Recycle your leader

It’s the best thing to come out of the leadership spill: a fun picture of a woman holding a sustainable cloth tote, emblazoned with the words: “Ban the single use prime minister”. Who’s behind it?

Step forward Sydney designer Gwen Blake of Boxer & Co, and if the name sounds familiar maybe it’s because she designs quirky merchandise for fans of Leigh Sales and Annabel Crabb’s podcast Chat 10 Looks 3. Blake tells Strewth the idea for the tote started as a text conversation with Crabb “along the lines of: ‘I hope Australia adapts to the new PM more easily than we adapted to the ban on single-use shopping bags’ ”. She adds: “I drew up the design and put it up on Twitter as a meme, and it was being shared everywhere, and people were saying: ‘Fantastic, where can I get one?’ And there weren’t actually any, it was just a picture. Then I thought I better jump on it or somebody else will steal the idea.” She got the bags up on Etsy on Saturday night. At $20 a pop, she’s sold 1500. The copycats soon arrived. “But we got in touch with them and sent the cease and desist, and the ones on there now are the real deal,” says Blake.

Ban the single use prime minister bag. Supplied

Tingle sensation

Doing her level best to keep up with our fast-moving politics is Laura Tingle, of ABC TV’s 7.30.

She’s the author of the next Quarterly Essay. The topic? Political leadership. An early blurb, for a Tingle talk at the NSW State Library on September 22, said: “Tingle notes that leaders must command not only their country, but also their party. Where does this leave Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten?”

A new blurb reads: “After the Liberal Party’s recent episode of political madness, where does this leave new Prime Minister Scott Morrison?” A QE spokeswoman says Tingle has updated her essay, “but she didn’t have to make any changes to the underlying structure or arguments”.

Taken to tusk

We’re all accustomed to ignoring the elephant in the room, which may explain why nobody knew what colour it was. But now we know: on the ABC’s Q&A on Monday, Pauline Hanson said of Turnbull: “He talked about multiculturalism, not about immigration numbers. And that is the white elephant in the room here that’s causing problems in the country.” Here at Strewth, we’re old enough to remember when white elephant meant redundant as a single-term PM.

Toe to toe over heels

Much excitement online over Fairfax’s decision to run a close-up picture of Julie Bishop’s lean calves and killer red heels for a story about her plans. The Australian’s Chip Le Grand said on Twitter: “Julie Bishop was sporting some fabulous shoes today but I’m not sure why (photojournalist) Alex Ellinghausen trained his lens on them while the Liberal Party’s most substantial woman announced her future political intentions. I guess we are more sensitive to these things at Newscorp.” Fairfax’s Bevan Shields defended the image, saying it was one of 30 and, anyway, “Alex Ellinghausen would never pap a pregnant woman in the street and run it on our front pages, unlike News Corp”.

Chip: “Right. So just that I understand, you are saying Julie Bishop’s varnished nails and matching pumps tells a more important story than the pregnant mistress of the deputy PM?”

There was a bit more back-and-forth, but all were agreed on the central point — that it was a cracking pic, loaded with symbolism, as well as shades of Dorothy clicking her heels to get the hell out of here.

Apollo theatre

News from geek heaven: NASA and the University of Texas at Dallas have released 19,000 hours of recordings between ground control and the astronauts on the Apollo 11 mission. Not all of the chat is as dramatic as you might hope. The astronauts joke about oatmeal, booze, and how little of one — and how much of the other — they intend to consume on returning to earth.

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