Strewth: in the key of Ross

Former Liberal MP Ross Cameron is in a class of his own, as his Sky News performance showed | WATCH.

It’s hard to know sometimes just where to start with Ross Cameron. Making Mark Latham seem dully stolid in comparison, the former Liberal MP turned performance artist offers paeans to everyone and everything, from Vladimir Putin and the “magic” of Jews, to the moon that keeps on carving its loyal, lonely path across our sky. And he clings with startling certainty to the theory Hillary Clinton has a colostomy bag. Sure he can come across like a blown head gasket, but he does at least appear to be having a tremendous time. And so to his performance on Sky News’ Paul Murray Live on Monday night where, clad in Donald Trump campaign gear (revealed after a dramatic on-air disrobing), he faced his increasingly bemused co-panellists Janine Perrett and Graham Richardson and defended Trump’s penchant for grabbing lady bits. In part: “I’m saying to you that this is a victory for women. The Trump conversation tells you that in the private moment, at the end of the day, when the bloke is sitting down with his mates, the thing that his mind turns to is the female of the species. The female is the celestial body around which the male orbits. She is the wiki to which the male will always, in the end, return. She is the dominant figure in human history. The rise and fall of civilisations may be renamed, ‘who gets the girl’.” All in all, it was the sort of monologue that, on another night, might have been spread over 40 tweets and a couple of bottles. It’s hard to say which of his co-panellists wore the more hilarious facial expression: Perrett, who did the old side eye like it was an Olympic event, or Richo, who looked as if he were dreaming of burning wheelchair rubber out of there. Perrett tells Strewth, “This whole election has turned into a circus so Ross’s performance is perfectly in keeping with that.” Which is surely different to calling him a clown.

This was unforgettable TV. Starring @RossCameron4 with cameos from @SkyNewsRicho and Janine Perrett. I've watched it back 5 times @PMOnAir pic.twitter.com/IBAMIoKuov

— BenFordham (@BenFordham) October 10, 2016

The kids are all right

There are times — well, in question time mainly — some denizens of parliament are compared to children, and not in a good way. So the actual children who poured into Labor’s caucus room yesterday let the side down a bit by being terribly well behaved. Accompanied by their parents (same-sex couples attending Labor’s press conference on opposing the plebiscite), they were utterly unfazed by the phalanx of cameras that greeted them and played on the carpet or, when the opportunity presented itself, with Tanya Plibersek. And they were quiet through the press conference, except for one energetic little girl who clapped when Bill Shorten declared his lack of enthusiasm for spending all those millions of dollars on a plebiscite. Perhaps the kids can come and run Senate estimates next week.

The butler does it

It was on Monday that Education Minister Simon Birmingham went on Radio National to chat about cutting taxpayer funding to hundreds of vocational sector courses. One cut host Fran Kelly didn’t mourn was butler service management: “How on earth did that get funding in the first place?” But who would turn their back on someone trained to deliver such attention? Surely not Treasurer Scott Morrison who, in his updated register of personal interests, acknowledges upgrades received on a well-deserved, post-election family holiday to Fiji’s posh Turtle Island. Among the enticements listed on the resort’s website are “champagne picnics on your private beach, any day you choose” and “private butler service”. Beats the hell out of a Joe Hockey cigar.

Drink and release

Labor’s Don Farrell is marking his second go as a fresh-faced up-and-comer with a Clare Valley cabernet that has a label bearing both his surname and, in an amusing nod to his nickname, “Godfather Too”. Meanwhile, his colleague Sam Dastyari has attached his name to a press release for the first time since his career encountered the pause button. The comeback beginneth.

Wrong way at the top

While not quite up there with the time Malcolm Turnbull held a presser during one of Usain Bolt’s big Olympic races, bravo to the Prime Minister and NSW Premier Mike Baird for scheduling simultaneous press conferences yesterday: Turnbull on defence, and Baird on defending his own bum over his short-lived greyhound racing ban. In contrast to Turnbull’s, though, Baird’s was a wrong and winding road. For example: “We got it wrong. I got it wrong. Cabinet got it wrong. The government got it wrong.” It fell to Seven Network state political reporter Lee Jeloscek to unflinchingly administer this question: “You’ve said you’re a politician of conviction … is it a relief to be free of that burden?”

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