Vis-a-vis a visa

IN the wake of the Golden Globes and so forth, we have our fingers crossed the Academy Awards will be the one that gets it right and gives Jacki Weaver a gong for her turn in Animal Kingdom.

For a perilous moment or two it seemed that, thanks to some visa problems, Weaver's husband, Sean Taylor, might have to miss Los Angeles and instead don his tux and watch the ceremony in a pub in inner Sydney's Redfern. Taylor is a South African national with full residency in Australia; all well and good, but it does mean some serious paperwork. And with the two of them due to fly out on Tuesday, it was starting to look dicey. We hear that thanks to the efforts of Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd and some efficient US officials, it's been sorted. All in all, an even happier event than learning Ita Buttrose has taken to enforcing etiquette via the medium of rap.

You-know-what fray

THERE was a time Australian Workers Union national secretary Paul "Let's go to town on Rio" Howes took a particular delight in needling opposition immigration spokesman Scott "Timing lord" Morrison on Twitter. The favour was often returned, and while it paled next to what Howes eventually served up for Rudd, it was a fun jaunt into the realm of the mutually acerbic. So it's a measure of Howes's humanity that during the Moz's present travails he has held his fire. Such bottling up could cause permanent physical damage, so thank heavens Trade Minister Craig Emerson has given Howes an outlet for his energies. Asked on Twitter if Emmo had spoken to him about criticisms he made of Howes in this organ yesterday, Howes replied, "Of course he didn't speak to me about it because that's what a decent person would do." AWU president Bill Ludwig has also been getting stuck into Emmo; if this were happening in the playground, we'd be calling in their parents. So it's touching to look back at Wayne Swan's speech to the AWU conference on Tuesday: "We know . . . it's what we do together that makes us strong. There are two Australians who understand this better than most, and they're both here today, Paul Howes and Bill Ludwig." As Swan said with some prescience in the same speech, "Let me assure you, delegates, that when you work in the sewers and in the poultry industry, you-know-what happens. In fact you're frequently up to your knees in you-know-what."

Selling the farm

NOW that his bromantic interest Lance Armstrong has retired again, Premier Mike Rann is free to tweet from fresh pastures, such as this one yesterday: "Just opened Waterloo Wind Farm. Its 37 turbines are delivering a further 111 megawatts of green energy." Whether these 37 wind farm turbines regularly deliver those extra 111 megawatts or just when Rann happens to be talking in the area isn't made clear, but there just isn't enough space in a tweet to get into that sort of detail. This is presumably why there was no mention made of the anti-turbine protesters, but fair enough; the disgruntled will be with us always. Meanwhile, we checked out state Opposition Leader Isobel Redmond's blog at isobelredmond.com.au but came away troubled by the oddly laxative slogan, "Let's get South Australia moving again". There is, though, a very nice photo of Redmond standing in a field and examining some type of cereal crop, a pose beloved of communist leaders of yore.

Whoop it up

IT wasn't oh so many years ago when Strewth witnessed an anti-vaccination protest, one of those exercises in free expression that involved adults thrusting placards into their hands of their children. One of these mites held aloft a sign demanding, "How many kids do you know with whooping cough?" Quite. We thought back to the protest and that little placard yesterday as we listened to news that a baby in Melbourne had died from whooping cough and Australia was suffering a sustained epidemic. We hope that placard's on a wall somewhere.

Father to thought

A SMALL epilogue to the Gerard Henderson-Bob Ellis Dialogues, thanks to this missive from Queensland reader Frank Pulsford: "Someone told me that Bob Ellis is your father and it is out of natural love and affection that you do your bit to keeping him in the public eye. I like that in a son. When I expressed some scepticism about the relationship, I was invited to consider your hair and his of some years ago and in my imagination add 30 years to your portrait. Hmm. Maybe. But I don't think there is an unkempt gene." Well, there is a bit of an unkempt gene, but it's not from Ellis, And no, for those of you who've tallied up his adversary's even great number of appearances and leaped to a similar conclusion, Hendo isn't our father, either. As one is so often reminded, you can't have everything.

Stamp duty

THE Royal Australian Air Force in partnership with Australia Post will launch a new commemorative stamp collection tomorrow at RAAF Base Amberley, Ipswich. Normally, we'd consider it beneath us to mention that the RAAF's media contact is Flight Lieutenant Skye Smith, but we're feeling pretty relaxed.

James Jeffrey