The lowdown

WE get a bit worried here at Strewth about the heightism creeping into Australian politics.

WE get a bit worried here at Strewth about the heightism creeping into Australian politics (despite us referring to West Australian Premier Colin Barnett as vertically challenged a few weeks ago). In Victoria, where big guy Premier Ted Baillieu towers over the opposition and everyone else, the press corps is concerned he is so tall reporters can't check out his hair colour and whether he has been at the dye pot.

For a 58-year-old man, Baillieu's hair is almost devoid of grey, while at the post-cabinet press conference earlier this week there did seem to be some added colour glimmering in the light. Up in Queensland, the fourth estate has noticed that the short-in-stature Liberal National Party leader Campbell Newman stands behind a lectern at press conferences, which in practice means he's not surrounded by reporters looking down on him. Maybe this height stuff is overrated. Napoleon Bonaparte was 1.7m, the average height for a Frenchman of his age, and he put his reputation as a shortarse down to the British tabloids. But, then, they get blamed for everything.

Just coasting

THINGS aren't what they used to be on the Gold Coast, with Queensland Premier Anna Bligh and local MP Peta Kaye Croft urging locals to "dress up" to woo delegates who will decide if the coast gets the Commonwealth Games in 2018. Considering the Gold Coast has brought Australia distinctive style role models such as meter maids and the white-shoe brigade, you'd think they wouldn't need much encouragement to frock up. But no, what the worthy pollies reckon is that locals should display a special Commonwealth Games poster, with business being challenged to pick up 100 to distribute to their clients. Posters! Whatever happened to the distinctive Gold Coast promotional style? Lifesavers in budgie smugglers, meter maids in jelly or even an old-fashioned dwarf-throwing competition would tell the delegates that, love it or loathe it, the Gold Coast is a distinctive place.

Eno, miney, mo

IT'S difficult to compare golf champion Tiger Woods -- a former world No 1 -- with fading 1970s musician and Roxy Music maestro Brian Eno, but NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell did back in 2009 when Woods was on his way to Melbourne to play in a masters tournament, which he won, while Eno was the star attraction at a NSW arts festival. O'Farrell claimed the golfer was the far bigger drawcard, but at that stage Woods's weakness for cocktail waitresses, strippers and porn stars was not yet public knowledge. Eno's name then lapsed from NSW political debate until yesterday when Tourism Minister George Souris, in rare ironic mode, told parliament: "Despite Mr Eno's enormous popularity, we've missed out on him this year and will have to settle for a golfer by the name of Tiger Woods." Don't push it too much, George; the past two years have been a lot kinder to Eno than to Woods. But it's good to hear that Woods has overcome his injuries and his wounded image to revisit Australia.

Sweet reason

KEEN to take some direct action after a protest supporting a boycott against Israel was held outside Max Brenner's chocolate shop in Melbourne, federal Labor MP Michael Danby led a group of Israel and chocolate sympathisers to the Sydney shop to show their support. Among those accompanying Danby were Sydney Institute director Gerard Henderson, former NSW treasurer Eric Roozendaal, journalist Jana Wendt, unionist Paul Howes, former federal ALP president Warren Mundine and comedian Austen Tayshus aka Sandy Gutman. Howes, Australia's most conspicuous faceless man, was particularly upset about the Melbourne protest, where three policemen were injured and 19 protesters arrested. "Violence based on religious and ethnic hatred must be firmly opposed in our multicultural society," he said.

Nazi slip

BUT at least they didn't use bad Hitler analogies, unlike Adelaide's The Advertiser state political editor Greg Kelton, who said yesterday that business would not be upset by the imminent departure of South Australian Premier Mike Rann: "If Adolf Hitler was in charge then they [business] would deal with him," Kelton said. Of all the conspiracy theories behind the departure of Rann, we think the installation of the Third Reich in the Festival State is the most unlikely. But Rann, over in India while a fierce storm broke out in Adelaide over his future, would have taken some comfort from the views of federal Tertiary Education and and Workplace Relations Minister Chris Evans, who's likewise getting stuck into the tandoori in India on a trade mission. Evans and Rann were in New Dehli at the initial meeting of the Australia-India Education Council, where Evans lauded Rann as "a long-term advocate of international education and South Australia's international education sector". Evans said Rann "is looking to work with his counterparts in India. He has been a frequent visitor to this country."