Evasive action

SOMETIMES it's more fun to hear just one half of a conversation and build the entire beast out of a handful of bones.

SOMETIMES it's more fun to hear just one half of a conversation and, like a paleontologist, build the entire beast out of a handful of bones.

In which spirit we present yesterday's performance by Labor MP Shayne Neumann, a story best told not in his words but in the words of the reporters interrogating him. A selection, reproduced in order: "Has Kevin Rudd called you yet to, you know, secure your support for his return to the prime ministership?"; "So you say don't believe it, but has he called you?"; "That's not really answering the question though"; "Has Kevin Rudd called you?"; "Has he called you to raise the leadership?"; "You're not answering the question"; "Has he rung you about the leadership?"; "You're leaving the door wide open here"; "So that's going to be interpreted as him having rung you?"; "Yes or no, has Kevin Rudd rung you?"; "[Has] Rudd rung you to talk about the leadership?"; "You've said that about eight times now"; "So he has rung you about the leadership?"; "By not denying or confirming it the speculation will rise that he has?" There is more, but Strewth has every confidence you will have got the Beckettesque drift of it.

A leader's black cat

DURING the course of his political globetrotting, East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta has developed an uncanny knack for crossing the paths of leaders -- including Kevin Rudd -- just before they get the chop. Speaking after his address at the CLSA Investors' Forum in Hong Kong yesterday, Ramos-Horta said some of his Australian friends had been urging him to bring his curse back Down Under. Quoth he: "I'm going to Brisbane and Melbourne in November, and I'm sure Julia Gillard will be out of the country when I'm in Australia. But some people suggest why don't I go back to Australia now, they want to get rid of Julia Gillard so they can't wait for me to get down there." Rudd, meanwhile, was being introduced erroneously in New York as PM. On it goes.

Learning curve

IN question time, Speaker Harry Jenkins acknowledged a group of Aboriginal schoolchildren from a remote community in the Northern Territory. As Jenkins informed the house, they'd been attending school regularly and doing well in their studies, and had been rewarded with a trip to Canberra to learn about government. (And the second prize . . .) And learn they did, an educational experience unfurling beneath them as both sides used Mark Latham to club each other. The children left before the half-hour mark; perhaps they'll head home and plan an intervention for the ACT.

Good cop, bad cop

IF only the kids had stuck around a little longer, they would have seen question time isn't a complete free-for-all as Jenkins booted out Liberal Luke Simpkins for behaving "like a foghorn on Sydney Harbour" (surely a dreadful insult for a West Australian). Going on to represent the other side of the disciplinary coin was Daryl Melham. The member for Banks's heckling voice is nearly punchy enough to drive all the water in Sydney Harbour out through the heads, but yesterday he held his tongue. In a sign he isn't just a punisher, Jenkins noted his good behaviour. "He's on Valium," a Coalition MP suggested helpfully. By rights, Joe Hockey should also have been praised for not saying "chunt" again, but let's let not go looking for consistency.

Whistleblower

AMID all the toing and froing on asylum-seekers, Liberal MP John Alexander created an image of a tantalising alternative crisis when he asked the PM if Australia would "receive the additional 4000 referees" from Malaysia. To much amusement, the tennis champ corrected this to "4000 refugees", but not before we were left struggling to decide which was more alarming: the northwest horizon erupting with thousands of refs, or the sudden resurfacing of the long-suppressed memory that Alexander was once a referee on Gladiators .

The final word

A LITTLE earlier in the day, Bob Katter was making a contribution to the asylum-seeker debate in his own special way. Alas, barely halfway into his allotted 15 minutes as he touched on everything from Sikhs to electricity charges, he was cut off by the Acting Speaker. (While this was a dreadful disappointment to Strewth, it did at least put a smile on Malcolm Turnbull's face. Or perhaps that was just because he was sitting in the opposition leader's chair? Either way, nice to see Mal happy again.) Luckily, this didn't occur before His Bobness coined the term "self-smuggler", which sounds like the sort of euphemistic activity your mother may have once warned you against. Bob Brown also did his bit for language enrichment yesterday, criticising "what I see as fractionating big parties". We had to look it up, finding a small but tantalising range of definitions, one of which was a cancer treatment in which radiation therapy is staggered across a number of days to lessen the toxic effects on healthy cells. Even though Brown is a doctor, we have a sneaking suspicion it was not in this sense that he meant it.