Bill Shorten, laureate

During his extended, two-day turn on the stand, Bill Shorten had much to say — so much, in fact, that Commissioner Dyson Heydon admonished him to set aside the evasions of a congenital lawyer and just answer questions. Amid all that verbiage there were, however, moments when talk of mushrooms elicited the Opposition leader’s muse.

From the transcript of yesterday’s proceedings, available via the link at the foot of this post, the poetry of evasion:

Mushroom Militia

You’ve got pickers
Who jealousy guard
Access to their sheds.

By that I mean, you know,
They were in a rhythm,
They were working.

They were making relatively good money,
(certainly for farm workers,
but the piece rate was injuring people)

Spores in the Belly

When we talk about drastic reduction,
What I want to do is keep
Mushroom picking alive
In Mernda and Yarrambat.
That would be my gut reaction.

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