Mrs Culthorpe before the fall. Outside Parliament.
Dear reader, we continue where we left off, trying to get the bottom of who was responsible for Mrs Culthorpe’s condition post her stint as a parliamentary intern. Read on for another penetrating insight ….
We were getting nowhere with our enquiries, the entire front bench of both parties had gone silent. It was a code of silence. Almost as if everyone knew something, but no one wanted to let the cat out of the bag.
We had to bell the cat…
But with Mrs Culthorpe’s deteriorating condition, we knew we were running out of time,
But what could we do?
In desperation, we decided to set up an identikit and get her to nod. A nod at the very least would give us an indication of who the culprit was.
The identikit proved to be enthralling.
As an intern Mrs Culthorpe soon became victim to an historically nuanced penis wielding oppressor and the toxic culture of parliament.
Good ol fashioned detective work. As we matched profiles, faces and types, bald, moustached and tattooed, Mrs Culthorpe looked passive, no reaction we glumly thought. It was only a matter of time she’d be dead and the culprit, that penis wielding oppressor taking refuge in the corridors of our finest institution would get away scot free.
It was getting harder still, cos as senior detective Losenge-Botham termed it. ‘THIS was an historical crime. And because of that it reeked of Rolf Harris’.
We weren’t quite sure what he meant, but ‘Rolf Harris’ sounded pretty scary, and we knew how long that took to bring the colourful performative picaresque painter to brook.
Still Ces persisted with short faces, long faces, fat faces, happy, evil, friendly till he almost gave up. I was preparing mashed potato and snags all awhile. Poor Mrs Culthorpe just sat impervious in her chair and dribbled. I gathered the potatoes and a big round potato fell outta the bag….. all of a sudden Mrs Culthorpe twitched….
It was a sign. I picked up the potato , she twitched again.
The P.M’s right hand man. Mr Potato Head.
Was it the potato? I pleaded,
Just then the tannoy crackled, it was the midday news we heard just a fragment, but that fragment hit us like a thunderbolt!
‘Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has praised his colleague Christian Porter’s public defence against rape allegations on Wednesday and claimed the attacks against him were driven by politics.
Mr Dutton said he had watched the press conference and described Mr Porter’s performance in front of probing questions from the press, in which he denied all allegations him, as “gutsy”.
High Noon. A lawmaker and a “Gutsy Performance’!
‘Gutsy’ we liked the description, Mr Porter of whom we all respected was the highest law-maker in the land and ‘gutsy’ re-affirmed that in our view he was not a pillow biter, a pansy or a pinko. It was reassuring, almost as if our senior law-man was Gary Cooper in ‘High Noon’ The baddies were out to get him and he was pleading with us, “ Do not forsake me oh my darling’
‘Dutto’ continued his soliloquy, we became transfixed by the courage evinced by out top law-man.
“To watch him stand up there and go through that vilification even with some of those journalists in the room who were just baying for blood, I thought his performance was quite remarkable and he held up the best he could,” Mr Dutton said on 2GB radio’.
So that’s it, we tossed the potato triumphantly in the air, so it was Potato Head we ejaculated….
To our surprise Mrs Culthorpe just looked blank. No potato.
Was it Porter? we asked …
There was a brief flicker of recognition, and though the mouth was fixed with dribble and dementia, she almost smiled, and then, nodded furiously in the negative,
Not Potato Head? Not Porter? Who the hell in damnation has caused this catastrophe?.
Just then, she stopped nodding.
This is what a ‘Gutsy Performance’ looks like
There was an ad break on the telly,
It was an advert for a new time share resort in a place they call ‘Avalon – land’. It boasted credentials of 100 % hygienic, and fully flushable clear glass toilets.
Could this be the link? The airport, the corridors of power? The big man they call ‘Lindsay’ and the inscrutable Mr Whu?
We were no closer but could tell, for women in parliament the situation was dire. And it was a situation that went ‘ right to the top”. And was the abuse suffered by Mrs Culthorpe historical? Just one look ,we could tell that she was history personified.
The ever inscrutable Mr Whu in the High-roller room at Federal Parliament. Could he be the culprit?
The optics weren’t good and she was fading fast. Perhaps Mr Potato Head knew something. In a flash, Ces and I jumped into the Kingswood . ONLY one man could help us out, and it was a man who could see a “Gutsy performance” I ever there was one, Mr Potato head himself. Peter “dutto” Dutton.
Will our intrepid reporters get to the pointy end? And save Mrs Culthorpe’s honour? Find out in our next solenacious episode, ‘three potatoes short of the mash’, or ‘Gutsy performances prevail penultimately’.