Love, actually

FOR two weeks every northern summer, the Russian city of St Petersburg is illuminated by the White Nights, an opaline twilight that marries eerie beauty with mass insomnia.

FOR two weeks every northern summer, the Russian city of St Petersburg is illuminated by the White Nights, an opaline twilight that marries eerie beauty with mass insomnia.

Now it seems Sydney is about to enjoy its own, albeit more extraordinary, version, the darkness of night to be held at bay by the white hot glow of Bob Ellis's ardour for Tony Abbott. It's a man crush that has been building for a while, eclipsing even the bromance 'twixt South Australian Premier Mike Rann and primo pedaller Lance Armstrong; no petite feat. But this is more remarkable: Ellis is, after all, the ultimate Labor fellow traveller and Abbott, is, well, not exactly Malcolm Turnbull. And still it grows, filled with even more tension than Harry Jenkins and Christopher Pyne's screwball partnership. Only the other month, Strewth listened agog as Ellis got quite worked up about Abbott's "husky good looks" and whatnot. Now Ellis has followed a debate with Abbott at inner Sydney's Gleebooks (to promote Ellis's latest book), with a paean to him on ABC website The Drum: "When asked if Brideshead Revisited had influenced him, he quoted, off the cuff, word perfect, Waugh's lovely sentence: 'It was the cloistral hush which gave our laughter its resonance and carries it still across the intervening clamour.' 'It was the moment,' he explained, 'when Charles and Sebastian effectively fall in love.' " All in all, Ellis characterises the night as an example of the new paradigm Julia Gillard won't be going near. We asked the Iron Monk how it felt to have, er, so utterly captured the heart of so dedicated a Laborite. After careful consideration, a spokesman for Abbott delivered to Strewth this response: "Bob's book is the best he's read since Battlelines."

Green with envy

ONE small strand from the rich tapestry of our democracy - or, more specifically, an exchange between Greens senator Scott Ludlam and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy in the Senate Standing Legislation Committee on Environment and Communications yesterday:

Ludlam: "There's a piece that ran in The Oz.

Conroy: "You're not believing anything you read in The Australian, are you?"

Ludlam: "I'm coming to you for corroboration."

Conroy: "Really? That's a disturbing position for the Greens to take."

Ludlam: "I didn't say I believed it. I came here to seek independent corroboration on whether it's true or not."

Conroy: "Well, I mean you should start from the basis . . . The Australian don't bother reporting news any more, they're engaged in regime change; you should just work on that basis."

Which sounds ironically unfiltered, coming from Conroy.

Penalised

TASMANIAN Liberal senator David Bushby, meanwhile, is looking to the past, in a carefully nuanced sort of way, after a call by Labor's Kevin Harkins to process asylum-seekers in the Apple Isle. Bushby has responded with a press release headlined, "Harkins would return Tasmania to a penal colony". Sadly, it's not illustrated.

Pesky polls

ACCORDING to the latest opinion polls (no, they never stop), Mike Rann's preferred premier rating has descended to a less than ideal 38 per cent. (We're fairly sure he would have preferred a different rating.) Apart from everything else, this results in irksomely constant questioning about his future, which must be a bit of bugger for a bloke who won an election a few months back. For example, he was obliged to defend himself on Adelaide radio station FIVEaa yesterday morning, though entertainingly he did so by biting the hand that props up his party: the trade union movement. "I've just been re-elected. No unions, no business, no newspaper is going to run a government. We're not going to be told what to do or told who's going to do it by unions because they weren't elected, I was," Rann said. The feeling's mutual, with the unions keen to see Rann go. Perhaps he'll find time to do battle with the Liberal Party again at some stage.

Going off-track

NICK Williams, son of racing leviathan and Crown Casino's founding father Lloyd Williams, is the frontman for the Williams stable when it comes to media engagements. At a pre-Cox Plate breakfast in Moonee Valley yesterday, he produced an incentive for victory that even this turf agnostic could understand. Minutes after his wife, Saskia, had drawn barrier six for stable veteran Zipping in Australasia's weight-for-age championship, Williams declared the main reason he hoped the beast would win was because "my wife is determined to eat pizza off the Plate". Williams admits Zipping, which placed last year, faces a task against younger rivals So You Think and More Joyous, though he hinted at the celebrations that would follow if the latter won for trainer Gai Waterhouse and owner John Singleton: "God help us, Singo." For the benefit of those who see racing as a mug's game, Williams assured all a visit to the family gaming house would leave punters worse off: "You don't need to prepare yourself for a fight at the casino. You just have to walk in with a pocket full of money and prepare to lose it."