Uncle Rann wants you. And you. And, yes, even you. Unless you're from Yuendumu

South Australia is crying out for migrants, but it's also proving beggars can be choosers

Populate and flourish! SA Premier Mike Rann on March 30, 2004:

POPULATION growth holds the key to our state's future prosperity and sustainability.

And a state government slogan continues to push the case:

SOUTH Australia. Make the move.

But there's always an exception. Rann invoking the Yuendumu exception clause on Thursday:

THERE'S gotta be a big message sent to whoever made this stupid decision to give people a one-way ticket south rather than dealing with the issue.

Populate and perish. Bob Brown on March 14, worrying we'll be crunched by the numbers:

WE live in a fantastic continent, privileged above all on the face of this planet. It's going to take some very wise decision-making to keep it that way. I'm saying definitively we do not have the infrastructure or plans for the infrastructure to carry 35 million people by 2050.

But where there's a will, they're away. Brown reminds The Daily Telegraph yesterday he knows how to keep numbers down:

I'M a doctor; that's where my keenness for euthanasia laws come in, too.

There are alternatives. Charlton Heston as Detective Thorn in Soylent Green (1973):

SOYLENT Green is made out of people. They're making our food out of people. Next thing they'll be breeding us like cattle for food.

Whoever does he mean? Outgoing host of ABC1's The 7.30 Report Kerry O'Brien in his cheerio press release yesterday:

I WOULD also like to thank an extremely generous audience, including those who may have occasionally thrown a shoe at the screen.

Take it as red. Marcus Strom redistributes his Bolshie analogy in The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday:

I CAN reveal Gillard as Lenin and Rudd as Trotsky. After the Bolsheviks took power in November 1917, a ceasefire with Germany was quickly arranged. Trotsky wasn't happy and wanted neither to make war nor sign a peace with imperial Germany. Lenin slapped him down, arguing that Soviet Russia needed peace to consolidate Bolshevik power. To show who was boss, Lenin instructed Trotsky as foreign commissar to oversee the negotiation of an armistice with Germany. . . . Sound familiar? Sort of? . . . However, the real beauty of the Gillard-as-Lenin, Rudd-as-Trotsky analogy is at home, proving Bill Shorten must, after all, be Stalin.

NSW Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell gently seeks to set the record straight in The Spectator Australia:

AS Tony Abbott points out in his book Battlelines, founder Robert Menzies never used the term conservative to describe the Liberal Party of Australia. So I was surprised to be charged by this publication of failing to outline to the NSW public a "clear conservative alternative". (A bit like The Spectator Australia being accused of ignoring the views of Green Left Weekly.)

Not just a river in Egypt. Elizabeth Farrelly in The Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday:

IT is alarming to find oneself agreeing with Fred Nile, especially on gender issues. But feminists should fess up. The burka belongs in cultures that still have bride-price. It is an antediluvian title deed, an all-enveloping, owned sexual identity. It's not for sale, because it is already bought and paid for. If that's not commodification, I'll burn my bra.

Hold the front page. Julia Gillard gives a taste of things to come during a press conference on Thursday:

WE will be introducing over 30 bills into the parliament in the first week of it sitting. These are obviously significant legislative items.

As you were. The PM's press release on Thursday:

LITTLE of this legislation will make headlines or nightly TV bulletins.

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