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QUEENSLAND Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce's nemesis might be closer to home.

QUEENSLAND Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce is on the front line in the battle against coal seam gas with miners Eastern Star Gas having exploration rights over a property he owns over the border near Baradine in northwest NSW.

But Joyce's nemesis might be closer to home. His local member in the Queensland parliament, LNP backbencher Howard Hobbs, is a shareholder in Eastern Star, now being taken over by Santos, which has exploration rights for coal seam gas over much of rural NSW, including Joyce's Baradine property. To add to the confusion, Hobbs is sponsoring a petition in the Queensland parliament to stop the coal seam gas industry. Eastern Star's chairman is former federal National Party leader in the Howard government John Anderson, although he has said he will get out of gas completely if the Santos takeover goes ahead. The head of the Lock the Gate coalition, which is leading the charge against coal seam gas mining, Drew Hutton, advised the Nationals senator yesterday to "lock the gate on them". "Believe me," said Joyce, "I'll be doing more than locking the gate. Thankfully, I've got a little job in Canberra that'll help me with that."

Class action

FOREIGN Minister and Brisbane MP Kevin Rudd yesterday went searching for votes among those not even old enough to vote yet when he fronted students at Brisbane State High School in his electorate of Griffith, but more specifically in trendy and very left-wing West End. It seems that some of the kids had picked up views heard around the family dinner table, as Rudd copped a tough time from the students on asylum-seekers and the Gillard government's so-called Malaysian solution. "In the great democracy of Australia's senior and secondary schools, I copped some interesting questions on the way through," he reflected on the experience afterwards. But Rudd's party trick of dazzling the locals by speaking in Chinese went down a treat, even if they found the Mandarin address as impenetrable as his answers to the Malaysian question.

Nok it off

THE chief executive of Thailand's low-cost airline Nok Air, Patee Sarasin, showed that political correctness is quite different in Thailand, compared with Australia -- as evidenced by his unashamedly sexist attitude. He told a Sydney conference yesterday that his airline employed models in their mid-20s as flight attendants, neither "the pretty girls who were not so nice because of high egos", nor "the ugly girls with beautiful characters".

"What we do is we combine the two: beautiful girls and nice girls you know?" he said.

He was then asked if his cabin crew selection criteria has seen him play a role in electing Thailand's first female Prime Minister, Yingluck Shinawatra. "No, no, I didn't elect her but she's quite good looking, right?" he replied. "Compared to your Prime Minister, she's much better looking."

That amounts to a diplomatic incident, part of Rudd's responsibilities.

Venture capital

EVERYONE complains about the weather but nobody actually does anything about it. Canberra's cold climate was blamed yesterday by Eros Foundation chief executive Fiona Patten for the lack of a street-prostitution scene in the national capital. But while there's no sex on the streets in Canberra, there is behind closed doors and, apparently, it's retiring public servants who want a part of it. "I used to see public servant after public servant think, 'I know what I'm going to do with my superannuation; I'm going to buy a brothel', and they would buy into a brothel and they would think it was just a licence to print money," Patten said. "Then, six months later, they would realise that it was not and they would jump out and the next one would come back in." Strewth will, from now on, look at Canberra public servants with a more quizzical eye.

Claws and effect

THE ecology of Queensland's Fraser Island is sensitively balanced and can be easily tipped, hence the concern about a mob of feral cats recently found on the World Heritage-listed island. A contractor has recently reported tracks and scats, requiring further study to see if they pose a serious threat. Fraser Coast councillor Sue Brooks says the cats could have an impact on smaller creatures on the island, such as frogs and echidnas, but it seems nature may control feline numbers on the island through a larger predator, the dingo. "I imagine the dingoes will be playing a large role. If it wasn't for the dingoes on Fraser Island, we'd be facing a much bigger problem with these cats." If you thought politics was Darwinian, it's nothing compared with animal life on Fraser Island.

Name droppers

REMEMBER the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea? Well, the Australian Electoral Commission has advised that the Communist Alliance has changed its name to The Communists, which sounds a lot more corporate. At least we now know the comrades are no longer in alliance.