The urge to get between a camera lens and a furry animal becomes unbearable for many politicians nearing the end of a wearying election campaign, and Queensland Premier Annastacia??? Palaszczuk??? succumbed on Thursday.
She chose a koala - several, in fact - and she was either showing unusual courage or a distinct lack of knowledge concerning Labor interaction with koalas in her home state.
Back in the early 1980s, Bob Hawke's new tourism minister, John Brown, caused international shock and horror when, attending a Brisbane conference designed to persuade travel agents to boost Australia as a nation of diverse attractions, he sought to set them right about koalas.
Despite the koala having been chosen as the Australian team's mascot for the upcoming 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, Brown said there was a need to destroy "the koala myth".
"The belief of Americans that they are a lovely, cuddly little bear is fairly well exploded when they get here and pick one of the rotten little things up," Brown told appalled industry leaders at the Brisbane conference.
"They find it's flea-ridden, it piddles on you, it stinks and it scratches."
That was 34 years ago. Time, you'd think, for the relationship between Labor and the koala-loving industry in Queensland to have healed.
Palaszczuk seemed intent on putting the sealer on it when she arrived at the Australia Zoo, established by the late "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin and family, on Queensland's Sunshine Coast.
She came bearing gifts, as politicians do during election campaigns: $140,000 for the zoo's animal rehabilitation hospital and a koala habitat run by Wildlife Warriors.
And yes, she risked all John Brown's old warnings by cuddling a couple of koalas named Ruby and Brandi - and emerged, apparently, none the worse to deliver a press conference standing between two koalas. She warned, darkly, that a Liberal-National Party government, aligned with One Nation, would - in the process of delivering "cuts and chaos" - withdraw government funding for the zoo.
It was day 26 of the election campaign - the election itself will be held on Saturday - and Palaszczuk wasn't at all keen on answering questions about the issue that has dogged her all the way through.
Asked about reports her government was providing funding through councils to assist the development of the proposed Adani coal mine, she baulked. She has previously promised that no taxpayer money would go to the mine, and to all the questions about backdoor payments, she declared, again and again that her government would be giving "no direct funding". As for other details: they are "commercial in confidence".
Soon, she escaped, travelling past the rhinoceros enclosure and the giraffes, to much safer territory.
She sat on a wall and fed by hand a family of friendly meerkats.
Wisely, the Premier went nowhere near the crocodiles.
