Reds & seabeds

AND to think it once seemed the submarine magic peaked in November when David Johnston had his canoe spew.

Vladimir Putin in solitary mode.

AND to think it once seemed the submarine magic peaked in November when David Johnston had his canoe spew. How roundly we have been disabused, not least yesterday when Day 3 of Good Government swung into gear. Tony Abbott arrived in question time and, despite the Kevin Andrews-Sean Edwards spectacular on Tuesday, shared his belief the submarine business was “absolutely crystal clear”. Alas, Labor did not share his comprehension and asked some questions, prompting the reinvigorated PM to loudly paint a reds-just-above-the-seabed scenario: “They want an open tender … You know about an open tender? Anyone can compete. What the Leader of the Opposition wants, he wants anyone to be able to compete to provide Australia’s next generation of submarines. He might want the Russians to compete! The Putin sub, that is what we want to get ... You could have Kim Jong-il submarines, Vladimir Putin submarines.” Pictured here is one Vladimir Putin submarine; Strewth is not convinced this is something the nation can do without.

Not quite Collins-class

AS for the North Koreans, we’re pretty sure the PM meant Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il having popped his clogs a while back, hopefully to be reincarnated as a regular North Korean able to more fully enjoy the wonderland the Kim clan created: a hermetically sealed hermit land where peasants are obliged to eat the bark off trees. But we digress. Abbott is right to be wary. Most of Pyongyang’s subs are a 1950s-designed Soviet model, improbably named Romeo, that the Soviets used for four years before declaring them obsolete. They’re also apparently so loud, it explains why “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?” rarely is used in a naval sense.

Past tense

WHEN Tanya Plibersek came at Julie Bishop with questions related to her allegedly going “bananas”, she got stuck into Plibersek for the time she called Africa a country. But first she had to recycle her gag from Tuesday about leadership spills being “so yesterday”. “I thank the member for her question,” Bishop began, sounding pleasingly like she might still ink the names of film heart-throbs on her pencil case, “but that is so yesterday.” And lo, there was mirth. But yesterday, “so yesterday” only got us thinking back to Sean Edwards. And lo, there was mirth. Edwards himself quietly tweeted a link to a Sky News clip in which “Mathias Cormann explains to the media what a ‘competitive evaluation process’ is.”

Fill in the gaps

THERE are patches in political transcripts that, for one reason or another, are rendered simply as “inaudible”. This can be an annoyance, but there are times, such as Joe Hockey’s encounter on 3AW with Neil Mitchell, where it’s more like an invitation to play Blankety Blanks:

Mitchell: “Would you (inaudible) the speculation that Malcolm Turnbull was sounded out to take over in December (inaudible) be very nice.”

Hockey: “I don’t respond to that gossip.”

Unkindness, strangers

THERE was another ebullience lapse when Christopher Pyne went on his regular slot on Adelaide’s ABC 891 with Matthew Abraham and David Bevan. “It’s remarkable that every Wednesday you manage to get a listener through who always manages to criticise me on your program,” he lamented. His hosts pointed out they also got a shedload of texts critical of Pyne, but declined to read them out. “I’ll give you a gold star because you don’t read out insulting libellous text messages,” Pyne said tartly. He was then asked if he didn’t want them read out. There are pregnant pauses, but the silence that followed felt long enough for full gestation, birth, life and the begetting of a new generation. Pyne was then thanked for coming on. (Pyne was back to indefatigability over a GetUp! stunt in which university students were invited to “pash” cardboard images of him to protest against university fee deregulation. Tweeted Pyne, “I’m obviously flattered that GetUp! would go to such trouble to promote me but I’m already spoken for.”)

After the fact

MYSTERY of the day, courtesy of The Sydney Morning Herald, which yesterday published on its front page a photo of the woman killed by police on Tuesday. They repeated the photo just a few pages in, but pixelated her face second time around.

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