Strewth: Peak Clive?

A Perth radio website serves up Clive Palmer in an intriguing new role.

We will just mention in passing that as of yesterday, the website of Perth radio station Hit 92.9 features a video in which Clive Palmer dances about in a rabbit onesie, smearing peanut butter on a semi-naked man who is wearing a Tony Abbott mask. There is nothing we can add.

Glitz apres apocalypse

Hours after using a briefcase to shield his face from reporters as he left Liberal HQ on Thursday, state party treasurer Andrew Abercrombie was rubbing shoulders with a who’s who of business, politics and sport at Melbourne’s Langham Hotel for the SecondBite Waste Not Want Not fundraising dinner. SecondBite, which redistributes surplus food supplies to people in need, was co-founded by leading insolvency expert Ian Carson, whose firm PPB Advisory was hired by the party to probe the financial irregularities that led to former state director Damien Mantach admitting to a $1.5 million fraud this week. While one observer said Abercrombie “seemed like a shattered man”, it wasn’t all glum — the event raised more than $175,000.

Off his chest

Andrew Demetriou has been quiet of late, but given a microphone at an amateur football club sportsman’s night this week, the former AFL chief couldn’t resist settling a few old scores. According to the Old Xaverians Football Club Twitter feed on the night, Demetriou dismissed allegations raised by departed Essendon coach James Hird as a mere diversion. Sports scientist Stephen Dank he described as a “turd’’. As for the so-called blackest-day-in -Australian-sport press conference where the drug scandal was announced: “The press conference was a complete and utter cock-up. It was a political stunt.’’ Who authorised the presser? None other than former sports minister Kate Lundy, who now sits alongside Demetriou on the board of Bastion S+Go.

A taste of both sides

We hear one of the people in the running to become Bill Shorten’s new chief of staff is Cameron Milner, which would indicate a reasonable degree if flexibility. A former state secretary for the ALP, Milner is now a lobbyist for Indian coalmining company Adani, the cause and main beneficiary of Tony Abbott’s moves against the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, moves opposed by Shorten.

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