I guess if Julie Bishop won’t be my neo-con sex kitten, I’ll have to settle for Bill Maher’s Neo-Con Dating Service.
Hyacinth’s Open Day
Not a bad view, eh? You can see why Janette Howard wouldn’t want to leave Kirribilli House!
Yesterday was the one day each spring when the doors are open to the punters. For $15 ($10 senior concession, with card) we can roam the gardens and take snapshots of each other admiring the views. And the fit men and women of the Australian Federal Police and the now-merged AFP Protective Service chat politely instead of shooting us.
Kirribilli House is a relatively modest twin-gabled residence in the Gothic picturesque style, dating from 1855. “It’s pretty crap,” complained one teenage lad. “The White House is better. But it’s the location I guess.”
In theory, the Prime Minister’s official residence is The Lodge in Canberra, not here. When, almost inevitably, Kevin Rudd is elected PM, will his family live here, or The Lodge?
[I also wrote about Kirribilli House for Crikey. It covers different material, and there’s a photo of the rude chap who dared wear a “Kevin 07” t-shirt.]
So this is what a resources boom looks like…
This graph (right) shows the massive rise in spending on minerals exploration in Australia over the last 8 years.
The graph comes from the Australian Bureau of Statistics report 8412.0 – Mineral and Petroleum Exploration, Australia, Jun 2007 released yesterday — although this specific graph doesn’t include petroleum.
They say:
The trend estimate for total mineral exploration expenditure increased by $22.3m (5.0%) to $470.8m in the June quarter 2007. The estimate is now 37.4% higher than the June quarter 2006 estimate.
The largest contributions to the increase this quarter were in Western Australia (up $17.1m or 7.8%) and South Australia (up $7.2m or 9.8%). New South Wales showed the largest decrease of $1.7m or 4.7%.
I suppose I should say something about this being an indicator of where all the money’s been coming from lately. But we all know this already, don’t we?
The Leadership (Non)-Challenge
When I returned to focus on politics after a busy morning yesterday, I discovered that not only was John Howard still PM, but also that there was never a leadership challenge. Really. How can this be?
I happened to read Crikey first, where Christian Kerr wrote:
Nothing happened in Canberra this morning. Nothing in a Samuel Beckett sort of way. A nothing that means plenty. A nothing that is quite profound.
You’ve right there, Christian! Every newsroom and every politics junkie in the country including myself arced up — prepared, as I said, for the biggest political story in a decade. And then come the time, Howard et al strolled out of the party room meeting as if nothing had happened.
Finally, at 12:45, Tony Abbott appeared. There had been “full and frank discussions”, he said, but there was “absolutely rock solid support for the Prime Minister”.
John Howard still PM
Well, John Howard is still Prime Minister — but the day is very young.
Game on!
So, will Malcolm Turnbull (left) be Prime Minister by tomorrow? Sky News has just reported that foreign minister Alexander Downer and environment minister Malcolm Turnbull no longer believe Prime Minister John Howard should lead the Liberals.
Sky News says both of them have spoken to John Howard about the leadership. I’m listening to ABC News Radio just now, though, and they say Howard’s denying the conversations took place.
Someone here is lying: Turnbull and Downer, Sky News, or John Howard. Now which of those has the best track rcord for being truthful, eh?
It certainly appears like it’s game on for a leadership challenge. If so, coming just a few weeks before a federal election makes this the biggest political event of more than a decade. Every newsroom in the nation has just gone to red alert. Fun fun fun.