On the QT: Substitute teacher edition

Today’s Question Time was an odd affair. Firstly it was the day after the Press Gallery’s midwinter ball, and thus everyone was feeling a bit seedy and the mood was a tad subdued as the day after the night before usually are. Secondly it was a Thursday and such days always lead to pretty pointless QT’s as half the house are already on the way to Canberra airport in their mind. And thirdly both Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott were absent today due to their attendance at the funeral of Sapper Jacob Moerland who was killed in action in Afghanistan, and so it was Julia Gillard versus Julie Bishop.

Now often when the deputies are on show it can be quite interesting – it was always interesting when on those rare occasions Costello got to sit in the big chair, and in 2008 when Julia was acting for Rudd while he was overseas many were watching to see how she fared. 

The problem with today though was Abbott was also absent and so it wasn’t really a fair fight. No one seriously thinks Julia will challenge Rudd before the election, people already know how she fares (with ease) and no one will ever again think that Julie Bishop will ever challenge anyone ever for leadership of the Liberal Party. So in effect both were the equivalent of the substitute teacher – everyone knows they’re not going to be the ones in charge when the important things are being done, everyone knows the real teacher will be back next week, and everyone pretty much treats the day as a day off. 

And so it was. Yeah Julie Bishop gave her hair a massive fluffing up so that she appeared to have just walked off the set of Dynasty circa 1984, but other than asking first question she did bugger all. 

In fact it was all pretty inconsequential. The Libs had a bit of a go at Simon Crean trying to get him to say he wasn’t consulted on the RSPT. He said he was. And really other than that to be honest I couldn’t be bothered paying too much attention. I mean it was so lame that the Libs were even asking Tanya Plibersek about the impact of the RSPT on housing. They asked Swan only two questions – and one was a joke by that walking embarrassment to the 21010 Liberal Party, Bronwyn Bishop. Tanner got none. And it was all a bit of a snooze. Peter Dutton got booted (nobody cared). Perhaps I too was affected by the substitute teacher aspect, because I can’t really be bothered doing a proper report.

So let’s sit back and enjoy some US politics, with Jon Stewart showing us that the more things change…