Connect the dots

GO to the Labor Party's website and you'll be urged to "connect with Kevin", as beguiling an invitation as we've had for many a day.

GO to the Labor Party's website and you'll be urged to "connect with Kevin", as beguiling an invitation as we've had for many a day.

But having duly connected with the PM, we could find no sign of his spectacular backdown on emissions trading. A link to his website doesn't mention the carbon backflip either. It's full of uplifting guff about the health revolution, a funding rearrangement that is supposed to make us all feel better. Go back to the Labor site and you will be welcomed by a "progressive party" and asked to "get connected" and "join progressive discussions" on the country's future. But search for info about Rudd's climb-down and you will be disappointed. On the plus side, though, Rudd assures us: "Australia needs a new way of governing." His website "allows you to stay informed and have your say on the direction the nation is heading". And, of course, it offers ephemerae such as Twitter and Flickr and YouTube. That's the new way of governing.

Pure Barnaby

THERE'S a movie to be made titled Loving Barnaby Joyce. Well, Strewth loves him for the purity of his utterances. "My heart actually felt for [Penny] Wong being dragged through the public teeth-pulling exercise on radio this morning explaining that the Labor Party no longer has a carbon reduction scheme of any sort." See? He's feeling empathy for his opponent. "Mr Rudd has yet again destroyed another one of his colleagues by revealing his lack of a political soul and his mercenary ambivalence that puts polls over statesmanship." Yay, Barnaby. "How can he possibly hold any credibility when he publicly denies the fundamental tenant [sic] of his political faith so illustriously espoused at the previous election? Mr Rudd has jettisoned the ETS as one would put aside a paper plate at a picnic . . . Mr Rudd is a philosophical soldier of fortune who, chameleon-like, uses faux earnestness as a key tool of deception . . . Rudd is a political bric-a-brac shop of kitsch philosophies: overpriced, underplanned and dispensed at will."

Wait for it

THE Blake Dawson prize for business literature is the richest of its type in the land. Designed to encourage "literary commentary on finance and business", there's $30,000 for the winner, and the presentation has something of a Brownlow feel to it: nobody knows who is going to win until it's announced, and that can't happened until after the speeches, including one by the judging panel and by Blake Dawson chairwoman Mary Padbury. The keynote this year was given by the lovable Thomas Keneally (who told the crowd the only thing that stopped him writing a book about his comrade in the Republican movement, Malcolm Turnbull, was that "he can afford better lawyers").

Raise your glasses

FOR the record, the prize this year went to The Big Fella: The Rise and Rise of BHP Billiton by Robert Macklin and Peter Thompson. Macklin, Kevin Rudd's biographer, declared on taking the stage: "If I'd known, I would have had less to drink!" Gripping the lectern, smiling and swaying, Macklin then sketched his career back to 1942. He was generous. He was effusive. Co-author Thompson was allowed to say a few words but Macklin wasn't done, tapping on the MC's shoulder and saying he had one more thing to say. "To those of you who didn't win, I want to say, it doesn't matter! Well, it matters. The pain, the anguish you feel, I can understand it. And I would like to talk to you all later tonight, to help ease that pain." He was then helped back to his seat.

Hats off to NZ

EITHER New Zealand's teenage girls are behind the times or they are a good deal more sensible than their Australian peers. Fewer than 30 Kiwi lasses bothered to welcome Canadian teeny-bop sensation Justin Bieber at an Auckland school. More than 4000 Sydney girls almost caused a riot when the lad was scheduled to make an appearance. In Auckland, about a dozen girls stood squealing as the popster swept through. As he arrived at the airport on Tuesday night, Emah Hira Matiu, 17, swiped his hat and the fan now claims she's been sleeping with it.

Oh, what a knight

PERHAPS New Zealanders are behind the times, after all. This thought comes to mind on hearing they are still doling out knighthoods, long since regarded as relics of an imperial age on this side of the Tasman Sea. Peter Jackson, the film-maker who created the Lord of the Rings trilogy, is gonged along with 13 other Kiwis. Strangely, Russell Crowe is not among them. Sir Russell? Crowe would not be so silly, would he? "I feel incredibly humbled and the truth is, making movies is not a solo effort; it involves hundreds of people, thousands of people, so I feel as though I'm accepting it on behalf of the industry," Jackson said.

Creating headlines

A GROUP of Chinese and Turkish evangelists claim to have found Noah's Ark in Turkey. The last time someone made this daft claim, climate change sceptic Ian Plimer mortgaged his house to fight a court case under the Trade Practices Act.