Peeved pollster

IT may surprise some political junkies to learn veteran pollmeister Gary Morgan is also chairman of Hamoa Mining.

IT may surprise some political junkies to learn veteran pollmeister Gary Morgan is also chairman of Hamoa Mining; happily, he appears to be combining these two spheres of his life by extending his battle with the Australian Securities Exchange all the way to the Lodge, at least by inference. Morgan, possibly unlike BHP Billiton shareholder Peter Dutton, is less than enamoured of the government's planned super profits tax and said as much to his shareholders last week. It was a forceful address, conveying sentiments such as, "The Rudd government's proposed mining 'super profits' tax will be disastrous for most mining companies that anticipate establishing a new mine in Australia." The ASX refused to publish it, which led to Morgan accusing it of censorship. This in turn led to correspondence from ASX chief supervision officer Eric Mayne ("ASX has no objection to listed entities voicing their political opinions and concerns but does not believe that the [Company Announcements] platform is the appropriate forum for such views and debate"). This time, Morgan aimed higher: "What concerns us is your fellow ASX executives or directors may not be objective. For instance, the ASX chairman David Gonski is the new chairman of Ingeus Ltd, a very profitable business of which Therese Rein (Prime Minister [Kevin] Rudd's wife) is founder and managing director." Ahem.

Warm embrace

WHEN Wayne Swan accused Clive Palmer earlier this month of only caring about his "fat profits", we wondered whether Labor might be declaring war on the well-upholstered. Then nothing more happened and we wrote it off as a rogue shot, until Friday night. Here is an edited highlight of Julia Gillard's exchange with interviewer Ryan Fitzgerald on Network Ten's AFL show Before the Game on Friday night:

Fitzgerald: "Everyone says that Julia Gillard doesn't get into her football. I saw her today and she was getting very vocal supporting the Bulldogs, and also getting stuck into Joe Hockey, who had his eighth hot dog there out the back. You love your footy, don't you?"

Gillard: "I love my footy and the problem with Joe Hockey, of course, is that no one else could get any food, so we had to get him out of the way."

As droll as it all was, the comedy was quickly eclipsed when Fitzgerald wisely grabbed his opportunity: "Can I get a hug from the future prime minister?" Gillard, who has recently suggested leadership talk is as meaningful as discussing a Martian holiday, obliged without so much as batting an eyelid.

Beer land

MEANWHILE in Canberra, the press gallery continues to amuse itself over Rudd's minor crossness in the presence of Kerry O'Brien. In a riposte to the ABC bureau's "Welcome to 7.30 Report Land" sign (Strewth, last week), the Seven Network has adorned its bureau door with a sign of its own: "It's easy for some in 7.30 Land, but in 7 Land it's a lot easier with a beer!" Cue photo of the PM about to stick his snout in a brew, albeit with the delicate focus of a nectar-crazed hummingbird.

Doughnuts to you

FROM the Tell Us What You Really Think file comes this paragraph from a Krispy Kreme doughnut story in the news pages of Sydney's The Sunday Telegraph yesterday: "Just a few years ago, its stores were swamped by queues up to midnight, with eager customers clamouring to buy boxes of the fat-filled stodge."

An ordinary girl

FOLLOWING her possibly mad but definitely extraordinary feat, round-the-world sailor Jessica Watson (or Jessica Simpson, if you're NSW Minister for Ports and Waterways Paul McLeay) is being praised to the heavens. But Strewth's Department of Follicular Bisection would like to thank her from the bottom of our (occasionally) pedantic soul for rescuing that much abused word, hero. When the PM labelled her the nation's "newest hero", Watson was having none of it: "I'm going to disagree with the Prime Minister. I don't consider myself a hero. I'm an ordinary girl who believed in her dream."

Big men fly in Rome

CONSIDERING how many things the Romans gave the world (Monty Python fans may now in unison shout, the aqueduct!), it seems only correct to give something back. So you'll be pleased to know that Aussie rules has just been in played for the first time in the eternal city, with Rome, 14.10 (94), belting Milan, 10.9 (69), on a disconcertingly square pitch. There'll be more to come, with four AFL teams starting up in Italy this year to play in European Australian Football Association championship cup this October. Strewth's man on the spot -- a big hand, please, for our ambassador to the Holy See, Tim Fischer -- tells us "the standard of play was every bit as good as say the Hume League (Riverina) and a Lockhart v Osborne grand final, and was enjoyed by the small but interested crowd of Romans and Aussie Italians". Sports agnostic Strewth has no idea what most of this means, but it sounds promising. Meanwhile Fischer, who is also an ambassador at large for the Sydney Swans (Tim, we had no idea), dutifully wore his team's scarf.