Tough audience

WHEN Barnaby Joyce lets rip in federal parliament, it’s rarely to a silent room.

WHEN Barnaby Joyce lets rip in federal parliament, it’s rarely to a silent room.

Even amid the maelstrom of decibels from the member for New England, one can still make out the metronomic comfort of “Hear hear”; the piercing encouragement of the Prime Minister’s “Ha ha!”; the waves of heckles; the surround sound of Ewen Jones’s larynx. So it probably came as something of a shock to Joyce when he ventured to McCarthy Catholic College in Tamworth this week. Faced with an audience of 1000 students and their teachers, he was confident — not least with the YouTube clip of his three-ring-circus of a response to Tanya Plibersek in question time the other week stacking up thousands of views and surely adding to his street cred. “I thought I would be crowd-surfing,” he admits to Strewth. “As the day was the feast of St Barnabas, I dropped the gag, ‘Don’t confuse Barnabas the Apostle with Barnaby the politician*’.” So, how did that one fly? About as well as a compost bin, it seems. Baring his soul yet further, Joyce continues: “There was dead, excruciating silence. not even a murmured laugh, not even from the perplexed-looking staff. All the result said loud and clear was, ‘We don’t’. From hero to zero in a single school assembly.” (*Given that St Barnabas was tortured and then stoned to death, we trust everyone heeded the serious message within the joke. Perhaps this is the real reason no one laughed. Then again ...)

Not having a ball

THERE are some ostensibly throwaway lines that end up staying with you. Such as one from Assistant Infrastructure Minister Jamie Briggs on ABC891 last month. Following on from his host’s observation that something stuck out like “dog’s balls”, Briggs brightly noted: “My little dog is about to lose his.” As we said at the time, it might have come across more poignantly had Briggs not chuckled. Anyway, today’s the big day for Ralph the cavoodle, who is off to the vet to say cheerio to his kegs. Or, if we may coin a word, to be undowed. While we salute Briggs for setting such a fine example in dog ownership, we did wonder how Ralph was spending his last day before becoming a pooch whose only balls are the ones he fetches. “Average day,” Briggs mused to Strewth. “Chasing birds, the family cat and chewing on an old bone. I don’t think the reality of the situation has hit him yet.”

For repeat’s sake

WHILE Hugh Jackman was admiring Tony Abbott’s physical fitness in New York yesterday (“Look who popped into our early AM workout ... The PM can train!!!!”), we stopped and thought about how this was just part of the same package of discipline that makes him a black belt in the art of Staying On Message. Why, one probably couldn’t eradicate “Stop the boats” without having one’s brain cauterised. And yet, we must doff our cap to Bill Shorten. We have no idea how he’d fare in a New York gym, but he’s got the other stuff worked out. Exhibit A, this edited extract from his press conference yesterday: “I won’t give a running comment on the royal commission … I’m not going to give a running commentary on what is said in the royal commission. … I will not provide a running commentary. … I won’t provide a running commentary, as I’ve said … I won’t give a day by day statement on the royal commission … I will simply not provide a running commentary about what is raised there … I won’t provide a running commentary on each twist and turn of evidence.”

Journo: “Are you tired of these questions?”

Shorten: “No.”

As if to test this, he was asked a question that brought forth the magic words: “I’m not going to provide a running commentary.”

Gut instinct

THIS shouldn’t be misinterpreted as making light of either a charitable gesture nor a serious disease. However, following Geoff Shaw’s suspension from the Victorian parliament for 11 sitting days, we perhaps smiled a tiny bit when we learned Speaker Christine Fyffe opted to donate Shaw’s docked salary — a pip over $4000 — to Bowel Cancer Australia. Though we’re sure this wasn’t in any way symbolic.

Polar position

THE Queensland government’s final submission to the royal commission into home insulation is a dry affair. Which makes it all the more surprising to find nestling in its depths, apropos of we’re not sure what, a quote from Robert Falcon Scott of the Antarctic: “We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against and therefore we have no cause for complaint.” The report goes on to note batt decisions were taken in a manner “unlike the Antarctic explorers”.

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