Nationals' leader and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce (Image: Supplied)

And on it goes When in doubt, announce a crackdown on social media companies seems to be Scott Morrison’s political tactic at the moment. After a truly awful parliamentary week, the prime minister tried to reset things at the weekend by announcing his would expand defamation laws to help the powerful — but carefully pitched it as an “anti-troll law”. That was possibly also to make up for the fact that his plan to use the G20 and Glasgow to call for a social media crackdown got derailed by French President Emmanuel Macron.

That followed an announcement a few weeks earlier that the government would be cracking down on social media. That’s not to be confused with his 2019 federal election promise to crack down on social media. And just to make sure everyone’s got the message, this morning Morrison and low-wattage communications spokesdrone Paul Fletcher issued a media release announcing a government-controlled parliamentary committee would “put big tech under the microscope”. Can we get to 10 announcements before polling day?

Van Duh Bleak There is a very specific historical type that we’re extremely fond of here in the Crikey bunker. It’s a pantheon including South Australian Senator Rowan Ramsey, reading the wrong Dorothy Dixer; Western Australia’s Ben Small and his utterly deadpan reading of a tweet about falling into a big vat of manure in its entirety at Senate estimates; Joe Bullock announcing his great “despond” at the thought of marriage equality and quitting less than halfway into an otherwise meaningless Senate term.

It’s the senator you’ve never heard of, who briefly pokes their head above the parapet of anonymity to be associated with precisely one extremely weird and embarrassing thing before melting back into history forever. We suspect David Van will end up among their number.

Yesterday Van was accused of making dog-like growling noises at Jacqui Lambie as she spoke in the Senate, a unedifying look at the best of times, but particularly vile in the context of the day’s report on the treatment of women in Parliament. Van denies it, saying a mixture of a “gruff” voice and his mask combined to make him sound a little canine. But what’s particularly revealing is his response to Labor’s Graham Perrett‘s description of the event as “curiouser and curiouser”:

The explicit linking of something that is decidedly not trolling with the new anti-trolling laws combined with a seeming attempt to imply a defamatory statement from Perrett seems as clear indication as any as to what the law is actually for.

Drunk with power One of the recommendations of Kate Jenkins’ report, Set the Standard — that saw Parliament described by The New York Times as “a cloistered, alcohol-fuelled environment where powerful men violated boundaries unchecked” — is more stringent policies on alcohol.

At the time of writing Morrison has failed to commit to that, or any other recommendation in the report. Looking at the history, it ought to be a no-brainer:

Back in June, Northern Territory Senator Samantha McMahon was allegedly so “maggoted” in Parliament she could barely stand. McMahon denied it, saying she merely wasn’t coping with “bad personal news”.

Tony Abbott missed a vote  — and not a trivial one: it concerned Australia’s response to the global financial crisis — after what he described as “quite a few bottles of wine” knocked him out to the point that party whips couldn’t wake him.

Barnaby Joyce — himself a great big flashing neon sign that unresolved sexual harassment claims don’t necessarily impede a bloke’s stroll towards the highest office available to him — referred to Bridget McKenzie as “a flash bit of kit” in 2012, apparently sober, which makes you wonder how he talks to his female co-workers when alcohol is involved.

So it’s no wonder there’s been no commitment to the kind of alcohol restrictions that practically every other workplace in Australia would consider the bare minimum. After all, how else would the major parties decide who fills leadership roles?

Raising up the Shields Congratulations to new The Sydney Morning Herald editor Shevan Bevan Shields! It’s wonderful to finally see a white guy with specs and stubble get somewhere in the media. We hope he brings to the role the kind of commitment he showed in his reporting on COVID-19 in Britain. He first argued that Britain’s initial herd immunity approach was “quite possibly” a sensible one, before actually catching the virus, going through a fortnight or so of “hell” and  concluding it might not be such a great policy to ensure as many people as possible catch it.