Angus Taylor: Rhodes no redemption for the minister who cried ‘Wolf’

Anthony Albanese and Santa Claus at a Parliament House charity BBQ on Tuesday. Picture: Kym Smith

The Ghost of Christmas Past had come knocking for Angus Taylor. “Take heed!” the ghost cried, as it clasped the Energy Minister gently by the arm and wound back the clock to his first speech on December 10, 2013.

“I first encountered political correctness as a student at Oxford,” Taylor told parliament of his Rhodes Scholar days. “It was 1991, and a young Naomi Wolf (the American feminist writer) lived a couple of doors down the corridor. Several graduate students, mostly from the northeast of the US, decided we should abandon the Christmas tree in the common room because some people might be offended.”

Young Angus was “astounded” as his friends explained “this new kind of moral vanity that was taking hold in America”. The War on Christmas (TM) had come to destroy capitalism, free speech and democracy! He needed to fight back again the “shrill elite voices”!

“A few of us pushed back hard. In the end we won, because we were mainstream,” Taylor told his colleagues. “But we must resist the insidious political correctness that would have us discard those core values that made us great.”

The story was also paraphrased in a Financial Review profile on Taylor the next year, on December 5, 2014: “Taylor was awarded a Rhodes scholarship and went to Oxford University, where left-wing writer Naomi Wolf lived a few doors away. When she proposed banning the traditional Christmas tree, Taylor, a Christian, led a successful counter rebellion.”

Taylor’s festive trouble would have stayed in the past too, were it not for that meddling Labor kid Tim Watts. The member for Gellibrand tweeted a screenshot of Taylor’s first speech on Saturday (in light of the police probe into the alleged doctored doc which resulted in the PM’s phone call to a NSW top cop) and another bright spark sent it to Wolf.

“I was a Rhodes Scholar in Oxford 1985-88,” Wolf weighed in online. “Angus Taylor recalls me in a fever dream at Oxford in 1991 among those warring on Xmas. (I was in NYC). (Plus I love Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa.) Flattered to be on this mythological hate list.”

I was a Rhodes Scholar in Oxford 1985-88. Angus Taylor recalls me in a fever dream at Oxford in 1991 among those warring on Xmas.(I was in NYC). (Plus I love Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa.) Flattered to be on this mythological hate list. Imaginary "war on Xmas" worked in US too.

— Dr Naomi Wolf (@naomirwolf) December 2, 2019

Taylor’s office offered this clarification: “Mr Taylor did not say Naomi Wolf was one of the graduates, and was not referring to Naomi Wolf as one of the graduates.” The minister insists that he remembers meeting Wolf during his time at New College.

That wasn’t good enough for Anthony Albanese Scrooge, who fulfilled his promise to pursue Scott Morrison over his “Angus Horribilis”.

“This is a bloke who started misleading parliament in his first speech,” Albanese told Labor caucus. “Naomi Wolf, who wasn't even there! Who was at the time writing one of the best selling books in the world in that year (The Beauty Myth). When you’re getting sledged from across the world for misleading parliament, you're in a spot a bother!”

Labor’s interrogation about the boy who cried Wolf was dismissed in Question Time but Morrison couldn’t resist the cinnamon bait, declaring: “This is Question Time not smear time!”

“(Albanese) comes into this place with his tricky little stunts and clever little lines … treating this parliament like some sort of second-rate high school debate, engaging in punctuation points and commas,” the prime minister said, five minutes after making a Star Wars joke. One insulted (not really) MP noted that high school debaters lose when they don’t answer the question.

For the record, Albanese wished his colleagues “Happy Christmas” (not Merry); Eric Abetz’s card offers “Christmas Blessings” and Greens MP Adam Bandt’s says “Seasons greetings and best wishes”.

How would young Angus feel about that?