Julia and Giuliani

JULIA Gillard just can't win. As her adopted state of Victoria went underwater, the Prime Minister was still in Brisbane yesterday, home of comeback kid Anna Bligh.

Just as New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani built a national reputation on the back of inspirational leadership during September 11, Bligh has carved her own place in history during Australia's northern catastrophe. Bligh's defiant challenge to the flood's ferocity - "we are Queenslanders" - has made us all feel like Queenslanders. Luckily the blowflies and cork hats fit in pretty well with Queensland's image. Lattes in Altona? Not so much. But still, being on the scene with her compatriots in Kerang or Warracknabeal would have given Gillard a much-needed opportunity to prove she is indeed a leader. Not just a hard-working, politically savvy, erudite minister able to enact tough policy reform and manage an economy, but our very own Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, who, a bit like Janette in Australia's Howard years, really ran Old Blighty for George VI, who said "stuff the blitz" and remained in her bomb-besieged, crumbling capital. Gumboots Julia, the nation needs you, preferably armed with angry tears. Reputations are forged during national crises and a failure to rise to the occasion can prove deeply destructive for a prime minister. The Bligh problem is even more acute for Gillard because it mirrors the problem of that other prime minister, Kevin Rudd, who admittedly did not excel in gumboots and, mercifully for Gillard, was back on safe ground this week schmoozing an uncharismatic British Foreign Secretary who is uneasy on the ear and unlikely to attract more than passing attention.

Reporter off hook

RUDD did remove his foreign affairs hat long enough yesterday to warn Australians of the effect Queensland's clean-up bill would have on the nation's gross domestic product. Although he confirmed this week he was "not Robinson Crusoe" after contracting a foot infection during flood duties, the overworked and no doubt exhausted reporters up at ground zero in Australian Associated Press's Brisbane bureau seem unable to remember exactly who he is. As the updates rolled out of AAP's electronic presses, one story provided an unfortunate example of the problem facing Gillard, who ousted a Ruddbot and now appears to have become a Gillbot. "Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is warning Australians to brace for the final clean-up bill from the Queensland floods, saying GDP could take a big hit", the lead of yesterday's AAP story said. The unfortunate reference to PM Rudd was corrected by the wire service within half an hour, but national editor Mike Osborne was still cringing that the error managed to stand through two lines of subeditors. "I really can't blame the journalist who wrote it because she has been going for about eight days straight on the flood story," Osborne said.

Nic stays . . . mum

GETTING the timing right can be pretty tricky in the world of a monthly magazine, but Nicole Kidman had grace enough to send a personal email to the editor-in-chief of the The Australian Women's Weekly on the eve of its latest issue being released yesterday. In an interview - carried out before Christmas - for the Weekly's cover story, Nic mentioned not a word of the impending arrival of her surrogate baby, Faith Margaret, born on December 28. News broke of the surrogacy just as the Weekly was ready to be unloaded from trucks. In her email on Tuesday night to Helen McCabe, Kidman explained her reticence to reveal her family's plans earlier. "I had an email from her overnight saying that at Christmas she was on tenterhooks," McCabe said yesterday. "I think she was just holding her breath and not wanting to tell anybody because she was terrified something might go wrong and because it was such a different set of circumstances. The security of a story like that is so huge that I do understand." Supermarket queue readers of Woman's Day, however, if they'd been living in a vacuum for the past day or so, may still have been under the impression Nic and hubby Keith Urban's new baby was a Haitian refugee. "Nicole and Keith: We're Adopting!" the magazine told its readers this week. It does seem that Woman's Day's "close source" was on to the right stuff. "They're incredibly excited at the prospect of adding another child to their beautiful family . . . and their daughter Sunday Rose can't wait to have a little brother or sister." But the source mentioned not a word about the Haitian adoption. Nic was in Haiti last year in her role as a UN ambassador, so surely another baby must be on the way. Woman's Day wasn't saying.

Lance's water sign

LANCE Armstrong - currently embroiled in a federal grand jury probe into possible fraud and sports doping - has been escaping the heat in Adelaide, where he is in town for the Tour Down Under. The seven-time Tour de France winner has been doing "secret training" this week at the Norwood Pool; Armstrong says he hasn't decided if he'll move back into triathlons and tackle the Hawaii Ironman in October, after retiring from cycling, but his swimming might have been something of a giveaway.

- Natasha Robinson