Christopher Pyne Gave An Utterly Bizarre And Slightly Scary Interview On Sky News Last Night

The year-long car crash that is the government’s attempt to deregulate university fees is due to hit yet another seemingly insurmountable obstacle today. The Senate is voting — again — on the uni deregulation bill, and most of the independent crossbench Senators the government needs on its side have repeatedly said there’s no chance in hell they’ll vote for it, just like they have all along.

Education Minister Christopher Pyne tried to get around the Senate’s opposition recently by tying the dereg bill to continued funding for 27 research facilities and threatening that a vote against the bill would mean 1,700 scientists lose their jobs. As tactics go, cutting off funding to scientists to get your way is not exactly Sun Tzu-level, and it went exactly as well as anyone who isn’t Christopher Pyne could have told you from the start; Jacqui Lambie was so angry at the news she literally checked herself out of hospital to vote against the proposal, and even government backbencher/one-man Apocalypse cult Cory Bernardi said it was a bad idea.
Despite insisting he wouldn’t right up until the last moment, Pyne finally backed down yesterday and split the bill into two separate parts.

This vine chronicles the battle between Christopher Pyne yesterday vs. Christopher Pyne today https://t.co/jZJzx4twKS

— Mark Di Stefano (@MarkDiStef) March 16, 2015

I hope you’re in a well-lit room with no known history of being inhabited by spooky ghosts, because this is about to get more than a little creepy. Last night he went on Sky News’ PM Agenda with David Speers to try and smooth things over, and ended up doing this instead.

Let’s try something. Replay the video, and close your eyes. Wait until it gets to the part where Pyne says “I want it to be a surprise for you,” and try not to openly shiver. Open your eyes. Never close them again.