When they're done running Rio Tinto, perhaps they could have a crack at writing Hamlet

SINKING to simian soundbites backfires for Howes as the shooter becomes the target.

Paul Howes at the AWU conference on February 15:

I don't like Tom Albanese [Rio Tinto CEO], I don't think I've hidden my lack of respect for Rio Tinto. They are a company who, frankly, monkeys could do a better job of running.

Paul Howes on Sky News' Australian Agenda yesterday:

The first time I met Piers was in the green room today, but he didn't hold back calling me a Neanderthal in today's Sunday Telegraph. [The Australian] referred to me as a baboon, and referred to my educational circumstances, because of how I had to leave home and start work at an early age. Yesterday's front page of The [Weekend] Australian referred to my genitalia [cartoon by Jon Kudelka with Julia Gillard saying 'OK Howes, you can stay in the tent as long as you keep that thing pointed outside'].

Paul Howes in Confessions of a Faceless Man -- Inside campaign 2010:

One thing is for sure: Akerman gives good copy, and that's why The Sunday Telegraph keeps publishing him.

Hmph! Mike Carlton in The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday:

One of the delights of my retirement from breakfast radio is that I no longer have to read The Daily Telegraph to see what the thick end of town, the really stupid people, are doing and saying.

The only mention Cut and Paste can find linking Paul Howes and a baboon in The Australian. Tim Boreham February 17:

Could a baboon run BHP? Union boss Paul Howes alleges a monkey could oversee Rio Tinto and the analogy could be extended to its rival, bearing in mind our simian cousins are intelligent creatures. Apart from managing the scary (or from Howes' perspective, delightful) spectre of soaring labour costs, BHP is expending $US80bn over five years to capitalise on what chief chimp Marius Kloppers describes as an "increasingly positive" commodities outlook.

ABC1's Insiders yesterday:

Host and former Labor adviser Barrie Cassidy: Fran, if these figures are right, the mining companies spent $27 million and in the process saved themselves $60 billion.

Fran Kelly: Yes, pretty good return isn't it. However, I'm not completely critical of Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan for this because this was killing Labor and they couldn't get the politics of it right at all.

Cassidy: The politics of this, this week is that the bigger the mining profits, the more revenue that comes to the government and the harder it is for the Coalition to argue that there should be no mining tax at all.

Kelly: Exactly. If the Labor politicians can't now turn this around and change public opinion in support of at least the tax they've got if not more, then they don't deserve to be drawing a salary.

Remember when? Radio National Breakfast on May 3 2010:

Fran Kelly: Michelle, what do you make of it?

Michelle Grattan: I think the government will be able to prosecute the case for spreading the benefits of the mining boom more evenly. I think that will resonate with people.

Hands off my dividends! Mike Carlton in the SMH on Saturday:

What a thrill it was to learn on Thursday that BHP Billiton had turned in a half-yearly profit of $10.6 bn. There will be the socialist wreckers and the environmental doomsayers howling for BHP and the rest of the mining industry to cough up more tax. But we must be careful not to kill the golden goose. I write as a BHP shareholder eagerly awaiting yet another handsome dividend cheque to come thumping into the mailbox.

Ricky Nixon in The Sunday Herald Sun yesterday:

I have never had a sexual relationship with this girl.

Bill Clinton January 26, 1998:

I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.