The view from the Birdcage: CBD goes to the Melbourne Cup

Federal politicians were doing their duty at Parliament House sitting day on Tuesday, leaving the field clear for their illustrious predecessors.

Birdcage regular and former foreign minister and Australian National University chancellor Julie Bishop arrived at the Lexus marquee after flying in from London, where she met with King Charles at St James’s Palace, celebrating his charity The King’s Trust.

Last week’s meeting with His Majesty occurred just as the scandal engulfing Andrew Mountbatten Windsor (formerly Prince Andrew) continued to grow.

“Nobody said a thing,” she said.

Bishop wore a bright orange Leo Lin dress and Nerida Winter hat to the race day and paid tribute to the event’s “vibrant sense of community”.

“It’s a fabulous way to spend your Tuesday.”

Bishop says she is enjoying her post-political life as an envoy for the United Nations and at the ANU.

“That is a very challenging role but we are making significant progress to ensure that ANU is amongst the best universities in the world,” she says.

This is either incredible chutzpah or skilful reframing, given Bishop was labelled “hostile and arrogant” by ANU academic Liz Allen in tearful evidence before a parliamentary inquiry. Bishop denies the claims.

As if on a school outing away from home, Nine stars including Karl Stefanovic and Sarah Abo decamped from their employer’s marquee to take up position upstairs in the Crown marquee. Not in the exclusive VIP section, mind you, but mixing it with the masses – that is, their viewers.

View from the top

Flemington, like Melbourne, is built on hierarchies. Forget about getting a chauffeured Lexus direct to the racetrack or access to Crown’s top floor VIP marquee. The real status points come from an exclusive invitation extended by Victoria Racing Club chair Neil Wilson to his Committee Room – the best seats in the house.

They were enjoyed by former Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet boss Glyn Davies and his wife, Victorian governor Margaret Gardner and husband Glyn Davies, Tabcorp chief executive Gillon McLachlan and Nine chief executive Matt Stanton.

Tim time

Melbourne Cup argy-bargy broke into question yime in Canberra.

Goldstein MP Tim Wilson, fresh from bleating on Derby Day about parliament sitting during Cup week, displayed a Tony Abbott-like ability to repeat the same message ad nauseum, proclaiming the schedule clash would never take place under a “Wilson government”.

In QT, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese dissed Wilson while referencing opposition leader Sussan Ley’s leadership dramas, declaring “I don’t know about the others behind you, but I reckon you’re pretty safe from this bloke.”

This prompted Wilson to accuse Albo of “punching down on Melbourne”, a line he tried on first with CBD on Monday.

“Albanese just doesn’t understand Melbourne or our way of life,” he said again.

Fit King Keating

You get the sense that Paul Keating wouldn’t be seen dead in a Joy Division T-shirt.

“I bought double-breasted suits back into fashion,” declared the high school dropout from Bankstown, who went on to lead the nation for five years and modernise the Australian economy as treasurer, all while dripped out in luxury Italian tailoring.

Speaking to a packed house at the State Library of NSW on Monday, the 81-year-old Keating maintained the bravado that made him a cult hero of Australian politics despite being prone to the occasional, uncharacteristically Biden-esque ramble

This was hardly helped by interviewer Troy Bramston of The Australian, who, while launching his Gough Whitlam biography, directed much of their hour-long discussion to the minutiae of the 1975 dismissal.

Not a problem for the crowd of mostly grey-haired True Believers, who remain indignant about governor-general Sir John Kerr’s treachery half a century later. Keating, for his part, insisted that had he been in Whitlam’s shoes, he’d have put Kerr in prison.

“If he’d have dismissed me, I would have arrested him,” the former PM said.

The evening was enlivened by Bramston leading Keating through a few of his most infamous zingers (Alexander Downer the “Christmas turkey,” Peter Costello the “low-altitude flyer,” and of course, telling John Hewson ”I want to do you slowly”).

Despite being lionised by much of the Labor base, Keating hasn’t held back in his criticisms of the Albanese government, particularly around foreign policy and the AUKUS pact. Speaking before Anthony Albanese’s meeting with US President Donald Trump, he said he “did give our PM a heap of fighting points in the event Trump turned nasty on him”.

Albanese, it turned out, didn’t need them, and the pair’s meeting was a success, even in Keating’s eyes. Trump, meanwhile, was described by Keating as a “peacenik”.

“He’s not a member of the peace movement, but he has a philosophic commitment against bloodshed and war. It’s not a bad thing to have,” he said.

A rare, uncompromising aesthete in a sea of disingenuous bogan cosplayers, Keating was at his most eloquent discussing his love of high art – the symphonies of Gustav Mahler and JMW Turner’s paintings.

“It’s the more superior world,” Keating said of the arts. “That [art] always took precedence for me over the political stuff. I did the political stuff as a sideline.”

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