Spills ahoy: Will Mark Dreyfus challenge Anthony Albanese for the Labor leadership?

Labor Right shifts its end-of-year dinner from the infamous Otis Dining Hall. Will we also see a change at the top of the party?

The ghosts of Labor leaders past, present and future?

RIP Otis Group, we hardly knew thee.

Labor Right has moved its end-of-year dinner from the infamous Otis Dining Hall in Kingston — which stocks SA senator Don Farrell’s drop The Godfather Too — to the much quieter suburb of Narrabundah. Once bitten (by a Ten news camera crew), twice shy?

We’re told the Right faction will instead host its festivities at Italian eatery La Cantina on Sunday.

But will newly installed national Right faction boss Matt Thistlewaite extend an invite to comrades Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong?

The darlings of the Left were both on the guest list last year when Joel Fitzgibbon was covering the bill. We see former frontbencher Fitz is continuing his rebrand, with fresh business cards featuring his new slogan “Putting labour back into the Labor Party” arriving from the printers this week.

Regardless, it’s a perfect opportunity for any potential leadership contenders to grow their numbers, as many MPs haven’t been in the same room since the start of the year.

Is that why Stephen Conroy was spotted roaming the corridors of power on Thursday?

Forget Chris Bowen (Strewth, Tuesday).

The latest spill rumour we’ve heard is that Mark Dreyfus may be teaming up with Linda Burney for a ticket with a few “within 100 days” promises about Indigenous recognition and emissions — a move that would see Dreyfus “decapitated” by the NSW Right, according to one senior Labor source.

NSW are already mad at the Victorian, who lives in leafy Malvern outside his electorate of Isaacs, for calling for the role of National Right Convenor (a de facto title given to the head of the NSW Right) to be scrapped during the faction’s Monday night meeting.

When Fitz pointed out the job didn’t really exist but was used by the media during his tenure, we’re told the SC said: “And you did not disavow!”

How’s room 101 going?

Say my name

A curious Christmas card arrived on the desk of the Herald Sun’s gun Canberra corro Tamsin Rose.

Sent by Anthony Albanese, it was addressed to champion Aussie athlete Tamsyn Lewis (who became Tamsyn Manou when she married cricketer Graham Manou in May 2011).

He got it right on the inside fold, which features a smiling snap of Albo from question time and the gold cursive greeting: “Wishing you a very merry Christmas and a happy new year 2021”.

We wonder why the Labor leader has running on his mind?

While we’re calling out corrections, it should also be noted the Prime Minister accidentally said “Hi Greg” to this paper’s own esteemed journo Ben Packham during a press conference on Thursday.

Finally out of The Lodge.

If you have a go

Mentions of Scott Morrison’s $15m comeback slogan have jumped 1735 per cent in the past week!

Research conducted for Strewth by media monitoring firm Streem shows the use of the word “comeback” in an economic or political context has exploded, with over 50 references in question time and more than 477 articles.

That works out to be roughly $31 per story.

Probably fewer comeback references than the PM would have liked, in part due to the fact Labor didn’t bother asking him a single thing in QT this week, preventing him from, dare we say, liberally using it.

Streem did note that a small portion of the comebacks came from Labor MPs mocking the campaign, and noting that it was created by Melbourne advertising agency TBWA\Melbourne.

Nothing like a bit of free press!

Gig a byte

If you were hosting a technology conference, who would be your first pick for guest speaker?

Tony Abbott, obviously!

“I’m no tech head”.

The former prime minister is headlining the “Adopting and accelerating a digital future” private online conference on December 10, organised by the Newland Global group and HCL Technologies.

Who better than the self-confessed non-tech-head Abbott, who once called the NBN a $50bn “video entertainment system” that would be the next Pink Batts.

Abbott also said he was “absolutely confident that 25 megs is going to be enough, more than enough, for the average household”.

We can’t wait to see what technology tales he tells — the virtues of turning it off and on again? Or how his predecessor Malcolm Turnbull “virtually invented the internet in this country”.

Tragically, Abbott missed out on an AACTA award on Wednesday night.

He was nominated in “Best TV Moment of the Decade” for his infamous onion eating, but lost the public vote to Mick Fanning’s shark punch.

Former Aussie PM Tony Abbott - our next President of the Board of Trade eating an onion like an apple... during a 2015 visit to a farm. We're in safe hands Britain pic.twitter.com/5QZi66xQyW

— Otto English (@Otto_English) August 26, 2020

Lean in

Abbott’s former chief of staff turned Walkley and Logie award-winning Sky News host Peta Credlin was back in Parliament House on Thursday night.

Well, on the big screen via Microsoft Teams.

Credlin was the special guest at the Nationals’ Women’s Networking event in the junior coalition party’s partyroom.

Senate leader Bridget McKenzie set it up, and we’re told the Liberal ladies were very jealous that the event was strictly “Nats only”.

Chop Stuey Robert cops a wagging finger and a tongue lashing from Credlin back in 2013.

Bills, bills, bills

Senator Rex Patrick was seen wandering the corridors of Parliament House with a strange smile on his face. “What’s up?”, Strewth asked. “Schadenfreude,” the crossbencher responded.

“Between when Mathias Cormann announced he was leaving the Senate and when he actually left, only benign legislation has been dealt with, meaning newbie Senate leader Simon Birmingham has been left with a plateful of highly controversial bills to deal with in the last two sitting weeks of the year.

Birmo is stuck in Parliament House eating a sauerkraut sandwich while Cormann is flying from one European city to the next on an RAAF-supplied private jet, eating caviar. Cormann must be experiencing a bit of self-created schadenfreude!”

Birmingham’s crossbench whispering training wheels were on full display this week, when the government’s foreign relations bill was stalled over Labor and Patrick’s amendments.

Simpler times.

Game, set, match

“Parliamentary Friends Of” groups have officially jumped the shark.

Deputy government Senate whip James McGrath and Labor’s Tim Watts launched the Parliamentary Friends of Video Games on Wednesday night.

Watts went live on Twitch while virtually playing an Australian Open tennis match as Sam Stosur against Labor MP Josh Burns.

“Josh Burns talks a lot of smack,” Watts told the stream. “He and I have played head to head as gamers in my parliamentary office in the past and he’s had a bit of a lucky run but we’re going to remedy that tonight.”

When Strewth asked who won, we were told “not Tim”.

Our sources say Burns barely lost a point all night, wiping the floor with Clare O’Neill, Rob Mitchell and Ed Husic.

McGrath tried his hand at Melbourne’s own Untitled Goose Game and was later overheard describing his lack of thumb dexterity as “like a retarded monkey driving a Lamborghini”.

Pleased to have launched the bi-partisan Parliamentary Friends of Video Games group with @SenatorMcGrath last night, joined by @Ronki and @RossSymons. Thanks to everyone who came along, it’s great to see so much support for the industry! pic.twitter.com/cQlyVhoLv6

— Tim Watts MP (@TimWattsMP) December 3, 2020

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