In other news

IT was late Wednesday afternoon, a time when most of the nation was mesmerised by the spectacle of Cyclone Yasi lumbering inexorably towards the Queensland coast.

But not Defence Minister Stephen Smith who, in a truly transcendental moment, popped out this media warning: "Picture opportunity: Minister for Defence Stephen Smith will unveil the Royal Australian Naval Centenary Commemorative Coin . . ." Though that wasn't quite as much fun as Tony Abbott's emailed request for people to chip in for the Liberal Party's levy-fighting fund. It is, as the comedy masters say, all in the timing. Someone else who appears to not be a levy-lover is PR consultant Ian Kortlang, who spelled out his reasons to Deborah Cameron on 702 ABC yesterday morning: "I think it's cathartic for people to give, and if there was a big fund that had all that money, you wouldn't go and put your hand in your pocket and put your $100 in for a telethon, or whatever they run these days." And has Kortlang experienced such a catharsis? Why, yes he has. "I gave away 110 ties over my Christmas break to the Wayside Chapel, so now every felon who's going to court for petty crimes over the next few months will have Zegna, Armani . . . they're all out there."

Kiwi courage

THERE was some powerful cyclone coverage from New Zealand's stuff.co.nz, which triumphed in its hunt for a Kiwi angle when it interviewed ex-pats such as Loulou Lawley in Townsville: " 'I just holed up in my bathroom with some Valium. Being from Wellington I was only scared for about two hours. The average person was petrified for about 10 and possibly still is.' She said although people were not supposed to be on the roads yet, from her sixth-floor apartment she could already see cars driving around. 'Typical bloody Queenslanders.' " Typical bloody Queenslanders, consider yourselves saluted.

Same old same old

ONE from the Whatever Could He Mean? files: US Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia addressing the crowd before commencing the 2011 James Crawford Biennial Lecture at the University of Adelaide on Wednesday night: "I'm glad to be back in Adelaide, I was here . . . must have been 20 years ago. We just got in at noon, so I haven't had a chance to look over the city. It hasn't changed . . . I'm told it doesn't change."

Relaunch not rosy

ONE of several things the Titanic and Melbourne paper The Age don't have in common is that The Age gets to have a relaunch, which to us always sounds a bit like renewing one's marital vows, a jolly nice idea, especially if one can squeeze a week in Vanuatu out of it. More specifically, it's the Saturday edition that's being relaunched; for purposes of clarity, it will henceforth be known as The Saturday Age. Naturally, it has been trumpeted loudly and proudly, and an important part of it was to have been Andrew Rule, the award-festooned journalist (Gold Walkley, Graham Perkin Journalist of the Year, you name it) and Underbelly co-author. So it's a bummer that yesterday, just two days before the big day, Rule announced his defection to the Herald Sun. As our Media diarist Caroline Overington noted drily, "Diary hears that Age editor Paul Ramadge was not at all pleased, when Rule went into his office to quit." On the plus side, we imagine Rule will at least appear in some of the stuff printed in advance.

To each his Foley

DESPITE his cemented status as a Strewth favourite, South Australian Treasurer Kevin Foley has been on the nose with the Public Service Association since he had a good old slash at public sector staff numbers and work conditions in the September budget. PSA secretary Jan McMahon has admitted however that she'll miss Foley's favourite sayings -- such as "rack 'em, pack 'em, and stack 'em" (regarding SA's overcrowded prisons) -- and holding up protest signs at rallies imparting sentiments such as "ex-Foleyate". Treasurer-in-waiting Jack Snelling's name doesn't have quite the same ring of possibility about it yet, but the year is young.

Cop that kettle

BARELY a handful of weeks after Mark Latham gave our colleague, contributing editor Peter van Onselen, a drubbing in the pages of The Australian Financial Review, he's at it again today in The Spectator Australia. At the very least, van Onselen is beginning to develop an appreciation of how Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop felt when she accused him of having a "rather unhealthy obsession about me", so that's probably a positive. As it is, Latham has taken two of van Onselen's pieces about the Labor Party published a couple of weeks apart last December, the first calling Julia Gillard an asset for her party, the second noting the party had ended the year at a remarkable low. Van Onselen is taking the John Maynard Keynes line: "When the facts change, I change my mind." Not Latham, though, who writes: "No wonder they call him Peter van Oscillator." Coming from the bloke who went from being Labor leader to Labor's most brutal critic, and who went from savaging the media to joining its ranks, this might have been intended as praise.

James Jeffrey