A teenaged Throsby recalls listening to Parliament on the unidirectional
non-buffering broadcast pre-Internet, err, television.
Ming’s Liberal pollies sounded like a sharp well-spoken crew and Arfur Caldwell’s a mob of striney buffoons.
That same mind finds today’s political arena all topsy-turvy.
It’s so hard, when government is in turmoil, to know if their pandemonium is a cunning ploy or routine incompetence.
Was Senator Michaelia “Boko” (aka *Barina) Cash’s fiasco a poorly deployed tactic or a masterstroke wonderfully executed?
Throsby thinks both!
And when the seasoned commentariat delighted us with a diversity of indecision on the issue, all theories stood.
When Boko Cash assumed a line of questioning from Chill Pill Cameron would likely follow an insinuating path, she preemptively counter attacked. Of course that’s where Dougy’s enquiries were going; besides, that’s how she would’ve played it.
Replay upon rerun of his interrogation suggests it was the last thing on his subsequently bemused mind, and that someone else had a bad mind. So that someone took hostage Electricity Bill’s hapless female staffers [thus earning the Boko Haram sobriquet]:
Cameron: [asking about Senator Cash’s new chief of staff] “Who is it?”
Cash: “If you want to start discussing staff matters, be very, very careful, because I’m happy to sit here and name every young woman in Mr Shorten’s office over which rumours in this place abound. If you want to go down that path today, I will do it.”
Later, Ms Cash roused her last ounce of lawyerly courage for an emphatically sincere apology:
Rumours circulate in this building. It does not mean they are true. I merely referred to rumours.”
We took that as an apology to any rumours she might have offended.
PM Waffles startled the popcorn popping ringsiders by defending Cash in parliament, deploying yet again that ol' chestnut: It’s Labor’s fault:
Senator Cash was being bullied and provoked by Senator (Doug) Cameron who was making insinuations about staff.”
Then came #WhiteboardGate and the popcorn poppers choked in merriment.
And so the “cunning ploy” was set in motion – soon revealed as poorly conceived stratagem – when absurd innuendos from Boko’s fellow travellers Waffles Trumble and Benito Dutton told miniscule radio audiences it was all Bill’s fault for leading a scandalous and immoral life.
Throsby warms to the only comment in a sea of opinionatedness that felt like it had measure of the stramash.
Shit Happens Tony, master of brain fade, confirmed he hadn’t the foggiest what Boko was on about and could only assume she had a pretty bad lapse… a brain snap.
Ah yes, brain snaps. Delicious with honey and cream.
* Sounds like one pulling a caravan up a hill