Bronwyn Bishop, shocking news Shane Warne lies, and King O'Malley as leg spinner supreme ...

(Above: a neat caricature of King O'Malley of whom more anon).

It's always banners and bunting day on the pond when Bronnie goes on the prowl, punching out any likely perpetrators of injustice by penning penetrating prose for The Punch.

Her column almost slipped by, sudsed out by the rinse and spin cycle of the washing machine, but the world would have been a duller, more dismal place if we'd we missed the philosophical gems of Bronwyn Bishop's offering The mining ads are all spin, and the Budget shows it.

Come on down Bronnie, our Socrates of wordsmithing:

Just when does spin become a lie? Answer – when the overwhelming objective is to deceive.

Harsh? Certainly! True? Most definitely.

At last, someone ready to call it the way it is.

Shane Warne is a bloody liar.

And so are all those other devious, tricky spinners fiendishly armed with an overwhelming desire to deceive. Yes, cricket is full of liars, and come to think of it, so is soccer, or at least all those strikers trying to deceive goalies, and what are we to make of golfers, determined to trick the golf course of their choice with a choice nine iron of spin? Is the whole world of sport full of spnning liars? Or only those who play with balls?

This is serious stuff, but Bronnie's not done:

Particularly when the advertisements to convey the lie is paid for by theft from the taxpayer ie advertisements to promote the Labour Party’s great big tax on mining, have avoided complying with the advertising guidelines but is none the less paid for by the taxpayer. Bargain at $38 million!

So why does this constitute a lie and not simple spin? Simply because the ads are designed to deceive. That’s why.

Huh? Whaa? Sorry, I dozed off there. Some bastard's implanted a trigger so that when I hear the words "great big tax" or "great big new tax" I nod off.

But I'm glad I woke up in time to learn that advertising is designed to deceive. Who'd ever have guessed that unscrupulous advertisers would try to be deceptive?

Frankly the Australian Labor party advertisements - yes, they lost the "u" in Labour some time ago Bronnie ... in 1912, thanks to that deviant alleged Canadian or American King O'Malley ...that's okay hasten slowly to catch up - aren't so much deceptive, as a potent proof that PowerPoint presentations are either the most Satanic invention of all time ... or the greatest cure for insomnia ever discovered by humanity.

There's only one form of advertising even more offensive, and that's the mining industry's choice of a dinkum digger type wandering around a vehihikul pretending that he's totally dinkum, as a way of proving that mining industry dinkum digger types are the only ones from stopping the sky from falling in.

Cue a couple of dinkum diggers:

Now there's a couple of average common or garden dinkum digger Aussie billionaires!

Never mind, Bronnie hits all the required talking points in style, and plays a straight bat against all kinds of devious deviant spin from the spinmeisters, until this curious little closing par:

PS Wasn’t it good to see Mr Steve Bracks get an Order of Australia Award for his services to Victoria. Remember he was the Leader of the Opposition with a preferred Premier rating of 23% to Geoff Kennett’s 55% just three days before Bracks won and Kennett lost. Mr Bracks stayed for ten years. Funny thing that!

Well I love PS's - there's something so Latinate and thrilling and Victorian to be had from dropping a post scriptum to the body of the text - but I was a little startled, almost gobsmacked.

I wasn't quite sure what was so funny. Was it that Jeffrey Gibb Kennett seemed to have changed the spelling of his name in recent years? Was this some kind of clever putdown of good old Geoff?

Or was it merely an indication that the editorial standards at The Punch are entirely absent, and politicians scribbling for free must look after themselves?

Was it a backhander designed to put Geoff the depressive back in his box by reminding him of how he got creamed by Bracksie? And now no one can be bothered to spell his name right.

What precise meaning should we extract from "Funny thing that!"? That it's funny Jeff got done over, and stepped in a cow pat? When all he did was barrack for Carlton and build roads everywhere? And put up strange edifices in the centre of town ...

Somewhere within the tortured analogy, the strange phrasing, I think what Bronnie's getting at is that an unloved politician like Bracksie can easily do over a much loved politician like Jeff Kennett, and so can Tony Abbott ... being an unloved politician he can cream that much loved Chairman Rudd. Except Chairman Rudd isn't that well loved ... and blowed if I can remember that Jeff was in his dying days much loved whatever the polls might have said.

Point, point, what's the cryptic crossword point, since clearly there's only one poll and that's on the day and that's what counts isn't the message.

As usual, I get mired down in the detail, trying to work out who's the more unloved of that unholy quartet, but the amusing thing about reviving memories of Bracksie is that back in September 1999, the election was held on the day that Carlton denied those losers Essendon a place in the grand final (and how do I know this you ask, since watching the Sherrin spin, with its tricks, and lies, and deceptive bounce is more painful than a trip to the dentist, and the simple answer is that I consulted Antony Green, well known local celebrity and reliably spotted on a regular basis around Enmore road, or scribbling in his blog here).

What's worse, as Green notes, when Bracksie did get in, he led a minority government supported by three cross-bench Independent, and he needed a couple of by-elections to get it really cooking.

If we're going to look into the crystal ball, could this be a Bronnie prediction that Tony Abbott will have to rely on the Greens in the Senate?

Oh cruel thrust and parry of the fickle finger of fate. Or as Bronnie might put it, "Funny thing that!"

As well as the loss of Labour in Labor, we can also thank King O'Malley for starting off Canberra by knocking in the first surveyor's peg:

Sheesh, the town looks grand as a drought-ridden sheep paddock.

As well as the standard wiki on the King here, there's a nice summary of the rogue at this Capricorn Coast History site, including a reminder of the wretched Bob Ellis's, and the likeable Michael Boddy's, vaudevillian musical appreciation of the man, The Legend of King O'Malley (and you can catch for the moment a short, audio visual with text, appreciation of the man from ABC Canberra's Stateline here).

O'Malley was a rogue and a fabulist and a charlatan, like any decent politician, and in a way he was our very own all American Elmer Gantry, with quite an appeal to the lady folk.

He wears a lot better than the kind of pious cant trotted out by Bronnie, since he understood that all politics is spin, and he knew how to throw a curve ball. Which strangely reminds me of that Chuck Jones' surreal classic Duck Amuck:


If you're going to spin a lie, spin a big one should be the order of the day! Throw a screw ball.

Now here's a better picture of the man doing brickwork at the naming of Canberra ceremony in 1913:

Now where was I? Oh that's right, still chuckling about Bronnie and her folk wisdom on spin and deception. You tell her King, drop down and rest on her shoulder a second, and whisper in her ear.

Tell her about how you made Canberra as dry as a neo-liberal in a budget session, with barmaids required to be members of the publican's family so that they wouldn't be hired for their physical attributes instead of their prowess in drawing ale (not that anybody would be drawing ale from 1910 to 1928 thanks to the King, and while in Canberra make sure to avoid the suburb named after the King, not to mention the Irish pub named in his dubious honor).

Yep, politics would be a lot duller if it weren't for types like the bald headed Eagle from the Rocky Mountains, determined to defeat diabolical rapscallions, and stamp out drunkeries delivering stagger juice to the masses ... and then of course there are other larger than life types, like Bronwyn Bishop, throwing curve balls in The Punch designed to make the day's tasks a little lighter ...

Finally, a nifty letter, showing King had the penmanship of an erratic spider dipped in ink, a bit like Bob Ellis's skill with a fountain pen! For more on the letter, head off to the National Archives here (click for bigger view).

Ain't politics grand. So much more noble than all those fibbers who play sport with a spin ...