Strewth: Today’s special

Jon Faine tried to tempt Scott Morrison with a special sanger, but the former treasurer refused to bite.

Now and then, Strewth has tried to soften — or at least lend a cosmopolitan air to — a certain metaphorical foodstuff by calling it baguette de merde. The ABC’s Jon Faine gave it a whirl yesterday with Scott Morrison.

Faine: “Were you given a faecal sandwich, to put it politely, when you were asked to try and deliver things like a state-based income tax or a GST increase?”

Morrison: “We don’t resile from the fact, Jon, that we dealt with and addressed those issues.”

Faine (changing metaphorical gears): “We all know you floated balloons that crashed.”

Morrison: “No, I wouldn’t put it like that, Jon.”

Surely faecal focaccia would be the shot, if only for the alliteration and rhythm.

Diplomatic language

Elsewhere on Aunty’s airwaves, Michael Brissenden was also trying to nudge a pollie, but in this case it was Penny Wong, who has diplomatically embraced the shadow foreign affairs portfolio. Brissenden: “What’s your view of Donald Trump? Do you agree with Bill Shorten’s description of him as barking mad?”

Wong: “Well, he’s certainly an interesting candidate.”

The language of high diplomacy was everywhere.

Journo: “What about Nigel Scullion saying the issue hadn’t piqued his interest until he saw the Four Corners report? Do you think that’s an appropriate response?”

Malcolm Turnbull: “He has a passionate commitment to indigenous advancement and indigenous welfare.”

The diplomacy could last only so long, of course.

Journo: “Prime Minister, are you concerned your cabinet might be split on Kevin Rudd’s bid for the United Nations?”

Turnbull: “… while I know it’s a matter of great interest in the media, can I just say with all due respect to Mr Rudd, it isn’t the most important issue confronting the cabinet … at this time”.

But nowhere did it end more bluntly than in the office of Education Minister Simon Birmingham, which welcomed Tanya Plibersek to her new shadow portfolio thus: “New shadow minister, same old lies.”

One door closes

“It has been said many times recently that politics is governed by the hard and fast rules of mathematics,” wrote Tasmania’s Richard Colbeck yesterday on his failure to be re-elected to the Senate. “Either you have the numbers or you don’t.” Colbeck had the numbers in one sense: on a day Bill Clinton gave a speech that seemed to go for four score and seven hours, Colbeck’s gracious statement clocked up 1147 words. Things went better for his colleague who scored the top slot on the Liberals’ Senate ticket in Tasmania. “Earlier, a lefty dropped this into my office,” tweeted Eric Abetz, along with a photo of coffee mug adorned with a less than fully flattering portrait of himself and the message “I voted for Eric Abetz #58”. Cruel, yet practical. As Abetz went on to note, “A few hours later I was announced as the first elected Tas Senator.”

Drawing a line

Having learned of survey questions there such as “Do you agree that (the) Trump candidacy should be exploded before it is too late?”, Strewth had a crack at signing up to The SMH Insider. It’s an offshoot of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun-Herald “where you have your say”. Signing up involves answering a number of questions, including whether we or any family members worked in a selection of industries, including newspaper publishing — which we clicked. Having thanked us for our interest, the site went on to offer a sentence from the downbeat end of the have-your-cake-and-eat-it spectrum: “Your opinion is very important to us, but unfortunately we have had a strong response from people who work in your industry.” And thus, beneath this fiery sword, we were ejected from the electronic Eden.

Classic from the vault

Early in his speech at Melbourne’s Arts Centre the other night, David Williamson slipped in a line about “the Murdoch press” that was both a sledge and an exercise in self-deprecation. We’ll just note it was one corner of the Murdoch press — namely this august organ — that provided one of our favourite Williamson moments, possibly second only to the onscreen chemistry between Julia Blake, Leo McKern and Graham Kennedy in the film version of Travelling North. It was this glorious paragraph in a 2009 profile by Luke Slattery: “Kristin Williamson concedes that one of her motivations for writing the book was to focus attention on her husband’s entire body of work. ‘Forty-two produced plays,’ she trumpets. ‘That’s more than Shakespeare.’ ” Five stars forever.

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