Strewth: Charging in

As ABC News 24 dutifully broadcast Malcolm Turnbull’s press conference, a reader was thrown by the captions.

Urban Infrastructure Minister Paul Fletcher and a portrait of possibilities. Source: Twitter

As ABC News 24 dutifully broadcast Malcolm Turnbull’s press conference from Kangaroo Island yesterday, Strewth reader Peter Dowling was thrown by the captions on the screen. The first: “Turnbull: It’s our job to drive stronger economic growth.” And beneath it, a snippet from an unrelated story that, thanks to the tight layout, didn’t look quite sufficiently unrelated: “Earlier he was charged with three counts of criminal breach of trust.” Who was responsible? It can’t have been Tony “I signed what when I was PM?” Abbott, who was safely chatting with2GB, at last coming to terms with his lot: “I don’t want to change the leader because I don’t believe in politically assassinating democratically elected prime ministers. I do not believe in that. (Turnbull) does, I don’t.” Coming next: Kumbaya.

Out to lunch

Bill Shorten got quizzed about a comically undersubscribed Devonport lunch due to star him — a dining hiccup reported by this organ. In the meantime, we regret to note the planned “Lunch with Chloe Shorten” planned for Geelong Library for the week after next has been cancelled. We would mention her cookbook remains available through MUP, but that would look like a sneaky cross-promotion for our book My Family and Other Animus, which is also out through MUP. Oh dear, now look what we’ve done.

Feel the schism

Labor Queenslander Jim Chalmers and Sydney colleague Chris Bowen were asked about the naming of a Suncorp Stadium stand after Terry Mackenroth.

Chalmers: “It’s right and proper we look for a way to recognise and acknowledge the towering contribution that Terry made to our great state — the greatest state in the commonwealth.”

Bowen: “Steady on.”

Back in the day, “steady on” was pretty much a precursor to a duel.

Pocket call

British Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson was in the House of Commons holding forth on the topic of Syria when the voice of Siri piped up from his pocket. Was it the first two syllables of Syria that did the trick? Siri brightly announced it had dug up some interesting information from the internet. Amused Speaker John Bercow pronounced it “a very rum business”. Williamson proffered apologies: “It is very rare that you’re heckled by your own mobile phone.”

Eye of the beholder

It’s been a long time since we lavished attention on a Paul Fletcher photo. This lapse is entirely a reflection on Strewth and not on the pictorial output of the federal Urban Infrastructure Minister. So we’ll break the drought with this freshly tweeted Fletch-o-graph, arguably the closest he’s yet come to giving the nation what looks like a still from a James Bond flick. Behold Fletch, standing before his freshly unveiled army of death machines. Before him, a brace of hitherto complacent world leaders who only now understand the man’s true power and the dawning reign of pitiless chaos for which they must ultimately answer. Bwahahahaha! and so forth. Along with the crucial ingredient that is Fletch’s suit — as impeccably grey as the bleak corners of an arch-villain’s soul — this portrait of terrible revelation is completed by the ominous yellow tinge of the light and the shadows it casts. Another way of looking at it, of course, is that Fletch was in the Sydney suburb of Chatswood, opening EcoMag’s new facility. As Fletch himself explains in fairly non-menacing terms: “They use proprietary technology developed by former University of NSW professor Tam Tran to extract high-purity magnesium oxide from the waste left over from salt mining.”

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