Yes, but who are the real threatened species?
You’d be hard-pressed to decide the most appropriate symbol: snakes in the Coalition ranks or a threatened Labor species from Tasmania.
Threatened Species Day was being observed in Canberra on Monday, which meant politicians with no apparent sense of irony were out among the wildlife in the courtyards of Parliament House.
Labor’s Senator Lisa Singh turned up to scratch the ears of a sleepy koala. Senator Singh, a serial victim of her party’s more ruthless power brokers, is quite a bit more threatened than the koala, it happens.
Despite Senator Singh winning more votes than any other Labor Senator from Tasmania, the union bosses of her state’s factional systems have contrived in recent days to dump her to the virtually unwinnable fourth spot on the party’s Senate ticket.
Her sin? She is not factionally aligned, leaving her unprotected from predators.
Nearby, Coalition MPs, fresh from their latest decapitation of a prime minister, were getting entangled in a snake. It was an olive python, a species that is adept at squeezing the life out of its prey.
The new Environment Minister Melissa Price (this being, of course, a whole new government), Queenslander Luke Howarth, fellow Queenslander and new assistant minister to the Treasurer Stuart Robert, and Victorian Chris Crewther appeared to think this was high fun.
Those with memories recalled that the last federal politician brave enough to fool around with a snake on Threatened Species Day was Barnaby Joyce. That was a year ago. Barnaby was still deputy prime minister. A month later he was declared ineligible to sit in parliament because of dual citizenship and...well...you know the rest.