By Stephen Brook and Kishor Napier-Raman
It is the final sitting week of the year at Parliament House in Canberra, which can mean only one thing for the desperate inmates who double as our political representatives – parties.
And no ticket is more popular than The Nationals’ seafood barbecue, with the buffet laden with produce including barramundi, prawns, scallops and even crocodile.
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Bridget McKenzie, David Littleproud and Peter Dutton on the tools at the Nationals seafood BBQ.
Oh, and beverages “supplied by Metcash”. Nicely done.
Manning the tools were leader David Littleproud, Senate leader, Qantas tormentor and secret upgrader Bridget McKenzie, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, and Senator Perin Davey, whose three years as a safari cook in Botswana no doubt held her in good stead.
The shindig on Tuesday afternoon, organised by Senator Matt Canavan, was attended by everyone who is anyone in the press gallery (and quite a few who aren’t).
The Liberals included Ian Goodenough, Simon Kennedy and Peter Dutton, who gave a short speech advising anyone who got food poisoning to “blame the Nats”.
Staffers from across the aisle attended, including independent senator Fatima Payman’s chief of staff, preference whisperer Glenn Druery, and Albonite staffers Jamie Travers and Josh Lloyd, as well as Albo speechwriter James Newton.
Rural icon Barnaby Joyce turned up late and loud, asking “Is there any left?”
The feast included bread rolls, potato salad and a lettuce salad which was left on the table looking a little bit unloved. To the surprise of no one.
Don’t drop the C-bomb
The vibe was markedly different on Monday night among those MPs who can’t bring themselves to use the C-word.
We are talking about Christmas, of course.
The word was entirely absent when the Greens Political Party (as Labor delights in calling them) held its “non-denominational seasonal festivity”.
The event drew most Greens MPs, staffers and press gallery journalists – the usual Canberra creatures – to feast on mushroom arancini and vegan sausage rolls. Not spotted in the room was WA Senator Dorinda Cox, the subject of bullying allegations.
Coming as it did just as the party made a major capitulation to Labor over housing, the open bar was much-needed.
Party leader Adam Bandt had an early shout-out for one of this paper’s scribes, James Massola, for his ceaseless chronicling of the party’s travails, but spent most of his speech making fairly mild jokes about Qantas, leading us to beg our political leaders to find new material.
Bandt, unlike some Greens MPs, still retains his Chairman’s Lounge membership.
Perth Lord Mayor and WA Liberals candidate for the seat of Churchlands Basil Zempilas on Tuesday.Credit: 9News Perth
According to CBD’s spies, there were more keffiyehs in the room than ties. Make of that what you will.
Way out west
And so to the federated republic of Stokes-Rinehartland, previously known as the state of Western Australia.
There, Perth’s bafflingly ambitious lord mayor, TV host Basil Zempilas, is standing as the Liberal Party candidate for the state seat of Churchlands at the forthcoming state election. All while remaining on the payroll of mogul Kerry Stokes’ Seven West Media and maintaining close ties to mogul Gina Rinehart, who has been “supportive without being someone who has tried to influence”, he told the AFR last week.
Baz was at the centre of a crisis which engulfed the state Liberal Party, making its hapless Victorian and NSW chapters actually look competent.
Political polling, commissioned by an unnamed WA “businessman with Liberal ties”, made Zempilas out to be electoral Viagra, in contrast to actual Liberal leader Libby Mettam’s apparent electoral kryptonite.
The polling featured prominently in Stokes’ The West Australian newspaper on Tuesday, leading to Mettam issuing a strongly worded statement attacking destablisers and saying “I take Basil at his word” that he has nothing to do with it. She then called a leadership spill, which she won.
Zempilas eventually emerged to face the media. At times his remarks had an absurdist tinge.
“It was a very weird thing to be part of without being part of it,” he told Radio 6PR of the leadership spill that never was.
He also said he was reluctant to “draw a line in the sand” over any leadership aspirations, due to the fact that “there was no sand in play”.
Leigh for the win
The Economist, the weekly magazine that pretentiously describes itself as a newspaper, has just released its annual list of what it considers the best books of the year.
And can you guess which federal MP made the list?
Correct! None other than terrifying overachiever Andrew Leigh the Ironman, triathlete, marathon runner, podcast host, father of three, Federal member for Fenner and assistant minister for Competition, Charities, Treasury and Employment.
“The Shortest History of Economics”, by Andrew Leigh.
The brainiac was lauded thanks to his book The Shortest History of Economics also known as How Economics Explains the World (his 13th tome, by our count). To our mind Leigh is the first sitting MP to make the list. Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd must be crying into their cups.
“Can a short book survey the full history of something so vast and remain readable?” the Economist asks its readers.
“To find out, read “How Economics Explains the World”, by Andrew Leigh.
“In fewer than 200 pages, the author canters through the history of human progress, pausing to explain the economic forces that drove it forward.”
The book has already gone for a reprint.
This newspapers’ senior economics correspondent Shane Wright also gave the book a positive review, but queried the omission of the economically-significant Punic Wars from the insightful sprint through economic history. Can’t have everything, we guess.
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