Fraser Anning barks but ‘dag’ Ed Husic saves the day

After Fraser Anning’s speech went off like a grenade in a septic tank, Labor’s Ed Husic delivered a moment of uplift.

Labor MP Ed Husic in the House of Representatives. Picture: Kym Smith.

So it came to pass that Fraser ­Anning, the senator who abandoned One Nation nanoseconds after surfing in on its ticket, slapped parliament into a momentary nobility.

But while his speech went off like a grenade in a septic tank, it didn’t arrive out of the blue; hectoring Muslims with the ghost of the White Australia policy is just a hardening of current rhetoric. But by calling for a “final solution” — one of the most loaded pairs of words history has to offer — he cast Muslims into the same bleak shadow that has haunted Jews for almost eight decades.

Even Pauline Hanson raced from this verbal cocktail, lobbing the phrase “straight from Goebbels’ handbook” as she ran.

But as parliament was consumed in a conflagration of bi­partisan rage, Labor’s Ed Husic delivered a moment of uplift, a Muslim sidestepping the storm to reach out to a Jew.

“There are a few improbable things in this place,” he said. “One of them which is remarked upon from time to time is my friendship with the member for Kooyong.”

Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg looked tickled by this acknowledgment of the bromance that dares to shout its name.

“The two of us are probably the biggest dags in parliament — I don’t know if that is parliamentary, but we are. Here we are, joined at the unhip.” A reminder, perhaps, that there can be no light without dorkiness.

Malcolm Turnbull and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten shake hands during a moment of unity in parliament yesterday. Source: Nine News

Proceeding with his call to ­emphasise the forces of unity, Husic harked back to the call from Malcolm Turnbull he got upon his election: “I have never forgotten.”

And then, unexpectedly, Husic took a step towards the transcendent. “People ask me because of my Muslim faith, do I have a problem with the Lord’s Prayer at the start of parliament? No I don’t. When you hear God’s words, you hear God’s words. They are good words, and in particular: ‘and forgive us for our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us’. It’s not an exhortation for the moment. It is a reminder for us to live a better life that is not mired in the negative, but in something that is better. And this is the moment that we can build on.”

Frydenberg stepped up and these two daggy children of immigrants embraced.

For the inevitable change of pace, the media gaze moved to Cairns, where it alighted upon ­Anning’s leader, Bob Katter, shouting about lilypad lefties — a category in which he now presumably counts Hanson — and Muslims. But between bellows he beamed at the suddenly attentive journalists before him. Not so much the cat that got the cream as the fringe pollie who got all the oxygen.