Strewth: Team spirit

Taking the slenderest leaf out of the Donald Trump playbook, Bill Shorten was out making the NSW Central Coast great again.

Taking the slenderest leaf out of the Donald Trump playbook, Bill Shorten was out yesterday making the NSW central coast great again. “Hi everyone,” he said to start his press conference. “It’s great to be here in Gosford. It’s great to be announcing with our great candidates, of course, Anne Charlton running in the seat of Robertson and Emma McBride, our member for Dobell. These two great MPs and candidates …”

After that, other adjectives were found, sometimes with considerable agility.

Journo: “Do you agree with Tanya Plibersek that Labor will have a huge win at the Braddon by-election?”

Shorten: “I think it is an uphill battle. If we win, that will be huge.”

Bravo! As for the latest Newspoll and Shorten’s policy of not commenting on such things, he said: “So my job is not to get distracted. My job is not to get into the trap of arguing about every little personality issue …” Which doesn’t explicitly rule out other traps, such as that largish one last week. In contrast to the old saying, though, Shorten ensured that particular failure was not left an orphan.

Journo: “Did you make an honest error last week on company tax cuts as Wayne Swan said?”

Shorten: “Listen, on the company tax issue, I’m not going to debate the process. But I think we got to the right place in the end. There’s no doubt that my economic team thought that an initial threshold of $10 million was sufficient …”

As the saying goes, there’s no “I” in team! Anyway, it all came good in the end. As Shorten phrased it so memorably, “We listened and now we’ve led.”

Poll explorer

Shorten wasn’t the only stating a reluctance to discuss numbers.

Journo: “Prime Minister, were you happy with the latest Newspoll results?”

Malcolm Turnbull: “I’m not a commentator on polls, I leave that to experts like yourselves …”

In Turnbull’s case, though, the reluctance was less than rock solid. Barely had he drawn breath into the prime ministerial lungs, he was off again: “But I have to say that Bill Shorten’s performance last week demonstrated his backflip — or perhaps his belly-flop — on company taxes demonstrates that the description of him as ‘unbelieva-Bill’ is very well-deserved.” This was at least a welcome concession that “backflip” is not a winner, given that a backflip — at least one properly executed — leaves the backflipper standing in the same position, staring in the same direction. Not a situation the former leather jacket-wearing Turnbull would be terribly familiar with these days. Meanwhile, his hard work to cement Scott Morrison’s nickname for Shorten carried on: “Bill Shorten — ‘unbelieva-Bill’ — with his belly-flop on company tax …” Pushed once again on the prospect of an early election, he said: “The election will be next year.” Which, sadly, means a whole lot more “unbelieva-Bill” coming our way. Unless things don’t quite pan out for Labor at the by-elections and the Coalition has to reshape its truncheon rhetoric to “unbeliev-Albo”.

Perchance to dream

Elsewhere in the nation, Labor’s Amanda Rishworth and Nick Champion also were being prodded in vain about leadership.

Here’s Champion: “I support Bill Shorten as leader. There is no ballot, there is no contest — it is a figment of people’s fertile imagination in the media …”

As opposed to well-fertilised imaginations; we’re sure that’s not what Champion was driving at, at all.

On the Rudd again

Tony Abbott must be feeling a little drowned out by all that other leadership noise. “I guess it’s unusual for a former PM to come back,” he told 2GB. “You could really only come back if you were drafted by your party. But let’s just see how things work out.” Compare that with Kevin Rudd’s announcement on that day in 2013 when Simon Crean blew himself up in the most shambolic putsch attempt since Mikhail Gorbachev’s usurpers gave a drunken press conference: “The only circumstances under which I would consider a return to leadership would be if there was an overwhelming majority of the parliamentary party requesting such a return, drafting me to return and the position was vacant.” And you know how all that went.

A bugger of a question

A brief exchange on the Witness K case, starring Christian Porter.

Journo: “Why go after the whistleblowers? Why not go for those who perpetrated the act?”

Attorney-General: “Look, I’m not even sure that I understand what that question is.”

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