Strewth: fluff at first sight

An interesting day online for Jacqui Lambie, faux fur and all.

Jacqui Lambie: Hatters gonna hat.

A natural progression from the Facebook photos of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews down on the medicinal cannabis farm (Strewth, yesterday) is surely this snap of Jacqui Lambie. “Come to think about it I’m probably more closely linked to the Mad Hatter!!!” she informs her Facebook fans, before quickly asserting the fur is faux. But while the Andrews snaps attracted some thoughtful gardening tips from commenters familiar with cannabis cultivation, commenters faced with a Lambie portrait of this power went immediately off piste. “Maybe look into public service and find out who allocated 27 million to two Islamics in Lakemba running daycare centres,” suggests one. “Listen Jacqui stop pussy footing around in your bloody high heels and get rid of these Muslim halal certification fees which has been funding the terrorists which our boys have to fight them being armed from our monies,” suggested another. But then someone called for her to become premier of NSW, so it was not a wasted exercise.

Olfactory settings

The gardens of Parliament House have been nourished with a fresh load of fertiliser; they don’t stay so enticing unaided. Everything comes at a cost, however, in this case a pong wafting over the House, perhaps making the brand new MPs in training there feel like they were trapped in some sort of metaphor. But if there’s an ordure in the House gag lurking here, we will not stoop to it.

Unscheduled break

Before Malcolm Turnbull delivered the Committee for Economic Development of Australia keynote address in Melbourne yesterday, an embargoed copy of his speech was emailed out to the press gallery. Atop this tower of silken words perched the usual caveat, instructing all and sundry to “check against delivery”. As it was, the delivery was momentarily spiced by protesters armed with placards and shouting “Shut the bloody camps”. Strewth hasn’t heard such disgruntlement in the vicinity of a Turnbull speech since the Sydney Sofitel night of the federal election. At least the PM looked happier this time around. As for his transcribers, they did capture the moment, albeit with a certain minimalism: “We took our positive economic plan for investment, jobs and growth to the election and now returned to government, we will work to deliver it. [Interruption] Our plan includes our Innovation and Science Agenda, our historic investment in defence industry ...”

Known unknowns

April 26 next year will be the fifth anniversary of Bill Shorten’s “I haven’t seen what (Julia Gillard) said, but let me say I support what it is she said” interview. While we ponder how to mark the occasion, the man himself was quizzed on something yesterday and showed again how much he’s moved on.

BS: “I know nothing about it.”

Journo: “Can’t comment on that at all?”

BS: “Absolutely not, no. I don’t know anything about that.”

One with the lot

Those who continue to assert you can’t have everything should read this paragraph of Cory Bernardi’s in his newsletter yesterday: “Many in the political class, aided and abetted by sections of the media, harangue and condemn anyone who doesn’t fall into line with their PC agenda. We are now expected to accept unquestioningly that there are dozens of self-declared gender identities, supporting traditional marriage means you are a ‘phobe’ and that Hillary Clinton is a trustworthy person to be US president.” In a roundabout way, this reminds us of the time an uilleann piper referred to the Irish reel The Bucks of Oranmore as “the Galway library” on the grounds “it has everything in it”.

Give pairs a chance

The biff over whether the opposition will provide parliamentary pairs (Strewth, yesterday) totters on. While we wait for some pollie to finally triumphantly wave aloft a piece of paper and declare “Pairs in our time”, Christopher Pyne and Tony Burke are going for hand-to-hand combat: “Burke is sounding increasingly ludicrous on @SkyNewsAust. Why would the government ‘say’ that it doesn’t have a majority when it does?” tweeted Pyne. Burke, in response, aired this thought: “I know it has a blue tick but I’m increasingly forming the view that @cpyne doesn’t belong to Pyne at all. Must be a parody account.”

So it’s going to be a very different parliament this time around.

At least the ‘R’ was right

In fat-fingered/thin-brained corner, in Tuesday’s Strewth we managed to spell the first name of Richard Cobden SC as R-o-g-e-r. We gather with regret that this is not the conventional spelling.

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