Point scoring

DESPITE NSW Premier Kristina Keneally's assertion in her kid-in-a-toyshop-excited YouTube video yesterday ("I'm here at COAG!") that there would be no agreement unless all states sign up, it appears we are now one nation under Rudd (except Western Australia).

DESPITE NSW Premier Kristina Keneally's assertion in her kid-in-a-toyshop-excited YouTube video yesterday ("I'm here at COAG!") that there would be no agreement unless all states sign up, it appears we are now one nation under Rudd (except Western Australia).

So we thought we might, as a community service, try to clear up one little bit of fog: is it 30 per cent of GST the states (except WA) will be ceding to the feds, as many people have been saying with reassuring confidence, or one-third, as others have been saying with equal confidence? Those three-and-a-bit percentage points come to roughly $33,000 every million bucks. Given that federal Treasurer Wayne Swan will be the bloke collecting the dough (and yes, premiers, he knows where you live, especially you, John Brumby), we thought we'd check in with his office. "It'll be an average of one-third across the nation," Swan's office told us. So there you go. One in three, which by complete coincidence could be roughly how much chance Rudd has of persuading WA to come on board when he insists on using lines such as "Over there in Perth". In the meantime, we hope that doesn't spoil things for any premiers who thought they were only going to cough up 30 per cent.

Fundamental things

THE PM may have packed his press conference performance yesterday with more "please please please" than a convention of Beatles cover bands, but Swan carpet-bombed ABC radio's AM with "fundamental". In an interview that lasted barely a couple of minutes, he cranked out the F-word a mighty nine times, including twice in the space of single sentence. There were so many fundaments, anyone tuning in at a random moment could have been forgiven thinking they were eavesdropping on a proctologists' dinner party.

An exclusive lot

STILL on the Keneally front, a breaking news story about the NSW Premier agreeing to the GST clawback appeared at 9.32am yesterday on the website of our beloved sister paper, The Daily Telegraph, tagged with the magic word "Exclusive". Unfortunately, this was somewhat undermined when any reader clicked on it and saw, in a box of "related coverage", the following link: "Keneally agrees to hand over GST - The Australian, 1 hour ago." We're all exclusive now.

Stroke of Tszyu

STREWTH has always had a soft spot for Kostya Tszyu, not least because he was responsible for the first (and so far only) friendly conversation we had with a passport control official at a Russian airport. It was on one of our semi-regular visits to Moscow, the city we think of fondly as the Big Potato, and the official, noticing the emu and kangaroo on our passport, asked if we knew of Tszyu. When we answered yes and suggested the boxer was popular in Australia, the official cracked a big grin, shook our hand and wished us a pleasant stay. This was a remarkable turn of events, given that at the time, most of the other officials we encountered in Russia welcomed us as if we were a vial of smallpox. So it was out of a sense of belated gratitude we went to see Tszyu launch his limited edition, Alexander Shorokhoff-designed watch in Sydney's Bondi Junction yesterday. It was, we were assured, quite reasonably priced at $9990 (we don't know a lot about watches, but we had to sit down for a bit), and Tszyu enthused that he was going to buy 10 himself. His publicist Max Markson said he'd invited another retired pugilist, lapsed watch thief Jeff Fenech, but Fenech had been otherwise engaged.

Animal kingdom

ON a day that began with us being menaced by a leopard slug (long story), continued with aggro from a pigeon and escalated with a story about a goat (called Billy) rampaging through a Melbourne nursing home, we began to wonder if the animals were taking over. This would not be an entirely unwelcome prospect. So when NSW Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell tweeted "NSW parliament's question time about to start - Camel Tebbutt (deputy premier) in charge", we were all but ready to welcome our beastly new overlords. Alas, he only meant Carmel Tebbutt, explaining, "Just another Twitter typo (my fingers v BlackBerry keys)".

Bette each way

OUR federal parliament is, among other things, a repository for a broad spectrum of knowledge. Take for example Russell Grenning, who as well as being an adviser to Queensland senator Sue Boyce is also a self-described Bette Davis tragic. It was in the latter capacity that Grenning took us gently to task for our Carl Williams item yesterday, in which we attributed to drag artiste Craig Russell the line, "We should only speak good of the dead. He's dead. Good." Grenning says, "The quote [with a she, obviously] was attributed to Davis, who in 1977 was reported as saying it when Joan Crawford, whom she loathed, died." In our defence, Russell was playing Davis and it was in 1977. While we're in the neighbourhood, here's one of Davis's more subtle ones about Crawford: "Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it's because I'm not a bitch. Maybe that's why [Crawford] always plays ladies."