The Sketch: The power of words, and silence

Clad in her gym gear, Emma Husar gets ready to vote. Picture: Gary Ramage

Question time may have a rowdy reputation but some MPs achieved a powerful effect yesterday while saying nothing. Richard Marles, for example.

Having handed the government a scalpel fashioned from coal earlier in the day, the Labor frontbencher silently strove to maintain a poker face during the first incision. Despite his best efforts, though, he looked like a patient whose anaesthetic was wearing off prematurely.

Some did the reverse. When Greens MP Adam Bandt invited Michael McCormack to join him in congratulating school students striking for climate action, the Deputy PM could have just said “no”. Instead he served up a word buffet that essentially boiled down to “no”.

The ‘daring’ Jim Chalmers holds court. Picture: AAP

Arguably the most daring was Labor’s Jim Chalmers, who settled on one word — “Helloworld” — the name of the travel company at the heart of Finance Minister Mathias Cormann’s Singapore hiccup, and dropped it over and over like a brick. You can’t have bricks without mortar, though, so between Helloworlds we got the company’s boss Andrew Burnes, who is Cormann’s friend (nice to have friends) and a Liberal donor (ditto). We got Joe Hockey and his million-dollar shareholding, and meetings arranged at the Washington embassy, and government-awarded contracts.

Scott Morrison got up and left, prompting Labor’s Tim Watts to tweet a bit from ScoMo’s most famous achievement in his Tourism Australia Days: “Where the bloody hell are you?”

Chalmers was undeterred by rolling reviews of his performance (“Sad and desperate,” opined Tim Wilson), pushing on with his steady Helloworld barrage. His old boss Wayne Swan gazed down with almost paternal pride.

And then, as Morrison returned refreshed, it was time for Christopher Pyne.

“Come on Smithers, tell us about Mr Burnes,” called Labor’s Rob Mitchell, topically retooling a Simpsons reference.

Unlike Emma Husar, who’d earlier joined the grand tradition of parliamentarians bolting in to vote in their gym gear, Pyne was in no rush. A man who likes to mete out his trowellings at a stately pace, he embarked on a lengthy, digressive prelude before alighting on “this pathetic case”.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison (left) defers to Leader of the House Christopher Pyne (right) during Question Time in the House of Representatives at Parliament House in Canberra yesterday. Picture: AAP

While the PM busied himself with his phone, Pyne was a jukebox of historical invective. He spoke of “a farrago of lies”, basically a stripped down, street-racing version of Bronwyn Bishop’s beloved phrase “farrago of mendacities”.

He repeatedly channelled John Howard (“Who do you trust on border security?”). He consistently mispronounced fallen NSW Labor figure Eddie Obeid’s surname as O’Bad, which few will quibble with.

On he went with so much energy it became almost plausible the reason South Australia has power issues is because Pyne has absorbed the lot. And while some might have plumped for a verbal monograph — or at least stuck to the topic — Pyne went everywhere, so many subjects tumbling out of him in a hurry it was like watching Wikipedia having a prolapse.

“Imagine this place without Pyne,” ventured one observer. A dystopian scenario sketched with cold economy, these were the bleakest of all yesterday’s words.