Craig Laundy evades exit signs

The Craig Laundy Question — when will he pull the pin as the federal member for the Sydney seat of Reid? — rolls on.

The Craig Laundy Question — that question being: when will he pull the pin as the federal member for the Sydney seat of Reid? — rolls on. It has led to at least one masterclass in manners, specifically on Aunty’s Afternoon Live with Patricia Karvelas the other day, when her guests were Liberal Party president Nick Greiner and his Labor Party counterpart Wayne Swan.

Karvelas: “Are you urging Craig to stay in the seat and to fight it for the Liberal Party?”

Greiner: “I haven’t spoken to Craig, Patricia.”

Karvelas: “I’m asking you, would you like to make a plea on national television for him stay in the seat?”

Greiner: “No, no, Craig knows my view. My view is he’s a very
high-potential person, the right sort of person for the future of the party, and he clearly is a great fit for the seat. Beyond that I don’t think I’ll be taking up your kind invitation.”

Karvelas: “I am kind, I’m so glad you’ve acknowledged it.”

When it was Wayne Swan’s turn, he didn’t bother with anything so soft as reading the room: “I think the government and I think the Liberal Party is turning into a national joke.“

Not really in the spirit there.

Bat man & the S-Birm

Come yesterday, it was time for the Scott Morrison dead bat.

Journo: “Why have you taken such a keen interest in preselection for Reid?”

ScoMo: “Well, when we’re in a position about that matter …”

Journo: “Do you hold out hope that Craig Laundy will run?”

ScoMo: “When I’m in a position to make announcements about that, I will.”

Journo: “Are you wanting to parachute someone into his seat?”

ScoMo: “Same answer. Thanks very much.”

Then we got to arguably the best instalment yet, starring Simon Birmingham — the S-Birm.

Journo: “Simon, do you know if Craig Laundy will quit?”

Birmo: “Obviously, every member of parliament, it is their decision as to whether they choose to recontest the next election …” (And so on, at generous length.)

Journo: “Have you spoken to him?”

Birmo: “Craig’s a great mate, we speak on numerous occasions at times and he’s made a great contribution in his time in the parliament. His future, like that of each and every MP, is up to them.” (And once again …)

Journo: “Do you think he needs to make a decision sooner rather than later?”

Birmo: “Well, everybody needs to make a decision before we get to close of nominations.”

Games, set and match.

Means and ends

Bill Shorten made one of his visits yesterday to a certain corner of the city: “We can’t just leave it to the generosity of the top end of town to look after millions of wage earners, can we?” In what feels like a minor difference in dialect, NSW Opposition Leader Michael Daley — making a far less equivocal expression of support for climate-strike kids than Shorten had — plumped instead for “big end of town”. This perhaps suggests he is a computer aficionado or a Jonathan Swift nerd, for reasons tidily explained by Search Networking: “Big-endian and little-endian are terms that describe the order in which a sequence of bytes are stored in computer memory … Big-endian and little-endian derive from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels in which the Big Endians were a political faction that broke their eggs at the large end (‘the primitive way’) and rebelled against the Lilliputian King, who required his subjects (the Little Endians) to break their eggs at the small end.” Then again, perhaps it doesn’t. Hard to say.

Species argument

Labor MP Pat Conroy gave a press conference at the Barron Gorge Hydro power station in Cairns. One of the topics he canvassed — carefully emphasised at the top in the summary of the presser — was “Neanderthals in the LNP”. Quoth he, “Warren Entsch, the current member for Leichhardt, has stood in the way of that transition. He has failed to stand up to the Neanderthals in his partyroom who are trying to drive more coal-fired power stations into the community rather than investing in clean-energy jobs …” Not really the picture we had of Neanderthals. To quote The Washington Post: “We rarely portray Neanderthals, our close relatives, as telegenic. Museum exhibits give them wild tangles of hair, and Hollywood reduces them to grunting unsophisticates. Their skulls suggest broad faces, tiny chins and jutting brows. But to mock Neanderthals is to mock ourselves: Homo sapiens had lots of sex with Homo neanderthalensis.”

From here, the story gets quite genetic.

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