The surprise party rumbles on, and only a shameless act will end it
Annabel CrabbTony Abbott promised us peace and quiet, but instead we've endured a procession of shocks.
It's been three months now, just about, since the Australian people elected a government on the specific assurance there would be "no surprises, and no excuses".
And yet, we jolt awake each morning, breathing shallowly, every muscle tensed, wondering what the day might bring.
Surprise! Maybe we're not that "open for business"!
Surprise! We've only got Malaysia to go and then we'll have Regional Diplomatic Standoff Yahtzee!
Surprise! It turns out that a century of feminism was wrong, and you CAN build a modern cabinet with hardly any chicks!
Surprise! We're not turning around the boats, after all! (Not in the turny sense, anyway. Or the aroundy sense.)
Surprise! Scott Morrison's next press conference will be in 23 seconds, at the top of Sydney's Centrepoint Tower! And unfortunately, the lifts are broken!
Surprise! We are so intractably opposed to debt and deficit that we're having $200 billion more of the first and another as-yet-unquantified dollop of the second!
Surprise! Have a look at what's turned up in the fine print of the schools funding policy! The phrase "unity ticket" might not mean exactly what you think!
No wonder the Australian voting public, craving peace and rest, remains as jittery as a retired greyhound at a firing range.
Perhaps Bill Shorten is staying above the pun fray, having been targeted so relentlessly by this new government with nicknames such as "Electricity Bill" and "Short-Change Shorten" that he has decided discretion is the better part of valour.
Otherwise, one imagines, he would have started calling the Liberals "The Surprise Party" weeks ago.
To be absolutely fair, the Coalition's surprises haven't, so far, had quite the drama or the amplitude of those delivered across the lives of the previous Labor governments.
"Surprise! This guy isn't your prime minister any more!" is historically hard to beat.
"Surprise! We ARE having a carbon tax!" and, "Surprise! It turns out there won't be a surplus after all!" are properly regarded as immortal.
And, "Surprise! Our party's former national president staged a million-dollar rip-off against tens of thousands of poorly paid workers whose interests he was supposed to represent!" is still boundlessly stupefying, no matter how much we normalise it through group discussion and court reporting.
But what would you do if you were Tony Abbott, presiding over a "no-surprises" policy that has - in three short months - turned into a display of heart-starters competitive with anything the defibrillation industry could offer?
Well, personally, I'd just go nuclear and formally redefine the word "surprise".
It worked for Julia Gillard, who made a lengthy speech last year accusing Abbott of "misogyny" and was immediately rewarded by the Macquarie Dictionary lowering the bar on what "misogyny" actually meant.
If Abbott could simply convince the world's definitional authorities to move from the literal definition of "surprise" (an unexpected event, or piece of information) to the ironic definition ("Well. Surprise, surprise. Another politician turns out to be full of it"), this whole thing would become a total non-issue.
And whose should be the face of this definitional campaign?
I can't believe you even asked that. Christopher Pyne, of course: the only person in Australia who could be given the job of selling the wholesale dismantlement of a popular education funding reform, and several days into the job find himself not only enjoying the assignment, but actually making progress.
For the past week Pyne has acted exactly like a kid who's been caught red-handed smoking out the back of the bike sheds.
He is charming, entirely unfazed and possessed of an inexhaustible supply of arguments as to why he is not guilty.
"I don't know what you're talking about, frankly. The school rules, with which I am extremely familiar, prohibit the smoking of cigarettes on school property. And I am of course bound by the school rules, and have never said I wouldn't be. Why would I say that, anyway? I am a member of this school, and proud of my flawless record of conduct. But it's equally clear that a student's conduct off school property is unregulated. And the land area behind the bike sheds is currently subject to a disputed ownership claim, lodged by me half an hour ago, and it is a universally accepted principle at common law that no conclusions about jurisdiction can properly be drawn about territory thus encumbered, don't you agree?"
He is relentlessly convincing, and yet the smell of smoke is overwhelming. (Obviously, this analogy is historically inaccurate. Pyne did not go to school at all; he was delivered by midwives straight into the hands of the Global Institute for Shamelessness, whence he graduated summa cum lauda as a young man, holding degrees in advanced audacity and flagrant disregard, and immediately became the member for Sturt).
Perhaps surprising is the new unsurprising.
In which case, prepare to be bored.
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