Tony Abbott’s new leaf

Rarely has a politician’s unfamiliarity with neighbourhood fittings been so obvious as when Tony Abbott encountered a street library.

Tayla Harris as tattoo.

Tony’s new leaf

Our bush capital overlords regularly are accused of occupying a bubble, but rarely has their unfamiliarity with fairly standard neighbourhood fittings been so obvious as yesterday when Tony Abbott encountered a street library: a box, on a stand, filled with books. There are hundreds of them in Australia, and they have been a fixture in Warringah for years, yet Tony was so startled, he stopped to make a video. “It’s amazing the things you see and learn when you’re doorknocking,” he said, standing back so everyone could see something that really is as common as a garden snail. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. You read a book, you put it in here, you take a book out!”

Best Twitter comment: “Dunno. Sounds like communism.”

The Daley digits

There’s an election in NSW this weekend. Nobody yet knows who will get the most votes, but the best headlines competition has already been won by Labor’s Michael Daley, who stumbled badly when asked to cost a few things during the leaders’ debate.

SBS headlined the story: “Daley insists: numbers make sense to me.” He also was asked to address now-famous comments about how Aussie kids can’t live in Sydney because of all those Asian doctors with PhDs to whom so many people owe their lives, and confessed: “I shouldn’t have said Asians.” No, he said, he should have said: “Internationals.”

Conway or the highway

Still, nothing on the local scene compares with US politics, with Donald Trump referring yesterday to the husband of his chief confidante, Kellyanne Conway, as a “stone-cold loser and husband from hell”. In Trump’s defence, he lashed out only after George Conway accused him of having a narcissistic personality disorder, saying: “You. Are. Nuts.” Now the US media is all “who will she choose? Husband or boss?” Trump seems pretty smug on that point, and he won the election, so who is betting against him this time?

Right on the mark

Plenty of people have put pen to paper — that’s an old idea, kids, but still a good one — on the Tayla Harris photo take-down, but how many have gone ink? At least one, according to Mix 102.3 Adelaide, which had a fan called Blake come in yesterday to show off his new tattoo of the now-famous image permanently on his forearm. Take that down, trolls.

Right off the mark

What is wrong with Sam Newman? Everyone on earth is sitting back admiring Jacinda Ardern for being 38 and handling a catastrophe with real grace, but not the Footy Show boofhead, who tweeted: “Thank heavens NZ prime minister said she will never mention the name of the terrorist. How grating is her accent?” I can’t even think of anything withering to say, it’s just obscene, and he surely knows it.

Estranged Mrs Assange

There was a time every media organisation wanted to give Julian Assange a prize. Then came rumours that he’d assisted Donald Trump into office and now he’s persona non grata, but never to his mother, who beats a drum for her boy daily on Twitter. At least she did until her account got suspended yesterday for reasons never explained. Christine Assange, whose handle describes her as “mother of journalist Julian Assange, detained 8 years without charge for exposing high-level corruption”, went dark for about 48 hours, prompting acolytes to bombard Twitter Support, saying: “Why are you restricting & shadowbanning #JulianAssange’s mother Christine? Stop this censorship.” And now Twitter has, for reasons just as unclear.

Slow moos day

A rich little borough in New Jersey wants to silence dogs, and aims to make it illegal for them to bark or howl for more than 20 minutes straight between 7am and 10pm or for 15 continuous minutes any other time. William Focazio, whose dogs have drawn many of the complaints, can’t understand. “That’s what dogs do,” he said. “They bark. They don’t moo.”

www.carolineoverington.com