Strewth: Fleece circus in Senate

Australian Wool Innovation chairman Wal Merriman in the hot seat. Picture Kym Smith

Australian Wool Innovation chairman Wal Merriman, who was one of the stars of Senate estimates yesterday, has an interesting relationship with the fourth estate. Yesterday found him delivering an apology for (a) calling an ABC journo a “useless prick” and (b) requesting that he “f..k off”. Quoth he, “I am from the bush. I occasionally come across in a way that causes offence.” Uh huh. Merriman even expressed reservations about the presence of news photographers in estimates. “Do they have to be here? Can they take a photo and go?” he asked. “It’s a public hearing,” he was reminded. Who can tell why Merriman objects? As this splendid triptych from our colleague Kym Smith shows, the photographers are the magic ingredient. (While we’re here, one of the topics discussed yesterday was mulesing, the removal of skin from a sheep’s buttocks to reduce flystrike. We gather Greens senator Lee Rhiannon consistently pronounced it “muesli-ing”, which sounds far happier. Nationals senators Barry O’Sullivan and John “Wacka” Williams offered guidance.)

Number crunching

Overheard elsewhere at Senate estimates yesterday, Attorney-General George Brandis walking in with a staff member to whom he offered the observation, “They are looking at the opinion polls and getting ready for a Labor government.” Whether “they” were Laborites or public servants was uncertain, but we’re sure Brandis knows what every other pollie reminds us: there’s only one poll that counts. And so on.

Better luck next time

Just to get us up to speed, a quick flashback to an item in Strewth a few days ago: “One of Dan Tehan’s gigs is Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Cyber Security. It’s a role he approaches seriously and practically. Yesterday he was spotted returning Michael McCormack’s phone to him after the Small Business Minister left it in the House of Reps. Tehan told Strewth, ‘There are malicious actors online and in the National Party, so I saw it as my duty to make sure Michael’s phone didn’t end up in the wrong hands.’ ” So far, so merry! Following on from this, we gather Macca decided to have his own bit of fun. Quietly grabbing Tehan’s pager as well as his own, he made his way out of the House of Reps in triumph, then called Tehan to crow about the excellence of the prank. This call came as a surprise to Tehan, who had his pager sitting in front of him on his office desk. As McCormack soon learned, he’d managed to rob the wrong neighbour: Aged Care Minister Ken Wyatt. We don’t believe Macca is the type who gives up easily. In related news, we believe Tehan will take nothing but his suit to question time today.

Wing cycle

Given all the talk of spinelessness in Parliament House, it’s fitting the building is experiencing its annual influx of invertebrates: bogong moths by the gazillion. Like the Scarlet Pimpernel in reverse, you see them here, you see them there, you see the blessed things everywhere. There are even more outside, drawing a great flock of seagulls that wheels above Parliament House’s flagpole each night, a slow vortex of pale feathers and orange beak, snapping the plump moths out of the air. Fine for seagulls, which seem pretty flexible about the whole day-night thing. But if you’re a strictly diurnal hunter, your main option is to brave the great indoors. Exhibit A: this currawong, as photographed by our colleague David Crowe.

24/10/2017 Currawong inside Parliament House. Pic: David Crowe