Look at moi

WE did admire Lisa Wilkinson's doomed persistence with Tony Abbott on Today yesterday.

WHILE we sometimes have a worrying mental picture of Lindsay "Sideshow" Tanner banging his head against a wall somewhere, repeatedly groaning "Please for the love of God stop proving me right", we did admire Lisa Wilkinson's doomed persistence with Tony Abbott on Today yesterday.

Wilkinson: "At the Midwinter Ball on Wednesday, Julia Gillard joked that she was going to offer herself up for a second charity item, an elocution lesson teaching people how to say, 'look at moi' Kath and Kim-style. How good is your impression? Let's see if yours is worth more?"

Abbott: "Moving forward! How did I go? Look, Julia often criticises me for using three-word slogans like 'stop the boats' but, you know, she was pretty good at a two-word slogan, 'moving forward'. I just don't know."

Wilkinson: "You've got to do 'look at moi', Mr Abbott. Come on. Go on, give us one go."

Abbott: "Perhaps I need an elocution lesson from the Prime Minister."

Wilkinson: "After me, 'look at moi'."

Abbott: "Look, I don't want to draw attention to myself! Honestly, I don't."

Wilkinson: "You're not going to play are you?"

Everything OK, Mr Tanner? Mr Tanner?

Happy anniversary

EVEN as the potentially touchy dates of June 23 and 24 edge nearer, it's nice to see the federal Labor Party, with its keen sense of history, hasn't shied way from marking its anniversaries. Why, only yesterday, Families Minister Jenny Macklin cranked out a press release inviting us all to celebrate "Twelve months since Paid Parental Leave legislation passed". So here's hoping we get something this time next week, even just an innocuous press release from Kevin Rudd to reiterate, ostensibly apropos of nothing, how much he loves being Foreign Minister.

Age hits a deadline

WE'RE sure it was a sly comment from The Age yesterday rather than a cock-up. Amid its front-page Simon Overland extravaganza was a list of further coverage, including "Comment & debate - editorial, p16". Any readers following these directions would have found themselves on the obituaries page.

In hot we trust

IN case you were wondering what former Olympic swimmer Elka Whalan (nee Graham) is up to, she recently preached at the charismatic C3 church in Sydney's Oxford Falls. "She was pretty amazing, blew everyone away," Will Swanton tells us. There's a video up, in which an effervescent Whalan tells the congregation, "I knew that 3 per cent of a nation made a national team, and I also knew that 0.8 per cent got up on the dais, and I wanted to be in the percentage. But then I came to God and all of that changed, and the only statistic that mattered was that I was saved and everyone else was." She adds that despite warnings that the church was "a bit culty", one of her first impressions was there were "so many hot guys and hot girls".

Get a room, boys

UNLIKE the Great Wall of China, it may actually be possible to see the latest string of correspondence between Gerard Henderson and Robert Manne from space. Published on Hendo's Media Watch Dog site, it's the latest round in a heartfelt series. It kicked off on June 5 with a dare from Manne: "Dear Gerard, I am waiting with eager anticipation your promised attack on my period at La Trobe University." And then it's on, the two hammering out 18 furlongs of robustly worded emails in 12 days. Touchingly, even as they take turns accusing each other of gross unprofessionalism, dyslexia, amnesia and of writing things that may be characterised as "barking mad", they sign off with "best wishes"; it's like a gentlemen's duel, where the pistols are loaded but the gloves are immaculate. We only hope this doesn't pan out to be a Fight Club scenario, where Hendo and Manne are revealed to be the same person.

The brutalist truth

SENATOR Julian McGauran's description of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy as "one of the toughest, brutalist operators in the chamber" (Strewth, yesterday) has caused some amusement. While we remain reasonably confident McGauran intended to compliment Conroy as the most brutal operator in the Senate, reader Andrew Kelleher has thoughtfully supplied this snippet on the definition of brutalist: "Deliberate plainness, crudity, or violence". First definition, we think.

Slow to twitter

LET the Australian Industry Group not be accused of rushing into things. This week, it cautiously released this "The Australian Industry Group is now on Twitter. Follow @The-AiGroup for instant updates on Ai Group's press releases, policy statements, submissions, reports and media comments." Nice to know, not least because it's been on Twitter since before Christmas, when Heather Ridout said something nice about Ken Henry.