Bob Katter
‘s new friends: Mad Bob Katter
isn’t seeking to rejoin the Nationals, as we reported yesterday. No. He’s apparently
thinking of seeing if the Liberal Party would have him. It’s a broad church,
after all.

Senators
behaving badly: Confected shock proliferates at the actions yesterday of the
village idiot of East Gippsland, AKA Senator
Julian McGauran.
“What it shows is the Government’s attitude to the Senate and to democracy,” a
no doubt ashen-faced Labor Senate leader Chris Evans said. “I
think it’s a test for the Government, it’s a test for John Howard.” Yeah,
yeah. The real interesting test will be if Senate
President Paul Calvert ever gets
the guts to throw someone out of the Senate. It hasn’t happened for yonks
because it’s not just a matter of the President’s saying so. It can go to a vote.
With no one side controlling the Senate until now, it could have all ended
quite messily if a President tried to remove an unruly Senator but didn’t get
the backing of the chamber. Now Calvert can act.
Even Barnaby Joyce is likely to
back him. Will he? If he does, odds are that the first Senator to be thrown out
will be Labor bovver boy Kim Carr or
professional martyr Bob Brown. McGauran
will just feature as comedy relief.

Hero of the
week: A brave little soldier has been crying out for attention all week, yet
everyone’s only been talking about Barnaby Joyce. Crikey is
charitable. We won’t ignore John Murphy, the Labor Member for Lowe.
Murphy has been
bravely battling a case of the sniffles all week – bravely and very publicly.
Things seemed to reach a low point in Question Time on Wednesday. He appeared in
the chamber kitted out with a red jumper under his suit, a matching scarf and with
a box of tissues dumped on his desk, fumbling with a pack of lozenges.
Yesterday he seemed a little better. The tissues were gone, he was only wearing
a scarf (blue this time) and the lozenges only appeared once. Here’s hoping
he’ll be able to spend the weekend tucked up in bed with a warm honey and
lemon, anyway.

More
Harold Holt news: Harold Holt’s legacy is
being reassessed, thanks to Tom Frame’s new biography of Menzies’ hand-picked
successor.
But did you know that he was murdered? Our attention is drawn to https://www.haroldholt.net/, which informs
us that Holt was killed “because he was
opposed to American bases such as Pine Gap being built on Australian soil.” There’s
also a CAT scan on the site that supposedly shows several objects allegedly
placed in the site’s author’s throat during a “clandestine operation.” Hours of
fun if you’ve got a quiet weekend coming up.