Strewth: Bill Heffernan’s blast from past

Even by Bill Heffernan’s standards, it was a moment in Australian politics without parallel.

Retiring senator Bill Heffernan with the fake pipe bomb and explosives that he produced at a Senate Committee hearing in 2014. Picture: Ray Strange

One event in Australian politics without parallel is that time senator Bill Heffernan pulled a fake pipe bomb out of a Coles bag to make a point about Parliament House’s security. Even by his standards, it was a stellar moment. The bomb was a two-part arrangement — a length of lead pipe and, playing the role of explosive, three candles taped together with an old phone charger. As he reminisced that day in Senate estimates about his farm childhood and the power of a pipe bomb: “It could blow a tree the size of this building out of the ground.” Which is a hell of a tree when you think about it. Now, as he prepares to leave the building for good, Heff is cleaning out his office. Yesterday afternoon, autumn sunshine slanting through the wooden louvres, he found his “bomb”, still safely stowed in that Coles bag. “Coles rang me then to thank me for the free publicity,” he observed to Strewth when we paid him a visit. But the stunt prop is not destined for one of the packing boxes crowding his office. “It’s just a lump of pipe I picked up in the back of my shed. I don’t need it. I’ve got plenty of pipe left in the shed.” He’d like to give it to the organisers of the (slightly postponed) parliamentary press gallery midwinter ball for their charity auction. We mentioned the offer of this piece of political memorabilia (Coles bag included) to Steve Lewis, one of the ball organisers. “It’s a novel idea,” he mused. We’ll chalk that up as a possible yes.

Get ’em young

A lovely exchange between the fourth estate and Social Services Minister Christian Porter.

Journo: “Mr Porter, you’re the father of a son. Do you have any personal experience of having this conversation with him about attitudes towards women? I’m not sure how old your son is …”

Porter: “He’s six months, so he’s on ‘da da da da’.”

The Mega hex

If Malcolm Turnbull loses the election in July, it will confirm George Megalogenis is a curse on this nation’s democracy. So far, every PM who has launched one of Mega’s books has been dispatched by the electorate at the next election, or seen off by their formerly supportive colleagues. Consider John Howard, who on May 31, 2006, launched the first edition of The Longest Decade — 18 months later, he was gone. On May 21, 2008, Kevin Rudd launched The Longest Decade’s updated edition — becoming past tense two years later. On February 28, 2012, a couple of days after the demise of Rudd’s first challenge, Julia Gillard took up the poison chalice and launched The Australian Moment — rolled less than 18 months later. Then of course Rudd 2.0 went to the polls — the first election he’d faced as leader since his Mega launch — and got wiped. Which brings us to Turnbull, who launched Australia’s Second Chance last November. Time will tell! (Absent from this list is Tony Abbott, who never did a Mega launch. “I didn’t write fast enough to get him while he was still PM,” Mega told Strewth with regret.)

Scandal nostalgia

Compare and contrast. Here’s Bill Shorten on the Today show yesterday on how things weren’t hunky-dory with the banks when he was financial services minister: “I think that there probably was scandal after scandal but enough is enough, isn’t it?” And Chris Bowen a little later:

Journo: “Bill Shorten admitted that there was scandal after scandal when Labor was in government. Why didn’t you or Bill Shorten act at the time?”

Bowen: “Well that’s just not right, that’s just not right.”

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