Strewth: By the baubles

At least it got to feel a bit like Christmas for a few festive minutes.

At least it got to feel a bit like Christmas for a few festive minutes. Picture: AAP

Armed with the news of an early budget and, excitingly, a surplus, Scott Morrison and his Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, arrived for their press conference yesterday glowing almost as much as the Christmas tree by the Prime Minister’s courtyard. The vibe was somewhat dented by the surely coincidentally timed announcement from MP Julia Banks that she was pulling the pin on the Liberal Party and repairing to the crossbench. Here’s the press conference told in two photos, before (above) and after (below).

The PM in less than a festive mood. Picture: AAP

The show must go on

Early reactions to this Banks spanking ranged from “Good riddance to bad rubbish” from one of Banks’s former colleagues in the lower house to a more gently reflective “This place is f..king falling apart” from a Coalition senator. It fell to Coalition backbencher Luke Howarth — fated to be the first of his team to appear on Sky News after this latest incident — to give the initial response. Obviously the two options outlined above were not open to him so he tried a different tack. “We have six months to go until the next election,” he said with some optimism. “The Australian people want stability,” he added, echoing the slogan emblazoned on the wall behind Malcolm Turnbull’s head at the Liberal Party’s 2016 federal election campaign launch. On he went, giving Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack a solid run in the indomitable optimism stakes: “They’ll find this interesting, but the fact is they want the parliament to go full term and they want us to get on with the job.” Human Services Minister Michael Keenan, meanwhile, termed the whole thing “part of the colour and movement you sometimes get in politics”, so he gets a prize as well.

Just the facts

All the excitement appears to have got to Bill Shorten, who has responded by opening his press conferences a certain way. Monday brought us this stolid hit.

Journo: “Is it hard to wipe the smile off your face this morning, Mr Shorten?”

Shorten: “It’s Monday, we’re back in parliament.”

Yesterday’s sequel was similar.

Journo: “So it looks very likely that the election will now be the 11th or 18th of May. All systems are go, how are you feeling?”

Shorten: “Mr Morrison has set the date of the election. It’s 11th May or the 18th of May next year.”

It’s almost enough to make you wonder what today will bring.

Siberian slip

Meanwhile in the Senate, a moment starring Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne, Labor senator Doug Cameron and Senate president Scott Ryan.

Cameron: “Does this minister agree with her colleagues in NSW who are saying the Prime Minister should go to Siberia?”

Ryan: “There was a lot in that question, Senator Cameron.”

Payne: “I think there would be an enormous amount of enthusiasm in the NSW Labor Party for a one-way ticket to Siberia for Senator Macdonald.”

Payne had just begun the gentle descent to her seat when she realised she’d accidentally dispatched her colleague Ian Macdonald and quickly corrected herself: “Senator Cameron!”

Cameron joyfully deemed it a Freudian slip, and Ryan quietly enjoyed the moment. Later, the LNP’s Barry O’Sullivan seemed to go out of his way to prove one of Julia Banks’s points about the struggles of women. When O’Sullivan reaches Novosibirsk, we trust he visits the opera house; it’s the biggest in Russia.

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