Very tricky

BEING an atheist can present unexpected challenges.

BEING an atheist can present unexpected challenges.

Just ask Julia Gillard, Australia's most prominent non-believer who early in the campaign announced that she doesn't share Kevin Rudd's and Tony Abbott's enthusiasm for the Almighty. So it's with a smidgin of surprise that Strewth discovered Gillard is expected to attend the Mary MacKillop celebration fund-raising dinner at Sydney's Town Hall tonight. Organisers weren't sure yesterday whether the Prime Minister would front up. Which is where the challenge crops up. If she does not attend, it would be interpreted as the PM dissing Australia's only saint. (MacKillop was co-founder of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart and will be canonised in Rome on October 17). But if Gillard does attend she could leave herself open to charges of hypocrisy. Perhaps she will suddenly find herself caught up in unxpected election commitments. The question will still nag: how does an atheist celebrate a canonisation if she doesn't believe in God?

Manned up

ONE of the nation's leading intellectuals, La Trobe University's Robert Manne, must be suffering election deficit syndrome. How else can we interpret a university press release offering snatches of his political thoughts? Normally, it's our job to call Manne and ask what he thinks, rather than him broadcasting his views to all and sundry. Having teased readers this far, Strewth feels obliged to act as a conduit to the thoughts of Manne. For a start, he's upset about the boatpeople debate. "It is very sad, in my view, that the minor issue of the arrival of a few thousand people seeking asylum should be turned into one of the great issues of the 2010 election." Julia Gillard's citizens' assembly on climate chage is mere stalling on her part (why didn't we think of that?). "It seems to me she's kind of been emptied out of any ideological beliefs at all, and the election campaign seems to be extraordinarily controlled and cliched, and saying what she thinks people want to hear." Golly, Manne should join the commentariat.

Lazybrains

MANNE deserves a separate item for his views on Abbott. "He only truly becomes serious and concentrated when he's thinking about issues to do with morality, and then he thinks like a very conservative Catholic. But in other areas, he's rather intellectually lazy. I don't think anyone with his intelligence could call climate change, as he called it, 'absolute crap' unless they really don't care what the truth is. I'm worried about him, because I think he wastes his intelligence in a mixture of opportunism and laziness." This is obviously designed to undermine Abbott's self-confidence in his intelligence, but it's Strewth's view (since dispensing one's views is the order of the day) that Abbott has been undermined by experts and has no need to worry about Manne who adds -- while watching "rather nervously" what is happening in Queensland and western Sydney -- "there's a good chance that Abbott might win it".

Premier no show

QUEENSLAND premier Anna Bligh has her own popularity problems without having to worry about offending Kevin Rudd. It appears that Bligh has no plans to display Rudd's election poster outside her house which is in his electorate of Griffith. The state opposition suggested that Bligh -- also national president of the ALP -- had made a personal decision not to display the sign outside. "My understanding of the local government rules in relation to the display of signs in the city of Brisbane, is that you're allowed 500 electoral signs within the electoral boundary," she said. "I happen to live on a very quiet road, but if he wants to put a sign there, I'd be happy to have it." That grating sound you can hear is called backtracking.

Solution onboard

STREWTH'S special correspondent on Christmas Island notes with amusement the presence of a new business there called Abbott Solutions. It is an accounting firm that has just set up an office in the centre of Poon Saan district where detention guards and immigration staff live, shop, dine and drink. Many stay next door to Abbott Solutions in the bright orange Christmas Island Lodge owned by enterprising former quarry worker Tan Sim Kiat. Kiat also rents a fleet of cars to the government and even the AFP since the detention boom began. "I am a businessman, not a politician, so I am happy when more boats come." With accounting staff making regular visits to the island, public servants now have the option of getting an Abbott Solutions tax return on their incomes. Its website asks: "Are you ready to be delighted?"

Weaselly words

PUTTING on her deadly serious face, Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young says Tony Abbott's "no doesn't mean no" comment was "inappropriate" one of the weasliest of modern weasel words. As Andrew Bolt's blog points out, she must have forgotten that her Senate colleague Scott Ludlum once told the Senate "no means no". This must mean that no means no, except when the Greens say it.

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