Christopher Pyne is staring down both Labor and NXT in his seat of Sturt. So yesterday he called on the Liberal’s most potent weapon … well, not quite. Attorney-General and Queensland Senator George Brandis joined Pyne for some doorknocking yesterday, doubtless terrifying residents who would have opened the door to be confronted with the country’s chief law officer. With any luck Brandis would have been able to offer his highly rated (by himself, if no one else) legal skills to constituents, although little else, given he doesn’t actually live in the state.

Perhaps Brandis opined to constituents on why the civil liberties he once championed must now be sacrificed to the War on Terror, or how he didn’t really offer a job to Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs if she’d quit, how he hadn’t actually had both counter-terrorism and the arts stripped from his portfolio in the course of a single term or why he actually didn’t totally bungle the amendment of 18C. But we’d like to think “Bookshelves” just serenaded each voter with some bush poetry.