Politically, 2024 has been coloured with a general sense of decline and disappointment. We are pleased to report that Tips and Murmurs — a repository of the gossipy, absurd and plain weird of Australian politics and media, fuelled as much by our readers as our writers — has kicked against that by being absolutely brilliant.
Indeed, word count means we can’t include our coverage of the ongoing shit show in the Shire, the Charlie Kaufman-like spiral that followed our investigation into why the Herald Sun appeared to have photoshopped Ben Cousins into an article for no discernible reason, Speaker Milton Dick’s attendance at a Dominionist Pentecostal church event, or Liz Truss’ unpopular populist revival.
We can’t thank you enough for the tidbits you sent our way this year. Please enjoy this selection of some of our favourites.
Coat of many colours (October 3)
When you’re the richest person in the country, they call this kind of thing “eccentricity”. Gina Rinehart’s Driza-Bone company is offering a special range of women’s riding coats, with special linings depicting the majesty of the Kimberley outback, described on the Driza-Bone website thusly:
This unique lining not only celebrates the majesty of the outback but also captures the profound significance of this awe-inspiring landscape.
Only one small detail is missing: the lining also captures what appears to be a photo from the wedding of Rinehart’s family friend and Hancock employee Marguerite Olivier.
Yep, apparently the presence of a personal family photo on the lining of an expensive coat is the kind of detail that just explains itself — even to the presumably reasonably large section of shoppers who wouldn’t recognise Rinehart on sight and/or don’t know that Rinehart owns Driza-Bone. Oh, and did we mention that the wedding photo portion appears to have been photoshopped in from an event that took place somewhere else?
Mad Katter (December 4)
Is Bob Katter the only person in Australia who doesn’t remember his classic speech on marriage equality and crocodiles? In 2017, the veteran Queensland MP made global headlines with his whiplash-inducing response to a question about the recent vote in favour of legalising same-sex marriage.
“I mean, you know, people are entitled to their sexual proclivities,” he told journalists. “Let there be a thousand blossoms bloom, as far as I am concerned. But I ain’t spending any time on it because in the meantime, every three months, a person is torn to pieces by a crocodile in North Queensland.”
Katter recently spoke to Crikey about an amendment he tried to move to the NBN Companies Act and made a comment that sounded tantalisingly familiar.
“The Queensland budget [put aside] $36 billion on tunnels in Brisbane, where we’ve got a person dying every three weeks, maybe, in Far North Queensland, mainly because we haven’t got that tunnel,” Katter said.
Crikey’s reporter noted the comment was reminiscent of Katter’s famous comparison. Katter responded: “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re referring to.”
Luckily, his merch people do.
Happy Junior FriYAYY y’all! (November 28)
When PR firm Invigorate started spraying reporters — famously some of the world’s grumpiest people —with creepily cheery greetings like “Happy MonYAYYY!” ahead of pitches, newsrooms around the country heaved a collective groan.
As one ABC reporter told us, “‘Junior FriYAYY’ sent me. Absolutely wild way to try and court a journalist to talk about whatever random shit they’re hawking.”
“I can’t tell if it’s a deliberate strategy to get people so irritated that they start a conversation, or if it’s genuinely someone who thinks people want to be told it’s Thursday like this, but it is wild.”
It turns out Invigorate has quite the back story. It is run by Tess Sanders-Lazarus, wife of NRL legend and former Palmer United Party senator Glenn Lazarus. She was briefly in the political spotlight after PUP accused her of withholding keys to the party’s Canberra office following Lazarus’ defection in 2015.
Sanders-Lazarus shamelessly wished Crikey a “Happy TOOSYAYYY” and confirmed that Invigorate partners with an agency that provides remote workers for its workforce. She also happily showed us a full list of the greetings used by the firm for each day of the week.
If I can’t post I don’t want your revolution (September 5)
Just like anything that involves even semi-direct contact with actual humans, politicians engaging in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) can be fraught. Even if you avoid any major blunders or controversies, you risk revealing that you are just profoundly dull.
Dull is not something we’d call independent Senator Gerard Rennick, but he did experience the other side of the process: getting a fairly savage down-voting and some hostile questioning about his views on COVID-19 and climate change. But what really caught our attention was Rennick’s username, the absolutely weapons-grade handle “Cool_Revolution_4559“.
We asked Rennick where he came up with the account name, and alas, it wasn’t his idea. “I had to create an account and that’s the name they gave me — no planning on my part.” Rennick, who recently ditched the Liberals to form the People First Party, told Crikey over text. “Maybe I should have used that for the party name,” he added, followed by the cry-laughing emoji.
A dog’s breakfast (June 5 — present)
Finally, a note on our correspondence with dear friend (dare we say, comrade) of the publication, Gerard Henderson. Mid-year, we got in contact to point out a series of errors in his piece about Antionette Lattouf’s interview with former prime minister Scott Morrison. Australian media’s prince of pedantry was appropriately grateful, saying it was “a real morale booster to learn … that the comrades at Crikey read my Media Watch Dog blog. Ellie [Henderson’s very cute cattle dog] will be pleased — she often eats her dinner on some of Crikey’s printed pages.”
He further asked that we print his response “in full or not at all”. We obliged and provided readers with an easily cut-out version should their pets want to dine out too.
We spoke again at the assembling of our “Movers and Shakers” survey, when we asked Hendo to join other heavy-hitters in helping us understand the modern media landscape. He politely declined, on the grounds that he didn’t regard himself as a “heavy-hitter in Australian media”.
“If this was the case,” he said, “I would not have been ‘cancelled’ by the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster.”
He’d come to this melancholy conclusion, he told us, after Aunty failed to interview him about his latest book on George Pell. Ah, we knew it was the ABC’s fault. He signed off with what might go down in history as the most Gerard Henderson paragraph in history:
All the best with the success of Crikey’s survey. I usually read Crikey at Post Dinner Drinks Time since I find it easier to follow late at night. By the way, I will be on the look out to see whether any of your respondents cite the Holy Name Monthly in their ‘media diet’. I last read it circa 1956 and assume it is still extant.
Merry Christmas, Gerard Henderson. Merry Christmas to us all.
