Flood of scorn

HINDSIGHT, as any punter leaving the racetrack can tell you, is the most accurate of all sights.

HINDSIGHT, as any punter leaving the racetrack can tell you, is the most accurate of all sights.

Yesterday Queensland Treasurer Andrew Fraser accused Liberal National Party leader Campbell Newman of being "Captain Hindsight" with his claim that if he'd been in charge of the water levels at Wivenhoe Dam when deluge of rain struck southeast Queensland earlier this year, he'd have lowered them 25 per cent before Brisbane flooded. "If he was Captain Cook he would have stayed away from Hawaii, if he was the captain of the Titanic he would have avoided that iceberg, if he was Harold Holt he would have swum between the flags, if he was Janet Jackson he would have gone for buttons over Velcro, if he was that woman at the third State of Origin he definitely would have lowered the bladder levels 25 per cent at half time," he said. Fraser and other ministers had a whale of a time at Newman's expense, but he couldn't actually respond because he doesn't yet have a seat in parliament, despite being leader of the party in opposition.

The director's art

THE departure of long-time Art Gallery of NSW director Edmund Capon was a bit of a love-in yesterday, with long-time board member John Kaldor claiming that Capon was the first professional director of the gallery, with his predecessors thinking of themselves as artists first and directors second. Good thing he's been there 33 years so no one could take offence. The man himself didn't have a clue who the new director might be, saying, "In business they always worry about succession, but in the arts we don't give a toss. We're hopeless." Capon has always been a master networker, but it seems social networking evades him. Capon is on Twitter but, according to the site, he has yet to tweet. He has 16 followers, a trifling number for someone who could meet and greet 16 people in about five minutes without raising a sweat.

In the hot seat

TEMPERATURES are rising in Adelaide and yesterday they exceeded 25C, pretty well unheard of in the Festival State at this time of year. It suits the political climate as well, where everyone's getting a bit hot under the collar about just when Mike Rann's going to pull the plug. The man himself continues to swan around India, seemingly unconcerned about events at home, and yesterday we note that he visited Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit. Some readers may have a quite snigger about the name of the Chief Minister but Strewth will not be one of them, being mindful of the case of New Zealand television host Paul Henry who laughed out loud at Dikshit's name. The Indian government formally protested to New Zealand over the matter and Henry lost his job. She is not a person to trifle with.

Fair cop, Julia

AS Julia Gillard finished her speech launching the biography of former Victorian police chief Christine Nixon yesterday, she said: "I declare the book Top Cop, by Christine Nixon, officially launched." Only trouble is it's by Melbourne's The Age journalist Jo Chandler and it's called Fair Cop. You've been nicked, Julia.

Pilots lose Travolta

BACK in the late 1980s after the movie Rain Man was released, several airlines cut out of their in-flight movies the bit where Dustin Hoffman says that Qantas has never crashed. But the Australian and International Pilots Association, the union that represents pilots, claims Qantas is now censoring itself by removing an in-flight safety video featuring the disco-dancing high-flying pilot John Travolta, who says: "There's no one I'd prefer to have at the controls than a Qantas pilot." The pilots see the removal of Travolta and his message as a sinister step towards using overseas pilots, but Qantas has denied any such intent, pointing out that the Travolta video was always intended to be temporary. Without going into the ins and outs of the pilots' dispute, engaging Travolta as a temporary host of safety videoes seems odd indeed.

Mild, mild west

THERE'S always been a touch of the wild west about the Diggers and Dealers conference at Kalgoorlie, with miners swapping stories about their legendary finds while the local constabulary turns a blind eye to the law that says the town's famed skimpily clad barmaids should not be "immodestly dressed". But long-time observers say this year's event during the past three days has been a lot more corporate and serious than previous ones and that the wild west these days is more like the mild west. In a reflection of the money that's floating around thanks to the mining boom, a set of old gold scales that was originally used by the Perth mint was auctioned for $105,000, the proceeds going to the Western Australian School of Mines. The scales were donated by mining identity Guy Travis and the successful bidder was Kerry Stokes's company Westrack, whose chief executive Jim Walker was due to have the expensive scales presented to him at the conference farewell dinner last night. There's a bit of money floating around if someone can part with $105,000 for old scales.