The Australian, 25 November 2011

There’s a bit of argy-bargy about whether Harry took a voluntary pay cut because he couldn’t stand listening to Christopher Pyne any more or he was pushed because an extra vote on the floor might come in handy if The Honourable Member For Denison starts being a stickler for the dictionary definition of “mandatory” next year.

Look, they’re both plausible. $70000-odd per annum doesn’t seem that much to pay to be allowed to stick your fingers in your ears like everyone else when the Honourable Member For Points Of Order whines “point of order” for the tenth time in the afternoon, but going from Speaker to Speak-When-Spoken-To on the backbench would be a bit of a wrench.

Whatever the reasons (let’s just say “politics” and leave it at that) Andrew Wilkie has been assured that “nothing has changed” in relation to his pokies deal with the government. Whether that means it’s full steam ahead or they were always intending to wriggle out of it if at all possible remains to be seen.

The Australian 8 November 2011

Results from the latest Newspoll show that loathing for Tony Abbott has almost reached the level of loathing for Julia Gillard, which I suppose must be heartening for her in a relative sort of way.

Presumably this means that Malcolm Turnbull will now have to start making as much of an effort as Kevin Rudd pretending that he doesn’t want to be leader again, which will at the very least give him something to do apart from pretending he thinks the NBN is a bad idea.

The Australian 7 November 2011

In possibly the least surprising result of 2011, the Minerals Council’s economic modelling of the carbon tax has proved to be considerably less optimistic that the government’s (paywalled).

Yeah, I didn’t see that coming either.