Fireman Tony on the trail

TONY Abbott's wife Margie says the Health Minister, with his usual boundless enthusiasm has taken to a new pastime she has labelled "golf without guilt".

TONY Abbott's wife Margie says the Health Minister, with his usual boundless enthusiasm has taken to a new pastime she has labelled "golf without guilt".

Abbott isn't actually whacking a little white ball but he is disappearing for hours at a time on weekends. He is now one of the official engine drivers for the Davidson Rural Fire Service, a volunteer bushfire brigade that protects the rugged Garigal National Park in his northeast Sydney electorate of Warringah. Abbott, who is also a keen cyclist and body surfer, joined the RFS some years ago but only recently passed his truck-driving test and earned a promotion. He now happily trundles along fire trails surrounding the upper reaches of Sydney's Middle Harbour and drops into gullies so deep that his staff can't disturb him with mobile phone calls.

Ekka a sneeze-free zone

THE Sunshine State's chief health officer Jeannette Young wants sniffling Queenslanders to avoid this year's Ekka, which kicks off today (although 40 youngsters from Brisbane's Children's Hospital had a sneak preview yesterday). Young reckons anyone with the flu is better off staying at home rather than venturing out to the 131-year-old event officially, if rarely, known as the Royal Queensland Show. "This is one of the worst flu seasons that Queensland has seen over the last six years. We've now had over 1400 cases reported to us," Young says. The Ekka was cancelled in 1919 during the international killer-flu epidemic, when the grounds in which it is held were used as an emergency hospital.

Hellicar's long holiday

"I SHALL return!" is the message former James Hardie Industries chairwoman Meredith Hellicar wants delivered to Australia from her idyll in rural France. But no one is saying when. On Tuesday Strewth revealed Hellicar was on an extended Gallic sojourn, away from concerns such as the court case launched by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, which wants her and nine other ex-Hardie bosses banned from running companies because of their alleged roles in Hardie's asbestos compensation scandal. Hellicar maintains she engaged in no wrongdoing. Her personal spin doctor Ian Kortlang insists "she hasn't left; it's more like a longer holiday compared to a shorter holiday". Meanwhile, the director of the federal Government's Takeovers Panel, Nigel Morris, refuses to say whether Hellicar, who stood aside as a panel member pending the outcome of her court case, is still getting her taxpayer-funded annual fee of $2000.

Tied up in Brisbane

INTERNATIONAL jet-setting entrepreneur and sometime jailbird Peter Foster, most recently of Fiji and the Solomon Islands, won't be moving out of Brisbane in the near future. In the local Magistrates Court yesterday, he was committed to stand trial on four fraud-connected charges relating to obtaining $274,000 from the Bank of the Federated States of Micronesia and dishonestly obtaining benefits totalling $399,369 in Brisbane and Surfers Paradise. The baby-faced Foster, 44, didn't enter a plea or make a bail application and magistrate Jacqui Payne remanded him in custody until his trial in the Queensland Supreme Court at a date to be fixed.

George marks his man

POLITICS isn't all sweetness and light, there is always someone grumpy around the corner. Take the newly elected Liberal member for Davidson in the NSW Parliament, Jonathan O'Dea. Earlier this week O'Dea, a 35-year-old go-getter who used to be on the censorship Classification Review Board, proudly announced that his electorate office appeared to be the first political or electorate office anywhere in Australia to achieve the international standard of excellence from local performance ratings group Global-Mark. Did he get a congratulatory slap on the back from his colleagues in the NSW Opposition? Fat chance! George Souris, a Nationals veteran and the Opposition spokesman for racing and gaming, fired off a savage email that started with a rather condescending "My dear Jonathan" and continued: "Your inexperience in sending out a release that will offend every electorate office staffer proves you need a bit of fine-tuning to the reality of life in politics." Souris went on to offer to review O'Dea's office personally, something he promised would be "a gruelling and harrowing life-changing experience" for the suburban Sydney MP.

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