THE sudden move on Tony Abbott from Malcolm Turnbull caught everyone on the hop – not least the former Oxford boxing blue himself.

Malcolm is also a Rhodes Scholar and his ascension means that no fewer than five of our last eight prime ministers have either been born or educated in England, or both.

However, Malcolm brings a very different attitude to our colonial past than his predecessor. And where better could Tony serve his nation henceforth than in London as High Commissioner to the Court of St James. Such an appointment would certainly help to clear the air in the Liberal Party room.

MEANWHILE, across the corridor Bill Shorten will be feeling the winds of change whipping around his own party room. Word reaching your columnist suggests that the new favourite to take over the Opposition leadership is Tanya Plibersek. One Labor insider said: “Albo could become the Arthur Calwell to Turnbull’s Menzies. But Tanya trumps Malcolm every time.”

THE POWER of the symbolic image to change minds – and government policy – was much on display this week. The heart-rending picture of the little boy, Aylan Kurdi, washed up on a Turkish beach triggered a seachange towards the Great Syrian Exodus.

There was, of course, something wildly illogical about the government backflip from a stern refusal to take Rohingya asylum seekers pleading for refuge from persecution in Burma to its open arms for 12,000 Syrians, to say nothing of the $44 million offered to support their compatriots in border camps. And when you combine that with a simultaneous decision to bomb their homeland against the enemies of their presidential dictator, the egregious Bashar al-Assad, the mind simply boggles… and all because of a little boy in tiny plastic shoes.

ANOTHER case in point was the Liberals’ candidate in the Canning by-election, former SAS officer, Andrew Hastie. The image of our Special Forces operators as “super soldiers” resonates in the public arena. It matters little, apparently, that Andrew follows his family’s creationist beliefs that the world began only 6000 years ago.

CLOSER to home, the picture of that “cage” in the south Canberra classroom to provide a refuge for an autistic boy, and perhaps a safety barrier for his classmates, showed why the principal lost her job. The other big loser was Education Minister Joy Burch, who still hasn’t learned that attempting to cover up such incidents only makes things worse.

AND what of that new species of giant trapdoor spider discovered by ANU scientists near Jervis Bay? Chances are we’d never come within cooee of one in a lifetime, but that didn’t prevent a shiver of apprehension at the photo…and it doesn’t help to learn they live for 30 years!

ANOTHER remarkable image was the new species of human discovered in South Africa. Dubbed Homo naledi, our long lost cousins are thought to have lived some where between one and two million years ago. Unless, of course, you’re Andrew Hastie.

FINALLY, many thanks to that puckish political pundit Mungo MacCallum for the delicious observation this past week on the name of the head of the operatically-clad Australian Border Force, Roman Quaedvlieg. Observed Mungo: “Its anagram is Avid Glamor Queen”.

robert@robertmacklin.com