Malcolm Turnbull called Bill Shorten into his office recently and said, ‘Bill, I have a great idea. We are going to go all out & talk to country voters.’
‘Good idea Malcolm, how will we go about it?’ said Bill.
‘Well,’ said Malcolm, ’We’ll get ourselves one of those Driza Bone coats, some RM Williams boots, a stick & an Akubra hat. Oh, and a blue cattle dog.
Then we’ll really look the part. We’ll go to a typical old outback country pub, we’ll show we really enjoy the bush.’ ‘Right.’ said Bill.
Days later, all kitted out & with the requisite blue heeler, they set off from Canberra in a westerly direction.
Eventually they arrived at just the place they were looking for & found a typical outback pub. They walked in with the dog & up to the bar.
’G’day mate,’ said Malcolm to the bartender, ‘two middies of your best beer.’ ‘Good afternoon Malcolm,’ said the bartender, ‘two middies of our best coming up.’
Turnbull & Shorten stood leaning on the bar drinking their beer and chatting, nodding now & again to whoever came into the bar for a drink. The dog lay quietly at their feet.
All of a sudden, the door from the adjacent bar opened & in came a grizzled old stockman, complete with stockwhip.
He walked up to the cattle dog, lifted its tail with the whip & looked underneath, shrugged his shoulders & walked back to the other bar.
A few moments later, in came another old stockman with his whip. He walked up to the dog & lifted its tail, looked underneath, scratched his head & went back to the other bar.
Over the course of the next hour or so another four or five stockmen came in & lifted the dogs tail and went away looking puzzled.
Eventually, Turnbull and Shorten could stand it no longer & called the barman over.
‘Tell me,’ said Shorten, ‘why did all those old stockmen come in & look under the dog’s tail like that? Is it an old outback custom? ’‘Strewth no,’ said the barman.
‘Someone told ’em there was a cattle dog in the bar with two arseholes.’