The MPs all but ran for the exit (and for a good number, the Qantas Chairman’s lounge) after one of the most bruising sitting fortnights in this term of parliament.
They’ll return to Canberra just days after the voice referendum is held, and whatever the result, it is clear it is not just about politics – emotions are involved and they’re raw. The political campaign has seen battle lines drawn between MPs who are usually friendly foes.
Furious debate
The attacks on the Indigenous academic Prof Marcia Langton were for many on the pro-voice side of parliament a line they didn’t believe would be crossed.
“I’ve seen a lot. There is a lot you can brush off. But I’m fucking furious after this week,” one Labor MP told House Party.
Just as furious were Coalition MPs when Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s personal phone number was released on social media (not the one you’re getting text messages from).
It led the Liberal MP Keith Wolahan to beg for some sort of unity during this important debate, and for the prime minister to “set the conditions” so that whatever the referendum result “the Australian people got it right”.
“We have seen examples of other nations where that doesn’t occur, including our great friend, the United States,” he said. “We saw what happens when that doesn’t occur. It damages democracy.”
Meanwhile, the sight of Tony Abbott’s Australian newspaper op-ed on the Indigenous leader Noel Pearson – with the headline “We need a Mandela, not a tribal chieftain” – in Sussan Ley’s office window for all in the House of Representatives to see sent some MPs into a rage.
Ley’s office said she had displayed the piece because she agreed with its message.
But at least Ley is fronting up to the press gallery to answer for some of her voice arguments. Peter Dutton has not held a press conference in Canberra since 31 July. There have been 15 sitting days since then. The opposition leader remains a regular on Sky and 2GB and has held press conferences outside of the nation’s capital – but in Canberra, it’s been Ley who has been doing the heavy lifting.
Royal commissioner takes aim
The National Press Club also delivered some uncomfortable moments this week. The chief of the Australian defence force, Gen Angus Campbell, decided to show his support for the veteran and defence suicide royal commission by attending an unusual address by its royal commissioner.
We say unusual because Nick Kaldas, the commissioner, hasn’t finished his inquiry yet; a report is due next year.
Kaldas didn’t hold back, questioning whether the Australian defence force and the Department of Defence were more about talk than action when it came to dealing with the “national crisis” of veteran suicide. And he complained of being stonewalled and stymied and of delays in obtaining requested government documents, something he attributed to the bureaucracy rather than any political interference.
Daniel Hurst said Campbell listened politely to the speech but was in no mood to talk to waiting media when he left the event, which was held offsite at the National Gallery of Australia because of renovations at the Press Club. Perhaps it was because one reporter opened with this blunt observation: “You copped a bit of a pasting in there,” and asking if the defence chief would like to comment.
Campbell marched on in silence through the garden outside the NGA’s Gandel Hall, only to be intercepted by a member of the public who wanted to talk to him.
Price is ‘wrong’
Coalition senator Price received a very warm reception for her NPC address – at least within the room. The Nationals leader, David Littleproud, and a cohort of his MPs, including Barnaby Joyce and Bridget McKenzie, sat front and centre, along with Liberal senator Kerrynne Liddle and former Nationals MPs Kay Hull and Peter Cochran. Price received applause and raucous laughter from her supporters for some of her comments, with the biggest laugh in response to her quip that she “should be doubly suffering from intergenerational trauma” given her Warlpiri-Celtic ancestry, when asked whether she believed Indigenous Australians had suffered any negative impacts from colonisation.
The Indigenous Australians minister, Linda Burney, later said Price’s comments were “simply wrong” and had caused great distress among the Aboriginal community.
Parting gift
The week’s events almost overshadowed the Senate farewell of one of its long-term occupants, the Liberal senator Marise Payne, who walked out the doors for the last time after 26 years in the chamber.
But among the tributes (and there were many) one stood out. Guardian Australia’s Katharine Murphy learned that Scott Morrison gave Payne, his former foreign minister, a personalised gift in the Coalition party room this week: a one-man reading of Teddy Roosevelt’s “the man in the arena” speech (although we are told he edited the title to “the woman in the arena”). For those who don’t know, the speech is about how no one knows what it’s like to do the hard things, except for those who have.
S Club Labor party
The Labor MP Tim Watts’ office managed a moment of levity during the week when they gathered to watch their colleague Steve appear on ABC’s Hard Quiz. Steve had kept his appearance on the popular show, in which contestants nominate a specialty topic to test their knowledge, largely secret. Steve, as it turns out, knows more about the UK tragi-pop group S Club 7 than perhaps anyone else on earth. Steve not only knows that S Club 7 had a movie, but that the desk sergeant in the film is a dancer who helps the group get out of prison. Eventually Steve’s prodigious S Club 7 knowledge beat out the Modern Family, Schindler’s List and Brisbane Broncos experts to emerge victorious with the Hard Quiz big brass mug. Turns out, there ain’t no party like an S Club Labor party. Maybe it pays to reach for the stars after all.
