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Usman Khawaja has never been afraid to take a shot at the boundary.
The Australian cricketer had made the trip to Canberra to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and to call for further action on gambling advertising. But standing at the crease of a parliamentary press conference on Thursday morning, he called out Anthony Albanese for cancelling on him.
"I'm going to be honest, I was a little bit bummed by it," he said, adding he had a lot of "love and a lot of respect" for the prime minister.
A text message was sent. A scheduling conflict was to blame. An agenda was quickly shuffled and the cricketer walked into the prime minister's office for a meeting shortly after.
"We have a lot of respect for Usman and we listen to him on these issues, as you'd expect," Treasurer Jim Chalmers said after the meeting. The pair, who are friends, had met earlier that morning. Chalmers joined him for the "good discussion" with Albanese.
Khawaja has long been outspoken on the crisis in Gaza. Two years ago he was banned from wearing shoes with the phrase "all lives are equal" during a test in Pakistan. He later sold the shoes to raise funds for UNICEF.
"The best way to understand Usman Khawaja is that he is a great cricketer, but that's not his best quality. He's a wonderful humanitarian and a very fine Australian," Chalmers added.
Khawaja spent much of the day with Australian sport star-turned-senator David Pocock. He also went as far to reveal he voted Labor at the last election.
It begged the question, could he have his eyes set on one of the remaining few Brisbane seats that Labor doesn't hold?
"Never say never," he cooly told ABC's Afternoon Briefing.
A meeting is in the eye of the beholder
So what is a meeting, really?
That was the question being asked on Thursday after American defence officials added to the already curious series of events
that surrounded Defence Minister Richard Marles's hastily arranged trip to the United States.
On Sunday, the minister declared he was going to meet with his counterpart Pete Hegseth. But as the week dragged on, the timing couldn't be pinned down. It was okay though, we were told, because Marles was going to meet with Vice President JD Vance.
Then the picture of the three men dropped on social media.
There's a millennial saying, "pics or it didn't happen". The snap screamed "see, I told you".
But then a statement from a US defence official outright denied there was a meeting. They chalked it up to a "happenstance encounter" as if the two men had crossed paths on the street instead of the White House.
A follow up statement from the Pentagon painted a different picture again. Chief spokesperson Sean Parnell said not only was it a meeting but it was "coordinated in advance".
When asked for a please explain by the Coalition in question time, Marles said the Pentagon had "made it clear" there was a meeting.
"Presumably those opposite think the photos that have been published were magically generated by AI," he said.
A return to the net zero whack-a-mole
For a moment there this week, Sussan Ley's control of the opposition (or lack of) threatened to be the story.
The never-ending sideshow of the Coalition's will-they-won't-they net zero commitment bubbled over in the party room this week after the Queensland Liberal National Party resolved to formally dump the emissions target.
Ley declined to go into details about what was said in the meeting. But lucky for us, her colleagues are not afraid to hit the phones and give hungry reporters their take on what took place
.
Frustrations with the time frame of the process being led by energy spokesperson Dan Tehan emerged as some MPs put on the pressure for a fast-tracked debate on net zero. They also want a plan to respond to the government's 2035 targets.
Keep in mind, this is all happening at the same time Labor keeps allowing debate
on Nationals backbencher Barnaby Joyce's private members' bill to repeal the emissions target.
The opposition leader's handle on the press conference teetered. It was far from Ley's best, or most convincing, performance.
But rather fortuitously for her, the government was at the same time taking its own deep breath, preparing to break the bombshell news that ASIO had accused Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of directing two antisemitic attacks on Australian soil.
The news wiped any conversation about net zero off the front pages. But much like a whack-a-mole, when one internal division is pushed down another rears its head. This time on national security.
While Shadow Foreign Minister Michaelia Cash was dialling up the outrage, Home Affairs Minister Andrew Hastie
was softly spoken as he conceded the Coalition was reluctant to list the IRGC back when it was in government.
As Insiders host David Speers wrote this week, Hastie hasn't been afraid to chart his own course since the Coalition's election drubbing.
He's contradicted Cash in his statements on Israel's plan to take over Gaza City. He also took issue with Shadow Defence Minister Angus Taylor's rhetoric on Australia's commitments to defend Taiwan.
But come question time, Ley adopted elements of Cash's political attack on the government and questioned why Labor hadn't acted sooner as recommended by a Senate inquiry two years ago
.
A house of cards
As the bells tolled to mark the end of the day, things were only getting started in the parliament's Great Hall. The Midwinter Ball is an annual event where politicians, reporters and business executives put aside their differences for one night to dance and be merry in the good name of charity.
It's as close as Australia gets to the White House Correspondents' dinner and was themed this year after the TV show House of Cards — which ended back in 2018.
The prime minister may have taken the theme a little too literally as he made a costume change mid-event.
Albanese ditched the tuxedo jacket in favour of a button down shirt adorned with the Medicare logo as he stepped up to the mic for his off-the record speech. It was a tongue in cheek reference to the stunt he became renowned for during the campaign.
He wasn't the only one to poke fun at the (overused) statement. Sussan Ley made her own jokes about it too. Meanwhile, the hosts of the evening, the Betoota Advocate, chucked illegal cigarettes (or as they called them Mark Butler's "lung lollies") into the crowd.
But by Thursday the message of pollie-journo collegiality was thrown out the window when Father of the House Bob Katter waved his fist in a reporter's face
for asking a question about his Lebanese heritage. |
