Hawkie schtick

WE have rarely experienced a sense of void as utterly empty as the one created by Mark Latham's 60 Minutes report.

WE have rarely experienced a sense of void as utterly empty as the one created by Mark Latham's 60 Minutes report.

(What happened to the one that the Nine Network, in typically diuretic fashion, promised had all our pollies "scared"? Did someone accidentally bung in the dummy version?) But nature abhors a vacuum, and so sent Bob Hawke to fill it at Labor's campaign launch. And boy, did he succeed. With the help of horse metaphors and a heartfelt rain of pestilence to pour down on decades of conservative economic mismanagement (knocking the blip of the Whitlam economic "miracle" under the carpet like the pro he is), His Bobness was truly a verbal river to his people. By the time he insisted he'd come to office in 1953 (three extra decades of Hawkie!), we found ourselves nodding in agreement. We don't remember terribly much more, other than Julia Gillard's assertion, "I have believed all of my life in the power of hard work." While she has been putting the boot into bludgers, it's possible she was referring to the sense of reward that came from listening to Hawke's entire monologue.

The bile ads up

WHEN Joe Hockey hit Twitter the other day to observe, "In another hotel room watching another ALP hate ad full of bile, angst . . . what is their positive agenda for our country?", we felt his pain and nodded sadly. So we were excited to see the Coalition's new ad, "Who's in the driver's seat with Labor?" Its positive, bile-free message appears to boil down to this: Labor will run over your children with really big cars. We look forward to the one that features asylum-seeker boats running down kids on boogie boards. While the child massacre continues on the Libs' YouTube channel, Labor's ad-workers have been far from idle. The latest, poignantly titled "Tony Abbott, I've got a few questions for you", features a construction worker on a building site getting stuck into the Iron Monk, while behind him his colleagues beaver away in a buzz of (presumably) economic stimulus-powered activity. But, oh kindly, disgruntled but obviously hard-toiling construction worker, we have a few questions for you. With your face so artfully grimy, how is it that your safety vest is so clean? And your shirt? And your arms? And your fingernails? [We get the drift. - Ed.] Just remember, somewhere in a darkened corner, Hockey is weeping.

Preferred option

GREENS leader Bob Brown, now famous as one of the only people to agree to a sit-down interview with Mark Latham, is less than sold on his interviewer's concluding message on 60 Minutes. As Brown tweeted yesterday, "Mark Latham is giving you second rate advice. If you're fed up with both parties, don't vote informal, vote Green!" And, presumably, not ask for details about any whiffy preference deals with the aforementioned parties. We're sure Brown would have added that if Twitter didn't enforce its draconian 140-character limit. Besides, as Brown spelled out recently, preference deals cut by his party have nothing to do with him, for he's just the leader. Or something like that.

Tough gig for Aunty

SOMETIMES a complaint box just won't do. Here's an ad from Aunty in our Media section yesterday: "Editorial Policies are seeking an investigations officer to investigate, assess and respond to complex editorial complaints." The gig will fetch the successful applicant up to somewhere in the vicinity of 90 grand (plus super!), though how much of this is danger money, we're not sure. And you probably qualify for a staff discount in the ABC Shop.

Gently tug 'em away

WITH the asylum-seeker debate knowing no bounds, we share this suggestion from a South Australian reader: "Tony Abbott should assign a Collins-class submarine as a dedicated anti-asylum-seeker measure. The sub can cruise up to the boat without the asylum-seekers noticing - avoiding any nasty scuttling of the vessel - whereupon navy divers can secretly attach a grappling hook and drag it back to Indonesia so gently that the asylum-seekers don't even realise." Well, we can't rule anything out.

All in the family

IT's just a small (and regrettably non-campaign) thing, but we cannot go past this delicious correction in The New York Times: "A capsule summary on Friday directing readers to pictures of ugly creatures at nytimes.com/science left the impression that fish and crustaceans are not part of the animal kingdom. Many of them may be ugly, but they are no less animals." As you were.

Thicker than water

THANKS to Woman's Day for shining an overdue spotlight on Staci Child, the 31-year-old New York-based lovechild of Tim Mathieson. We were fascinated to learn that Julia Gillard's de facto stepdaughter has, among other things, a penchant for tattoos that mimic Russian prison art. We can't begin to tell you how much this raises a person in our (admittedly Russophilic) estimation. Happily, she's also a supporter of same-sex marriage, so there's hope for some interesting chats at the dinner table down the track.