Sic joke

WE realise things must be a bit tight in NSW Labor since it was destroyed in the recent state election.

WE realise things must be a bit tight in NSW Labor since it was reduced to little more than a pile of smouldering body parts in the recent state election.

So perhaps someone would be kind enough to lend them a dictionary, or at least a lightbulb to illuminate the room that houses the computer they use for typing out their press releases. That way there's a chance they can avoid efforts such as this one from upper house Labor member Shaoquett Moselmane yesterday, a press release that fumbles so majestically on its way to celebrating his motion congratulating the federal government on its budget, it's more cock-up than a rooster filled with helium. One endearing example: "I welcome the O'Farrell governments [sic] ringing endorsement [sic] of the Gillard Governemt's [sic] first Federal Labor budge [possibly sic, but it's hard to be sure]."

Nile overflows

ALSO in the NSW upper house, Christian Democrat Fred Nile was taking a historically bipartisan approach while sinking a slipper into the teaching of ethics to schoolchildren. Fair enough, too, as this could trigger the end of NSW as we know it. But Nile sees worse, describing it as

"a course which I believe does not teach children right from wrong but promotes a secular-humanist, relatives philosophy [he possibly meant relativist, but "relatives philosophy" does have an unnerving ring of its own] . . . I believe this is the philosophy that we saw during World War II with the Nazis and the communists." Something for everyone.

Joyce cut

THE utterances of Barnaby Joyce can sometimes feature a touch of self-effacement. For example, this yesterday: "The Treasurer has done nothing to prepare Australia for the financial fallout on global sovereign debt, which some of us have been screaming about now for years. Yes, I was talking about this even before my brief tenure in shadow finance." And a brief tenure it was, truncated by Joyce's musing on the possibility of the US, ahem, defaulting on its debt. Meanwhile in Washington . . .

Bunny boy

WE'VE long thought of Anthony Albanese as a man of the people. Earlier this week, he lobbed unannounced at the launch of Alan Whiticker's rugby league tome Glory Days: The Story of South Sydney's Golden Era, which relives the Rabbitohs' string of premierships between 1967 and 1971. We gather Albo didn't leave until he had the autographs of all 16 former players from that era who are still with us, sans that of Ron Coote, who was otherwise engaged. (Incidentally, this fulfils our promise to mention sport in Strewth.) But it's always nice to be reminded he's also a man for the people, possibly all of them. Why, just the other day, we received a hefty fridge magnet featuring a thoughtful portrait of Albo by a pond. It now has pride of place on the Strewth fridge and we're pleased that no niggling details -- such as the fact we're not in Albo's electorate -- got in the way of its delivery.

Creative mulch

ON our return to town, we were pleased to see the Australia Council for the Arts office in inner Sydney's Surry Hills doing its perkily creative bit to remind nascent artists that there is dough for the taking. We're speaking, of course, of ArtStart grants, which are worth a handy $10,000 a pop. Arts Australia is advertising the grant in its front window as a laundry powder-style box labelled, "ArtStart -- Career fertiliser [not necessarily the first noun we would have reached for, unless referring to artists of the BS variety] for budding visual artists, performing artists, writers and musicians." For some reason, the package is a cigarette box-ish shade of olive green; we're not sure if there's a message in this.

Rumpus room

CATCHING up on events, we've been flicking through photos of Kevin Rudd's pre-operation trip to the East Asia Summit Foreign Ministers meeting in Bali. We note he not only met his Russian counterpart (as in foreign minister, not internally dispatched PM) Sergei Lavrov, but that the encounter took place in the Bougainville Room. We trust this brought some small degree of pleasure into Julie Bishop's day.

News on leave

WE find the idea of a newspaper that shuts down for a few weeks (as opposed to permanently) quite refreshing. The Budapest Times has knocked off for most of what's left of the northern summer, signing off on its front page thus: "We call it the silly season, Hungarian hacks call it the cucumber season. Either way, the press is forced to scrape the bottom of the barrel for stories on amusingly shaped vegetables while the newsmakers and shakers dip their toes in Europe's more fashionable waters. We prefer to shut down the presses and join the holiday. Rather than running a front-page splash on the unfortunate fellow in the village of Gerendas who had his throat ripped out by a pony this week, we are leaving you with some suggestions on ways to idle away your time over the next three weeks."

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