There are certain things you can admit to in public life in Australia and recover from. Troy Buswell had a sexual encounter with a chair. He sniffed it, good and hard. He’s the Treasurer of Western Australia.
If only Queensland Liberal Leader John-Paul Langbroek had suffered a similar lapse of judgment, he could have been the state’s next Premier.
But his admission that he spent his university days ponsing around campus holding a teddy bear after the style of young Lord Sebastian Flyte from the effete period drama Brideshead Revisited is an irrecoverable clanger - especially in a state where haute cuisine means you’ve remembered to put the pineapple ring on top of the ham steak, or a vertical tasting refers to the first 10 Bundys of the evening.
In a startling world exclusive in tomorrow’s edition of QWeekend in The Courier Mail, Langbroek reveals that while studying - you guessed it - law - he was faffing around at UQ with his cuddly bear under his arm.
Probably wearing a cricket jumper too, jauntily knotted over his polo shirt, as he lay back on the lawns outside the refectory listening to Scritti Politti or The Style Council on his Walkman.
Heroically he’s blamed it on his girlfriend, now wife, who he says urged her to carry the bear as his own Brideshead-inspired fashion statement.
Anna Bligh did her best impression of Peter Beattie in a dress yesterday, engaging in a bit of fnarr fnarr about the sexually-charged homoeroticism of the Brideshead set.
She described Lord Sebastian as “a charming but self-destructive and ultimately tragic fictional character’‘, and perhaps a harbinger of Mr Langbroek’s political career.
“As screaming lords might say, it is really rather bothersome,’’ Ms Bligh said.
Smug though she sounded she’s probably right.
Mr Langbroek has no future in Queensland politics and should move to South Australia immediately.
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