Abbott, our bad

GIVEN Tony Abbott has spent a sizeable chunk of his working life in the vicinity of Wilson Tuckey, we suspect moments of silence still have the power to surprise him.

Tony Abbott

GIVEN Tony Abbott has spent a sizeable chunk of his working life in the vicinity of Wilson Tuckey, we suspect moments of silence still have the power to surprise him.

He certainly seemed a little taken aback yesterday when he held a press conference at a Sydney bus factory, only to be confronted by a big nothingness from the fourth estate. Was everyone simply agog at Abbott's effortless flight into the realm of bus-o-nomics? Or were the assembled journos trying to formulate queries that wouldn't meet with the disapproval of Lindsay Tanner? Whatever it was, Abbott clearly had to give things a little wriggle along: "Any questions? We have plenty of journalists here, no questions? There must be some." There were eventually, not least this one: "The town where Osama [bin Laden] was shot is named after a major James Abbott. Any relation?" (We suspect that's not the sort of question Tanner means.) Abbott replied thus, "Look, I think all I should say on this is that it'll be a more peaceful neighbourhood in the absence of Mr bin Laden and I think decent people right around the world are quietly satisfied today that the perpetrator of the worst terrorist atrocity in human history has been finally dealt with, with justice. Justice has been done to the perpetrator of the worst terrorist outrage in human history." We asked Abbott's office the same question (we can hear Tanner resting his case, sighingly), only to be referred back to this moment from his press conference. So we'll take it as a no, then.

Rhymes with heart

PERHAPS Abbott is actually related, but is keeping mum on the grounds that the historical Abbott, a British army officer stationed in the place that came to bear his name, was a dud poet. To wit: "Oh Abbottabad we are leaving you now / To your natural beauty do I bow / Perhaps your winds sound will never reach my ear / My gift for you is a few sad tears / I bid you farewell with a heavy heart / Never from my mind will your memories thwart." Heart and thwart? We're sure Strewth readers can do better. In the meantime, here's some visual poetry: Abbott posing at Bojangles Saloon in Alice Springs with the framed pair of his budgie smugglers bought by the pub for a vast amount (well, $3400) last year. We're sad to hear the beer was merely a prop and that Abbott stuck to mineral water.

Nice execution

WITH all the talk of a firefight in Osama bin Laden's modest mansion hideaway and allusions to the possibility he would have been taken alive by US forces if only he had been in a more co-operative frame of mind, there was some shyness about describing what happened as summary justice. Not our Julia Gillard! Asked on the ABC yesterday whether the killing had changed the dynamic in the war in Afghanistan, our robust Prime Minister marched right in with the E word: "Well, of course this has hurt al-Qa'ida. Its leader being executed had clearly hurt al-Qa'ida, but it has not killed al-Qa'ida."

And the next page

SPEAKING of robust, we hear there was some admiration (albeit of a veiled variety) of ousted federal Labor MP Belinda Neal from a senior figure in the ALP machine yesterday: "Only Belinda could get herself into The Daily Telegraph the day after bin Laden is killed." There was bugger all non-bin Laden space left, so it's an achievement worth saluting.

Mining for laughs

SOUTH Australian Premier Mike Rann may have meant to type "economic", but we cling to the possibility he was revealing a more avant garde sense of humour than we'd suspected when he tweeted this: "Apart from the go ahead for Olympic Dam expansion there could not be a bigger boost to our state in comic terms in decades. A new frontier."

Hanging on at night

AUSTRALIAN Securities & Investments Commission commissioner Greg Medcraft may have just been nominated by Wayne Swan as the regulator's new chairman, but he's still attending to his night job as a councillor at Sydney's Woollahra Council. Just a few of the challenges Medcraft has had to face in the past few weeks include the construction of two roundabouts in Bellevue Hill, putting closed-circuit television cameras up at an unfortunately well-patronised suicide spot, petitions from dog lovers feeling harassed in a park by "commercial enterprises", petitions from ratepayers protesting the chopping down of trees in a park, and putting in flashing lights to slow down the well-heeled hoons hurtling through the Vaucluse shopping strip. These all sound like skills that will translate well to the day job.