Strewth: at tippling point

In March, the Liberals were, for Turnbull, a conservative party. By July he has changed his tune.

You may have noticed a bit of a conniption over Malcolm “Sensible centre” Turnbull’s comments in London, not least this bit: “In 1944, Menzies went to great pains not to call his new centre-right party a conservative party — rather he described our party as the Liberal Party, which he firmly anchored in the centre of Australian politics.” One or two people may have been surprised by such emphasis being made by the same man who in March informed parliament, “We are a conservative government — a Liberal-National government.” Putting that to one side, one of the pluses in the whole thing was that it delivered the best hint of mid-interview tippling since that time in a Leigh Sales interview that John Laws sipped at what might have been a rum and Coke, or perhaps a black Russian. This time the drinker was the verbal Catherine wheel we know as Jeff Kennett, and he was buggered if he was going to bother with waiting for any of that sun-over-the-yardarm malarky. The time was about 8.45am and the former Victorian premier had been airing his frustrations solidly to ABC radio’s Jon Faine.

Kennett: “I shouldn’t say this on air, but I think I’ll have another whisky.”

Faine: “At this time of the morning?”

Kennett: “Well, something’s got to give.”

(Incidentally, in the audience for Turnbull’s London speech and asking a question afterwards was former Conservative Party leader Michael Howard, who enjoys as one of his claims to fame an interview with the BBC’s Jeremy Paxman in which Paxman asked him the same question 12 times in 90 seconds, a question Howard successfully evaded as many times; a weaker character might have wanted booze to get him through. He now answers to Lord Howard of Lympne.)

Calling the disaffected

Meanwhile Cory Bernardi, who was re-elected to the Senate on the Liberal Party ticket, then turned his back on it, plugged his new political outfit as “a credible and principled alternative”.

A big hand

But the broad church rolls on, give or take. At a preview screening of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power in Sydney’s Bondi Junction on Monday evening (hosted by the former US vice-president himself), a Strewth field agent noted that the first audience member to her feet and applauding was Kristina Photios, who quit the Liberal Party last year over its lack of action on climate change and in the process put the shiv into — brace yourself for no surprises — Cory Bernardi and Tony Abbott. “Debate in the Liberal Party is being shut down by a vocal minority of conservatives who are subverting the democratic process,” she said at the time. She was soon followed in the standing ovation the other night by her husband, Michael Photios, the NSW Liberal Party powerbroker who stepped down as the leader of the Libs’ moderates in February.

Ad Libbing

Let’s revisit the views of Robert Menzies in his book Afternoon Light: “We took the name ‘Liberal’ because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary but believing in the individual, his rights, and his enterprise, and rejecting the Socialist panacea.” Ming does go on to ponder the US sense of “liberal”: “When I resided in America … in 1966-67, I thought that it threatened to become a word which had special reference to racial relations; to ‘civil rights’; to the vexed questions of ‘integration’ and ‘segregation’. Thanks to a wide immigration policy, we are free of this problem in Australia, and I hope that we shall never permit ourselves to acquire it.” Something for everyone.

Questions, answers

In Canberra, a journalistic quest.

Journo: “If the Coalition maintains its plebiscite policy, would you join forces with Liberal MPs and independents to bring on a vote on gay marriage before the end of the year in the lower house?”

Bill Shorten: “The issue of marriage equality has been talked to death. The PM knows what he ought to do but he doesn’t have the ticker to do the right thing. Let’s just get on with it. Australians are over the talking, let’s get on with it and have a vote in parliament and be done with the issue.”

If at first you don’t succeed …

Journo: “And would you help bring on that vote?”

Shorten: “Absolutely.”

Dept of Mental Images

Thanks, we think, to Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg for inserting into the political lexicon the phrase “a lot of sizzle for very little sausage”.

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