In the absence of real news, the Fairfax press have decided that a minor addition to our new Prime Minister's facial hair is worthy of a report.
As something of a sideys afficionado myself (and the occasional mo-grower), it seemed to me that perhaps he should be encouraged to go the whole hog.
After all, how cool would this be?
In other news, the naughty party boy now can't be named by the mainstream media as he's been charged with creating a public nuisance and the rather vindictive seeming charge of producing child pornography.
Not knowing the details of the case I obviously can't say for certain what this is all about but at a guess the police got very very snaky about the fact that he's been lapping up the media attention in the last few days and been generally unrepentant about the whole matter, making them look/feel a little silly/powerless. This kind of charge seems like the kind of thing that might come up if he was filming/photographing himself or any of his peers at the party getting saucy , presumably on his phone which I'm guessing would have been checked thoroughly when he went in to chat to the local law enforcement types yesterday.
I'd be surprised if the charge was allowed to make it all the way to court - it seems like something designed to give the kid a short sharp shock and a major scare, after all, having that kind of thing on your record could seriously screw up the rest of your life and even he would have to be aware enough to see that. It also seems like a calculated spin move to try to knock some of the boy's larrikin appeal off him. (Are we likely to see a Free [naughty party boy] campaign now?)
Of course I don't know the story but on first glance, it looks like a rather large and rather obvious overstepping of the mark from here.
