Strewth: Tony Abbott talks

We’ll leave it to you to write this caption. So many puns, so little time... Source: 9 News.

Reticently emerging from his Greta Garbo-like isolation, Tony Abbott had a few things to say for the benefit of his party yesterday. It can’t be easy, so it’s understandable he restricted himself to a Daily Telegraph column, a tete-a-tete with 2GB’s Ray Hadley and a news conference. Arguably the best bit was from the latter when, as he bravely fronted a phalanx of TV crews summoned to his home, he spoke against a backdrop of a garbage truck hoisting bins and emptying them (image courtesy of Nine News). This surely enhanced his message.

So to stave off the threat of a Bill Shorten prime ministership, who is the best person to lead the party if Malcolm Turnbull decides he’s not up to the task as outlined by his predecessor? If not Abbott himself then someone like him — a “Tone Clone”, as Malcolm Farr put it. We have a suggestion: someone who rails against everything from inner-city wankers to Safe Schools; someone who, in stark contrast to Abbott, never headed a government that launched Safe Schools; someone who reckons Turnbull is “the most radically leftist and divisive PM in Australian history”. That man is Mark Latham; we believe he is free. Alas, when approached by Strewth yesterday, government frontbenchers opted to maintain a dignified silence.

Words left unminced

The bloke we fret for most in this latest episode of Neither a Sniper Nor an Underminer Be is Mathias Cormann. In February when Abbott emerged to make one of his previous rare criticisms of the government, the Finance Minister’s air of imperturbability cracked, allowing him to suggest Abbott’s comments had been “self-indulgent”, “sad” and deliberately “destructive”. Here’s what Abbott said yesterday: “Mathias and I had a man-to-man talk about that outburst of his … we had a blunt conversation about it.” We wait for Sportsbet to offer odds on what portfolio Cormann would score in the event of an Abbott restoration; the aTonement, if you will.

In the key of Alan

Ray Hadley’s 2GB stablemate Alan Jones, meanwhile, continues his recuperation from serious surgery. When he first emerged last month, he got a few things off his chest with a vim and vigour apparently untouched by his medical trials: “The Turnbull government is an ideological swamp, an ideological vacuum”, “I said when Abbott was sacked it would end in tears. Well, the way we’re going and if you look at the polls, there won’t be enough handkerchiefs to go around”, and so on. Yesterday, Jones had settled into somewhere between resignation, exasperation and full-on scorched-earth policy: “I tell you what. These people just deserve to be smashed in an election to make them wake up.” So there’s that.

Brushing up on their skulls.

Let others do it for you

Funnily enough, Bill Shorten felt no need to pipe up yesterday.

Say it with death

It’s no trade secret newspapers are doing it tough, but we were surprised to see The Sydney Morning Herald alluding so starkly to mortality. Behold this scene from a catacomb that the SMH was using to lure subscribers yesterday, and tell us you can’t feel the Reaper’s chill breath on your cheek.

[e-mail]