More evidence, if it was needed, that the pandemic is far from over. Billionaire blowhard Clive Palmer and his offsider Craig Kelly are still promoting their quack cures, importing controversial overseas doctors to back their dubious claims, and claiming victimhood when anybody declines to facilitate their schemes.

It’s all just so 2020.

Craig Kelly is still promoting COVID “cures”.Credit:John Shakespeare

Kelly, the former Liberal MP for the Sydney seat of Hughes, has been on the socials promoting a series of conferences put on by Palmer’s United Australia Party this month on COVID-19 vaccines in Victoria, NSW and Queensland featuring some controversial overseas talent.

The headline act is US physician Peter McCullough, who has pushed hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as treatments for the virus – sound familiar? – and made some pretty out-there claims about vaccines, and who has been sacked from jobs and stripped of professorships over his views.

Can’t say anything these days, can you?

It’s likely that other speakers on the bill, Pierre Kory – another US doctor who says ivermectin is a “wonder drug” with “miraculous effectiveness” against COVID-19 – and John Leake, McCullough’s co-author of The Courage to Face Covid-19, which rails against the “Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex”, US Federal agencies, the Bill Gates foundation and others, will continue in the same vein.

Worth sixty bucks – general admission – of anybody’s money, we say.

But it looks like Kelly suspects ticketing giant Eventbrite of standing in the way of the truth on COVID.

Kelly, who did not respond to a request for comment, told his followers on Monday that “Eventbrite removed their service and tried to disrupt our efforts. Clive Palmer and the UAP will not be deterred from bringing these important events to the Australian public.”

Eventbrite did not respond to our inquiries either, but a UAP spokesman told us it wasn’t quite as dramatic as Kelly was hinting at.

“They simply withdrew from the ticketing arrangement,” the man from the Palmer party said. “They have been replaced, and all tickets are nearly sold out.”

HOURS OF POWER

The politico-media bubble is enthralled at the workplace dispute that has become public this week between teal independent MP Monique Ryan and her chief of staff – of six months’ standing – marriage equality campaigner and social media powerhouse Sally Rugg.

To recap: Rugg is taking Ryan and the Commonwealth to the Federal Court, alleging the Kooyong MP tried to sack her after she refused to work “unreasonable” hours, leaving many with experience in such roles perplexed to say the least – outrageous hours are kind of a KPI in political offices.

So, what exquisite timing for one of the big cheeses of Victoria’s union movement, Trades Hall secretary Luke Hilakari, to give his comrades working in Labor government ministerial offices a pep talk in which the eight-hour day got an honourable mention.

Luke Hilakari: Eight-hour day advocate.Credit:Simon Schluter

But Hilakari hosed down any suggestion that he was fomenting industrial strife in the corridors of power, just reminding the political adviser class what their party’s forebears had stood for.

“It was about grounding people in the labour movement’s history,” the Trades Hall secretary told CBD.

“We were the first place in the world to have the eight-hour day, the first place in the British Empire to have a Labour member elected to parliament, so you can take some inspiration from what our forbears achieved.”

The gathering at Zinc in Federation Square was also addressed by Victoria Chamber of Commerce and Industry boss Paul Guerra, no mate of the union movement, who reminded the government types of the importance of keeping business onside.

OUT OF OFFICE

The Greens used to say, back in Richard Di Natale’s day, that they “do politics differently”. The slogan – along with Di Natale – has long since been retired, but the party’s new state MP for Richmond, Gabrielle di Vietri, is keeping the dream alive.

Consternated inner-east locals have noticed that di Vietri has broken with the long-standing practice of her predecessor Richard Wynne and opened her electorate office on Gertrude Street in Fitzroy just four days a week – Monday to Thursday.

Not only is the former mayor of Yarra doing this aspect of politics differently to the vast majority of the state’s lower house MPs, she’s standing out from the crowd of her fellow Greens MPs Ellen Sandell, Sam Hibbins, Tim Read and Samantha Ratnam, who all open their offices to constituents five days a week.

But, you know, broad church and all that. A spokesman for di Vietri told CBD: “The work of an MP is of course not confined to sitting behind a desk in the office.

Gabrielle de Vietri will not be office-bound on Fridays.Credit:Jason South

“Gabrielle’s team has set aside Friday as their dedicated day to be out in the community, to make sure they’re as accessible to the people of Cremorne, Burnley, Abbotsford and Richmond, as they are to the people of Collingwood, Fitzroy and Clifton Hill.”

REGAL REGRETS

Australia’s monarchists have a problem. Nobody is particularly excited about King Charles III. In a stinging email sent to members last month, the Australian Monarchist League’s chairman, Philip Benwell, likened getting people to come to the organisation’s events to “pulling teeth”.

“The lack of positive response … has been very off-putting for organisers and many are not willing to spend their time when faced with such lack of interest by members,” Benwell wrote.

Crown slips: Philip Benwell has found it difficult to drum up interest in Australian Monarchist League events.Credit: Steven Siewert

Perhaps the appointment of Liberal warhorse Eric Abetz as campaign chairman hasn’t quite revved up the base, and not everybody’s too happy with the rightward politics of the movement. As this column reported last year, Benwell had to issue an apology over a conference that platformed Pauline Hanson and Katherine Deves.

The movement’s chairman added that “the forces arrayed against us are formidable”. It’s just that some of those seem to be on the inside.

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