Defenceless

BARELY 24 hours after Labor's game of swallow the leader, Greg Combet was out on duty, launching the Australian defence industry policy statement before a crowd of industry heavies.

BARELY 24 hours after Labor's game of swallow the leader, Greg Combet was out on duty, launching the Australian defence industry policy statement before a crowd of industry heavies.

When Combet sought response, Australian Industry Group chief executive Helen Ridout piped up: "Execution is everything." While this drew a laugh from the crowd, Strewth's agent in the field informs us Combet spent the next couple of seconds doing an uncanny imitation of a strangled cat.

Karl unrequited

ONE of the sadly unacknowledged victims of the Rudd rolling is Today co-host Karl Stefanovic, who provided such a crackling undercurrent of raw desire during Julia Gillard's weekly screwball slot on the show with Tony Abbott. There was flirtatiousness, admiration and moments of disarmingly schoolboyish fumbling. To our regret, Stefanovic reined in his ardour for a while, but then last week it made a triumphant, not to mention eerily prescient, return in this exchange with Gillard:

S: "To you first of all, PM."

G: "Stop it, Karl."

S: "Cheap shot, cheap shot."

G: "I'm going to call you Lisa."

S: "All right, I'm quite all right with that."

Ah, what could have been.

Testing, testing

WAS the Labor Party less than 100 per cent confident about its new leader to start with? Visiting the party's freshly revamped website, alp.org.au, yesterday, a message there said: "BETA: Labor connect: home." In the IT world, a beta product is one that is tried out in the marketplace to see how the public reacts, so as to decide whether the product should be tweaked, withdrawn or run with. By last night, the decision seemed to be to go with it.

Common cause

WITH the launch of Blanche d'Alpuget's second volume on husband Bob Hawke just weeks away, we're hoping publisher Melbourne University Press goes through with its original choice of book launcher, Kevin Rudd. After all, who could resist the symmetry of having two Labor leaders who had tasted both immense popularity and the axe? In the meantime, Rudd has tweeted, "Thanks everyone for all the really kind messages after yesterday. They mean a lot to Therese, the kids and me. Let's stay in touch."

One for Aunty

THE most mysterious occurrence during the ranga revolution was surely the ABC breaking the story (21-gun salute for Chris Uhlmann and Mark Simkin) that Dennis Shanahan's four-day-old prediction of a leadership ballot was about to be realised, then sitting on it for the best part of three hours as if it were a bit young to be consumed straight away and just needed to be cellared for a while, leaving Sky News to go beserk with it. Even national treasure Phillip Adams didn't rise to the occasion, which surprised us, given his show's called Late Night Live. Still, while we're on the topic of Aunty, we'd like to thank them for what was hands down the funniest moment during a week that was otherwise light on for laughs (unless you count the opposition's attack of late onset squeamishness about knocking off leaders): Tony Jones's interview on Wednesday night with a magnificently, indefatigably oblivious Peter Garrett.

Your right to no

EAST Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta's visit to Australia ended on a silent note when the organisers of a business lunch in Sydney shut out the media. Even though the lunch was part of Ramos-Horta's official program, organiser Tony Williams informed our Timor man that attendance was not an option. Williams is the secretary of the Timor-Leste Australia Business Council, which represents a handful of brave (though apparently reticent) souls who have ploughed money into the emerging country. We imagine Ramos-Horta may have been bemused, given he began his working life as a journalist and has a Peter Beattie-esque soft spot for media attention.

No illusions

WE'D like to step back from the political upheavals and offer belated congratulations to Peter Temple for his Miles Franklin triumph of his novel, Truth. We love few things more than an ever so slightly downbeat champion such as Temple. Here's what he told Strewth: "I think I may be the first Australian writer to be get a round of applause on a Qantas flight. Just before landing in Melbourne [on Wednesday], the chief steward said: 'I'd like to inform you that we have on board Peter Temple, who last night won the Miles Franklin Prize, Australia's most prestigious literary award.' There was applause and cries of goodonya. What does this say about Australia's literary culture? On the other hand, it was Oliver Cromwell who said to his companion as they rode through a cheering crowd: 'These persons would shout as much if you and I were going to be hanged.' "