The Sketch: All Melburnians? No, not any more

Will Richard Colbeck exit through the gift shop?

Where does Richard Colbeck sit on the political strife scale?

Imagine the fire danger rating than runs from low moderate (green) to catastrophic (red/black), but in the Canberra Bubble — colourful, controversial, under pressure, troubled, beleaguered, embattled, former and disgraced.

To give you a hint, Colbeck has been dubbed “Minister for Funerals” by the rogues gallery at Wikipedia. His official entry was vandalised to read: “He has been Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians (or as the position is now known, Minister for Funerals) and Minister for Youth and Sport in the Morrison government since May 2019.”

It was removed by Monday afternoon and now his page, like the man, is in witness protection.

Will Colbeck exit through the gift shop (which incidentally remains open in Parliament House despite the building being closed to the public)?

“No, I haven’t considered my resignation,” Colbeck told a particularly shouty press conference after Victoria announced 73 new cases and 41 deaths — including 33 people who died in aged-care facilities in the past couple of weeks but were not reported until Sunday.

Colbeck believes he still has the confidence of the Prime Minister: “As I said in my statement last week, and … in the Senate last week, I should have had the data in front of me when I required it. That is not an indication of the work I’m doing more broadly in the portfolio.”

Hours earlier, Josh Frydenberg called it a “slow motion car crash”. Not his federal colleague’s performance — Victoria’s COVID response.

“And you saw the overreach from the Premier just a few days ago asking for a 12-month extension of the emergency … This has to be the biggest public policy failure by a state government in living memory,” the Treasurer declared.

We are absolutely, 100 per cent, not all Melburnians anymore. Even Morrison’s minister who lives in Hawthorn!

As Frydenberg hit the dispatch box to repeat his claims, a female voice descended from the heavens. “Oh no,” she exclaimed, not once but twice.

It was Victorian Labor MP Ged Kearney, whose microphone was accidentally un-muted early as she phoned in from lockdown Preston.

Yet Daniel Andrews wouldn’t bite. “I’m not here to argue with Josh Frydenberg. I haven’t got time to have an argument with him or a debate or even a discussion. I’m very focused on getting the job done.”

The Victorian Premier was far too focused on not coming off as the Christmas grinch. “We had a different Mother’s Day. No one was happy about that,” he said. “We’re going to have a different Father’s Day (this Sunday). I want to make sure we have a Christmas Day as close to possible as normal.”

BUT. “If we (remove restrictions) too quick, if we do this chasing something that might be popular for a few weeks, if we forget it‘s a pandemic and think it’s a popularity contest, then Christmas won’t look normal at all. It will be a very, very different Christmas Day. If we open up too quick, we will lose control of this. The numbers will explode.”

Greg Hunt, meanwhile, was telling question time about the vaccine deal Australia hasn’t done. “We are investing over $350m in vaccine research to help protect Australians as part of the first limb of our vaccine strategy,” he said. The country does need a leg-up.

And you can’t get much more Melbourne than this: one woman fined at the weekend breached the 5km home limit because there was “no good coffee in her area”. Forget belt and road! We should be more concerned about belt and ristretto.