No ties, just winners for Scott Morrison’s team

Has Scott Morrison issued a no-tie edict?

We can breathe freely now our ties have gone. Picture Kym Smith

Has Scott Morrison issued a no-tie edict? When he and his posse lobbed at Talbingo yesterday to deliver the latest instalment in the Snowy 2.0 adventure, they looked like a boy band that had defied the critics and outlasted the usual shelf life of such things. Mathias Cormann looked briefly uncomfortable in his casual attire — or perhaps he’d just learned Helloworld is sponsoring a Liberal Party fundraiser in Melbourne this weekend. Anyway, the important thing is everyone looked like they could breathe freely, and Cormann found his groove: “This is a very exciting project.” Energy Minister Angus Taylor followed suit (“This is a great day for this region. This is a great day for Snowy Hydro. Most of all, this is a great day for Australia”), as did Environment Minister (and honourable exception to the boy band vibe) Melissa Price, who gave emphasis:“As you can see, we’re very excited to be here.” But no one crackled with the spirit of future electricity as hard as the Prime Minister, who bestowed this line upon the nation: “It is absolutely fair dinkum power. It doesn’t get more fair dinkum than this. This is fair dinkum, 100 per cent.”

Bubble trouble

Not ready to rest on his laurels, the PM also tackled a question directed at Price and created an entirely new phenomenon.

Journo: “Minister, what would you say to criticisms that you’ve been absent when the government has announced the environmental policy they’re taking to the next election?”

ScoMo: “The criticisms are untrue. It’s the usual sort of froth and bubble that comes out of the bubble.”

Which we imagine would be bubble squared.

Politerary talent

Bill Shorten was nowhere near that cutting edge yesterday, daring only to go so far as to experiment with a spot of alliteration. To wit: “The current government is run by cronies for cronies on behalf of cronies, by donors for donors, on behalf of donors.” A double triple, yes, but it needs some work.

Come on down

Not a Pell metaphor but the Belle Vue Hotel in 1979.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian is learning that knocking down infrastructure can be as fraught as putting it up, with a judge slapping a temporary injunction on the demolition of Sydney’s Allianz Stadium. We trust she won’t be tempted to pull a Joh Bjelke-Petersen and call in the Deen brothers to sidestep such legal niceties and present a fait accompli. As our colleague Sarah Elks wrote in this august organ in 2009 when their demolition firm was reaching the end of its road: “The Deens have a long history in Brisbane of being the demolishers of choice under the Bjelke-Petersen government. Using the joint weapons of surprise and darkness, they were responsible for destroying some of the city’s best-known and loved buildings, including the grand Cloudland ballroom in 1982 and the Belle Vue Hotel in 1979.” Those were the days.

The Deen brothers’ greatest hit ... hard at work demolishing the grandstands of the Gabba in 2000. Picture: David Sproule

For your consideration

Now that our esteemed colleague Ean Higgins’s book The Hunt for MH370 has officially been launched into the world by Dick Smith, we are going to do a Molly Meldrum and implore you to do yourselves a favour. In the words of Trent Dalton it is “a staggering, meticulous, and frequently spinechilling work of long-form journalism”. More than anything, we hope Higgins — whose voice is a such a force of nature it would probably work in a vacuum — records an audio version.

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