There was so much debate about a public holiday this week, I could have sworn we were approaching 26 January. In what felt like a one-off nationwide revival of Geoffrey Robertson’s Hypotheticals, politicians at all levels of government weighed in on the pros and cons of a public holiday if the Matildas were to win the Women’s World Cup. During a climate crisis, a cost-of-living crisis and a housing crisis, how wonderful it is to know that, while our leaders may struggle to find solutions to actual existent problems, they still have time to game out a response to hypothetical sporting ones.
Of course all this discussion was ultimately moot, but kudos to all involved for thinking ahead. Perhaps if we want to get anything done in this country, all future decision-making should be tied to national sporting success. If the Wallabies win the Rugby World Cup, we’ll scrap the stage-three tax cuts. If the Boomers win the Fiba World Cup, we can have high-speed rail. (For the non-sporting types, the Boomers are a basketball team, not a highly competitive squad of property investors over the age of 60.)
Unfortunately for Barnaby Joyce, there was no such forward-thinking at the Commercial Hotel in Walcha, where he found himself unknowingly watching a repeat of the Australia-France friendly while the rest of the country watched the nail-biting quarter-final.
Yahoo News reported that Joyce was left “red-faced” by the mistake, though how anyone could tell the difference from his usual colouring is a mystery. What a horrible shock it must have been to discover he’d been living in the past for 90 minutes. Some would say he’s been there longer, but let’s not be cruel.
Who informed him of the mistake is not clear at this point, but whoever it was they must have felt as if they’d made the biggest anthropological discovery since Mungo Man: a man from the distant past of July 2023. Or perhaps it was like when they discovered that Japanese second world war soldier in the jungles of the Philippines who believed the war was still going 29 years after it had ended. Either way, Joyce suddenly found himself in the future. And what a terrifying place that must have been for him. One where his much-fabled $100 lamb roast never came to pass. If only there were something we could learn from this man who has travelled forward in time from 14 July.
Of course, Joyce is not the only politician who finds himself as a man out of time.
Mark Latham, whose views on homosexuality appear to have been retrieved from some sort of time capsule, was this week dumped as New South Wales One Nation leader. Oh, how the fallen have fallen. Strangely the dumping does not appear to be related to the current defamation suit launched against him by independent MP Alex Greenwich over a homophobic tweet he posted earlier this year. Pauline Hanson said she had been unable to contact Latham about it at the time, presumably because mobile phone technology did not exist in the decade Latham was communicating from. How he managed to get a tweet out is anyone’s guess. Then again, communication has never been Hanson’s strong suit either. Despite having three decades of public speaking experience under her belt, she still manages to make every speech sound like it’s her maiden one.
Latham has no such trouble expressing himself, though, revealing last week a novel defence against the defamation suit: claiming that his homophobic remark actually “enhanced the reputation of Greenwich”. This is the sort of creative legal mind Donald Trump is gonna need if he’s gonna weasel his way out of his four indictments. Please, Mark, go to Donald. He needs you more than we do.
Presumably Hanson was not able to focus on Latham’s defamation suit as she was appealing against the verdict of her own defamation lawsuit, this one launched by her former federal senator Brian Burston. At this rate, the party will need to be re-registered from Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party to Pauline Hanson’s Defamation party. Indeed, one might argue that the act of choosing to represent One Nation in parliament is a form of self-defamation, but I digress.
Since so many former One Nation senators have had a falling out with Hanson, it can be easy to forget which is which. Rod Culleton was the one who quit the party six months after being elected, Fraser Anning was the one who quit the party one hour after being sworn in, while Brian Burston was the one who admitted to smearing blood on the door of Hanson’s office. All very normal behaviour. We’ve always known Hanson is a divisive figure, but it seems that’s nowhere more true than within her own party.
And although the Matildas didn’t manage a victory against England, you’ll surely be relieved to know that Pauline did manage to win her defamation appeal against Brian. Somehow I don’t think we’ll be having a public holiday for that.
Mark Humphries is a writer/performer, best known for his political sketches on ABC TV’s 7.30. His most recent publication is On Politics and Stuff, co-written with Evan Williams.
