Bearing gifts

WE suspect Julia Gillard isn't unused to opening her front door to find a visitor whose smile may or may not be masking hostility deep within their heart, but it must make for a nice change when it isn't Kevin Rudd.

WE suspect Julia Gillard isn't unused to opening her front door to find a visitor whose smile may or may not be masking hostility deep within their heart, but it must make for a nice change when it isn't Kevin Rudd.

Indeed, yesterday it was NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell, who had the good grace to lob at Kirribilli House with a couple of choccie-laden showbags from Sydney's Royal Easter Show. The biggest and boldest was a Bertie Beetle bag, which resulted in some erroneous online smirking about BOF getting the cheapest showbag available, the Trabant of the Easter Show. What BOF got was in fact the Bonanza Fun-filled Bertie Beetle bag (like a Trabant with a sunroof and racing stripes), which has a double-figure price tag (well, 10 bucks) and includes Bertie Beetles (scrumptious, unless you've acquainted your palate with Lindt any time recently), Redskins, an egg cup, and some farm animal tattoos (something for Nick Xenophon to keep in mind). We're not sure if the PM gave him billions for infrastructure in return.

Sign of the times

DESPITE the PM's meddling with the space-time continuum this week, we can rest assured March 31 is definitely behind us. That was the date schools could start taking down their official Building the Education Revolution signs. As Senator Chris Evans's office told this august organ: "The federal government has made it clear to schools and state education authorities that signs need to be displayed until either March 31 or when the project is completed. After this point it's solely a decision for the local school if the sign stays up. Schools and education authorities can recycle the signs after these dates." Time for a reminder? Then again, as delightful as it would be for our cash-strapped schools to hand them over to the kiddies for arts 'n' crafts 'n' mutilation, we're thinking as the government forked out $3.8 million to put up 8325 of these signs, they might want to keep mum and get a bit more mileage out of them.

In the drink

WHEN we quoted a tongue-in-cheek appendix from Northern Territory Guidelines and Field Methodology for Vegetation Survey and Mapping that gave instructions on drinking stubbies and driving, our optimism got the better of us and we expressed our hope it wouldn't attract the fun police. Alas, as The Northern Territory News reported yesterday: "A government department was embarrassed yesterday after it was revealed it promoted drink-driving in a staff 'how-to' guide . . . department spokeswoman Karlie Weinert said the instruction . . . was an 'administrative error'. '(It) has been amended and fixed on the website accordingly,' she said." Incidentally, the NT News repaid the hectares of free publicity we've given them by not mentioning us.

Intellectual party

IF you've ever found yourself wondering who the thinkers are in the federal opposition, Tony Abbott provided an easy cut-out-and-keep list at the Menzies Research Centre in Sydney yesterday: "As well as my very distinguished senior colleagues Julie Bishop, George Brandis and Eric Abetz, I should also mention frontbenchers who are either here in this room or who will shortly be here: Joe Hockey, Kevin Andrews, Bruce Billson, Connie Fierravanti-Wells, Simon Birmingham, Mathias Cormann, Mitch Fifield, Brett Mason, Marise Payne, Scott Ryan, Michaelia Cash and Tony Smith. I should also mention Sue Boyce, John Alexander, Jamie Briggs, Steve Ciobo, Mark Coulton, Paul Fletcher, Alex Hawke and Alan Tudge. All of you by virtue of your presence here today can rightly lay claim to be amongst the intellectuals of our parliament." Strict membership rules, then.

Wiki rage

MISSING from Abbott's list was opposition resources spokesman and as-yet-unsuccessful deputy leadership putschist, Ian Macfarlane, but that's probably only because he's been busy at an oil and gas conference in Perth this week. Macfarlane shared with the conference his daughter's outrage at his naming in Wikipedia as one of the "dirty dozen" of climate-change sceptics in Australia. As Macca revealed, she changed the Wikipedia entry to remove the reference. But, as a former Howard government resources minister, he says he didn't mind at all being named alongside his old boss, John Howard, and former Western Mining chief Hugh Morgan. "I told her to leave it there," he said. "I saw it as a badge of honour."

Opera drama

OUR item about a cardiac event at the Melbourne premiere of La Boheme has stirred reader Gregor Ferguson: "What is it about La Boheme? About 35 years ago I was at a Scottish Opera production at the King's Theatre in Edinburgh; at the point where Mimi expires and Rodolfo throws himself across her demurely arranged corpse, an ambulance belted down Leven Street, just outside, its siren going. The conductor didn't miss a beat but the 'corpse' corpsed visibly while Rodolfo's grieving sobs changed in timbre to barely suppressed guffaws. The audience thought it was a hoot."

James Jeffrey