Farewell 46: the most ridiculous moments of the last Parliament

Australia’s 46th Parliament was the first for 15 years to have the same prime minister face voters at the end as was sworn in at the beginning. But that wasn’t the only thing that made 46 unusual — even allowing for the pandemic, the past three years in politics were weird as shit.

Here are some of our favourite moments:

Pauline Hanson appeared to not know when her own birthday is. In June 2021, during a debate around amendments to superannuation that benefited 67-year-olds, she announced: “Just because you’re 67 and you’re of a retirement age — which I am proud to say, I am 67 years of age, and I turned 67 yesterday.”

Confronted with the notion that this appeared to be a very clear piece of self-serving, Hanson got up minutes later to say: “Misrepresentation: Senator Watt said I’ve circulated this on my birthday. My birthday was last month. This [amendment] was not circulated on my birthday, so it’s basically misrepresentation, telling a lie.”

The ALP’s consistent meme failure. It won’t surprise anyone that Labor doesn’t appear too often in this list. One of the main problems with a small-target strategy is less amusing content, less chance of a backbencher busting out some Skyhooks during a press conference. But it does deserve a mention for some fantastically shit social media work. Some of it was just baffling — the Aunty Donna reference that worked neither as a joke nor as a universal reference that voters would mostly get springs to mind. Some of it was amusingly inept — say, when Jim Chalmers posted stats the wrong way around. But mostly it was just terrible. Anthony Albanese, you’re not building my confidence in Australian manufacturing if this is the best image your office can put together:

Barnaby Joyce wants the government out of his damn life. On Christmas Eve 2019, former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce — whose freeform approach to language has been an ongoing source of fascination here in the bunker — made an interesting claim. In a video from his paddock, he told us he wanted the government — of which he is an extremely well-paid member — out of his life: “I just don’t want the government any more in my life; I am sick of the government being in my life.” He also, as is his wont, had some thoughts about God: “There’s a higher authority that’s beyond our comprehension — right up there in the sky. And unless we understand that that’s got to be respected, then we’re just fools. We’re going to get nailed.”

Backbencher shenanigans. One of our favourite things in the world is the backbencher you’ve never heard of popping up, doing something extremely weird and then disappearing back into history. The 46th Parliament gave us so many of these beautiful moments: South Australia’s 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 — to make a point about ABC bias, we think; Liberal Senator David Van saying a mixture of a “gruff” voice and his mask were to blame after he was accused of making dog-like growling noises at Jacqui Lambie as she spoke in the Senate. This was the same day as a scathing report on the treatment of women in Parliament was released. 

Michaelia Cash’s curry for the country. The Western Australian senator was WAY too into the idea of having a “curry for the country” — “I’m going to tell the prime minister that one!” she shrieked, producing the kind of laughter that hell boils with. “A curry for the country. I love it! I love Indian food! It’s my favourite food! I promise you I will do that!

Scott Morrison. There is so much criticism levelled at our outgoing prime minister, but it’s important to remember that, first and foremost, he’s just a bit of a weird unit. The forced handshakes; the array of unflattering sports photo ops, peaking late in the campaign when he pancaked a young soccer player in Tasmania; saying “Ni Hao” to a Korean lady. The guy just put people on edge. But possibly our top choice is the time he stood up in Parliament while women from around the nation protested the horrifying treatment in Parliament — and by extension Australian workplaces — and said that in other countries they could expect to be shot: “Not far from here, such marches even now are being met with bullets, but not here in this country. This is a triumph of democracy.”