PM’s absurd position on predators in his ranks is imploding

Ah, the defenders will say, but perhaps the Prime Minister only knew of other issues with Zumbo – he hogged the photocopier, and left the staff kitchen messy – but no one told him of the big stuff, like sexual harassment? Please.

Friends, this whole thing is imploding under its own absurdities.

Rebel stand in Hughes

Meantime, there was a strange connection this week with Craig Kelly and the story I wrote last Sunday concerning the insanity of Police Commissioner Mick Fuller wanting to also be a commissioner of the Australian Rugby League. As you’ll recall, by Sunday afternoon government support for the absurdity had collapsed. But here’s the interesting thing. When on Wednesday, Craig Kelly announced that he was leaving the Liberal Party, a story quickly emerged that Commissioner Fuller might go for preselection as the Liberal candidate to replace Kelly.

Apparently not, however. “I thought it was a humorous rumour,” Fuller tells me. “I’ve always thought politics is best left for the politicians.”

(I know. Not the definitive, “Not now, not ever” quote I was looking for, but the best I could get.)

What’s most interesting though is that Kelly doing a runner from the Libs has changed nothing for the We Are Hughes mob who are seeking to do in their electorate what Warringah Voices did by beating Tony Abbott in Warringah with strong Independent Zali Steggall.

“Nothing has changed,” one of the founders Linda Seymour tells me. “It highlights that party politics is all about party first, people second. Kelly was personally endorsed over local branch wishes by three Liberal prime ministers across 10 years, that decision was never about Hughes or real democracy, it was about maintaining power. We are Hughes are about endorsing a candidate that puts people and constructive politics first.”

Mighty museum

In the field of fabulous bequests, my favourite yarn happened a neat decade ago, when I was a fellow on the senate of the University of Sydney. Late one wet Wednesday afternoon, a mysterious visitor from America arrived, insisting on seeing the vice-chancellor Michael Spence. He agreed whereupon the visitor took from beneath their coat a genuine rolled up Picasso, Jeune Fille Endormie, from 1935! The visitor gave it to him on the spot, on strict condition that it be sold, the funds put towards scientific research, and the donor remain strictly anonymous.

It was all agreed, and raised $20.7 million!

This week’s yarn ran it close, however, when the mighty Australian Museum found itself the recipient of its largest ever donation from a surprising source – a long-time staffer, Patricia McDonald, who started work there in 1953.

“We knew Patricia had left a bequest,” Australian Museum Kim McKay told me on Friday, “and we assumed it might be her house and given it was in Sydney we were thinking it might be as much as $1 million. Little did we know that this very determined, humble and formidable woman had invested her comparatively small public service salary in the stock market. I was in my office being briefed on the bequest when one of my colleagues said . . . ‘wait for it . . . her shares and the house total over $7m!!!’ We opened a bottle and toasted this great woman’s legacy. I wish I’d known her. It’s the largest single donation in our almost 200 year history.”

In other good news for the museum, since its re-opening on November 28 after extensive refurbishments, its welcomed an extraordinary 240,000 visitors – and with no international visitors because of COVID, that is a rise of 368 per cent on local-only attendance. RAH!

Quiz

My niece’s daughter was set this quiz in her year 5 class at Wenona School. What is the next line after these first seven lines?

1

11

2 1

12 11

111221

312211

13112221

Clue: It is not just, and maybe not even, a maths question.

Joke of the Week

Mum opens the fridge and is amazed to find a rabbit inside, gnawing on a carrot. “What are you doing in my refrigerator?” she cries. “Isn’t this a Westinghouse?” the rabbit asks. “Yes, it is,” Mum replies. “Well, I’m westing,” says the rabbit.

Quotes of the Week

“My privacy has been breached at every turn in this process. I don’t think she’s ever respected my privacy, so her sudden concern for it now, I find patently false.” – Brittany Higgins on Minister Linda Reynolds’ position that she didn’t act more proactively on Higgin’s rape allegations out of concerns for her privacy.

“He’d say ‘it’s just a hug’, but it’s not just a hug, it’s a 50-year-old man who’s your boss sprawling all over you in the back seat of the car. Or he’d say, ‘give me a hug goodbye’ and then he’d start kissing you. It was awful. I had to go home to a boyfriend who’d say ‘how was your night?’ You just feel disgusting and used and scared to go into work again, but what else do you do? This is my job and it’s a good job.” – An un-named woman, telling The Australian of what it was like to work in Craig Kelly’s office with fellow staffer Frank Zumbo.

“When it is your time, please roll up your sleeve and get vaccinated.” – NSW Chief Health Officer, Dr Kerry Chant.

“I have feelings like anybody else and I don’t enjoy when someone, you know, judges or criticises.” – Novak Djokovic, saying that this year’s Australian Open was one if his hardest because of all the criticism.

“It is nerve wracking. We hit them with a little hammer and a tiny little chisel, a couple of millimetres long. Sometimes we used a dental chisel – the blade is about 4 millimetres wide. If you strike it just right … the nest will fracture along the line where it meets the wall.” – Dr Damien Finch of the University of Melbourne, who led the radiocarbon dating of Kimberly rock art by using old wasp nests that found the paintings are between 13,000 and 17,500 years old.

“The government has a made a deliberate decision to drop people below the poverty line.” – Greens Senator Rachel Siewert, on the government raising the JobSeeker allowance by $50 a fortnight but with extra requirements.

“Measly, mean-spirited and a complete betrayal of what is needed.” – Cassandra Goldie, Australian Council of Social Service.

“My goal has only been to save lives and ensure that my constituents and all Australians were not denied access to medical treatments if their doctors believed those treatments could save their lives.” – Craig Kelly in a letter of resignation from the Liberal Party, apparently with a straight face.

“The so-called DobSeeker provisions of the legislation will allow employers to report workers who turn down jobs to the department for investigation. This gives a huge amount of power to employers to coerce vulnerable people into jobs under threat of being cut off from payments.” – Australian Council of Trade Unions president Michele O’Neil, one of the many saying that the government’s proposed hotline to dob people in for not taking an offered job (quickly dubbed DobSeeker) in could force people into taking any job offered at the lowest possible wage.

“Thank you for putting me on a panel with Billie Eilish – I’m a massive fan Billie. As of dinner last night, according to my 15-year-old, this is the coolest thing I’ve ever done.” – Hugh Jackman hosting an online rally hosted by Global Citizen in aide of prioritising vaccines for poorer countries, returning children to classrooms, tackling gender and financial inequality and addressing climate change as its key priorities. Every parent will understand how Hugh felt about being cool to his teenager.

“If you’ve had a flu injection, it’s the same, it honestly didn’t hurt at all.” – Labor MP Peta Murphy saying that the COVID vaccine doesn’t hurt as much as the needles she has regularly as part of her treatment for metastatic breast cancer. The backbencher volunteered to get her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine in front of dozens of journalists and television cameras to show other people with underlying health conditions that it was safe.

“We’re taking advantage of the museum’s closure to carry out a number of major works, speed up maintenance operations and start repair works that are difficult to schedule when the museum is operating normally.” – Laurent le Guedart, the Louvre’s architectural heritage and gardens director , with some good news about lockdowns.

Quiz Answer

1113213211

Why? Because each successive line describes the number of digits on the line before. Thus, the second line says there is one 1 on the first line. The third line says there two 1s on the second line. And so on! Get it? Ask your partner. They are smarter, and will explain!