Notice the big pockets

Australia has always been generous to those who come here seeking respectability and wealth, as the transported criminals who prospered after being shipped to their innocent new land came to appreciate. It’s a fine tradition — one Foreign Minister Julie Bishop appears keen to honour and to advertise. Hence the Facebook picture above, which Ms Bishop proudly posted this very Saturday morning on her Facebook page after the duo chinwagged about “empowering women”.

Mrs Clinton undoubtedly shares that enthusiasm for the opportunities to be grasped in Australia, as well she might in light of the many hundreds of millions of dollars poured into Clinton charities by Julia Gillard and, more recently, by Ms Bishop herself.

Such warmth! And, perhaps, a just-us-girls briefing as well.

You see, Mrs Clinton will be sitting down with the ABC’s Leigh Sales on Monday for a chat. Being a hugely well paid priestess in the national broadcaster’s temple of truth, the the 7.30 hostess might choose to explore topics like

• the Clintons’ involvement with Haiti
• running the State Department from an unsecured server in the basement bathroom closet
• making 30,000 emails disappear
• the remarkable series of coincidences that saw Bill Clinton pocket enormously lucrative speaking fees from companies and nations whose cases and causes were before the State Department, followed by the subsequent granting of those supplicants’ dearest wishes
• her campaign’s funding of the so-called Russian Dossier

Yes, indeed, there are oodles of fascinating chapters in Mrs Clinton’s past about which Ms Sales might press her guest for straight answers. But sadly, as we learned this week, the ABC is so strapped for cash, so slashed to the muscle by budget cuts that the hard questions might be just too hard to pose for a demoralised and financially depleted outfit with barely a billion dollars a year to bless itself.

But not to worry. The former First Lady is a dab hand at blaming misogyny for her failure to campaign in Michigan, urging Australia to shirtfront China and explaining how Donald Trump’s approach to North Korea is an unmitigated failure and nothing at all like she would have done.

One can almost imagine Ms Bishop pumping a tiny fist and calling “You go, girl!” as her chum fields the tough ones.

Ms Bishop’s Facebook post can be found via this link or the one below.

And by the way, don’t miss the comments thread. Some of the posters would make very good ABC interviewers if, that is, we had a very good ABC or even a tolerably dismal one.

— roger franklin

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