Liberal MP jokes that Advance Australia Fair is the ‘best Welcome to Country'
'Rebecca, thank you for the best Welcome to Country that I am sure has been delivered,' McKenzie said, to laughter.
While the aside landed successfully on the night, such gags may not travel as well beyond Portsea.
When contacted afterwards, McKenzie told CBD she would not comment. 'It was a private event.'
But not when CBD is in da house, Zoe!
McKenzie, a former industrial lawyer and Australia Council for the Arts board member, is facing a stiff challenge from local teal independent Ben Smith, who is swamping the area with volunteers and corflutes, forcing the Liberal Party to spend big, while Dutton's unfavourability is rising in the state. One McKenzie supporter at the garden event told CBD. 'I think Zoe has a fight on her hands.'
And the controversy over the fringe literary salon continues. One of the other garden party speakers, sculptor Lisa Roet, got in touch to say she did not know that McKenzie would be speaking.
'It was touted to me as a casual drink and chat in celebration of the writers festival. I am apolitical,' she told CBD.
Roet said that she had no idea the garden event was being perceived as an anti-festival or a Liberal Party event, and she remained a 'staunch supporter' of the official festival.
She added: 'I am an avid supporter of Indigenous rights and have always supported Welcome to Country ceremony. I believe it is an important part of our reconciliation process as a nation.'
Down Sorrento way, emotions are running hot.
Front row plus one
Governor-General Sam Mostyn 's barrister husband, Simeon Beckett, SC, has impeccable progressive credentials, with a specialisation in human rights and anti-discrimination law, and having served as a counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse.
So Beckett might be horrified to discover that he's ended up on Donald Trump 's Truth Social, the media platform created by the US president back before big tech decided to bend the knee last November.
Beckett appears in a video of Trump attending Pope Francis ' funeral in the Vatican City at the weekend, seen in the background whipping out his phone to take a video of the passing commander-in-chief like an enthusiastic fan boy.
Although to be fair, we'd probably have done the same. We asked Government House for some more details, but didn't hear back.
Beckett attended the Pope's funeral along with Mostyn, who represented Australia at an event thrumming with world leaders and swiftly overshadowed, in geopolitical terms, by a brief meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, their first since that heated exchange in the White House earlier this year.
Pre-polling day
SPOTTED: At the pre-polling station on High Street, Kew, on Saturday, early voters ran the gauntlet of volunteers to enter the empty shopfront which used to be an Australia Post office.
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Aspiring Kooyong candidate Amelia Hamer stood yarning with state Hawthorn MP John Pesutto, the former state Liberal leader facing potential bankruptcy after losing the Moira Deeming defamation case, which would oust him from parliament.
Reportedly, Liberal powerbrokers are lining up to replace Pesutto with Hamer if she fails to take Kooyong from teal independent Monique Ryan.
Hamer recently told The Age she regarded Pesutto as a great local member. One can only wonder what the two discussed on a dark and damp Saturday afternoon. Presumably, it's a tad too early for handover notes.
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