Banquo's bill

IT was, as expected, a fine night at the Walkley Foundation's Press Freedom Dinner in Sydney's Darling Harbour on Friday night.

IT was, as expected, a fine night at the Walkley Foundation's Press Freedom Dinner in Sydney's Darling Harbour on Friday night. Comedian Jean Kittson compered, News Limited's Campbell Reid and the Nine Network's Laurie Oakes gave speeches, and Sky News's Helen Dalley managed to draw her own ticket- "C'est moi!" - out of the box during the raffle (nobly, she had a second go). And on stage the whole time was an empty chair, representing imprisoned Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo and placed there at the request of the Sydney arm of writers' association, PEN International.

The chair was the subject of a moving introduction by Christopher Warren, the head of journos' union the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, which runs the Walkley Foundation. Amusingly, it was also the subject of a fat invoice. Yes, the Walkley Foundation - a body we don't automatically associate with japery, but we all make mistakes - wanted PEN to cough up $130, the same as everyone else, the main difference being that everyone else got to gorge themselves silly on three courses and enough wine to test a diving bell in. PEN's Susie Eisenhuth has yet to see the funny side, but we have every faith she'll come around. In the meantime, she tells Strewth, "I remain outraged, as a member of the MEAA and a member of the Sydney Committee for PEN International, that such a request was made. As I said to my colleagues on the committee when I emailed them with the confirmation an attendance fee was required, 'Should we send the bill to Liu Xiaobo?' " Why not? It might brighten his day.

Swan's dive

SOME time today, Wayne Swan will stage his annual migration from his parliamentary office to the Treasury building, where he'll be setting up camp to work, as he explained yesterday in his weekly Treasurer's Economic Note. We always liked to imagine the budget preparation zone as a severe place, a scene of almost Hobbesian brutality where the dank, seeping walls resound with the cracking of whips and the squeaking of rats; or perhaps we're just thinking ahead to when Joe Hockey is running it. Alas, Swan felt it necessary yesterday to take such fantasies and, if we may borrow a Kevin Rudd-ism, give them a cold shower. Writes Swan, "The office in the Treasury building isn't the airless bunker with a naked light bulb hanging from the roof as some people have described it, but that image certainly conveys a sense of the intensity of the final days before the budget is handed down. The nights get even later than usual and dinners start consisting mainly of pizzas and takeaway Indian curries as we pore over the final details." Whatever gravity is left by this stage is undermined at the end, where under all of the Treasurer's other details, we are reminded his Twitter account is called @SwannyDPM.

Fahion frenzy

ON the weekend, while you were having a bludgy old time and Justin Bieber became a security threat, Woman's Day had an entire team slaving like maniacs in that noblest of quests: to recreate the wedding frock of Kate the freshly minted duchess. As they informed us, "Woman's Day has sourced a team of leading Australian dressmakers, an expert patissier, jeweller and florist who will work day and night across this weekend to recreate every magical detail of the dresses, cake and floral arrangements ahead of a special VIP unveil at a high tea party" at Sydney's Queen Victoria Building today. No, we have no idea why, but as the royals have taught us, too many details spoil the magic.

Premature mailout

RED faces for the South Australian Health Department after Rann government media adviser Ruth Awbery recalled an email sent out a week in advance. Luckily for Awbery but sadly for us, the premature media release contained no confidential cabinet announcements. However, it did contain the complete list of winners in the 2011 Nursing and Midwifery Excellence Awards, plus the lucky recipients of the 2011 SA Nursing and Midwifery Premier's Scholarships. And the winner is . . . Oops, that's next week. And to think people got into a stew about Dannii Minogue tweeting the Gold Logie winner a few minutes in advance last year.

Brand aid please

PERHAPS it's just a sign of our mental decrepitude, but we're struggling with this lead paragraph from wire agency AAP: "With British funnyman Russell Brand for a hubby, it's little wonder that Katy Perry has a thing for Aussie characters." Can anyone translate it?

Not that good

ON Saturday, we quoted Lindsay Tanner on Sky News: "I think there was a lot of outcry about The Australian Literary Review . . . getting some kind of arts subsidy. I think that's been an outstanding success and I think the subsidy, whatever it was, was entirely justified and a very positive thing." What the Tan-man and Strewth neglected to mention was that the aforementioned subsidy, through the Literature Board of Australia Council, was canned at the end of June last year when Tanner was finance minister. Still, you never want too much of a good thing.

James Jeffrey