Strewth: Trigger warning

Via the ragged channels of Twitter yesterday, Liberal MP Ian Goodenough reinstilled Strewth’s thoughts on democracy.

Just as the week reaches that point when Strewth ends up wondering (once again) whether democracy’s had its run and it’s time to give a military junta a go, up pops West Australian Liberal MP Ian Goodenough. Via the ragged channels of Twitter, he shared this photo of himself yesterday.

Liberal MP Ian Goodenough on sentry duty: Yes, he is pleased to see you. Source: Twitter

But rather than leave it as an enigma, he also furnished this explanation: “On sentry duty today at Batchelor Airfield as part of the Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program. I’m participating in Operation Pitch Black military exercises with 16 nations.” Then he added a line that could only be described as purest Goodenough: “Wouldn’t mind adding a Colt M16-A4 to my collection!” The man knows his way around a gun better than just about anyone in parliament, but we are informed this weapon is fitted with a blank firing attachment, which surely cannot be pressed into service in any way as a political metaphor. We’re not so sure about the combination of blue camouflage and red landscape, though; it looks as helpful as the scarlet uniforms the British army wore in the veldt during the Boer War. Anyway, Goodenough has hinted to Strewth he may include this snap in his 2019 calendar.

Pleasure and pain

It’s not generally one of those things we’ve ever blurted out loud, but Strewth has long wanted to read a sentence that would — at some figurative level at least — join the dots between Australian federal politics and Sydney’s premier S&M venue where people go for good times in fetish gear and on torture racks. All good things come to those who wait — in this case Fiona Patten’s memoir Sex, Drugs and the Electoral Roll. Endowed with the memorable subtitle My Unlikely Journey from Sex Worker to Member of Parliament, it’s not published by Allen & Unwin until September 1, so we can’t say a lot just yet. Except that Patten ticks the box for us in the chapter “Meeting Peta Credlin”, which describes her first encounter with Tony Abbott’s chief of staff: “It felt like a night at the Hellfire Club. I was a bit bruised, but inwardly I was glowing.”

The afterglow

While the Emma Husar business reached its unhappy conclusion, the looming departure of another MP, Coalition backbencher (and former minister) Luke Hartsuyker, yielded a cheery line in his local paper, The Coffs Coast Advocate: “Mr Hartsuyker joked in retirement he may return to the family business of making clogs ‘as probably the only federal MP who would know how’.” As for someone who’s made it beyond the departure lounge, we’re pleased to see former senator Nick Xenophon has survived his fruitless encounter with South Australian politics to turn up on shopper dockets advertising his law firm. “Injured in an accident? Better call Nick!” the ad begins, this cheery echo of the lawyer from Breaking Bad accompanied by a photo of Xenophon’s beaming visage and impeccable hair. “First consult free. No win — no fee.” If only running as a candidate worked the same way.

Balance in the farce

As Barnaby Joyce continues his tireless battle against reticence on his Sound of No Silence tour, hacks have been keen to ascertain that the special chemistry between the former deputy PM and Malcolm Turnbull remains the same. Journo: “PM, I’m just wondering what your response is, apparently Barnaby Joyce said that you used his personal issues for your personal political gain?”

Turnbull: “Well I haven’t seen that, I can’t comment on that.”

Journo: “It’s in relation to banning relations between staff and ministers.”

Turnbull: “Well, I stand by everything I’ve said.”

That would be a yes, we think.

Blast from the past

A bit of Norman Mailer: “I’ve always felt that fascism is a more natural governmental condition than democracy. Democracy is a grace. It’s something essentially splendid because it’s not at all routine or automatic. Fascism goes back to our infancy and childhood, where we were always told how to live. We were told, Yes, you may do this; no, you may not do that. So the secret of fascism is that it has this appeal to people whose later lives are not satisfactory.” But he did preface this by saying he was a pessimist.

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