LNP bows to a man in Bowman

Head on a Pike The process of replacing Andrew Laming — whose reputation is once again spotless after he threatened to sue all those people being mean to him on Twitter — in his seat of Bowman has concluded. Laming announced his resignation at the next election after various allegations — that he denies — totalled up to an unmanageable extent.

Anyway, the Liberal National Party is looking to move on the only way it knows how, by preselecting… Laming run through a malfunctioning photocopier: Henry Pike, who presumably jumped to the front of the queue by being the only bloke option in a list that was otherwise all women. He got the nod, despite being engulfed in a mini-scandal already, with messages he sent more than a decade ago (“[It] states quite clearly in the Bible that fucking a fat chick is a sin beyond redemption” is a representative sample) coming to light on Friday.

Yep, it was already on the public record when the vote took place, raising the question: what optics would have been bad enough to shift the vote to a woman? Or perhaps history has taught the LNP that frequently commenting on people’s weight isn’t an impediment in Bowman?