Matt Canavan and Gerard Henderson. Witness K and Bernard Collaery. Boris Johnson.

Sadly, Gadfly’s invitation to hear Minister for Minerals Matteo Canavani at Chuckles Henderson’s Institute got lost in the mail.

It promised to be a spellbinding evening, with the topic “The Link Between Pope Pius XI and Bob

Brown”. The theological possibilities are intriguing, especially when you consider Pius XI – formerly Achille Ratti – and the regime of Benito Mussolini had a lot in common.

David Kertzer, who specialises in the politics and religious history of Italy, says that much of the ideology of Fascism drew heavily on the Catholic traditions of authoritarianism, intolerance and dislike of the Jews.

Pius XI was distressed over the state of women’s clothing, particularly backless ball gowns and gym togs, while allowing himself to be shamelessly manipulated by Il Duce into supporting the Fascist regime.

How did this dovetail with Bob Brown, wondered puzzled members of Chuckles’ institute? Was Bob similarly upset by scantily clad women? From what Gadfly can gather from the event, Matteo thought Brown was a busybody who meddled in the Adani mine business, which “really, really frustrates people and leads to very poor decisions to boot”.

Pius XI all over again.

Message corrupted

Can anyone work out what the leader of the opposition, Antonio Albanese, is on about? The corruption question has him meeting himself coming around corners.

Last week, the Granny Herald reported that Albo was part of a troika from Labor’s politburo that before the election opposed the idea of a national anticorruption commission on the grounds it would “make it very hard to govern”.

Sensible Penny Wong and grizzled hardliner Tony Burke were among those from the leadership buro who expressed concerns about their ability to govern without corruption. Senator Stephen Conroy – who went on to a stellar career as a gambling lobbyist – was also reportedly in the anti anti-corruption commission camp.

Fingers were pointed to the experience of New South Wales’s Independent Commission Against Corruption, which the party’s right wing declared to be “disastrous”. If being extremely effective is the same as being disastrous, then ICAC has been disastrous, certainly for politicians of both major stripes.

Two days later Albanese didn’t think the criminal associations of Crown casino were worth investigation by a parliamentary committee. For Albo, the very limited ambit of a probe by the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity is sufficient. The whole saga was a timely reminder of how deeply Crown’s tentacles run into the Labor Party.

And please don’t mention politicians who walk out of cabinet into lobbying gigs, or lobby public servants for community interests that accidentally coincide with their own.

The ALP leader got into his famous barbwire fence straddle, saying that on one hand he has never seen proved “any evidence of direct corruption” during his time in parliament, while adding that’s “one of the reasons why we need a national integrity commission”.

And Albanese operates in an environment where favours are bought and sold every day.

As independent MP Andrew Wilkie put it: “Corruption seems to be the word we don’t utter in this place.”

Security tsk

National security is defined as anything with a red stamp that says “top secret” or any other phrase that sounds vague and scary. In truth, national security should be about protecting Strayans, as Peter Dutton calls them, from internal or external attacks to life, limb and infrastructure.

The prosecution of Witness K and Bernard Collaery in Canberra is nothing to do with national security at all. It’s to do with government embarrassment at being sprung conducting illegal activities in our neighbourhood. In the process, we