Strewth: an unruly mob

Vladimir Putin may have to polish up on his Sambo skills if he wants to remain President of Russia.

Vladimir Putin may have to polish up on his Sambo skills if he wants to remain President of Russia. Sambo is a weaponless martial art developed by the Red Army and, as a youngster, Vladimir practised it and judo.      Both could come in handy if Papua New Guinea is serious about staging next year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation conference, scheduled to take place in Port Moresby and whose attendees normally would include our Prime Minister, along with Donald Trump, Shinzo Abe, Justin Trudeau, Joko Widodo and Xi Jinping.

Malcolm Turnbull and PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill were all happy families last weekend discussing relations between the two countries and running over details of the APEC event we are helping to bankroll.

They’re our mates, after all.

But were Turnbull to take the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s advice, he’d probably give the Port Moresby APEC a miss. The Smartraveller site warns of persistent high levels of crime there — carjackings, and gang rapes targeting foreigners. The US government’s Overseas Security Advisory Council notes that the PNG capital is the third least liveable on the planet (thank you, Dhaka and Damascus) and that you could well be stoned in your car or killed by a Raskol gang member. But O’Neill’s good with it. After meeting Turnbull, he said they talked about Australia’s “support in providing security so that our leaders who are going to come and visit us on that occasion feel safe and comfortable. Papua New Guinea is a safe destination … the leaders will enjoy their stay here with us.” O’Neill is of part Irish descent, so he has the gift of the gab.

So where’s The Philippines’ vigilante President, Rody Duterte, when you need him? He has been dispensing justice ever since he shot a student at law school who was rude to him.      He’s turned it up a few notches since then and his campaign against drugs has seen more than 3000 of his countrymen shot dead. He’ll be at APEC. Even if he’s the only leader brave enough to show up, you’d reckon it could still be a productive meeting.

Assad’s dropped

Julie Bishop is nothing if not agreeable. The Foreign Minister now agrees that Bashar al-Assad cannot be part of the future in a liberated Syria. That wasn’t her view last week. She has changed it. She’s always changing it.

In 2007 she was one of the few people in Australia who thought Brendan Nelson might make a good prime minister. So keen was Bishop that she joined his band as deputy Liberal leader. (He used to muck about on guitars, the young Brendan, you know, like John Lennon. Lennon’s Aunt Mimi famously warned her wayward nephew: “The guitar’s all very well, John, but you’ll never make a living out of it.” If only a voice of reason had warned Brendan that politics is all very well, but that he’d never make a living out of it.)

Pretty soon, though, Bishop moved on and agreed with a majority of her colleagues that Malcolm Turnbull would be a better leader, for whom she stayed on as loyal deputy. A year later she had changed her mind again and, when her colleagues sought to anoint Tony Abbott, she agreed with them and agreed to stay on as his deputy.

She went to visit Tony one night in 2015 to tell him that she, as always, agreed with her colleagues and that the prime minister should step aside for Turnbull. Once again, she agreed to stay on as Turnbull’s loyal deputy. Stick with it, Bashar. She may come back around.

Clarke clocks off

New Zealand-born John Clarke, who died bushwalking in Victoria on Sunday, was in a class of his own when it came to satire and comedy.
His lancing of Paul Keating, John Howard, Malcolm Turnbull and others while deadpanning responses to questions posed by Bryan Dawe are the stuff of TV legend.

And isn’t it funny that he didn’t have a New Zealand accent? Mind you, he came here as Fred Dagg almost 40 years ago and the serious Kiwi accent is a pretty recent invention.

Dagg had seven sons, all of them called Trevor, and might have served as an inspiration to former world heavyweight boxer George Foreman who has five sons, all called George.

Perhaps Clarke’s finest moment was when he starred in the “documentary” series The Games, lampooning the organising committee of the 2000 Sydney Olympics and including a scene where John Howard issued an unlikely apology to Aboriginal people for the crimes committed against them. John Howard the actor, that is.

Clarke co-wrote The Games with his old mate 3AW’s Ross Stevenson, whose Melbourne breakfast show is Australia’s most popular. Stevenson once told the Palmerston North-born Clarke that he’d never met a New Zealander he didn’t like.

“Really?” said Clarke. “I’ll draw you up a list.”