Giving it a ’shott

Rob Oakeshott kept his announcement about a parliamentary run alarmingly brief.

The NSW electorate that is home to the Big Banana is edging towards a sense of completion of sorts, with Rob Oakeshott announcing he’s going to have a crack at becoming its next federal MP. Cowper has been held by the Nationals for roughly 400 years, but things are in a state of flux with the looming departures of federal representative Luke Hartsuyker as well as his state counterpart, Andrew Fraser, who enjoyed a brief notoriety in 2005 after he physically attacked then state roads minister Joe Tripodi during a parliamentary debate. (Guardian Australia insisted yesterday that Oakeshott would be up against Hartsuyker in the coming federal election, but we assume this was due to some sentimental attachment to the MP, who has attracted favourable comparisons along the way to both Stan Laurel and the Paddle Pop lion.) “I’ve obviously thought long and hard about this decision and go into it eyes wide open,” Oakeshott says in a video he posted on his website. “If I don’t stand, nothing happens in our local area because nothing changes politically.” As a bonus he worked in the word “diddling” in reference to the work in “progress” that is the Coffs Harbour bypass. Clocking in at a shade under two minutes, the video is disconcertingly short. Hopefully this is just a warm-up and not a hint that he has lost his taste for the mighty monologue. (Google the little skit the great Mark Colvin recorded for A Rational Fear back in the day. “If you’ve just joined us, you’re listening to day three of Rob Oakeshott’s farewell speech,” he begins, expertly balancing fear and wonderment in his voice.)

Bigger than bad

One person less than conspicuously pleased by Oakeshott’s announcement was Trade Minister Simon Birmingham, though the effect he was trying to convey was somewhat offset by his holiday beard. Anyway, there were other fish to fry, and Birmo was keen to make one particular word sink in.

Journo: “There’s been another fish kill … how serious is this problem becoming?”

Birmo: “Drought is devastating and what we’re seeing with fish species is a devastating consequence of devastating drought … There are many devastating consequences …”

Having expended nearly his entire “devastating” quota, he left it a while before firing off another — this time a lone specimen, not a shoal — then moved on.

Out of his comfort zone

Former Rudd government minister Lindsay Tanner’s new novel Comeback is out next month. A sequel to his well-reviewed 2016 title Comfort Zone, it thrusts his beleaguered lead character Jack van Duyn “into a vicious power struggle involving crooked property developers, angry unionists, and a deranged stalker from his past”. While we ponder that, let us hark back to when Tanner quit amid the commotion of the overthrow of Kevin Rudd. As Strewth reported of that 2010 day: “When Lindsay Tanner pulled the pin yesterday, the often exasperated but otherwise indefatigable Speaker Harry Jenkins sounded as if he might go the Rudd route and choke up: ‘On a day of twists and turns when I thought I’d seen everything, the shock of this announcement has caught me unawares.’ … Luckily, things returned to normal when Tony Abbott, in the midst of a touching tribute to Tanner, noted there were political families across Australia wishing their family member in parliament would follow Tanner’s example; a lone interjection sounded from the government benches: ‘Now’s your chance.’ ” Tanner is long gone from there, but Abbott abides.

Bercow goes berko

Speaking of parliamentary Speakers, Britain’s John Bercow has cracked it after his threshold for being bossed about over his handling of Brexit was reached and breached: “I have no intention of taking lectures in doing right by parliament from people who have been conspicuous in denial of — and sometimes contempt for — it. I will stand up for the rights of the Commons and I won’t be pushed around by agents of the executive. They can be as rude as they like, they can be as intimidating as they like, they can spread as much misinformation as they like, it won’t make the slightest bit of difference to my continuing and absolute determination to serve the House of Commons.” Longer than “up yours”, but just as solid.

Just say no, revisited

Bill Shorten has a message for the yoof: “One thing I will say to young people, when someone is giving you this substance and pills, don’t think you are going to have a great time, don’t think it’s going to make your fun experience of a festival better, it is absolutely not, it is wrong.” That should do the trick.

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