Labor’s frozen ham, Lehrmann lawyer’s weird tweets, and the AFR spits in our faces again

Murray, what? It was the kind of dimly well-intentioned and unintentionally dim intervention that Scott Morrison’s government specialised in. Just as Morrison kicked off one of the most prolifically inactive governments in human history by deciding more needed to be done about strawberries via a Sorkin-esque walk-and-talk, now Agriculture Minister Murray Watt has announced, despite everything, that we can all have a little ham as a treat.

Watt’s suggestion of a price freeze on ham ahead of Christmas wasn’t even an off-the-cuff thought bubble, maybe accompanied by a preference for wooden toys. There’s a press release and everything. Wait, we thought “overall the evidence and data shows” that capping prices doesn’t work long-term. “What it shows long-term, in terms of what the experts are telling us, is that it reduces supply.” Oh wait, my mistake — that was Housing Minister Julie Collins talking about caps on rent rises. Big difference.

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Sussan Ley’s great delusion? But as luck would have it for Watts and co, their opposition is still the Coalition, whose Deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley showed a level of harmony with the electorate this week roughly on par with late-era Nicolae Ceaușescu. Her declaration that “we can win back the teal seats” would’ve had King Canute’s biggest fans suppressing a smirk. As Rachel Withers pointed out in The Monthly, this is an extraordinary piece of magical thinking from Peter Dutton’s deputy in a post-2022 Liberal Party ever more dense with the exact kind of people teal voters voted against, and acting like it, so dysfunctional it’s given up another seat since it’s crushing loss in 2022, the first opposition party to manage that for more than 100 years.

It’s currently as convincing as late Labor luminary Simon Crean — his own stint as leader the inspiration of a cruel bit of banter from Shaun Micallef, who would simply stop his topical monologues after the phrase “a Crean Labor government” as if waiting for the mere suggestion to get a laugh — announcing ahead of the 2013 election that Labor could defy cratering polling, a hostile press and fall of Rome-level dysfunction and win the 2013 election. You may remember how that played out.

Whybrow/lowbrow Among those wondering just who is paying the legal fees of former Liberal Party staffer Bruce Lehrmann in his defamation case against Network 10 and Lisa Wilkinson is apparently… his lawyer.

As spotted by online sleuth Ronni Salt, back at the end of October Steve Whybrow SC replied to someone who was asking if anyone knew where the money might be coming from: “Nope, but know a few who would appreciate someone telling us if they do.”

Whether this a gag or a confession of slightly slipshod bookkeeping, it’s still a touch odd, and ironic given the apparent jeopardy to justice that careless tweeters about the case in general (and Whybrow in particular) ended up bringing about. Not only that, but it’s strange to see this post now, given the guy basically never posts — you only have to scroll down a couple of tweets to find yourself in January wondering where he found this hat:

How the other half live We owe The Australian Financial Review an apology for our occasional caricature of it as the paper of choice for people with names like Plutus P. Moneyfellows who are forever crashing their Hudson7 Roadster and relying on their gentleman’s gentleman Camdenbury to extricate them from romantic mishaps.

After all, what could be more accessible to the average person than the luxury gift guide the Fin put out to mark the start of December? What could be less offensively gauche during a cost-of-living crisis than buying your loved one an ice bucket for just two and a half grand?

Or a $10,000 T-shirt dress that only looks kind of awful?

Seasons greetings, peasants!