Strewth: Ming bling

In the corner of Canberra that is forever Menzies, we found someone had given him the festive` treatment.

Robert Menzies’ bust gets the festive treatment outside Menzies House, Canberra. Picture: Rosie Lewis

It was a few Labor conferences ago that your Strewth correspondent found himself idly hoping things would get spiced up by Kevin Rudd — at that point between prime ministerships — abseiling from a helicopter in a sequined jumpsuit and smashing through a glass dome, then coming over all surprised and humbled by the attention as he made his way to his seat. Alas it didn’t happen then, nor did it happen yesterday. There wasn’t so much as a sequin in sight in Adelaide as protesters surprised Bill Shorten on stage (cue jokes about Labor losing control of its borders), though ALP president Wayne Swan’s dry suggestion that “I think our visitors should leave the stage now” was a small gem. But for a proper bit of sparkly bling, we have to turn our eyes to that corner of Canberra that is forever Menzies, specifically the bust of Robert Menzies outside the building that bears his name. As our wonderful colleague Rosie Lewis found yesterday, someone has given him the festive treatment. (Lewis insists it wasn’t her. Honestly.)

Ruddical puns

Rudd was also on Scott Morrison’s mind yesterday. Having introduced David Hurley as the next governor-general, then liberated him in the direction of a cup of tea, ScoMo turned his Parliament House press conference back to the nitty gritty of explaining the awfulness of Labor. Yesterday’s version painted a future Labor government as a return to the Cataclysm of Kevin. But was the PM going to resist having a bit of cheeky wordplay with this? He was not. “Roll out the Rudd carpet” was one gift ScoMo bestowed on a clearly unprepared press corps, “re-Rudd” was another. If nothing else, it suggests the creative fires that have given us “Electricity Bill” and “unbelievaBill” still burn brightly*. Future Rudd puns may include: Rudd awakening; Rudd menace; Rudds under the bed; better dud than Rudd. The spirit of word adventuring is clearly with ScoMo at the moment. Just the other day he told The Daily Telegraph: “I’m going to keep my party firmly along the white line going down the middle of our road.” Evidently he sees himself either as a pilot or a crazed driver. (*By way of contrast, Swan yesterday characterised the PM as “a grinning fool in a baseball cap”. He’s not really the wordplay type.)

MickMack melodies

It’s doubtful anyone has embraced the spirit of the season quite as hard as Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack. At a festive function for his department, his speech was a jolly repurposing of The Twelve Days of Christmas. Some of MickMack’s lines came exhilaratingly close to scanning (“On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me, Lindfield Road overpass in the seat of Petrie”, and others were more a triumph of mind over matter: “On the 10th day of Christmas my true love gave to me, on some projects we had some bipartisanship between myself and Anthony Albanese.” The audience went wild for it. Expect him to turn up on your doorstep with a troupe of carollers any day.

Tarzan and the mace

Now that Blighty’s spill is a few days behind us, we hope British PM Theresa May’s face has softened from that what Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle once described as “the expression Lucifer wore when the other angels attempted an intervention”. In the meantime, we’re still stuck on the Labour MP who made off for a few seconds with the ceremonial mace during a Brexit hullabaloo. It’s been pointed out to us that it was a pretty low-key effort compared to an earlier one. The Guardian reports: “In 1976, the then shadow industry secretary, Michael Heseltine, waved the mace at the Labour benches after his Conservative opposition lost by one vote on a bill. His … colleague James Prior wrested it from his hands and the Speaker suspended the sitting. Heseltine was made to apologise the next day.” Heseltine earned the nickname Tarzan out of it, so it was all worth it.

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