See, he's based on the Tree of Temptation from Big Brother UK (hence Surly's awful fake-British accent), which was great. It was literally just a nondescript tree in the back yard who'd catch people while they were smoking on their own and give them missions. It's not that the idea of having a "character" is shitty or childish in itself, it's just that Australia hasn't copied it very well.
Same goes for this parrot, if it turns out to have Surly's voice. The Tree got chopped down but came back as a wooden chest of drawers in the next series, which made sense. But Surly turning into a parrot does not.
Observe:
Funnily enough, the same year as the chest-of-drawers Tree, we had a fortune-telling machine (think
"Big") called Bob Righter, that I think the US sort-of stole, and........... a much-hyped parrot that I think was only used for one task and more-or-less forgotten about.
Maybe someone got mixed up while they were
looking for ideas.