Strewth: one detonation

The replacement for Rod Culleton has imploded.

It was in Tuesday’s Strewth we suggested One Nation might have found someone to fill the Rod Culleton-sized hole in our souls: Queensland candidate, Mark Ellis. His CV certainly packed a promising amount of colour. There was that time from his walloper days when he and some colleagues got done for kidnapping some indigenous kids, though the charges were dropped. And the time he and his security company marked their success in protecting Clive Palmer from the media outside court (“The boys were professional, there were no punches thrown”). Since then, more has come to light, not least alleged death threats against an employee, and a photo of him saluting an immaculately proportioned swastika mown into a lawn. (There was a British sitcom in 1990 called Heil Honey I’m Home!, in which a slightly reimagined Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun lived next door to a Jewish couple. No, we’re not making this up. Amazingly, it was cancelled after its debut episode. But we digress.) It turns out that even a camel as stiffly spined as One Nation can cope with only so much straw, and Ellis’s time as a candidate for the party has drawn prematurely to a close.

The way forward

So given the adventures One Nation has had with its personnel — elected or otherwise — we have a modest proposal. Take One Nation’s candidate-vetting process and turn it into a reality TV series. It would be a ratings monster! We have gently pitched it to the ABC and SBS, and are hoping the silence that followed will morph into something more productive. We’re also very much open to overtures (and coin) from the commercial networks. To sweeten the deal, veteran Australian Idol and The Bachelor host Osher Gunsberg has kindly offered his services: “I volunteer myself to host this show. It will be live, and in front of a studio audience.” Correspondence via the address at the end of this column.

Osher Gunsberg: ready to host.

Sticks and stones

Meanwhile, a tough moment yesterday for the bloke previously and mercilessly sledged by his opponents as Electricity Bill.

Journo: “Mr Shorten, Minister (Andrew) Constance, the Liberal (NSW) Transport Minister, said you’re ‘Billshort on ideas and Billshort on cash’. Does that worry you, that kind of rhetoric, considering you guys may have to work with each other in a couple of years?”

Bill Shorten: “Does it worry me if a Liberal says mean things about me? No.”

Hopefully this wasn’t dispiriting for his Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen, who put out a press release about Scott Morrison headed “Buried Treasurer”.

Fresh in our memories

With Family First now vanished through the flaps of the big tent that is Cory Bernardi’s party, let us pause to solemnly remember Family First at the peak of its powers. By which, of course, we mean that time senator Steve Fielding dressed up as a bottle.

Steve Fielding: family thirst.

First with the spews

English newspaper The Argus has visited a boozer called the County Oak and offered up the resulting review beneath the delicate headline, “This place is not for the faint-hearted and surely the worst pub in Brighton.” Opening paragraph: “I’m not narrow-minded and don’t think I’m squeamish, but getting my shoes covered in vomit before I even got through the door should have provided all the warning I needed.” If it were a bit nearer, we’d be tempted to check it out.

[e-mail]