Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Julie Bishop may be on to something revolutionary.
Given the current level of Australian political discourse, why not dispense with the spoken word and replace it with the living emoji?
The emoji, for those antideluvian souls in the dark, are those cutish little smiley or sad-faced characters originating in Japan that have become such a pop-culture social media phenomenon they're threatening to replace word texts altogether.
Feeling a bit down? Choose an emoji with a tear and a mouth turned upside down. Amazed or shocked? The emoji has a mouth wide open and eyebrows way up top. Frustrated, fuming, so thrilled you could burst? There's an emoji for every emotion.
Ah, but what if politicians were to use their own faces to display their inner thoughts?
Julie Bishop, serial deputy to Liberal leaders, perfected the unblinking death stare years ago, unveiling it on ABC's Q&A. It transfixed the nation to the point she made a return appearance in a competitive stare-off with The Chaser boys and a garden gnome. And won.
Now she has made the leap to the even groovier emoji.
Strange and terrible paths have been trodden in Senate estimates committee hearings in Canberra this week, including a diversion through the Governor-General's kitchen.
When it was revealed the G-G's kitchen staff wanted a $2000 Thermomix, Labor Senator Joe Ludwig was flummoxed. "What's a Thermomix, anyway?" he wondered, instantly losing the votes of a nation of cooking aspirants.
Ms Bishop, something of a favourite of TV talk shows, was asked the same question by Karl Stefanovic when she appeared on the Nine Network's Today show on Wednesday.
"I'm going to answer in emoji," declared Ms Bishop, knowing everyone who uses Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tinder, Google Hangouts, Whatsapp or more obscure apps - which probably excludes a fair number of her colleagues, including her own leader - would understand what she was talking about.
And glory be, the deputy leader of the Liberal Party snapped into a freeze-dried facial contortion that declared - "who, me, what???"
Forget the Thermomix. It was the sort of sincerely shocked expression that might be employed usefully to the question "do you bear in your heart the desire to become prime minister?" Could she have been practising in front of a national TV audience?
Fairfax illustrator Shakespeare was moved to create a helpful selection of alternative emoji for Ms Bishop to study. There's the "Oh, Malcolm, I'd be delighted to serve in any capacity my colleagues consider fit, and it's lovely that you'd think of me at a time like this", the "You mean...Scott Morrison's got the numbers???", the "Tony Abbott's said what about Indonesia/Iraq/Prince Philip this time??", and the "Who, me? I've never spoken to that person in my life".
