Lie-a-thon Looming

THIS ADVISORY will be of greater interest to younger readers who are, as they say, "down with Twitter", but it is worth everyone's while to note that Julia Gillard will shortly be taking questions from readers of the Launceston Examiner.

The session begins at 12:45, and you can catch PM Yabby's latest lies  by clicking here:

Some possible questions:

Did either Bruce Wilson's kids or Craig Emerson's kids ever call you "mum"?

Did Nicola Roxon and Bill Shorten ever suggest to yourself and Bruce that it would be lots of fun to throw everyone's car keys into a hat?

Now that your staffers have instigated that race riot on Australia Day, are you prepared to stir up other minorities against Abbott in the interests of a diverse, multicultural community rooted in the principle of equal opportunity for all?

Is Peter Slipper's allowance as Speaker enough? Shouldn't he get an extra book of taxi vouchers so he can make it to court?

Did you pay stamp duty when you transferred your former Abbotsford home to the uni girlfriend you shared it with? Are there any other lawyerly stratagems little people might use to avoid taxes?

Was Vassilis Telikostoglou, who built your front fence, the owner of Paris Mode fashions, which is listed as having received $17,500 from one of Bruce's fraudulently registerred bank accounts?

Remember, the Examiner is a Fairfax newspaper and therefore a bastion of that quality journalism. The editors would never dream -- not in a million years -- of sifting questions to present only the softballs.

But just to make sure everyone gets to see those inquiries, answered or not, why not tweet them as well to the Examiner's twitter account? Here it is:

@ExaminerOnline (use the hash tag #SunX)

 Readers are invited to contribute their own questions in comments.

UPDATE: Forget even trying. The questions below, all posted in less than 10 minutes of the "chat", demonstrate rather clearly that, no matter what the medium, Fairfax journalists will always be happy to serve as this government's gatekeepers and publicists.

Comment From Walter 

As a 70 year old aged pensioner I could not be more happier with you as Australias PM. Keep up the good work 

Comment From EL 

Hi Prime Minister, Just wanted to also thank you and am proud to vote Labour under your leadership 

Comment From Kev 

Lots of reforms by your Govt is long term- carbon pricing, edu, nbn, etc. looking to the future, I'm glad we have you leading the nation! 

Comment From Gregg 

Just would like to say you are doing a good job and sorry to hear about your dad my thoughts are with you 

Comment From Andrea obrien 

Don't have question. Just wanted to thank you. From a mother of Daughters. Stay strong. 

Comment From Aaron D

As a passionate advocate of your government's agenda can I say thank you for not giving in to the barrage of negativity and for having the tenacity to fight this fight. I am sure it will be rewarded in the long term. 

Comment From Emily Rodrigo 

Prime minister, I'd just like to say how great it is having a female prime minister. 

Comment From Pip 

I like your glasses PM! 

Comment From maureen 

Sincere thanks for your commitment to our country, Ms Gillard. I hope you get a chance in your busy schedule to explore the beautiful state of Tassie. 

Comment From Annie 

Thank you for chatting, you are an inspiration.

Just coincidentally, at exactly the same moment Fairfax's Tasmanian journalists were protecting their guest from the sort of questions good stenographers would never ask, the publisher's stock hit an all-time low of 39.5 cents.

The Great Bunyip is a dab hand at punishing sins.

Take Me To Your Leader (but not via a freeway)

THE PRECIOUS gift to the world that is Melbourne seems less so this morning as the working day begins with news of a developing traffic snarl that, as of 7.50 am, is bad and about to grow much worse. The problem -- and this will be very hard to credit unless you live in the Worrywart State -- is one of those garden variety computer glitches from which no area of modern life is immune. In this instance, deficiencies in the dot-squiggly stuff have darkened (some of) the warning signs in the Domain and Burnley tunnels.

Rather than position a pair of those mobile illuminated signs at the entrance to each underground artery, signs that might have advised motorists not to change lanes or travel faster than, say, 40 kph, officialdom has shut both. This means traffic feeding into the system is stalling and gridlock the order of the day from Laverton to Coburg to Frankston. In years gone by, motorists might have coped by switching to the broad avenues and arterial roads our city's founders believed a metropolis-to-be would need. Alas, three-lane thoroughfares have been shrunk to single lanes by champions of bicycles (and the intense anal pleasure some draw from their narrow little seats), so these roads no long provide any traffic-easing alternatives.

As for detouring via secondary streets, no luck there. The same smartypants urban planners who thought it a good idea to feed St Kilda Road's conduit straight into the dead end they have made of the CBD's Swanston Street, which has been closed to cars, also dropped roundabouts at those intersections which they have not blocked altogether. For good measure and because they can, they have dropped speed bumps on all the straight bits.

One doesn't like to be a grumble bunny, but wouldn't it be nice if, in this moment of citywide vexation, Victoria had an actual leader? You know the sort, a premier prepared to step in and take charge in the public good. Couldn't Ted Baillieu have countermanded the bureaucrats, ordered the tunnels to remain open and turned out the police to conduct traffic and make sure drivers behave themselves? According to reports on the radio, the tunnel signage went out in the wee hours, meaning the Premier's slumber was almost certainly disturbed by a functionary's call advising him of such. He rolled over and went back to sleep, apparently.

Remember, there is no actual hazard in either tunnel, just the temporary inability to warn of one should it arise. Indeed, according to a phone-in caller just put to air on 3AW, only some of the tunnel's electronic signs are down; the rest are working.

Like the head of a pimple, the pain being inflicted today on citizens attempting to go about their business is the ugly tip of an infection that goes much, much deeper.

If, for example, some unfortunate decides to top himself by leaping from an overhead pedestrian walkway, expect the freeway on which he splatters to be shut for hours, possibly the entire day, as investigators draw silhouettes on the bitumen, record the distance fallen and fill their clipboards with notations. How long does it take to move a corpse? In Victoria, where observing official protocols is considered the essence of civilised life, you will be made to wait until officials are damn well good and ready in order to find out.

UPDATE: Roads Minister Terry Mulder has taken to the airwaves to explain that, in addition to the tunnel signage, the computer has also shut down the fans that expel exhaust fumes. Couldn't a sparky have hot-wired the fans until the computer is fixed? There was plenty of advance warning but nothing was done, no initiative displayed.

UPDATE II: Melbourne's traffic czars cannot reboot a computer or hot wire some fans, but are they very good at covering up the consequences of their incompetence. Until a minute or two ago, a live webcam feed of conditions on the Monash Freeway at Toorak Road was available here.

This is what visitors now find:

Cameras monitoring other current bottlenecks are also off-line. Funny thing, those relaying images of smooth traffic flow and untroubled drivers continue to provide their happy feeds.

UPDATE III: If One Term Ted is awake by this point in the morning, it might have dawned on him that this traffic disaster is causing considerable economic loss. No, not the lost productivity, late arrivals at work and late deliveries, but the cessation of tunnel traffic fines. In a state with a fine-led economy this is serious.

Quality Journalism Rewarded

FAIRFAX MEDIA (FXJ) dipped briefly below 40 cents a few minutes ago. Good.

No new owner, not even even Ron Walker, could do such a bad job of steering Melbourne's only alternative to the Herald Sun's daily diet of kittens and Collingwood.

And another thing: Neither Walker nor Ms Rinehart would dream of paying themselves the $50,000 a week that CEO Greg Hywood has been pocketing while ushering staffers out the door.

WHOOPS:  There are doubts amongst commenters that Hywood collects $50,000 a week -- and it has to be admitted that those doubts are justified. From The Australian of August 19:

The company's remuneration report for last year shows that Mr Hywood picked up a base salary of $1,178,570, including a cash bonus of $290,000. However, the cash bonus Mr Hywood was in line to receive this year was worth considerably more because he was acting chief executive for part of 2011, being installed as the permanent chief in March last year.

Divided by 52 weeks, that $1.17 million sum comes to a paltry $22,664.80 per week.

Boycott Woollies (and Safeway in Victoria)

AROUND 90 cents buys a delightfully refreshing soft drink made with apple and blackcurrant, a particular favourite at the Billabong, where an inch or so is often drained before the bottle is frozen overnight. Stowed next morning in the golf bag to melt as the round progresses, it makes a cold, tongue-tingling zinger all the way through the back nine. 

Trouble is, you can only get this beverage at Woolworth supermarkets, where the Professor will no longer be spending what has been $150-or-so every week, not even if lamb cutlets (another favourite) are marked down to one dollar for trays of 30.

There are quite a few things to dislike about Alan Jones, from the Hansonesque advocacy of tariffs to the emotive irrationality he brings to the topic of coal-seam gas exploration, but from now on it will be Coles all the way.


All who believe that even protectionist nitwits deserve the right to speak freely and that the radio host's apology should have been enough might also want to consider giving Woollies a miss from now on.

And here are some other companies worth spurning.

NOTE WELL: In Victoria all Woollies stores operate under the Safeway banner

AND ALSO WORTH NOTING: Current Fairfax chairman Roger Corbett is a former Woollies chieftain. Evidently he left his spoor behind.

A Pillar of Consistency

AS DAVID MARR observes, it is beyond decency's comprehension to hear the sort of abuse hurled at a prominent and successful woman.

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?

ANXIETY’s shadow flickered briefly across the happy couple’s faces as they paused before the door of her parental home, a moment for fear and uncertainty to be dispelled by a quick squeeze of the hand and a peck on the cheek. It can be an ordeal meeting your sweetheart’s dad for the first time, and by now Julia understood that very well indeed. The memories flooded back and she shuddered.

“So, Bruce, what do you do and what are your intentions,” her Dad had asked Craig’s predecessor.

“Now that you ask,” replied Bruce, that lovable scamp, “I’m a thief and a very good one. As to my intentions, with your daughter to do the legal work my intention is to become the biggest thief, and I do mean the biggest, in any ACTU-affiliated industrial organisation. When my members are earning $10 an hour, it’s wrong, just plain wrong, that the bosses should have it all.”

Julia caught her father’s expression and saw his concern. He was older, still snared in that absolutist morality, unable without a little help to appreciate theft as one those relative and subjective things, which is how she had come to see it during the rough and tumble days of university and student politics. Once you grasped that the personal was political, that it was about you and always about you, that was the first step on the path to greatness.

“Dad, what you need to understand is that those of us on the left are working for a better Australia, and that’s the important thing. How we achieve that, well sometimes it can seem a bit odd, but rest assured that when everyone else is stealing, no one is stealing.”

Her dad had smiled at his pride and joy. She was so very good at helping him to grasp the way things worked in these modern times, and it was apparent Bruce had been cut from the same cloth.

“I’ll tell you how much I want Julia as my chief legal officer,” he had said, pausing just a second for effect. “I want you to know I’ve left the wife and kids in Perth to share a life with Julia in Melbourne.”

THE Bruce thing had not worked out, although the new bathroom, front fence and other renovations to Julia’s modest home remained cherished and practical mementoes of the love that might have been. Now it was Craig’s turn to pass paternal muster, and Julia reached once more for her swain's sweaty palm, but this time it was not there.

As the door opened she turned and saw that Craig had stepped back a metre or two, rolled up his trouser legs and placed upon his head a handkerchief knotted at all four corners. She had told him how her folks brought with them in the family’s ten-quid suitcases many of the Mother Country’s cultural customs and funny little ethnic ways, and this was Craig’s attempt to cross the divide of otherness.

Craig was twitching now, surrendering to the convulsive spasms she recognised as his notion of dancing, clearing his throat for what became a song that rose, bass and brave, from that cute little tubby-bubby paunch below his diaphragm.

"Men of Harlech, stop your dreaming,
"Can’t you see their spearpoints gleaming…"

Craig was bellowing, but she could just catch her father’s words.

“Your new bloke is an idiot,” he said.

“No denying it, Dad, but he has the makings of a fine Cabinet minister – and he really does love me.”

“Has he left a wife and kids in Perth as well?”

“No, Dad. In Brisbane.”

The father nodded and once again he smiled. It was wonderful to have a daughter who could see virtue when others might not, the girl who had swotted those uni courses devoted to personal entitlement and the right of a modern woman to make her way to the top of the machine by any means necessary, as so many men before her had done.

He didn’t understand it, the new rules that made black into white and ambition the trump of honesty.

But what he did understand was that Julia understood the new world's new rules and he admired the grace with which she had made honesty, fidelity and truth the subordinate satellites of ambition.

He could never be ashamed of someone who had made herself the mistress of such a thoroughly alien universe.

No, he would never be ashamed. And woe betide anyone who said otherwise.

The World Turned Upside Down

SYDNEY takes the AFL flag while Melbourne bags the NRL's.

Surely this is the end of times.