Strewth: Scott Morrison’s ministers Marie Kondo themselves

Scott Morrison insists this frontbencher cleanout is not the relentless ticking from the Doomsday Clock getting cranked up.

ScoMo sees only joy, not division

As ministers Marie Kondo themselves, Scott Morrison insists this frontbencher cleanout is a time of renewal for the government and not, as it first appears, the relentless ticking from the Doomsday Clock announcing the coming Labor apocalypse getting cranked up a few more decibels. Perhaps those departing ministers — Kelly O’Dwyer, Michael Keenan and Nigel Scullion, all preparing to depart like objects that no longer spark joy — merely misheard the PM’s famous exhortation as: “If you’ve had a go, you get to go.” Across the Pacific, another absence was Julie Bishop’s at the G’Day USA gala dinner in Los Angeles. Sure, they had Mel Gibson, John Travolta, Liam Hemsworth, Jamie Lee Curtis, Paul Hogan and Sam Worthington, but J-Bish — the event’s biggest cheerleader — was, by necessity, not part of this year’s program. Trade Minister Simon Birmingham was on deck, but our US correspondent, Cameron Stewart,reports with some melancholy that Birmo did not wear red shoes. Hemsworth declared: “It’s really kind of scary being in a room full of Australians especially when it’s free alcohol.”

Extra cold-blooded

Amid all these solemnly announced departures, Communications and Arts Minister Mitch Fifield is dealing with an arrival. His electorate office in Melbourne’s Mentone has been shut for a week after the discovery of a snake in the air conditioner. Cue a phone call to a snake handler — the profession that redefines getting legless on the job — who says it’s most likely a black snake or a copperhead. Fifield was at a safe distance in Cooktown, Queensland, with the Prime Minister.

Still kicking

Following last week’s excitement about the replica Endeavour, James Cook and the planned circumnavigation of Australia, it was fitting the grave of our continent’s actual first circumnavigator, Matthew Flinders, was subsequently discovered beneath London’s Euston Station. As if that wasn’t spooky enough, the ABC’s London bureau chief, Samantha Hawley, issued a (short-lived) tweet about it: “Amazing yarn. Matthew Franklin’s remains will have a story to tell.” Which may have come as a bit of a surprise to Matthew Franklin, our former colleague who now toils nobly as Anthony Albanese’s press secretary. The only way we connect the dots here is that Franklin’s boss is keen on rail.

Sir-prise revisited

It’s four years since the first of this government’s trinity of prime ministers announced a knighthood for Prince Philip. It was met with great, wheezing gasps of wonder at the time, but looking back does it not strike you as a simpler and somehow merrier age? As Strewth began then: “Once upon a time, Tony Abbott spoke of scraping the barnacles off the boat. Yesterday, in an about-face, he surprised his colleagues by bringing a barnacle into work — one far, far heftier than anyone had imagined possible. One can imagine his colleagues standing about in flabbergasted silence, until one finally channelled Roy Scheider in Jaws and murmured, ‘You’re going to need a bigger boat’.” Still, it wasn’t the first foreign honour to be bestowed on the Duke of Edinburgh, and — give or take his tendency to try stunts in his Range Rover — hopefully not his last. As we noted during the happy days/daze that followed the knighthood, it’s a good thing Queen Elizabeth II doesn’t take the view of the first Elizabeth, who was deeply put out when one of her favourites, Thomas Arundell, was made a Count of the Holy Roman Empire. Her response was a characteristic combination of tart and ominous: “My dogs shall wear no collars but my own.”

Sock it to ’em

There’s a small but fondly tended part of your Strewth columnist’s heart reserved for anyone attempting to explain the pronunciation of Hungarian surnames to non-Hungarians. Hungarian spelling has a consistency the likes of which English will never know, and once you’re in, you’re in. But to the newcomer, it’s pretty much Bafflement Central. We sometimes wonder how we’d be if we’d instead inherited Mum’s surname Szekelyhidi; very tired, we suspect. Anyway, we dips our lid to SA Unions secretary Joe Szakacs, Labor’s by-election candidate for Jay Weatherill’s old Adelaide seat of Cheltenham. Szakacs has made a short video with handmade posters — including ones with apposite pictures — to explain it’s pronounced “sock arch”. By the by, we imagine ScoMo will be tickled to learn Szakacs is Hungarian for Cook.

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