Wyatt Roy

“@Marty yeah that gear was craaazy, can Dezza get anymore of it? #bestnightever.”

That’s the kind of crap that’s going to get some poor MP de-throned in twenty years time.

Journalists and political nasties are going to have a field day in 2030, with millions of Facebook photos, status updates and tweets to trawl through.

Continue reading "One day only the most boring will prosper in politics" »

After a bruising election campaign and an outbreak of acrimony over forming government and the Speaker and Deputy Speaker, MPs and Senators combined yesterday for what looked like a cross between high colonial ceremony and a day of awkward team-building exercises.

“Parliament: the day in pictures” isn’t always a theme for the most compelling set of images, which underlines just how hard the political photographers have to work to get something interesting to illustrate the news. But the pictures from yesterday’s opening of the 43rd Parliament merit it. Just take the first shot above of the new member for Bennelong, John Alexander, being sworn in with his mascot the youngest MP ever elected, the new member for Longman, Wyatt Roy.

Below are some of the other choice shots from News Ltd photographers Ray Strange, Gary Ramage and Kym Smith from around Parliament House yesterday. They’re numbered for easy reference so you can add your captions and quote suggestions in the comments below.

Continue reading "Parliament opening day photos: your commentary" »

The battle of Longman is being fought by a grumpy old bearded man who appears irritated by everything, and a ridiculously younger man – 39 years younger to be precise - who looks so juvenile that he might celebrate his victory by getting his Ps or buying a six-pack with a fake ID.

Longman is held by a couple of thousand votes by Labor’s Jon Sullivan, 59, a veteran politician who spent nine years in state politics before knocking off former Aboriginal Affairs Minister Mal Brough in the 2007 Queensland Ruddslide.

Sullivan faces the galling and very real prospect of losing this 1.9 per cent marginal seat to 20-year-old Wyatt Roy, a baby-faced political assassin who has the frame of a jockey, who only recently finished his HSC, and was working on Mum and Dad’s strawberry farm until winning preselection for Queensland’s rebranded Liberal-National Party.

Continue reading "Doogie Howser and Captain Cranky punch on in paradise" »