Sign of the times or just a warning to stay away?

There was a protest sign outside Parliament House yesterday listing the words, ‘Ignorance, cruelty, sorrow, disappointment’.

The protest sign outside Parliament House yesterday. Picture: James Jeffrey

There was a protest sign outside Parliament House yesterday listing the words “Ignorance, cruelty, sorrow, disappointment”. At first we assumed someone was giving a content warning for anyone contemplating walking inside. This would have been wrong on several levels, not least because Christopher Pyne was in there working hard to keep disappointment at bay. Stuck between the rock that was Labor’s no-confidence motion against Peter Dutton and the hard place that was the smouldering, Malcolm Turnbull-shaped crater, the Defence Minister — in the face of everything — got stuck into Labor for its leadership instability of yore. “You’ve got to admire their chutzpah,” he said in a textbook example of that quality. Like the captain of spaceship determined to keep control of the narrative even as his craft begins burning up in the atmosphere, he gamely soldiered on. “I’ve got news for the Labor Party: we’re getting on with the job this side of the house. We are getting on with the job.” The mirth on the Labor side was intense, but even Pyne was unable to suppress a giggle.

Too soon

Not everyone has Pyne’s stamina. Finance Minister Mathias Cormann clearly was jack of coup talk on Radio National Breakfast, his characteristic air of subtle bonhomie quietly evaporating. Though he did score some points for acknowledging the multiple changes while accentuating the positive, all in a single breath: “As a result of the hard work of the Abbott government and the Turnbull government, which is now going to be built on by the Morrison government …” It’s not as easy as it looks. The same can be said for host Fran Kelly’s masterclass in understatement: “I know you are not keen to look in the rear-vision mirror …” As a bonus, Cormann’s office transcribed it as “revision mirror”, which also works.

Parallel universe

There is an alternative approach, though, and that is to carry on as though nothing happened. Yesterday one of Bert van Manen’s constituents in the seat of Forde got an auto-reply email that began a cheery list with: “Did you know the Turnbull Coalition government is delivering …”

Animal house

At the annual threatened species event in a Parliament House courtyard, MPs gathered around a young koala named Gizmo, showing a lot more enthusiasm than Hawke government minister John “Desk Jockey” Brown did all those years ago when he described the creatures as “flea-ridden, piddling, stinking, scratching, rotten little things”. Speaking of piddling things, Tanya Plibersek had better luck than last time, when she was irrigated by a wombat. (“That’s all right,” she said at the time. “I’ve had three children. I’ve been peed on before and from greater heights than this.”) This time she wrangled a 10kg olive python (a creature that aroused a look of almost poetic love in the eyes of Coalition MP Luke Howarth when he had his turn) and visited various furry creatures without being peed on once. The only bit of menace was the magpie getting agitated in its nest on a branch just above everyone’s heads.

Peas in a pod

Strewth was reminded yesterday of the time then deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce went to visit Coalition backbencher Ben Morton in Western Australia and, during a fit of gratitude at some event, accidentally referred to him as Jason Falinski. Now in the new, post-spill seating arrangements in the House of Representatives, Morton is sharing a pew with, you guessed it, Falinski. We’d prefer to think of it as a sly sense of humour at work rather than anything so prosaic as coincidence.

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