What’s the antidote to spin in politics? Wiggling, wobbling and the occasional quack, according to Queensland’s Ray Stevens.
The Mermaid beach MP held fast to the adage that actions speak louder than words on Tuesday, when he answered a persistent journalist’s questions with this sensation, proving beyond all doubt that white men can dance – but they absolutely shouldn’t.
“It would be almost funny if it wasn’t so disgraceful,” the journalist David Donovan wrote. He has been pursuing Stevens over a controversial sky rail project in which the MP has a stake, and which the Newman government approved last year despite fierce criticism.
Resisting the public’s right to know (not to mention its right to please God, no) has never been so much fun.
It brings to mind that other piece of sage political advice: “Never write if you can speak, never speak if you can nod, never nod if you can shake violently for 30 excruciating seconds.”
That was the approach Tony Abbott took in 2011 when asked by Channel Seven’s Mark Riley about his remarks to Australian soldiers on the complications leading to death of one of their colleagues.
“Well, I guess sometimes shit happens,” Abbott told the troops, unaware he could be heard by microphones.
Confronted with the awkward banter back in Canberra, he let his withering stare do the talking.
It was the medium of song to which the former trade minister Craig Emerson turned in 2012, to puncture the Coalition’s increasingly out-there predictions about the consequences of a carbon tax.
Lamb roasts would cost $100, inflation would skyrocket, and the South Australian town of Whyalla would be wiped off the map, the public was told. It was the last of these that Emerson seized on, rubbishing the claim to the tune of Skyhooks’s Horror Movie.
Forcing this extraordinary rendition onto the Australian public turned out to be the worst consequence of the carbon tax, which was scrapped by the Abbott government in July.
Even masters of the political bon mot can’t resist a little action. Back in 1992, no less a wordsmith than the then prime minister Paul Keating felt compelled to express his derision for the then Liberal leader John Hewson with this impromptu warble.
It’s a gesture that delights toddlers around the world, and naturally, parliament was in raptures.
