Strewth: Running dog, thesaurus of fibs

A greyhound called Jack Whelan has won the hearts and minds of those following the Emma Husar saga.

Running dog

As you will know, the investigation into complaints about Labor MP Emma Husar by former staff is being conducted by barrister Jack Whelan. Among the allegations that have been floated are ones concerning staff members walking Husar’s dog and, as is required, picking up any poo it deposited. (As a former dog owner and puppy school convener, your Strewth columnist can attest to the fact nothing cures you of chewing your fingernails faster.) In a separate NSW dog story, a greyhound called Jack Whelan took out the George’s Tree Services Stakes in Grafton on Monday night, winning by 6.5 lengths and potting $635. (For those who need to know, Real Wicked came second, followed by Telam Bugsy Girl.)

Thesaurus of fibs

The by-election campaigns, as Strewth noted, saw Malcolm Turnbull tirelessly toiling to suggest the Labor Party was telling porkies. But despite the sheer variety of the Prime Minister’s output — “dreadful lies”, “desperate lies”, “outrageous lies”, “grotesque lies”, a solitary “this base, this extraordinary, outrageous lie”, and an endless production line of plain old “lies” — it all got a bit same-same. So Scott Morrison should be acknowledged for going on Sky News with Laura Jayes yesterday and trying a daring variation: “Bill Shorten doesn’t have a plan to give anyone a job or to increase their wage or to protect them from rising costs of living. He just has a bunch of hot air that he pushes out and tries to frighten people at every electoral opportunity he gets.” Jayes absorbed this, then tried to push on: “When will you be reintroducing this legislation?” At which the Treasurer appeared to concede defeat and returned to the safety of the original formula: “He tells lies, basically.”

Grated expectations

The first question Turnbull fielded at his first press conference on Sunday after the by-elections had a certain inevitability: “Prime Minister, you look at these results and it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that you are a lame-duck Prime Minister marching towards defeat sometime in the middle of next year, isn’t it?” Anthony Albanese was out and about yesterday and with almost equal inevitability was asked: “Have you now put away any ambition to become federal Labor leader?” Just as inevitably he replied: “I don’t know if you were paying attention last week or not, or any time since 2013 when I have been asked this question. I have been consistent about it. I am happy to be a part of the Labor team. My ambition is for Labor to be in government and to be the infrastructure minister in a government led by Bill Shorten after the next election.” But our favourite in this genre remains this from Albo in Narangba, north of Brisbane, last week: “I don’t know how many times I can say it. Here’s this, I’ll say it really slowly: No. There you go. There you go in a word, it’s not hard.” Who knows how anyone formed an impression to the contrary.

Tanks full of memories

We started with animals today, so let’s end with them as well. Between the tales of love, life, divorce, dementia and death, our book My Family and Other Animus contains an account of an episode in our childhood when we briefly cohabited with a shark named Bruce. It was a fun time, and it certainly captured the imagination of ABC Conversations host Richard Fidler when we went on the wireless to have a long yak with him about the book earlier this year. Yes, it was a time of little sleep — Bruce was energetic and busy at night — and, yes, there were little mishaps that ended with bad language scorching the air and salt water dripping from the ceiling. Anyway, we mention all this not as a gratuitous plug to placate our publisher, Louise Adler, but as a bit of context for a message we received yesterday from our learned colleague, Inquirer editor Georgina Windsor. To wit: “Your 10-year old self was a trendsetter!” Attached to this was a Wall Street Journal article about a growing enthusiasm in the US for keeping sharks as pets. While the story does contain some bonuses — not least a horn shark called Horney — it’s also packed with practical advice, such as this from Long Island Aquarium co-founder Joe Yaiullo: “In general, I would say don’t get a shark as a pet.” But for those who’ve transcended such timid prudence, The Wall Street Journal has this priceless tip starring Manhattan Aquariums owner Joe Caparatta: “He had simpler instructions for shark owners who ‘like to handfeed’ the sharks by holding a piece of meat above the water. ‘We recommend using tongs,’ he said.” (And no, this has not been a ham-fisted political metaphor; as Sigmund Freud would have put it, sometimes a shark is just a shark.)

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