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Drawing

Mug Punter #5

Medium: Coloured pencil/graphite
Size: 250mm x 200mm

Look I’m the first to admit that Mug Punter #4 was a bit of a let down, I don’t think I captured the likeness as well as I would’ve liked. I’m much more pleased with this one of the latest generation of the Downer political dynasty. From memory I think Lord Alexander Downer - no he’s not really a Lord, but he does have the behaviour, plummy voice and is occasionally prone to pomposity so who knows - is third generation Australian power politics. A born to rule ethos is probably the tagline to the family crest. 

Typical of the private schoolboy upbringing we occasionally get university revue type humour from Lord Downer - most famously when he was Opposition Leader in the 1990s and quipped at a dinner that his party’s domestic violence policy should be called the things that batter. This was meant to be a wordplay on his Party’s slogan The Things That Matter and went down like a lead balloon.

He gained some additionally notoriety when at a charity event in 1996, the legs of various officials were photographed as part of a “guess the leg” game. It was later revealed that the leg wearing fishnet stockings belonged to Downer.

This type of behaviour led former Prime Minister and political foe, Paul Keating, to call Downer “the idiot son of the establishment” .

So as a homage to aristocratic attempts at playing dress-ups, the (forthcoming) Spring Racing carnival, and silly hats I ask you to all rise and welcome Lord Downer!