Tv Friendship Forgotten In Bear-pit

The Age

Thursday November 13, 2008

KATHARINE MURPHY

BEFORE the election returned John Howard to a quieter life in Wollstonecraft, Joe Hockey and Kevin Rudd used to share a convivial slot on breakfast television.

For five years Rudd and Hockey were cornflakes buddies on Sunrise. Now they attempt to glower at each other menacingly over the dispatch box in Federal Parliament.

In these exchanges Rudd generally does a nice line in pale and aloof. Hockey has only two modes: avuncular Joe and angry Joe.

Yesterday, Hockey inquired how Rudd was managing his disturbing penchant for serial conflicts given the Prime Minister had simultaneously declared war on drugs, inflation, unemployment, whalers, disadvantage, downloads, pokies, doping in sport and bankers' salary deals. "Prime Minister, how goes the war on everything?" bellowed Angry Joe.

Above the predictable partisan ruckus that ensued, the clear ringing tones of Labor backbencher Daryl Melham carried effortlessly across the chamber. "We're on this side and you are on that side. That's how it goes," said Melham with a languid grin rather like the Cheshire Cat.

Rudd, too, lost some of his ghostly pallor and grinned.

While the House of Representative bear-pit thundered on, upstairs, Family First senator Steve Fielding was doing his best to preserve the manly tone of yesterday's proceedings by attempting to set up a select committee to probe the acutely embarrassing particulars of the incident now referred to as "the G20 episode". (You know the one, where some helpful soul told a newspaper that George Bush didn't know what the G20 was during a recent telephone conversation with Rudd.)

Whether he will succeed in that attempt is as yet unclear, since routine inquiries established the mercurial Victoria senator had briefed the media before his fellow senators.

The foreshadowed inquiry could see newspaper folks and Rudd and his staff called to account before the grand inquisitors of the red chamber - but probably not, on balance of probabilities, George W. himself. "Let's be reasonable here," chuckled the good-natured senator.

© 2008 The Age

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