(Image: Private Media)

That was then, this is now

Malcolm Turnbull on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament August 15 2022:

I do regret using that term [third chamber] because it was misunderstood. I never intended to convey the idea that it would be a third chamber like the Senate is a second chamber. I’m not going to apologise for political discourse five years ago, but what I would say is I think we have to be clear. It’s not a third chamber in the way the Senate is a second chamber.

Malcolm Turnbull on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament February 14 2018:

The position that the government has taken and that I’ve expressed is that we do not support entrenching in the constitution a national representative assembly that only Indigenous Australians can vote for or be elected to. We take the view that every one of our national elected representative institutions should be open to every Australian citizen. We believe that is a fundamental part of our democracy and the rule of law.

The reality is that if the policy that the opposition has now adopted were to be carried out, if that referendum proposal were to be put up and if it were to succeed — and I have no doubt that it would fail — that national representative assembly, elected by and composed only of Indigenous Australians as an adviser to this Parliament on matters affecting Indigenous Australians, would constitute, in effect, a third chamber of this Parliament.

Morrisonian We thought he was gone forever. Surely Scott Morrison was going to quit politics as quietly as possible and then bubble back into public life only when he shared the stage with some church leader who’d previously said women shouldn’t be issued drivers’ licences or something. And yet the revelations of the previous few days have given us a level of raw, uncut Morrisonia that we were unprepared to deal with — ever again.

So the obsession with secrecy was immediately apparent. The lack of regard for his colleagues was clear when Mathias Cormann said he’d found out he was sharing the Finance portfolio with Morrison at the same time as the rest of us. The relationship with the truth was stingingly brought home when he told 2GB that to his “recollection” he’d not sworn himself into any other ministries secretly, mere minutes before news broke that he had, in fact, secretly sworn himself into another ministry.

But the clear winner for us here in the bunker was the response when Sky News asked him if he had a comment on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s predictable criticism. These days, Morrison isn’t much of a politics guy: “Since leaving the job I haven’t engaged in any day-to-day politics.”

Hurley-burly Governor-General David Hurley has proven himself to not really be a red tape kinda guy this year. There was that impromptu Instagram spruik for those Canberra builders earlier this year, and then the altogether more serious matter of secretly swearing Morrison in to various ministerial portfolios during the pandemic.

In these circumstances, once again thank God (we use the phrase advisedly) for Eternity News, the Christian publication which has previously given us so much insight into the work practices of Investment NSW CEO Amy Brown. Host of Triple R’s media show Spin Cycle (along with your correspondent) Jess Lilley pointed out to us that Hurley and his wife Linda also gave an interview to Eternity, way back in 2017 when he was NSW governor. Eternity eventually took down Brown’s interview after it came back to light. Will the Hurley interview go the same way? Honestly, it doesn’t contain any of the eerie foreshadowing Brown’s did. The one revelation that stands out is Linda Hurley’s morning routine:

She prepares for the day ahead in a rather more unusual way. ‘I hula-hoop every morning and I like to read the Bible or a devotional book while I’m doing that.’