of Australian seafood and sea vegetables”, with a shellfish consomme and shallot pearls. To finish, a “Fromage de l’alliance” plate of (FR) AUKUS cheeses – a Brebirousses D’Argental from Lyon, France; an Adelaide Hills triple cream; Colston Bassett stilton blue via Nottinghamshire, England; and Sartori Bellavitano Espresso from Wisconsin, US.

But the question on everybody’s lips … will Tetley be brave enough to serve a Vienetta for desert during Anthony Albanese’s NPC Q&A on Tuesday?

Jean-Pierre Thebault.

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