Friday, December 26, 2008

SUMMER QUIZ: Are you game?

Need a Boxing Day hangover cure do you? You ignored that warning about Aunt Joan’s eggnog?

The West Australian's wity and well-rounded federal political editor ANDREW PROBYN has a way of distracting your alcohol-addled grey matter from the throbs and excesses of Christmas Day.

Find a quiet corner, away from the dreadful relatives and attempt the 2008 Pollie Pub Quiz, which looks at some of the highlights and lowlights of the political year that was.


(1) What is the name of Peter Costello’s memoirs?

(a) Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda
(b) John Howard: My Part in His Downfall
(c) The Costello Memoirs
(d) Hubris in Surplus
(e) I Did It His Way...

2) Who is the youngest federal politician?

(3) What is the missing word from this wonderful example of Rudd-talk, taken from his speech to the Brookings Institution, Washington DC, on March 31: “A complementarity that could be developed further in the direction of some form of . . . . . synthesis”

(a) organic
(b) photo
(c) conceptual
(d) pseudo intellectual
(e) evolutionary

(4) Six Liberal MPs, including four West Australians, absented themselves from the House of Representatives vote during the historic February 13 apology to the Stolen Generations. Who were they? (ONE POINT EACH)

(5) Julie Bishop has twice been caught plagiarising since her elevation to shadow treasurer in September. What/who were the TWO sources from whom/which she pilfered:

(a) NZ businessman Roger Kerr (b) Dietrich Bonhoeffer (c) Wall Street Journal (d) Green Left Weekly (ONE POINT EACH)

(6) How many countries has Kevin Rudd visited in the past 12 months?

(a) 14 (b) 16 (c) 18 (d) 20

(7) Which federal MP released a sexually-charged novel this year called The Twelfth Fish, which contains the following line:

“The din from the party mocked me as Karen attacked my surly worm with gusto. It was as if she was professionally slighted by my medical predicament.”

(8) How many days was Brendan Nelson Opposition Leader? (you get a point if you are within 10 days)

(9) To what or whom was Kevin Rudd referring when he said it was the “greatest moral challenge of our time”?

(a) Brian Burke (b) men’s hair loss (c) terrorism (d) climate change

(10) Name the WA federal parliamentarians whose maiden speeches this year contained the following: (ONE POINT EACH)

(a) “I look forward to a time when we will have removed at a federal level all discrimination on the grounds of gender identity and sexuality, to a time when my partner is not denied a passport because his gender is not recognised under our laws”

(b) “What is currently missing in the tidal energy option is the necessary start-up support at a national level—support which will be repaid many times over once tidal power is producing competitive energy”

(c) “I grew up in the back of a van which was somewhere different every day … so my earliest childhood memories, after distant impressions of New Zealand, are of Indian back roads, London snow and African railways”

(d) “At the tender age of six months I was removed from my family, placed in a babies’ home and made a ward of the state in Victoria until I reached the age of 18”

(e) “Parents or carers who provide their children with examples of crime, drug addiction or illicit drug use clearly demonstrate that they are poor role models. I believe in intervention where necessary and the removal of children where necessary”

(f) “We sailed from Southampton, England, on the ship Fairsea. I was eight years old. Our destination was Adelaide. We were a family of £10 Poms, part of the migration that filled the steel mills, the manufacturing plants and factories”

(g) “I am from Kosovo and Gaza and Beirut and New York. These are the places where I worked for the United Nations”

(11) Kevin Rudd is the master of acronyms, but how good are you? What do the following Ruddonyms mean:

(a) GFC (b) IPCC (c) RoE (d) CPRS

(12) Which pro-Palestine Labor MP boycotted Kevin Rudd’s parliamentary motion commemorating the 60th anniversary of the foundation of Israel in March?

(13) What sort of car does Therese Rein drive?

(14) How many times has Wilson “Ironbar” Tuckey been ejected from Parliament since 1980?

(15) What did Labor MP Belinda Neal reportedly tell staff at Gosford’s Iguana’s nightclub in June?

(a) I told you I didn’t want chips with that (b) Don’t you know who I am? (c) I said a Vodka Cruiser you dumb @#$#!

(16) Former Governor-General Michael Jeffery was secretly granted a waiver on his superannuation tax, worth how much?

(17) What has Kevin Rudd NOT declared war on?

(a) drugs (b) inflation (c) unemployment (d) whaling (e) climate change (f) binge drinking (g) waffly diplo-babble

(18) What did obscure Queensland Labor MP James Bidgood do to earn a “counselling” sesson from the Prime Minister’s office earlier this month?

(19) What was it that George Bush allegedly didn’t know in the conversation he had with Kevin Rudd?

(a) What the G20 was (b) The spelling of potato (c) What Dick Cheney was up to (d) Where John Howard was

(20) What gesture did Julie Bishop make at Julia Gillard in Parliament?

(a) bird (b) moon (c) cat’s claw (d) two finger salute

(21) To whom was Tony Abbott referring when he said in August: “We miss him. We love him.”

(a) John Howard (b) Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley (c) Peter Costello (d) Dr Daniel Mannix

(22) Which federal Labor MP has an anagrammatic first name and surname?

(23) The following anagrams are which current federal politicians?

(a) dive drunk (b) elect per stool (c) born by posh win (d) nasty inner lad (e) romance sin (f) Agnes from Turin (g) pinch Tory herpes (h) elongate glans

ANSWERS AND SCORES HERE TOMORROW!!!