Strewth: just a journo

Contrary to appearances, Strewth is a fan of the subtle sledge. Which brings us to Scott Morrison’s appearance yesterday on 3AW, where the Treasurer discussed the National Energy Guarantee with Neil Mitchell. Attentions were turned to this august organ’s economics editor.

Mitchell: “Some analysts are saying it could in fact force prices up, can you guarantee that won’t happen?”

ScoMo: “I can’t see how that would happen and I’m not aware of any credible analyst who said that.”

Mitchell: “David Uren in The Australian.”

ScoMo: “He’s a commentator. He’s a journalist.”

We’ll admit to lying in wait, eager to ambush Uren and ensure he was aware of this. Sure, Uren has been involved in this game for decades, with stints as editor of BRW, Asiabanking Magazine, Asia Inc and the Business Council of Australia’s policy journal, BCA Papers. And amid all this he also somehow has found time to write books, among them Takeover: Foreign Investment and the Australian Psyche; The Kingdom and the Quarry: China, Australia, Fear and Greed; The Transparent Corporation: Managing Demands for Disclosure; and with Lenore Taylor, Shitstorm: Inside Labor’s Darkest Days. But a sledge is a sledge and Uren appreciates the art form. “I plead guilty to commentary,” Uren told Strewth when, ’twixt chuckles, he was finally able to draw breath. He proceeded to talk about a matter of genuine importance: seeing David Bowie at London’s Hammersmith Odeon in the 1970s, deep inside the Ziggy Stardust era. We’re jealous as hell.

Not ready to believe

Early in the afternoon, meanwhile, Tasmania’s quite conservative Energy Minister Guy Barnett put out a press release enigmatically headlined: “Hodgman government far from convinced on energy policy”. Furthermore: “Yesterday, I spoke with the federal Energy Minister, Josh Frydenberg, and my state and territory counterparts. Minister Frydenberg committed to providing further detail on the federal government’s proposed energy policy. We aren’t yet convinced by what we have heard and we need further detail on the federal government’s plan.” Commentary, surely.

Now that’s service

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.”

Goon show

On ABC Adelaide, host David Bevan got down to the liquid essentials as he quizzed Labor’s Mark Butler and Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young.

Bevan: “Mark Butler, what is a goon bag?”

Butler: “I have no idea. I haven’t seen that story, language of these things changes all the time and I struggle to keep up with them so I can’t help you with that.”

Yours truly has known of it as a goon bag since our teens. Bevan had better luck next.

Bevan: “Sarah Hanson-Young, do you know what a goon bag is?”

Hanson-Young: “I do know what a goon bag is … As a girl who grew up in the country it was one of those things that if you wanted cheap booze you would go and get the wine in the box and the goon bag is inside the wine in the box. It doesn’t taste very good, it makes you feel crap the next day and I would advise most young people to stay well away from it.”

Sadly, they never made it to a discussion of Goon of Fortune, surely the most reliable way of getting soused under a spinning, wine-laden Hills Hoist. We’ll console ourselves with the thought of how Omar Khayyam would have celebrated the game: “A Book of Verses underneath the galvanised Bough / A Bag of Wine, a Loaf of Bread and Thou.”

Into the escape pod

Strewth’s latest episode of How It’s Done is a short masterclass delivered yesterday on Sky News.

Peter van Onselen: “Just finally before I let you go, Anthony Albanese, can you get to the bottom for us of what’s going on with the whole Michael Danby sickie, trip-to-Israel business? On the one hand I have heard Bill Shorten accused of running some sort of white-anting campaign against him. On the other hand I have heard him accused of being weak for not acting to reprimand him. What is going on here?”

Albo: “I don’t know, to tell you the truth, and I have got to say I haven’t given it a second thought.”

PVO: “OK, well I guess that is that, then.”

And so it proved.

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