Strewth: Tony’s flush drive

A semi-naked Tony Abbott has appeared in front of a row of Portaloos pleading for proper dunnies at his local surf club.

Tony Abbott joins the legends of the pan pantheon. Source: Twitter

When a semi-naked Tony Abbott appeared in front of a row of Portaloos pleading for more proper dunnies at his local surf club, the reaction on Twitter was variable but predictable. Some were gobsmacked at the sight of a former PM reduced to this, some rejoiced he was connecting with so powerfully with his electorate.

The most famous surf club in Australia shouldn’t need port-a-loos every time a crowd turns up. pic.twitter.com/NJMm6U9RsJ

— Tony Abbott (@TonyAbbottMHR) February 3, 2019

Some pointed out he’d been the local member for ages and frankly couldn’t he have taken a moment out from stopping the boats to provide a pleasant stop for butts? And some, we regret to say, were just rude. But aren’t they missing the point? After all, the bog standard you walk by is the bog standard you accept.

Gough Whitlam also a legend of the pan pantheon. Picture: Guy Wilmott

Surely this is what puts Abbott up there with Gough Whitlam, who rescued much of Australia suburbia from the fickle, faecal mercy of septic tanks. As Neville Wran put it: “It was said of Caesar Augustus that he found Rome brick, and left it marble. It will be said of Gough Whitlam that he found the outer suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane unsewered, and left them fully flushed.”

Do as the Romans do

But rather than rely on Twitter — the medium the ambidextrous Abbott both uses and derides — we turned to wiser minds, among them the sage we know as Laurie Oakes. Knowing we’d resist all leak puns, he told Strewth: “Tony Abbott’s defiant declaration that he will fight for better toilets on the beaches is more Churchillian than Whitlamesque. Nevertheless, Gough, an admirer of the achievements of the ancient Romans, would have recognised in Abbott a kindred spirit — one clearly inspired by those who constructed the great Cloaca Maxima sewer, still in use in modern Rome 2500 years later. It should be noted, though, that the Whitlams saw a certain grandeur in what are now called Portaloos. On the evening of December 2, 1972, as she made final preparations for an election night backyard victory party where several hundred guests were expected, Margaret Whitlam pointed to a makeshift toilet and told me proudly: ‘It’s a two-holer. Have a look at it’.”

Sewer generous

All roads lead to Rome, off course. When gently pressed to reflect, Nine News political editor Chris Uhlmann told Strewth: “Tony clearly knows what matters to effluent voters of Warringah. This Whitamesque play pairs perfectly with his deeper Western Civilisation narrative, as it was the Cloaca Maxima that made Rome great. It’s a brilliant marriage of subliminal political messaging that connects not ‘hearts and minds’ but the even more visceral ‘bowel to brain’.”

Back to the beach

An anonymous press gallery gem — we swear it wasn’t Michelle Grattan — mused to Strewth: “I thought everyone in Sydney just shat in the ocean anyway. The Manly Cigar.” Which reminds us of a dimly remembered cocktail (from the bad old days of outfalls and whatnot) called the Bondi Surfer. All we recall is that the penultimate ingredient produced foam into which you dropped a licorice bullet; the moment it bobbed back up you called out, “Bondi surfer!”, and chugged. That said, we’re fairly confident what our modest correspondent saw at Manly was, in fact, a sea cucumber. (As opposed to Liberal MP Ian Goodenough, whose preferred marine invertebrate is the lobster.) We’ll let our colleague Troy Bramston lead us back to the Augustus of Australia: “Whitlam had a philosophy about toilets that he followed in his senior years: ‘Never pass a lavatory without using it’.”

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