(Inter)National Nitpickery

Curious about world news, events or the occasional Australian political blunder? Every edition, we’ll be deconstructing politics and topical events from the outside world, poking the shitty bits with a nice long stick and commenting on its tangy smell. Perhaps we’ll find a nugget of golden wisdom lurking within?

Photo Credit: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Everyone’s favourite right-wingman, Andrew Bolt, recently asked both Jeff Kennet and Peta Credlin a reasonably simple question – “Can you name the achievements of the Turnbull government after one year in office?” – which received a resounding “…uh” and “um, well…” that was slightly awkward.

It’s not like he was asking about last week’s shit flailing contest specifically. Seriously, not even uni students are so good at procrastinating that we’d get nothing done in an entire year. Okay, maybe that’s being a bit harsh – Turnbull’s government did manage to quite successfully piss off climate activists and the Australian LGBT and Muslim communities all in quick succession! I mean, if we want to get into the nitty gritty political details, they did sign a piece of paper saying “free trade agreement”, and I think I recall hearing the word “innovation” a while back on some national agenda. But we’re forgetting their biggest success of all – winning the election!

Obviously, the only reason Turnbull and Co. hadn’t gotten much done before the teacher came round to check their work was because they didn’t have all their pals at the desk. With a majority government, surely things will now start moving forward. If you happened to take a moment over the break to catch up on the news, you may have heard about their most recent victory regarding the royal banking commission in the House of Reps, which the pesky Opposition keeps bugging them about. Would you believe it, three pollies decided to go home early, giving way to a swift and easy majority vote, pulled right out from under their noses!

Wait – shit, I’ve got my left and right mixed up, it was Labor who did that – winning three consecutive votes in favour of the royal commission move, while some lazy Liberals decided to skip the debate. Damn sneaky move from left field, resulting in a literally historic (and hysteric) parliamentary result, with the majority government losing a vote in the Lower House for the first time since 1962. Unfortunately, the “stunt” didn’t quite work out entirely thanks to Speaker Tony Smith, who saved the day with his casting vote, buying more time for the latecomers to get back. Looks like we’ll have to wait a bit longer to see the banking commission pay off in its own glorious shitstorm. Regardless, the Opposition succeeded in embarrassingly highlighting Turnbull’s razor thin majority, in their first week back no less!

Lefties weren’t invulnerable to first week slip ups though, what with Labor frontbencher Sam Dastyari shooting himself in the foot with a travel bill payed for by a political donation. Thanks to his inadvertent martyrdom, the Q&A fan favourite finally brought to light the huge stinking gold plated money shitting elephant in the room. As a result, foreign (read: Chinese) political donations are now in the sights of Labor as the next line of attack. Good timing to be honest – with Turnbull’s underwhelming performance, they’ll probably want their money back!