Strewth: Sarah Hanson-Young tweets herself to a Davos getaway

The Greens senator has paid her own way to the World Economic Forum, no mean feat given she’s recently repaid taxpayers $20,000 for overspending on other travel.

It at the very least constitutes an antidote to the usual images from the annual World Economic Forum in Davos to see our very own Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young there. As she tweeted with characteristic enthusiasm on Monday: “Looking forward to diving into #WEF18 here in Davos. Lots to talk about on the agenda — including how Australia can be more engaged with the rest of the world — rather than following the isolationist attitude of Trump’s America.” She’s paid for the trip herself — no mean feat, given she recently and belatedly repaid taxpayers some $20,000, fittingly enough the result of travel overspend. Some of the speeches she’s gone to hear and then tweeted about have not been unexpected: Cate Blanchett (in her role as UN Human Rights Commission goodwill ambassador), Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and French President Emmanuel Macron. She’s also shared a panel with conservative Canadian MP (and former Harper government minister) Michelle Rempel on engaging in politics. (A fun note from Rempel’s Wikipedia entry: “On November 15, 2016, Green Party leader Elizabeth May accused Rempel of using unparliamentary language for stating on the floor of the House of Commons that the Liberal government had been treating residents of the province of Alberta “like a fart in the room”.) US President Donald Trump is on the program today, and given his enthusiasm for the Trans-Pacific Partnership has pretty much matched SHY’s, we look forward to her tweetment of him.

What could’ve been

On a non-Davos tweet earlier this week, Hanson-Young expressed her enthusiasm for changing Australia Day: “I am one of those many non-indigenous Australians who is saddened & increasingly uncomfortable that we celebrate the day British settlers arrived and the subsequent slaughter of men, women and children. I want a day we can all celebrate.” Even the firmest stickler for January 26 will recognise she’s hardly Robinson Crusoe. Others, though, have been carrying out bold changes to Australia Day of their own. SHY’s West Australian colleague Rachel Siewert has managed to have Arthur Phillip and his batch of boats landing that day in 1788 on the wrong side of the continent at Port Hedland. This cartographical cock-up could at least inspire a novel of the alternative historical genre. The Herald Sun was clearly aiming for a similar effect yesterday with this surprising titbit: “Captain Cook established the first colonial settlement in Australia at Sydney Cove on January 26.” Say what you like, but Cook probably would have found this a very agreeable alternative to being stabbed to death almost nine years earlier in Hawaii.

The pane explained

Before he went on to wish everyone in advance a happy Australia Day, Bill Shorten used part of his press conference yesterday to suggest a path forward: “I say to Mr Turnbull: let’s put all our cards on the table. Let’s agree between us who we think needs to be referred to the High Court from both sides of politics, and let’s move forward. We’ve got to end the nonsense, let’s end the nonsense and the petty bickering over citizenship so 2018 isn’t spent doing all the same arguments that we saw in 2017.” This was followed a short time later by this exchange regarding one of his own backbenchers.

Journo: “David Feeney doesn’t have any documents to prove he’s not a British citizen. Why are you wasting hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars (for him) not to resign?”

Shorten: “It’s up to Mr Feeney. Mr Feeney is currently finalising his case and researching his case and looking for documentation. He’s entitled to run the case and see where it goes.”

Christopher Pyne was surely praising Shorten’s transparency on this topic later on when he said of him, “He’s like a pane of glass.”

Imperial star destroyer

As the Feeney matter maintains its tectonic momentum, we’ll point you to this report in our august former organ The Moscow Times: “A 2018 presidential candidate campaigning to restore the Russian monarchy will drop out of the race after reportedly acquiring dual citizenship in the ‘Romanov Empire’ … On Wednesday, (Russian Monarchy Party leader Anton) Bakov announced he was withdrawing his bid for the Russian presidency after receiving dual citizenship from a newly founded state called the Romanov Empire in Western Africa.” Nothing if not a reminder that whatever problem you have, someone has it in a more exotic version. On which note we turn briefly to this one from the BBC yesterday: “Twelve prized camels have been disqualified from a beauty contest in Saudi Arabia after their owners tried to tweak their good looks with Botox.”

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