Julia's peaking

OUR first thought on seeing Julia Gillard's eyes-wide-shut portrait on the cover of the "power issue" of The Australian Financial Review Magazine yesterday was of Twin Peaks' Laura Palmer, one of TV's most famous stiffs.

OUR first thought on seeing Julia Gillard's eyes-wide-shut portrait on the cover of the "power issue" of The Australian Financial Review Magazine yesterday was of Twin Peaks' Laura Palmer, one of TV's most famous stiffs.

Some corporate types, however, eschewed pop culture and suggested (like the scamps they are) it proved Gillard was blind to business. For what it's worth, the photo inside of Paul Howes in a pair of Ray-Bans was a brave homage to Paul Keating's Rolling Stone cover of yore (results: mixed). Kevin Rudd, the nation's happy-little-Vegemite-in-chief, was snapped shaking his retriever Abby's paw with one hand and holding a finger meaningfully to his nose with the other. Tony Abbott's portrait, meanwhile, did not feature an accidental cameo by a pornographic poster; two days in a row was probably too much to expect.

Minister fires it up

A NSW government announcement: "NSW Police and Emergency Services Minister Michael Gallacher will launch the 2011-12 Bush Fire Season with the [Rural Fire Service] commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons." How does one launch a bushfire season? Like a boat? We had a sudden picture of Gallacher crying, "I hereby declare this bushfire season open", while smashing a bottle of petrol against a tree. Though that could just be us.

Faining ignorance

SPEAKING at the Sydney launch on Thursday night of his new book Correspondentland, the BBC's erstwhile Australia correspondent Nick Bryant waxed enthusiastically (as one ought) about his book-plugging encounter with Kerri-Anne Kennerley. Then there was his session with the ABC's Jon Faine "to have my moan about Australian politics". All seemed to go well, then the interview ended, the red broadcast light went off and, if we may paraphrase, Faine instructed Bryant to repatriate himself to "Pommyland" in the procreative manner. "And I thought the interview had been going well," Bryant said. It turned out Faine was reading text messages that had come in during the interview. The next one suggested Bryant run for office. It's hard to say which sentiment was the crueller.

Bucks for Barack

THE Australian political scene may err on the side of scrappy, but it's arguably preferable to the plaintive tone among President Barack Obama's people as they try to scrape together dough from supporters. Here's Obama For America national finance director Rufus Gifford in a guilt trip of an email to supporters: "The staff and I are working around the clock, powered by too much coffee. It's been way too long since we called our moms. And we've all had more pizza and bad takeout in the past few weeks than anyone should have in a year . . . If you're able to, will you chip in just $3 today?" Perhaps it's time to change tack and adopt National Lampoon's gun-to-puppy's-head tactic.

Eyes on the ball

FORGET the flag nookie furore in At Home with Julia; anyone can get steamed over something that obvious. Behold instead the more forensic rage of Gerard Henderson in his Media Watch Dog yesterday: "Episode three . . . depicted the Prime Minister in her Parliament House office playing with an Australian rules football while an AFL game was being shown on a television. MWD researchers suggest that the game in question looked like it was half a century old and possibly the 1961 preliminary final between Footscray (now the Western Bulldogs) and Melbourne. And yet there was no suggestion that the PM was watching replays from the year she was born. Can you bear it?" We have since been informed it was the 1954 grand final (In colour? Really?), the only one the Bulldogs have won. We hope this isn't the case as we'd hate to see Hendo reduced to conducting one of his characteristically tenacious bouts of correspondence with himself.