PM gets the wrong brotherhood and wrong salute

The PM left Question Time viewers across the nation aghast when he compared the Labor Party to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Muslim mix-up

Malcolm Turnbull left question time viewers across the nation aghast when he compared the Labor Party to the Muslim Brotherhood. Yes, the Muslim Brotherhood. Yes, the radical Islamist Muslim Brotherhood that ran Egypt for a wee bit in the early 2010s before the military got sick of it. Quite the leap to make. The Prime Minister made the link after backbench Labor MPs held up five fingers when leader Bill Shorten said: “The Coalition is in its fifth year of office. Since the 2013 election, have power prices gone up or down?” Turnbull later withdrew the comment but went on to state that Labor MPs were holding up five fingers in the style of the Islamist group’s salute. “I would refer honourable members to the way in which that symbol is used elsewhere, and is. And that is a fact. That is a fact.” Well, it’s not quite a fact. The Muslim Brotherhood salute, known as the rabia sign, is four fingers held up with your thumb held in, not an open palm.

Read another book

Scott Morrison reckons Shorten would be sorted into Slytherin House if he ever attended Harry Potter’s Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. For those who haven’t read JK Rowling’s wizard books, Slytherin is the house that all the baddies belong to. This writer reckons the Harry Potter books stopped coming out 10 years ago and therefore we should ban them from ever being referenced in parliament again.

Pinball PM

Meanwhile, the PM continued his long descent into interventionist socialism on Triple M radio in Melbourne yesterday. Turnbull promised Hot Breakfast hosts Eddie McGuire and Mick Molloy that he would pressure the station’s management to reinstate a beloved AC/DC-themed pinball machine. Molloy and McGuire have spent the past few days on-air lamenting management’s decision to unplug the pinball machine, never to be played by bored staff again. “Well look, it’s a dreadful decision by management. I’ll give them a call myself after this and encourage them to return your pinball machine,” Turnbull told the guys after they pleaded for his help. A grateful McGuire said: “We know you normally take the position of big business but we appreciate on this instance you’re going in for the rank-and-file workers, the worker ants, so well done.”

RIP Len Wein

Comic book lovers everywhere will be mourning the sad loss of writer Len Wein yesterday. Wein worked on many of the great franchises including as the editor of Watchmen, considered by some critics to be one of the most influential superhero comics. But Aussies will forever hold a candle for Wein’s most famous creation, Wolverine from The X-Men. The wild man with the adamantium claws was definitively played for nearly 20 years by Australia’s favourite hunk, Hugh Jackman, with two Wolverine spin-off films shot in Sydney. This scribe is very fond for Wein’s other great X-Men addition, the weather-controlling Storm. Mainly because I’m based in Melbourne and I desperately want the power to heat up this Antarctic hellhole of a city.

Hugh Jackman in The Wolverine film. Picture: Supplied

Kiwis away

Readers will have read our Adam Creighton last week on the state of play in the New Zealand election. But Strewth’s eye was taken most with this statistic: “Except for a blip in 1991 — the nadir of Australia’s last recession — more New Zealanders have (migrated) permanently to Australia than the reverse every year since records began in 1979. Over the two years to June this year, however, net ­immigration into New Zealand was almost 2500, a vast change from the 30,000-plus leaving in net terms in the late 2000s.” An impressive turnaround for sure, but how much of that is Kiwis being sent back by the Australian Border Force? About 13.5 per cent of our immigration detention centre inmates (not including Manus Island and Nauru) are New Zealanders; that’s 170 Kiwis possibly going home. And it’s a huge increase from 7.8 per cent just two years ago. Never mind the Kiwis we’re not letting back in such as Richmond player Dusty Martin’s dad, Shane, who won’t see his son play in the AFL finals due to a long criminal history. A strong Kiwi economy may be boosting the population on the other side of the Tasman, but Immigration Minister Peter Dutton is doing his fair share, too.

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