The greatest hits of Her Excellency Linda Hurley

Some craven opportunists in Australia’s republican movement are leaping on the ongoing revelations regarding Scott Morrison’s accrual of secret ministries during times of national crisis. Not content to criticise Morrison, some — such as Assistant Minister for the ­Republic Matt Thistlethwaite — are saying monarch’s representative in Australia Governor-General David Hurley’s role shows the need for Australia to become a republic.

Crikey’s view: we must protect David Hurley, or at the very least his wife Linda, at all costs.

Sure, the pair may have broken a few norms by spruiking that builder in Canberra, and regardless of whether he did anything wrong, the optics of his involvement in the secret acquisition of power by the then PM aren’t great. But on the other hand, a tipster pointed this out to us — we’ve since confirmed they got it from this thread compiled by Twitter journo Ronni Salt — and in the interest of all facts being on the public record, it’s important we pass it on:

This is Her Excellency Linda Hurley’s address to the Invasive Species Solutions Trust last December. Via song. Many artists would have shrunk from what this piece asks of them.

Joni Mitchell might have said “I cannot work the concepts of a ‘Centre for Invasive Species Solutions’ and ‘philanthropic opportunities’ elegantly into a verse, let alone those exact words”. Kendrick Lamar would have looked at a couplet like “Philanthropic and corporate partners are invited to join / folks, environmentalists, primary producers, help them win” and said “You cannot expect me to get that many syllables into a single bar”.

Hurley shows them up to be the unambitious cowards they are. It packs a musical punch too — in the parlance of our time, when that key jump happens at roughly 1.19, I feel like I could kick a door clean off its hinges.

What’s surprising at first, but seems completely inevitable once the reality of this clip sinks in, is that she does this all the time.

Here she is in September 2021, giving us an a cappella song of consolation during lockdown (on the G-G’s official YouTube channel, no less):

With her pristine, unpretentious voice, that slight curl of nerves around the edges, her look of genuine concern as she sings, the fact that she waited until a year and a half into the crisis before deeming a musical response to the pandemic necessary — it’s roughly eight trillion times more likeable and touching than Mark Ruffalo singing a line from “Imagine” into his phone.

Here’s her tribute to the Shepherd Centre. Again, it’s so earnest and literal, like someone writing their first-ever poem for a wedding speech. And we thought the fact that she starts the day with some hula-hooping and Bible studies like some kind of character in a Belle and Sebastian song was going to be the most winningly eccentric thing we found out about her.