Strewth: Hanging the Queen

Anyone wondering why they can’t get through to their local MP? It might have something to do with an article about the Queen.

Queen Elizabeth’s Australian portrait.

Anyone wondering why they can’t get through to their local MP? It’s because hipster website Vice published a story yesterday called “All Australian Citizens Are Legally Entitled to a Portrait of the Queen”. Did you not know that? I thought everyone knew that. Vice was amazed, telling readers all you have to do is email your local MP and they have to send you a nice big portrait, the current version of which is, appropriately, given the song we all still sing to her, quite glorious, as Vice reporter Nicholas Lord soon found out (the article has a picture of him in his flat, under his portrait, with a pussy on his lap.) You can guess what happened: every hipster on earth, being so very individual like everyone else, immediately flooded their MP’s office with requests for a QEII portrait. And the first to call them out? Australian Manufacturing Workers Union communication officer Georgia Kriz, who says it’s not cool. “Electorate officers are already flat out doing important shit like helping people immigrate and find housing and navigate … (censored) Centrelink. Queen picture requests just take up valuable time and money,” Kriz tweeted. “One of my EO mates has already had OVER 100 requests (it’s more than, but anyway) for posters from her office! It’s going to cost over $1000 to order and post them! It’s also going to take literally HOURS! And why?! Just so over 100 absolute (censored) can receive a pic of Liz in the mail that they’re never going to hang in their dank and mismatched Marrickville share houses because they’re too busy washing out their keep cups … and negging women on Tinder.” Now, I don’t know what negging means, and I was too scared to Google it. But she’s right about everything else.

Blood on the page

What kind of place is Sydney? Probably the only place where you can be bleeding out on the streets of Kings Cross one minute, and up for a literary prize the next. That’s the fate of John Houssam Ibrahim, whose memoir, Last King of the Cross, has been shortlisted for the inaugural Danger Prize for the best TV series, book or film about Sydney crime, with the winner to be announced during the BAD: Sydney Crime Writers Festival. Ibrahim — who has been described by NSW police as an organised crime figure; and who as of last year had been subject of 546 “police intelligence reports” while never being found guilty of any major offence; and who wears a scar down his belly from the time he was knifed half to death — is up against a biography of Sydney hitman Lindsey Rose; and an investigation into infanticide in the 1920s called The Suitcase Baby. The winner will be named on August 31 at Sydney’s Justice & Police Museumby Laurie Oakes. BAD director Denis Tracey says Oakes, who retired from the Canberra press gallery a year ago, was the “ideal person” to present the award because “he’s not only a serious fan of crime fiction; he knows where a lot of bodies are buried”.

Domestic Barney

Speaking of writers, or at least of books, you perhaps have heard that Barnaby Joyce is on a tawdry publicity tour for his book, Weatherboard and Iron, about the drunken womanising in his not-too-distant past? He has been everywhere, man, including on Sydney radio station KIIS 1065’s Kyle and Jackie O, where he sledged partner Vikki Campion a second time, saying the reason he has lost weight is because she can’t cook (or maybe won’t cook for him; the detail got lost in Kyle Sandilands’s guffawing about how good it is to have a young chick on your arm) but our favourite line from the interviews came from Charlie Pickering on ABC’s The Weekly , who gave him a little Barnaby bus “so you can throw your whole family under that one”.

Book Weak

Pickering is right, though: Barnaby’s tour for his crude little tome is an odd thing, bound to hurt his first family. On the one hand, he’s letting it all hang out; on the other, he’s bleating about his desire for privacy, even while admitting he included all the details of his affair with Campion to sell more copies. Last month Joyce was announced as one of the headline acts at the Canberra Writers Festival. Festival board member, author and journalist Steve Lewis says they “copped plenty” about including Joyce, but hey, he’s got a book and he fits with the festival’s political slant, so he’ll be in conversation at the National Press Club on August 23 and wow, the demand. Strewth understands they’ve sold about 60 tickets.

Tome raiders

If they’re not queuing for Barnaby, what is the hottest ticket? Girls Night In — an event with Kathy Lette, Annabel Crabb and Nikki Gemmell, moderated by Jean Kittson — is about to sell out a 1300-seat venue.

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