Strewth: Magna Katter

Bob Katter stole the show with his history-loaded question for Barnaby Joyce.

Ian Macdonald in his Cancer Australia Barbecue apron in the Senate yesterday. Picture: Gary Ramage

With everything from One Nation shenanigans to a senator’s staffer being punted from a Nationals seafood barbie, from Emma Husar’s moving speech on domestic violence to the vision of a streamlined Clive Palmer walking the corridors of Parliament House in a shirt of scarlet flannel, yesterday was a broad-spectrum sort of day. But no one worked broad spectrum into a single moment quite the way Bob Katter did in question time with a query to Barnaby Joyce about water allocations that eventually, somehow, extended to “the Magna Carta itself”. As Katter spread his hands wide in acknowledgment of his rhetorical masterstroke, Joyce rose to the occasion: “At times I stay up late at night deliberating on the issues of Runnymede (in) 1215 and exactly what was going on between King John and those feudal lords. I do acknowledge that after a few months they broke out into war and, in any case, it wasn’t of much use.” This done, he tackled the water.

The human billboard

Whenever we want to learn about product placement, we inevitably turn to Coalition senator Ian Macdonald. In a previous adventure, he wore Hi-Vis gear encouraging a fondness for coal. Sure, he was energetically berated by his colleague Bill Heffernan (pictured), but Macca was unbowed. Yesterday he lobbed in the Senate still wearing his jaunty red apron from the Cure Cancer Australia barbecue. There was no Heff to take issue with Macca this time, but we suspect even he would have been OK with it.

A bit of Pauline

For those of you craving a bit of Pauline Hanson magic without the enhancement/dilution of Rod Culleton, here is a little bit of her in conversation with the ABC’s Barrie Cassidy yesterday: “I see in Donald Trump a lot of me, I suppose, and people said I’m like Donald Trump. No, Donald Trump was a reflection of what I was saying 20 years ago and still do to this day. I think the fact is that he came across to me as a person who cares about his country, patriotic.” (But if you’d prefer a bit of Culleton with your Hanson, may we gently direct you to the Sketch on Page 7.)

The snow must go on

Far away across the Pacific, Cory Bernardi has contemplated what he’s seen in the Trumpstorm and waxed lyrical in his newsletter: “It’s three degrees and the first tiny flakes of snow are falling in Manhattan. Somehow I find it symbolic, given that my secondment to the United Nations and my stay here is drawing to a close. The end of one season and the beginning of another.” Somewhere down the track, those snowflakes are adding up to an avalanche: “ ... it all goes to explain why politics in Australia needs to change. My time in the USA has made me realise I have to be a part of that change, perhaps even in some way a catalyst for it.”

Easy as EPC

On radio station FiveAA, a discussion about Peter Dutton’s comments on Lebanese immigrants saw Anthony Albanese constructively criticising the Immigration Minister. “We are suffering today from EPC, Anthony,” replied Christopher Pyne. Pressed to spell out EPC, Pyne explained in a tone that suggested mild surprise anyone should be unfamiliar with it: “Excessive political correctness.” We’ll have to add that EPC to a long list that spans from electronic product code to the European Policy Centre (a think tank in Brussels), to extra-pair copulation which, as Wikipedia patiently explains to the curious, is “promiscuous mating behaviour in monogamous species”.

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