Lightning bolt leaves Rudd lost for words
The Age
Wednesday August 12, 2009
DIVINE intervention? Catastrophic climate change? Call it what you might, but a higher power descended upon Parliament and, glory be, silenced no less than Kevin Rudd himself.There he was in full-tilt burble, triumphantly citing surveys showing business confidence rebounding, which, ahem, could only be attributed to his own government's fabulously foresighted handling of the economy. Possibly aware that this could seem a trifle immodest, Mr Rudd veered to his well-trodden escape path, warning that that there were still bumps in the road and we weren't out of the woods yet.He was right. Suddenly, the lights were extinguished and the House of Representatives was plunged into gloom. Worse for the Prime Minister €” and mercifully, perhaps, for the rest of us €” his microphone failed, choking him off mid-sentence.A bolt of lightning hurled from a turbulent Canberra sky had blown a parliamentary fuse. Precisely two downlights were left, illuminating only a tiny clutch of National Party MPs, climate change shilly-shallies all. A miracle, surely.As Mr Rudd subsided into his seat, a band of parliamentary wags struck up."You didn't pay your power bills, Swannie," roared Opposition frontbencher Peter Dutton at Treasurer Wayne Swan."You've run out of money," chimed in Mr Dutton's colleague Steven Ciobo."You shouldn't have signed Kyoto," cried West Australian Liberal Don Randall.Mr Speaker sought to calm the hubbub in his House of Darkness, threatening, without the aid of amplification, that "I will yell and I will clear the chamber of those who appear to be frightened of the dark".Fat chance. Labor backbencher and career wit Daryl Melham couldn't resist. "You glow in the dark, Bronnie," he boomed at Bronwyn Bishop, resplendent even in the murk in a vibrant red outfit, a string of pearls and a giant floral arrangement in her lapel setting off her signature bouffant.Mr Rudd, discovering that his microphone had found new life, joined the fray. "I gather that outside this place there is currently storm and tempest," he said. "Can I just say that it pales into insignificance compared with the storm and tempest which rages within the ranks of the Liberal Party and the National Party. And, Mr Speaker, there is more light in this chamber now than is currently being brought to bear on the policy on climate change on the part of those opposite."The Opposition's "greener, cheaper, smarter" emissions trading model, Mr Rudd proclaimed, was nothing but "a rolled gold, unreconstructed Liberal Party magic pudding from central casting".Little wonder, really, that a higher power sent a thunderstorm to shut him up.
© 2009 The Age
Share This