Last updated: December 27, 2014


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A small matter of ministerial confusion

LIBERAL frontbencher Marise Payne suspects changes the federal government is making to indigenous employment programs could actually cut jobs.

So in the Senate on Tuesday she asked Joe Ludwig about it in his capacity - or so she thought - as the minister representing the minister for indigenous employment.

A mild kerfuffle ensued. Chris Evans, the government leader, thought Payne had the wrong minister. It might, he conceded, be him.

However, he thought it was Penny Wong who speaks for Julie Collins, the lower house minister who rejoices in the titles of Minister for Community Services, Indigenous Employment and Economic Development and Minister for the Status of Women.

The latest ministerial representation list was consulted and, sure enough, Wong it was.

She started, with unusual candour, by admitting that she had to check on just who it was she was representing.

There followed, through the original question and two supplementaries, lots of consulting hastily unearthed briefing notes, interspersed with retreats behind lots of "I am adviseds" and platitudes, such as the imperative to end Aboriginal disadvantage.

It was a minor masterpiece in obscuring the obvious, that she didn't know anything about the matter. And why, in the circumstances, should she?

What was perhaps odder was the opposition sitting through it all more or less silently.

In that ruder and cruder other place, the House of Representatives, a floundering minister would be savaged.

Moreover, the opposition had no reason to be forgiving towards Wong.

Her main representational role is to speak for the treasurer, a job that she carries out with relish.

Wong was at it before the indigenous jobs hoo-hah emerged, trumpeting the IMF's latest rather flattering economic outlook for Australia before turning on Joe Hockey for thinking our economy was flatlining.

"In the world of Hockeynomics, a growing economy is flatlining," Wong sneered.

That's usually about as nasty as things get in the Senate, though NSW Liberal frontbencher Concetta Fierravanti-Wells went one better (or lower) when she suggested Bob Carr was compromised by the allegations of corruption against Eddie Obeid in the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

The foreign minister's reply could scarcely have been briefer: "Mr President, no."

And as Carr stepped down as NSW premier more than seven years ago, Fierravanti-Wells did seem to be attacking with a very long bow.