Strewth: lost ditch effort

It was in August as the Barnaby Joyce citizenship drama unfurled that Foreign Minister Julie Bishop took aim at the Labour Party across the ditch: “New Zealand is facing an election. Should there be a change of government, I would find it very hard to build trust with those involved in allegations designed to undermine the government of Australia.” Now NZ Labour is in power and Jacinda Ardern (or Arden, as Bill Shorten’s office briefly had it yesterday) is PM-elect. Winston Churchill in 1946 springs to mind: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” We’ll be needing a local version.

No turn for the verse

Despite the exciting prospect of war with our neighbour across the Tasman, there was a certain, well, if not quite a sad exhaustion of the soul at least an ennui haunting some corners of Parliament House. “There is no poetry in this house,” one of our elected representatives lamented to Strewth. “I found a toilet on the way to the chamber that has a sign imploring users to lift their standards. The muse is gone, the (security) fence is going up and now people are literally losing their shit.” Look, we don’t know if this helps, but we find the sheer joy in this photo of Josh Frydenberg, Mark Dreyfus, Mike Freelander and friends at the signing of the Torah in parliament yesterday seriously uplifting. The ceremony saw the last letters being written into a Torah for the Canberra Jewish community. It clocks in at 300,000 words and has been a year in the making.

Josh Frydenberg: and a good time was had by all. Picture: Gary Ramage

Portrait of the artist

We’ll also point our dispirited MP in the direction of a sort of visual poetry: this sponsored Instagram post by opposition legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus, hunting new Instagram followers with this moody portrait captioned “Put pen to paper”.

Mark Dreyfus: paid content.

Can do, do can

Following our musing on Goon of Fortune — the game that unites the humble silver wine sack and the Hills Hoist — reader Frank M has chimed in: “It’s similar to the Beer Hunter, where you get six blokes, a sixpack, shake one can vigorously, shuffle, and then each bloke picks a can and opens it tilted next to his ear.” Perhaps best not to try this one at home.

Question time redux

As part of our service to Bob Katter fans, here’s the question he failed to ask in its entirety (The Sketch, yesterday) due to the 45-second time limit: “Electricity prices in three major states for the 13 years to 2002 rose from $650 to $780. A minuscule $130 in 13 years. From 2002 open market operations determined price and electricity wholly privatised. In the next 13 years, prices skyrocket from $810 to $2130, a $1320 increase. Since (National Electricity Market Management Company) asserts environmental charges are only 25 per cent, clearly then the price explosion is attributable to free-marketing and privatisation. A (Katter Australia Party) balance of power in Queensland shall return ‘cost only pricing’. Can Queensland be assured of no federal intervention which’d impose $1100 of unjustifiable and unconscionable charges?” He got only as far as “explosion”; we hope this helps.

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