Strewth: Love at last

A bit like ministers under Malcolm Turnbull’s new bonk ban, the CFMEU sometimes wants for love.

A bit like ministers under Malcolm Turnbull’s new bonk ban, the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union sometimes wants for love. Why, just last week Immigration Minister Peter Dutton broke the fourth wall of question time to have a crack at a striking CFMEU member up in the public gallery: “There you go, mate. Throw your arm up. Out on building sites, breaking arms, carrying on.” But who knows, a thaw may one day be possible. Take, for example, the beautiful and unlikely change of heart from Australian Financial Review editor-in-chief Michael Stutchbury. Here is a highlight from the petite financial organ’s CFMEU-kicking editorial from January 18: “a quasi-criminal union … an outfit whose business model is law breaking and comparative advantage is the use of violence wielded through on-site enforcers and bikie gangs”. So imagine the surprise of CFMEU national construction secretary Dave Noonan when he received this email from the very same paper on Wednesday: “Hi David, it’s July 30, 2018, and you are at a table at the annual awards night for the Australian Financial Review’s Most Innovative Companies list. The top 100 companies are about to be announced. Your palms are sweaty, your heart is racing, but on the outside you are pretending that you are cool as a cucumber. The names start to get announced … and then, the next company read out is: CFMEU Construction & General! Not to be a dream crusher, but that will never come true unless you actually enter. Which is why I am writing to you. After over six years of running the list, we have identified CFMEU Construction & General as a genuine contender to rank on the list.” Could it be a trap? Or has Stutch managed, in the space of under a month, to allow a bit of CFMEU love to breach the ramparts of his heart? The email, after all, did lob on the most romantic day of the year. “We might take him up on the offer,” Noonan told Strewth, clearly in the grip of an unfamiliar mix of emotions. “We’re flattered and very happy that Stutch was feeling the love on Valentine’s Day.” As Bob Katter would probably put it, let a thousand flowers bloom.

Conditionally speaking

Speaking of Bob Katter, he offered some thoughts on Barnaby Joyce yesterday. Few people do verbal footnotes on the run as effortlessly and copiously as he does. Exhibit A: “If I was in his shoes, which I am not likely to be, because quite frankly I would not have made the mistake that he has made, and acted as irresponsibly as he done …” Exhibit B: “I don’t think his conduct, putting aside the fact you have a young staffer and you are having an affair with them, putting aside that, which is a moral question and we shouldn’t be going to that …” Noted, Bob.

Faster than time

Amid the storm, life as usual tries to go on. Jobs and Innovation Minister Michaelia Cash, for example, sent out an alert for a press conference at which she would speak about the January release of the Australian Bureau of Statistics labour force figures. But then in a move that appeared to place heavy emphasis on the second part of Cash’s portfolio, her office cranked out a time amendment that lobbed into inboxes at 12.36pm, announcing, “Doorstop now at 12.35pm.” (Speaking of pressers, Labor senator Doug Cameron got through a whole one yesterday, sounding off about the government without once using his favourite word: “rabble”.)

A memorable stretch

In need of a memory of Barnaby Joyce in happier times? Let us return once more to 2011, when he and his then colleague George Brandis went to the wedding of Michael Smith and Katarina Kroslakova. Yes, yes, it later became the subject of a bit of an expenses hiccup, but let’s focus instead on the glow from this 2011 Strewth item: “Expecting a regular hire car to collect them, they walked out to be confronted by a stretch limousine. Remarked Brandis, ‘I think that hideous thing is for us.’ Joyce asked the driver who he was waiting for. Consulting a piece of paper, the driver confirmed Brandis’s worst fears: ‘Someone called Barnaby.’ As a ‘tired’ Joyce related to Strewth, ‘We sat in the back among the changing neon colours of this protein and chemical-enriched abomination, glancing at one another uncomfortably.’ The measured Brandis ignored Joyce’s exhortation to ‘be loud and proud’ and disembark in style at the venue, instead waiting inside the limo until any possible eyewitnesses had moved away. As we later learned, Brandis tore up the dance floor and Joyce read Kim Cockerell’s poem Fair Dinkum Love, a work rejoicing in lines such as: ‘Fair dinkum love isn’t about stiff posture and fancy clothes / It’s about wrestling on the couch in your tracksuit’.” Those were the days, friends.

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