Shaun Micallef's Mad As Hell

Drawn by the scent of blood in the spilt milk on the hair shirt of our body politic, Mad as Hell returns to the earwaves and eyewaves that make up broadcast television to lance the boiling cesspot of mediocracy we call parliament.

Tonight we slice into the soft flesh of the week's events in search of contamination - the hard noses of media moguls in our revolving leadership, the pointed interventions of lobbyists in school funding and the extremely literal needles in our very actual strawberries. Plus, does a special envoyship signal the death of Coalition division, and if so can AMP still charge it for life insurance?

In order to distract from disfunction in other parts of the institution, we've poopooed budget surplus forecasts, danced to confectionery automation, uncovered ruined Endeavours, and settled once and for all the ethics of murder.

This week HMAS Mad As conducts freedom of navigation exercises through a sea of news. With only a 2019 Vladimir Putin calendar to guide us, subsisting on a barrel of Western Australian Pork and buoyed by the powerful oratory of Josh Frydenberg, our hull is as full as a bloated metaphor with Pay TV handouts and a nautical pittance in foreign aid. There's also a bit about Bill Shorten.

As the royal couplet arrive for a visit, we've gone into a flurry to make sure everything is ready: Have we wiped the sweat off the monarchists? Did we remember to sweep the doctors off Nauru? Is the Great Barrier Reef going to be cooked in time for afternoon tea? And did someone exercise their religious freedom to bake a heterosexual sponge or at least warm up Eric Abetz?

After the Wentworthians' repudiation of the Liberals repudiation of Turnbull's repudiation of Abbott's repudiation of etc, we seek to turn the page on the endless page turning and instead focus on the acceptable whiteness of being, the Jerusalamity of our embassy, the impressiveness of John Howard's flesh pressing and whether Julian Assange should clean up after his cat.

The Prime Ministerial arms must be taking a well-earned rest after such a big week of waving: big sticks at power companies, Turnbull off to Indonesia, NDIS funds into the drought aid and bye bye to the Royals. All the while Katter gives Anning back his independence and Trump gives a serve to the Saudis.

Tonight we ditch the Mad as Hell bus and place our dogs in the overhead compartment of a tax payer funded plane to the last resort island of Nauru, but not before unsolicited navigational advice from Alan Jones takes us via Turnbull's Indonesian Ocean's conference and through a Hanson/Dastayari dogfight, causing us to crash land on the recently abandoned National Party zeppelin field.

The bus has entirely gone off the rails this week, with the driver choosing to fly, Mark Latham missing it completely, Bill Shorten as the inexplicably popular guy up the back passing notes to the ABC and everyone else staring out the window at Turnbull popping the hood on his leadership coupe.

We hit peak summit this week and with the embassy movement burning the last of our national reserves of diplomacy, Concetta has turned on Melissa, sausage fans have turned on Bunnings, the PM has turned on himself and Josh Frydenberg has turned on a camera and made cinematic history.

The Victorian bloodbath has been run and the temperature seems right for Renae Lawrence's return, the immigration level could be a little high, but we turn mood lighting onto Dolce and Gabbana's apology and Turnbull's instagram follows, then take a dip into Trump & Saudi Arabia.

Well the right hand didn't know what the even further right hand was doing this week with Morrison heading OS to introduce himself to world leaders and Trump while things were afoot back home, that foot being another hand, this time the invisible one of Turnbull pulling the threads of power while still another foot, a real one this time, was taken out of Bishop's ruby slippers so they could be donated to a museum, and all along fingers were pointed, boots were sunk and legs were unavailable to stand on.

And with that we are served our parliamentary wrap. Stuffed to the brim with religious freedoms, Chinese internet and a generous helping of Hanson and Bernardi's time-filling. All complimented by a quick pass of Encryption Bill, a miserly sprinkling of sitting days and a super-secret ingredient, the election date.