Thursday morning was quite the juggle for the PM's office.
With the Gaza city of Rafah – currently hosting more than a million Palestinians, the majority displaced by months of conflict – under imminent threat of Israeli ground attack, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese issued a joint statement with New Zealand PM Christopher Luxon and Canada's Justin Trudeau, calling on Israel not to proceed.
Having initially defended Israel's right to strike back after the October 7 massacre in Israel last year, the government has increasingly raised concerns about the scale of the retaliatory attack in Gaza.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong declared such an attack "unjustifiable" and the joint statement of prime ministers deemed the prospect of a Rafah attack as "catastrophic".
Minutes after that joint statement, an alert pinged out to media for an afternoon photo opportunity at The Lodge commemorating a landmark bilateral dialogue at a Canberra restaurant on Wednesday night, after which Australia's prime minister locked down the third phase of his personal relationship reforms, popping the question to his partner Jodie Haydon.
Yes, the PM is getting married, after proposing on Valentine's Day with a ring he designed himself, as the PM's office duly briefed. You can guess which event got more coverage in the media.
Haydon has been on the scene for a while, of course, though public interest in her has remained a modest and niche affair, as evidenced when you type "Is Jodie Haydon…" into Google and the most commonly asked question turns out to be "…related to Bill Hayden?" Oh dear.
Anyway, Haydon has made it through stage one (dating), stage two (state dinner at the White House) and now has committed to stage three, seemingly undaunted by her beloved's recently-confirmed unreliability when it comes to explicit promises around the stage-three mark. Who can disapprove of love? No-one, of course, and the first PM to wed in The Lodge is indeed a story.
For better or worse
While it is not yet confirmed whether "love, honour and obey" will appear fully in the couple's marriage vows, the "for better and for worse" bit is broadly implied. And former deputy PM and Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce, also on his second marriage, has of late been exploring the "for worse" elements.
Joyce has confirmed he "made a big mistake" by mixing prescription drugs and alcohol, a decision which ultimately led to his discovery by a smart-phone-bearing amateur documentarist, who captured Mr Joyce lying on a footpath drunkenly cursing into his phone.
National Party leader David Littleproud has urge Joyce to take leave, and Albanese initially declined to comment saying the incident was Joyce's own business, though more recently he pivoted to a "please explain". And elsewhere around the parliament, political women wondered what would happen to them if they were found goat-faced on their backs in a Canberra street late at night.
This very week, the third episode of Nemesis reminded us of the successful female chief executive who was sacked on the floor of parliament for being so successful that she gave her executives watches as a bonus. Lidia Thorpe, of course, was told to have a good hard look at herself for getting in an argument outside a strip club. Double standards? Patricia Karvelas considers the point.
With Taylor Swift's arrival in Australia, it's worth reflecting that the public SPANKING that lady received recently for not being more gushingly effusive towards Celine Dion as she accepted her recent Grammy wasn't all that much milder than the reaction to Will Smith actually decking Chris Rock at the Academy Awards.
Swift's muscular boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce, meanwhile, is reported to have been so smashed at the post-Super Bowl victory parade that he seized the microphone and attempted a Garth Brooks song, bellowing "Blame it all on my roots!" tunelessly before being helped away by teammates.
Mmm. Probably a catchy tune for the serial misbehavers of the parliament, but hard to see Taylor getting away with that kind of thing.
Loading...Inside the Big House
If you had the misfortune of watching Question Time this week you'd have been treated to new levels of banality when it comes to Dorothy Dixers from government benches.
Backbencher after backbencher after backbencher had the (humiliating) task of asking different ministers variants of the same question: Minister, how good will our stage 3 tax cuts be for (insert ministerial portfolio here)?
The man who now oversees QT, Speaker Milton Dick, once had very firm public views of Canberra's daily theatrics. Dick was the deputy chair of a report that essentially wanted to see Dixers abandoned. It, of course, didn't change because governments of the day like to use them as a way of selling their agenda.
Senate estimates – the committee process that bestows upon senators several times a year the opportunity to ask public servants anything they like – is generally WAY more productive than Question Time. You actually get answers. And some of them are delightfully random.
Truly left-field highlights include a male staff member urinating on a colleague at the APVMA (most dramatic toilet-related incident since Scott Morrison did his nut about gender neutral dunnies in his department), and the Fair Work official with a penchant for "scantily clad" handpainted figurines in his office.
And of course, genuinely shocking reveals on consultancy firm tax scandals, dodgy grants painted and adorned in his office right through to a thorough interrogation of car park grants, sporting club funding and consultant tax scandals. Plus the reliable bonus of updates on the wine cellar at The Lodge and Kirribilli (tipping a champagne spike in the next round, given the PM's news).
Here are some highlights from this week's Red Interrogation Room Of Pain:
- Finance Minister Katy Gallagher confirmed in Senate estimates that $40 million has been set aside for an advertising campaign about the tax rewrite her government swore blind it would never undertake. The effects of which do not require ordinary taxpayers to take any action at all, just submit their tax returns as usual. Forty million advertising your broken promise? Confidence levels are set to HIGH, evidently.
- Again, while in the green-carpeted House of Representatives the Coalition battered away at Immigration Minister Andrew Giles over last year's release of detainees with criminal records, the solid information that came from Estimates came from Team Red in Estimates, where it emerged that nearly 40 people released from immigration detention have already had their ankle bracelets taken off. We also got an insight into the crimes they'd committed previously.
- Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy, appearing at estimates, reported that household spending was at 15-year lows, with inflation and interest rates eating away at their budgets. Relief is in sight, he argued, as he warmly credited the RBA for its handling of rates. (NB: Kennedy sits on the RBA so there is a slight "Good job, Angus!" vibe to his vote of approval.)
- Over at the Department of Agriculture, which went broke last year, an eye-popping development first revealed by the ABC's Kath Sullivan nearly a year ago, staff have been banned from travelling for work. This is not an edict that applies to FIFO secretary Adam Fennessy, who is based in Brisbane and is entitled to 12 business-class return flights to Canberra a year, estimates heard. But fear not, Fennessy avers that he "prefers economy" and opts for walking instead of hopping in a ComCar. Canberra is a flat city, which makes this choice even more economical.
- And without wanting to mention urination AGAIN, staff at Services Australia have alleged they can face disciplinary action for taking toilet breaks that last more than five minutes. No, we're not making this up.