Three’s a crowd, for local Greens

Britain’s Green Party, but not ours, is open to the idea of extending marriage equality to polyamorous relationships.

Kim Carr and the RV Investigator in Hobart yesterday.

Natalie Bennett, the Australian-born leader of Britain’s Green Party, has declared her party open to the possibility of extending marriage equality to committed polyamorous relationships. Our colleague Ean Higgins, who is not known for any shortcomings in the persistence area, asked senator Sarah Hanson-Young if Australia’s Greens might also be open to such a discussion. SHY is, of course, the Greens’ spokeswoman on marriage equality. In due course, Higgins received a reply from SHY’s chief of staff, Ali Neyle, and it would frankly be worth Higgins’s time to have it embroidered on to something: “Senator Hanson-Young’s view and the Australian Greens policy remains the same as every other time you have asked about this issue. Marriage equality is about two adults regardless of gender. The senator acknowledges your continued and long-term obsession with this topic and suggests that rather than hoping the Greens will change their policy you deal with your fascination with polygamy in some other manner.” At which point the mind begins to boggle.

Die a little death

Following the sad procession of the Australian Democrats and the Democratic Labour Party towards the Australian Electoral Commission’s scythe of deregistration, the Australian Sex Party is experimenting with polite attack as a form of defence: “Without in any way criticising the staff at the AEC or their abilities to perform the job, they are being asked to use the most ridiculous methods to determine whether 500 bona fide members exist.” The party’s struggle at the edge of the abyss lent a certain edge to its following missive: “Sex Party gets euthanasia motion over the line.”

Spreading the budget

Advance flogging of the budget goes on. Here’s Tony Abbott on 3AW with Neil Mitchell:

Abbott: “It’s a good budget and I think it’ll be well received …”

Mitchell: “Yeah, but you thought the last one was a good one, too.”

Without so much as a skipped beat, the PM deployed his Teflon-coated shields and soldiered valiantly past that comment to spread the burden across more than just Joe Hockey’s shoulders: “Second, it’s a team effort, it’s my budget, it’s Joe’s budget; it’s Mathias Cormann the Finance Minister’s budget; it’s Scott Morrison the Social Services Minister’s budget; it’s Warren Truss the Deputy Prime Minister’s budget; it’s Josh Frydenberg the Assistant Treasurer’s budget …”

Jobs focus

Having addressed to his own satisfaction the place of the three-piece suit in Australian politics (Strewth, yesterday), Labor’s town crier Kim Carr donned a flat cap and posed with the RV Investigator in Hobart (pictured); a most singular image. He then got on to less happy stuff: “Tony Abbott needs to use next week’s budget to repair the damage done by his savage cuts to Tasmanian science and research, instead of simply trying to save his own job.” This has been a theme in Labor’s recent missives the way hydrogen is a theme in water molecules. Here’s Alannah MacTiernan the day before: “Mr Abbott must think about Australian jobs, not just his own job.” The same day, Shayne Neumann and Helen Polley also worked the Abbott’s “own job” theme. Ditto Jan McLucas, Stephen Jones, Warren Snowdon, Joel Fitzgibbon, Jim Chalmers, Mark Dreyfus, Graham Perrett, Doug Cameron, Sharon Bird and Mark Butler. It took Bill Shorten to abandon this small-target approach, braving a trial separation from grammar yesterday to deliver this: “This a government who’s focused on their own job.”

On the other hand

An economist who can’t answer any question with a “well, yes and no” isn’t trying. Behold this small but beautifully formed example from Deloitte Access Economics’ Chris Richardson, as prompted by our colleague David Crowe:

Crowe: “Do these changes to the pension go far enough?”

Richardson: “Would I make other changes to the pension? Yes. Would I ever be elected to parliament? No.”

Best of Britain

While Prince Harry wowed the crowds in Sydney, not least the serial proposer sailing bravely close to a restraining order, an opinion piece by his mother’s Prime Minister David Cameron was granted an accidentally sinister yet marvellous plug by The Times: “Britain is on a knife-edge. Let me finish the job.”

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