Strewth: Leigh dreams

Strange visions greet Peter Dutton when he shuts his eyes.

If there’s one thing the week was lacking, it was Peter Dutton suggesting the sound of Andrew Leigh’s voice makes him close his eyes and fantasise. The Immigration Minister addressed this deficit yesterday after his host, 2GB broadcaster Ray Hadley, played a clip of the Labor frontbencher.

Dutton: “Ah Ray, just hearing him talk, closing my eyes I can see him walking around in a robe, you know, like some, you know, Greek god, and he just gets weirder and weirder.”

Hadley: “Hang on, I know you have a vivid imagination but I can’t in any circumstance close my eyes and think of Andrew Leigh in a robe as a Greek god. As a wanker, yes, but not as a Greek god.”

As the Eurythmics nearly sang it, Leigh dreams are made of these. Dutton, whom we just quoted very faithfully, has also described Leigh as “a weird cat”. Leigh is trying to take it all in his stride.

All that glisters

There has been a lot of “rolled gold” bandied about during these past few days of citizenship talk, whether it’s Finance Minister Mathias Cormann’s “rolled gold” assurance the Coalition was safe from any further hiccups, or dredging up Bill Shorten’s old “rolled gold” vow Labor was in the clear. Ah hindsight, what a beautiful thing it is. (And no, we are not going to repeat our terrible old joke about hindsight being what Craig Emerson eventually gained that time he accidentally swallowed Julia Gillard’s contact lenses.) Why has “rolled gold” become the, ahem, gold standard of Australian politics? Rolled gold involves creating a sort of bling veneer by bonding gold to a base metal; in other words, it is shiny BS. As jewelryshoppingguide.com spells out: “You can wear pieces that look exactly like 14K or 18K gold and no one would know the difference!” Meanwhile, the Our Everyday Life website puts it in some historical perspective: “While not as valuable as items made from solid gold, rolled gold gained hugely in popularity during the austere conditions following the Depression in the early 20th century.” Which is possibly not a patch of history one wants to be drawing attention to straight after a budget. (Even when you get away from the metallic angle, it’s not entirely without problems. Over to Wikipedia: “Rolled Gold … is a compilation album by the Rolling Stones released without the band’s authorisation by its former label Decca Records in 1975.”)

The worth of advice

The citizenship shambles is certainly a movable feast. Here’s Bill Shorten on Wednesday after he’d suddenly lost two people more than Lady Bracknell’s threshold for carelessness.

Journo: “Are you apologising at all today for those assurances?”

Shorten: “We have acted in good faith at all times.”

Journo: “You misled the people in good faith?”

Shorten: “No, we followed the legal advice we have been given.”

And Tony Burke on Sky News yesterday discussing Coalition MP Jason Falinski.

Kieran Gilbert: “You think Mr Falinski needs to be referred?”

Burke: “If what’s in The Australian today is accurate then he should just resign and we have all the by-elections on the one day.”

Gilbert: “… As I pointed out he’s released more material as well, disputing the case that he ever was. If all that material is there, the legal advice …”

Burke: “I don’t see how a piece of legal advice from your lawyer gets around the documents …”

(Burke gets a smiley stamp for his plug for this august organ.)

It’s no joke, Joyce

Barnaby Joyce, who hung in as deputy PM despite being a suspected Kiwi, took grim satisfaction in Labor’s citizenship travails yesterday. Legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus,meanwhile, talked with the ABC’s Jon Faine, a chat he strove to keep as circular as possible.

Dreyfus: “And you might recall the PM standing up in the parliament and saying that Barnaby Joyce was eligible to sit in parliament and ‘the High Court will so hold’ was his memorable phrase.”

Faine: “And he was wrong but so were you.”

Dreyfus: “And that proved to be completely wrong.”

Hair apparent

A certain press gallery journalist has told Labor’s indefatigably fresh-faced finance spokesman Jim Chalmers that if he’s to have any Peter Walsh-like credibility as a future finance minister, he needs to look grizzled and get grey hair. (It’s possible this journalist rocks platinum follicles himself.) Things are looking up! After Sky’s Kieran Gilbert noted the miracle of Chalmers’s lack of grey hair despite years in parliament, Chalmers gently corrected him. “A few!” he said. Now to get grizzled.

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