Shy Clive
FEDERAL Opposition Leader Clive Palmer may have walked out on the ABC the other night, but he didn’t walk out on GQ magazine.
FEDERAL Opposition Leader Clive Palmer may have walked out on the ABC the other night, but he didn’t walk out on GQ magazine. This is just as well, as we get to learn — in an interview that hits newsstands on Monday — that Palmer sees himself as an elephant (“I learn, I remember”). And also that Tony Abbott shouldn’t anticipate too much joy in the foreseeable future; as Palmer says: “I have more energy and invigoration than ever.” Here are just a few of the highlights:
GQ: “Many are genuinely scared about what you can do. Have they reason to be?”
CP: “The only people who have reason to be frightened of Clive Palmer are those who want to take the pension off our elderly and axe the benefits being given to the orphans of our armed servicemen.”
GQ: “Given that statement, how do you get on with Tony Abbott?”
CP: “My impression is he’s a down-to-earth fellow and quite a shy person deep down, like myself. He’s acting with a lot of constraints within his own party and has to think deeply before he says anything. Both Labor and Liberal are compromised in ways the (Palmer United Party) isn’t.”
GQ: “Would you like to be PM yourself?”
CP: “Why would I want to be? It’d mean earning less than I currently do and driving a car infinitely worse than the one I’m in. Have you seen my house? The architecture is a clear cut above that of The Lodge. And my jet leaves the commonwealth jet in its dust.”
For good measure, the renowned banana split-blitzer says he’s down from 158kg to 118kg (“thanks to oxygenating with no denial of food”) and reckons he’s 18 months away from exchanging a round physique for the round figure of 100kg. As Palmer says of weight loss: “With that has come more energy.” Good luck, Tony!
Keen to move on
IN Sydney, meanwhile, Tony Abbott held a joint press conference about the Restart program for mature jobseekers. And in the process he gave what was arguably the day’s greatest demonstration of optimism, saying to the assembled hacks, “Let’s see if we can have some questions first up on the Restart program.” It was not to be. The first journo out of the blocks gently set him straight: “Prime Minister, I think there’s only one topic on everyone’s mind today: was it wrong to push for a vote so early on carbon? Did that end up backfiring for the government?” Several more questions followed, all sticking to the one, resolutely non-Restart topic. It reminded us of that time WC Fields asked a woman what she’d like to drink. “Ooh, champagne I guess,” she answered brightly, to which Fields replied: “Guess again.”
Only partial silence
WHILE leafing through Ruth Rae’s about-to-be-launched biography of former MP Tony Windsor, we came across this: “He made a conscious decision” — as opposed to one made in the depths of slumber, Strewth supposes — “not to answer the calls of any journalist from Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited group and he did not speak to anyone from the group for two years.” But at Tamworth airport last year (as Strewth documented then), Windsor spoke to our Walkley-winning colleague Stephen Fitzpatrick. Admittedly what he said was “I don’t talk to the The Australian”, but he certainly did speak.
The choke’s on them
YESTERDAY coughed up a wonky postscript to the Northern Territory’s Territory Day festivities: a product safety call for bracelets sent to schools as part of Territory Day showbags from the NT government. Via a brisk walk through eye-catching phrases such as “young children”, “ingesting batteries” and “choking hazard”, the notice urged parents to make with haste for the nearest bin. Ahem.
strewth@theaustralian.com.au