This sounds crude, and I am loath to use the vernacular, but maybe, finally, the time has come for Malcolm Turnbull to “grow a pair”.
He’s ticking away, inevitably, to losing Newspolls 29 and 30 — which he used as a major excuse for knifing Tony Abbott. And, even though Abbott was a dead man walking, he and his 2GB barrackers aren’t even waiting for the last two shoes to drop before white-anting the PM. That’s why it is not so far-fetched for the PM to invite a challenge: “Come and get me”. (Remember the time when Prime Minister Abbott almost lost to an empty chair?)
Abbott doesn’t have (and never again will have) the numbers to do it. Neither do Dutton, Morrison or the perennial bridesmaid, Julie Bishop. Malcolm Turnbull should stare them all down and say that he is still their best chance in the apparently Sisyphean challenge called the 2019 federal election.
My “grow a pair” scenario gets a little thin, I’ll admit, when the PM keeps emasculating himself like he did last week. He racked up Brownie points with his passionate, principled, TV demolition of Barnaby, and the announced ministerial code of conduct. And his genuine call for more respect for women staffers on the Hill. But then he totally blew it in Question Time when he blithely defended the Michaelia Cash splash – that disgusting, defamatory smear against every young female worker in Bill Shorten’s office. Not to mention Shorten’s wife and family.
Who the hell in the PM’s office convinced him to buy, and try to sell (with a straight, righteous face), the “Senator Cameron bullied me” bullshit? Did the PM’s media adviser go AWOL at the same time as Barnaby’s obviously did?
What angered observers as much as her estimates blackmail-style threat to Doug Cameron, was the Clayton’s apology that Michaelia Cash did when forced to withdraw by Senator Penny Wong. She withdrew the remarks but added “… if anyone had been offended by them”. A non-apology that is also known as the “Wayne Carey cop-out”. In 1995, the drunken AFL star aggressively grabbed a passerby’s breast as he left a nightclub one morning and told her to “get a bigger set of tits”. Forced by the North Melbourne Football Club to apologise at a media conference, Carey used the “if I offended anybody” line. Years later, on Enough Rope, Carey admitted to Andrew Denton that he wasn’t really sorry for groping the total stranger.
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Beware the Ides (and tides) of March. I say “tides” because this week saw Malcolm Turnbull’s lead over Bill Shorten, as preferred prime minister, totally washed away in the wake of the Joyce headline-dominating shambles. Meanwhile, the Opposition Leader had his own Adani waves to contend with as he tried to outgreen the Greens for votes in Batman while posturing as a coal-loving miner in northern Queensland. It reminded me of my old newspaper days when I told the sub-editors’ table not to try to “out-Murdoch Murdoch”. You can’t and you shouldn’t even try.
Shorten’s political and geographic straddle and struggle prompted Sky News commentator David Speers to recall the old Joh Bjelke-Petersen line about the pain of having feet planted on either side of a barbed wire fence. Former Labor Premier Peter Beattie also warned his federal allies just how many House of Reps seats they’ll lose in the far north next year if they cosy up to the city slicker latte sippers down south and cop the blame for Adani jobs evaporating in Rocky and Townsville.
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I’m old enough to remember the Fred Daly line, “Rooster one day, feather duster the next.” I had some great times with the colourful Labor legend. When I was editor of The Sun in Sydney, I assigned feature writer Alan Farrelly, a future editor of The Australian, to ghost write a series of articles with Fred before his book came out. His “feather duster” line is still used often in Foggy Bottom without attribution and I thought about it last week when dual citizenship casualty, former senator Jacqui Lambie, returned to Canberra to promote her memoir Rebel with a Cause.
Jacqui had a book signing in the parliamentary book shop, just off the awesome marble hall. I dropped in (pic below) to give her a hug and wish her well. Got a smile but there was a barely concealed, palpable sadness behind that smile. And I wondered if any other senator even deigned to go down there and say “Hi”. I doubt it. Feather duster, right? And that was before the Jacqui Lambie Network lost all those feathers in the Tasmanian state election last weekend.
Well… it does seem as if the exact number of possible Adani jobs is under dispute somewhat.
“he is still their best chance in the apparently Sisyphean challenge called the 2019 federal election.”
Why is this Sysyphean? Sysyphean is a task that cannot be completed as it is recurring. Winning a single election is a finite binary task.
He meant Herculean.
Senator Cash has suckered you all Derryn. She should have been answering serious questions about the management of her office and why they knew about the AFP raid to be able to tell the press. Relevant staff seem to have vanished. Rather than being made to face up she was able to chuck a Trump Tantie and distract attention from the main game. What bloody Adani jobs BTW? There are way more in the tourist industry and agriculture.
Unpleasant as is the H/H I hadn’t realised that he imagines himself to be the Human Centipede – one who waits for his “last two shoes to drop” or does that apply only to the vermin at HateRadio?
The cliche, since such seem to be his sole form of writing, is “waiting for the other shoe to drop” – most people having just the two – and means the approach of something, first one step… then waiting for tuther.
JohnD has dealt with his failure to grok Sisyphus’ task.
Him just doan do nuance, do ‘ee?
What’s “Foggy Bottom” ?
Just another H/H failure to modify or eschew his cliched scribbling.
It generally is used in the Benighted States to refer to Washington, having been built in a swampy, foetid region, miasma ib summer, fog the rest of the year.
He has previously used ‘Beltway’ – another cliche for inner Washington – to mean insider Canberra.
Why Crikey continues to publish his rubbish is beyond the understanding of many.
Foggy Bottom is the riverside area in Washington DC where the US State Department is located.
Thanks. I thought it might have been a lurid reference to his feather duster. He’s still a dickhead though.