Bill Shorten and Peter Khalil vs robodebt (Image: Twitter/7News)
Bill Shorten and Peter Khalil vs robodebt (Image: Twitter/7News)

The Albanese government seems far too young to be trotting out the old hits the way successive Liberal leaders leaned on, say, “Stop the boats.” And yet yesterday, NDIS and Government Services Minister Bill Shorten and Labor member for Wills Peter Khalil got in front of some cameras and jammed a foil robot into a bin, announcing 3,000 new jobs for Services Australia to “clean up” the “tragic robodebt disaster”.

Robbed of the ability to triumphantly cancel the whole thing (it was ruled illegal in 2019), the ALP launched a royal commission into the scheme, which gave a breathtaking insight into its fetid heart.

All of which is to say, the scheme has already been thoroughly discredited, Labor has got as much credit for that as it is likely to, and the fact that, nearly 18 months into this term it has realised that maybe hiring some people is a good idea doesn’t quite represent the final crushing of a painful legacy that it otherwise might.

It got us thinking about the history of political stunts, not all of which have quite come off.

An array of accoutrements

Former senator Ian MacDonald was ruled “disorderly” for his decision to wear a hi-vis “Australians for Coal” shirt in 2014 (former Greens senator Scott Ludlam was also pinged for holding up a piece of paper with “SRSLY” written on it in response) and yet Senator Pauline Hanson donning another culture’s religious attire for an extremely grubby stunt was… apparently fine?

Then there was Bob Katter’s troublingly comfortable stint as the Grim Reaper to protest the death of the Australian auto industry.

Baby, please don’t go (into that shredder)

Thanks to the fog that engulfed every Victorian’s brain over the course of, shall we say, a difficult 2020 and 2021, this one is largely forgotten. But we in the bunker have never stopped thinking about it. How did this happen? How complacent had the Andrews government become that a minister allowed herself to be filmed — from more than one angle! — feeding several babies into a shredder?

It was part of a Nine report on the Victorian government’s destruction of 368 unsafe toys ahead of Christmas, captioned “Taking a leaf out of the Grinch’s playbook, the Victorian government has DESTROYED 368 unsafe toys ahead of the holiday season”, which is pretty funny in itself.

Then there’s the footage itself, which features then-consumer affairs minister Melissa Horne joining safety inspectors and feeding some of those defective toys into a shredder, and at no point did anyone say: “Minister, perhaps we’ll let someone else dispose of the baby dolls?”

Weapons of choice

Your can’t bring in real weapons, but Liberal senator Bill Heffernan got away with brandishing a fake pipe bomb in Senate estimates to protest against recent changes to security. Then-“rebel” Coalition MP and misunderstood empath Andrew Laming was booted from Parliament for 24 hours for bringing flammable cruise liner fuel into Parliament and coating his hands with it.

Coal, coal world

Of course, the problem with a good stunt is it may stick with you in ways that don’t reflect brilliantly on your preferred side of history. This is coal.

Scott Morrison coal climate emergency
(Image: AAP/Lukas Coch)

Do these stunts work or are they just naff? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.