App in hand

WHEN Malcolm Turnbull was rolled last December, there was a hurt silence during which his website and dogs' blogs were left to wither.

WHEN Malcolm Turnbull was rolled last December, there was a hurt silence during which his website, Twitter feed and dogs' blogs were left to wither among mothballs. That was then. Now the spring in the rejuvenated Turnbull step shows signs of turning into a juggernaut with the launch of an official iPhone Mal app. It comes in a multitude of languages and is handy for the mobile Mal addict wanting to read, say, a concise account of the Turnbull regime- "[F]ollowing a leadership ballot on 16 September 2008, he was elected by his Liberal Party colleagues to lead the Coalition as Leader of the Opposition. Malcolm ceased to be Leader of the Opposition on 1 December 2009"- and catch up on videos, such as A Greener, Cheaper, Smarter ETS. We look forward to Tony Abbott's undoubtedly jolly response.

Scott on Scott

WHILE Turnbull blazes the iPhone trail, opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison is sticking with Twitter and Facebook. The latter is resulting in some impressively circular emails, such as one that lobbed in a nearby inbox, headed: "Scott Morrison suggested you like Scott Morrison".

Lashings of blame

WHEN Madam Lash, aka Gretel Pinniger, did a no-show at the launch of her biography last week, she was represented instead by her chauffeur, who relayed the message that guests should regard the book - Madam Lash: Gretel Pinniger's Scandalous Life of Sex, Art and Bondage - as an act of character assassination, and its launch as Pinniger's wake. The author, Sam Everingham, was left in a bit of an awkward spot, but not, he reckons, as awkward as the one Pinniger was in. Everingham claims it went wrong over media speculation over the identity of the man rumoured elsewhere to be Lord Paul Hamlyn but identified in the book only as the Patron, a kinky but no longer extant billionaire whose estate keeps Pinniger solvent. Says Everingham: "A copy of the book [was] perused by international lawyers from her late patron's estate. There were scenes, particularly those on pages 131 and 132, which they took strong objection to." As a special Strewth service, we've perused those pages and they contain whips, bruises, paraphernalia from the more exotic end of the marital aid catalogue, and a chaste cameo by Jack Nicholson. Everingham: "By attending the launch, she would be seen as endorsing the book's contents. Gretel's ongoing financial support from her late patron's estate was under threat. . . . Through her brother I was advised that Gretel's financial security 'had come close to disaster'." So it's a reasonable bet she won't be at the Riverview Hotel in Sydney's Balmain tomorrow night, where Everingham will be discussing the book with Pinniger's brother George and her protege, Debra Starr. Then again . . .

Pot, kettle, black?

IN NSW (suggested rego plate motto: State of Freefall), the exit of two ministers from the state government prompted this headline on The Weekend Australian's front-page story by Imre Salusinszky: "Two more ministers bale out on Kristina Keneally". This in turn prompted a lovingly crafted harrumph of an email from Brian Cambourne, who had a tart note to make about this august organ before asking, rhetorically, whether the ministers had baled or bailed. Cambourne, who once led a "subliminal" email campaign against NSW Education Minister Verity Firth, wrote: "The headline . . . is a good example of the fallacy that readers of alphabetic text such as English must go through sound . . . before they can access meaning. When sounded out 'bale' and 'bail' are identical but they have quite different meanings. . . . Perhaps there's more to effective reading than mere sounding out?" Well, quite; there's the Macquarie Dictionary, which reminds us that as much as Keneally may want to be bailed out, her erstwhile ministers did indeed bale, at least metaphorically. Also, Cambourne may wish to note that Imre's surname contains a z. And the premier's surname has just one n. And an extra l wouldn't go astray. Incidentally, Cambourne is an associate professor in education at Wollongong University.

Leaky touch

HAVING mentioned Simon Benson's book Betrayal - The Underbelly of Australian Labor (Strewth, Saturday), it would be remiss of us to not mention that the cover art - Kevin Rudd smiting Paul Keating and Morris Iemma with lightning bolts - is by our very own Bill Leak. What's more, five prints of Leak's handiwork (signed and framed, natch) and five copies of Benson's book are being auctioned on eBay by Betrayal's publisher, Pantera Press. All dough raised goes to the Smith Family's early childhood literacy program, Let's Read.

Zut alors!

CONGRATULATIONS to our former colleague Ean Higgins, who has won the opinion category in the Grand Prix du Journalisme Independant, the Quebec equivalent of the Walkleys, for an opinion piece in newspaper Le Devoir on the ironies of language politics in Quebec. As pleased as we are, we only hope it wasn't editing our copy years ago that drove Higgins to French.