Et tu, Brandis

WEST Australian Liberal senator Mathias Cormann has been doing his bit to make government more transparent, tweeting from inside the partyroom during yesterday's ballot for the position of deputy opposition leader in the Senate.

WEST Australian Liberal senator Mathias Cormann has been doing his bit to make government more transparent, tweeting from inside the partyroom during yesterday's ballot for the position of deputy opposition leader in the Senate. Cormann, bless his learned soul, tweeted in Latin: Alea jacta est - the die is cast - Julius Caesar's line when crossing the Rubicon.

Sadly for the deputy leadership hopeful, his next tweet was in plain English: "Congratulations to senator George Brandis on his election as deputy leader of the Liberal Party in the Senate."

Fashion victims

IN honour of Rosemount Australian Fashion Week, which kicked off yesterday, we slipped into our finest purple Italian trousers and sauntered down to Sydney's Circular Quay to check out the action. After all, when designers of the calibre of Ginger & Smart were willing to reveal the inspiration for their show was "the fourth state of consciousness, between waking, dream and sleeping", the least we could do was turn up. And we're glad we did. In a place where the men dress like effete James Bond villains and the women appear to have grown up in conditions of extremely low gravity and are possibly one decent breeze away from snapping in half, what's not to love? And alongside the apparent illegality of bums and busts, it was all so very serious; we imagine the wartime crew at Bletchley Park had more laughs cracking the Enigma code. Devastatingly, not one person complimented us on our elegant lilac strides; all that effort and bugger-all return. Suddenly, we had an inkling of what it might be like being Ken Henry.

Great big old cliche

IS it just us or is Tony Abbott starting to get self-conscious about hammering us all relentlessly with the phrase "great, big new tax"? (Boy, wouldn't it have been to fun to have been a fly on the wall at the brainstorming session that cooked up that one.) Watch him next time he does it -- and, going by averages, the next GBNT utterance should be along in under an hour -- and pay attention to that pause, perhaps caused by some vestige of shame, and that slightly guilty smile. He's like a man who's about to launch on his family a joke or a pun so stunningly lame, he knows the highest audience response he'll receive is a collective groan. But seriously, it's getting as bad as Kevin Rudd's "working families" and "can I just say"; a couple more GBNTs and we will give some serious consideration to glassing ourself.

Swan song curtailed

AS everyone from Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky to the Everly Brothers have demonstrated, it can be a tough gig being a double act. Take for example the Henry review press conference by Wayne Swan and the PM. Rudd began the presser with a long attack on miners (sadly resisting the line, "A tax is the best form of defence") and pleas for working families (non-breeders and bludgers can rack off). He then sat down while Swan spoke and took questions, but one journo tried throwing a question to Rudd about the emissions trading scheme.

Journo: "Why should Australians believe you on this reform, Prime Minister, when you were so quick to backpedal on the ETS?"

Swan: "Well, I'm actually doing all the questions, thanks very much, and that's the way we're running this press conference."

Journo: "Why should they believe you, though, after the ETS backflip?"

Swan: "Well, sure, OK, we'll come back at the end, how about that?"

At the end Rudd then summed up, addressed the ETS question and shut down the presser without answering a question. What some may define as creative tension hung in there. Still, at least Swan was able to discharge some of that tension yesterday when he went on the wireless with shouty de facto deputy opposition leader Ray Hadley.

Logie bar bar

BRENDAN Fevola may not have been punished for his drunken indiscretions at Melbourne's Crown Entertainment Complex in recent years, but others have been. The many wobbly stars at Sunday's Logies were shielded from cameras and the bar by, er, cautious Crown and Nine Network management. Each camera and microphone at the Logies after-party was ghosted by an exec while bartenders were telling reality television stars the "responsible service of alcohol" might not suit their purposes but it was now Logie law.

Fundamental flaw

WHEN Gerard Henderson and his dog Nancy set about having a dig at Sue Cato for making a colonoscopy gag on 702 ABC (Strewth, yesterday), it appears he may have missed the joke. An aghast Cato told Strewth yesterday she would never make fun of someone who's had a colonoscopy (so she's one up on us); rather, the line was a play on WA Premier Colin Barnett's name. Suddenly, the line makes more sense: "Sam, a good friend of mine, who's a bit of a political wit, described it as a political Colin-oscopy for all the people in WA if it fails." Cato explained she said it slowly and deliberately. But, then, Hendo has suggested in the past that Nancy is a bit old and hard of hearing.