Long thought extinct, the drongo is back. Not the bird, it's doing just fine, but the uniquely Aussie expression for an idiot or incompetent person that had all but faded from the vernacular.

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It returned last week when a columnist at Nine newspapers dismissed suggestions for dealing with the fuel crunch - bad ideas like cutting the fuel excise or making public transport free that have been flying around like unguided missiles - as "drongo economics". Dumb notions that would only fuel inflation and upend the government's upcoming budget.

Drongos have been in full-throated song lately.

Shortly after the war erupted, warbling in our own Senate, Pauline Hanson congratulated "senator" Trump for launching the attack on Iran and freeing the Iranian people. She didn't flinch when corrected by Lidia Thorpe. Talk first, think later - or don't think at all. Classic drongo behaviour.

Hanson was on song again last week, doubling down on her support for Trump, oblivious to the effect the war was having on her own constituency. Oblivious, too, to polling that shows most Australians do not support the war or Donald Trump. Most of us think he's the drongo-in-chief.

Then there was the Coalition call for the government to slash EV and home battery subsidies to fund a cut to the fuel excise. At the very moment Australians are reminded that solar power stored in batteries doesn't have to navigate the Strait of Hormuz and that EVs might be a better idea than diesel-guzzling utes, only a drongo would suggest making us even more dependent on fossil fuels.

The Nationals launched the No Fuel Here platform, encouraging users to report fuel shortages in regional areas. One problem was they had no intention of publishing the data collected, which instead would go to MPs. Another was the fine print saying that by using the platform, users agreed to receive material from the Nationals. In other words, a clumsy attempt at email harvesting from a bunch of drongos.

Bloody drongos aren't restricted to one side of politics. Energy Minister Chris Bowen performed his own drongo routine early in the war, claiming one day there was no crisis and admitting there was the next. Assurances all is fine with fuel until mid-April sound like a drongo given mid-April is just a couple of weeks away.

But the the ultimate drongo was the prime minister himself when he leapt to support the US strikes against Iran,........

© Canberra Times