Strewth: a new emperor

A fresher contender has beaten Kevin Rudd to take the title of Wholly Roamin’ Emperor.

As regular Strewth readers will know, it was when Perpetually Contented Backbencher Kevin Rudd was jetting about the world that we anointed him Wholly Roamin’ Emperor. As we hypothesised so boldly and erroneously at the time, it surely was all about Rudd trying to expand the boundaries of his Brisbane electorate — the ancient imperial dream of a Greater Griffith — rather than him keeping himself in the global limelight as he plotted Julia Gillard’s graceful retirement and his return to the Lodge. We now wonder if the Emperor’s clothes must now be passed on to similarly contented backbencher and plonk aficionado Tony Abbott, who has eclipsed Rudd’s travel bill as a former prime minister. Indeed, the $74,000 that kept the member for Warringah (in Sydney, in case he forgets) on the go last year is more than Rudd, Gillard and John Howard combined. The Wholly Roamin’ Emperor has been pipped — long live the new Wholly Roamin’ Emperor. Prepare the coronation tea towels.

To its what?

The grim spectacle of Pyongyang sending a missile over Japan yesterday did yield at least one positive — a display of purest, wildest optimism from Malcolm Turnbull, who put out an official statement that included this: “China has unique economic leverage over North Korea and with that greatest leverage comes the greatest responsibility and we urge Beijing to use it, to bring this North Korean regime to its senses.”

Reasonable Trump

Meanwhile, on Radio National’s AM, a bit of a breakthrough moment starring Labor’s foreign affairs spokeswoman.

Sabra Lane: “Following on from President Trump’s speech on Afghanistan last week, do you think the Taliban is actually capable of being beaten?”

Penny Wong: “He made a number of points in that speech which I think were reasonable …”

What will they think of next?

Stalin for time

The statue war grinds on, their most energetic prosecutor yesterday being Malcolm Turnbull on Adelaide’s FIVEaa with Leon Byner: “You had shocking criminal vandalism against statues in Sydney’s Hyde Park over the weekend. Bill Shorten’s response to that has been to say that the inscription should be changed. I mean, how absurd. What’s he going to do? Get a chisel out and start changing the inscriptions on statues that are 100 years old, or 140 years old? I mean these are part of our history … I mean that proposition that you start revising, re-editing your history, is thoroughly Stalinist. I mean this is what Stalin did; when he bumped off one of his henchmen, Leon, he would not only, you know, shoot them*, then they’d go back and they’d doctor all the photographs, so that they became ‘non-persons’ … It doesn’t tear down old statues, it builds new ones.” But no new plaques, thank you. (*Fun fact: Stalin didn’t always stop at wanting people shot once. During the Battle of Moscow in World War II, he informed the officers in charge of the defence that if they failed, not only would they be shot, their remains would be dug up after the war and shot again. Oops, did we say “fun fact”? Sorry about that.)

Show us your papers

With all these fresh excitements, the citizenship stuff is starting to feel old hat, even with fresh new ingredients such as Labor senator Katy Gallagher putting out a press release in the vicinity of dawn’s crack yesterday to assert, “I am not and have never been an Ecuadorean citizen.”

Bill Shorten’s enthusiasm is at about the same level as what his desire for statue change appears to have cooled to.

Journo: “Why won’t Labor produce documents to prove citizenship?”

Shorten: “Well, first of all, are you saying that anyone in Labor has a problem to refer it to the High Court? Because the fact of the matter is we don’t … The Labor candidates have an extremely stringent vetting process and that’s why that hasn’t happened.”

Journo: “Why not release the documents to give the public peace of mind anyway?”

Shorten: “Well, first of all, let’s see what the High Court says about these seven people who didn’t pay enough attention to the Constitution before they nominated for parliament.”

On it goes, but Groundhog Day is fun only when it has Bill Murray.

Fresh face

Amid the still growing citizenship cloud, thanks to Fairfax’s Good Food website for adding some fun to the mix by creating “NSW senator Mike Baird”. Eventually, the penny dropped that he was in fact a former premier and, with a swift correction, the fun ended.

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