Malcolm Turnbull has long been wooing the gay community. Last Mardi Gras Parade I sat directly opposite him and his lovely wife Lucy, in the BGF stand. A few points worth noting: The gay bears loved him. He deliberately avoided looking at the anti Howard float I saw him give Lucy a lingering kiss in the stands. A blatant exhibition of heterosexuality that was simply inappropriate – I mean, I don’t care what goes on behind closed doors but he doesn’t have to flaunt it.

If you look at the elections held in the last 20 years, the shortest interval from issuing of the writs to the sitting of the new Parliament was 65 days for the 2001 Election (Writs 8 October 2001, new Parliament sat 12 December 2001). Now if newly elected members are to receive their electoral allowance, it doesn’t start until they are sworn in on the first sitting day of a new Parliament. Sitting days for House of Reps have been set for the year, the remaining scheduled weeks scheduled for the House of Reps are weeks beginning 15 and 22 Oct, 12 and 28 Nov and 3 Dec. The last scheduled sitting day is Thursday, 6 December. After that Parliament is unlikely to sit before February 2008 unless something really unusual occurred. If you subtract 65 days from Tuesday 3 December you get 29 September (the date on which the writs would need to be issued if the 65 day interval was achieved again). But then if you took the alternative view that Parliament only needs to sit for one day, say Thursday 6 December, then subtracting 65 days brings it back to 2 October. So I figure by the October long weekend, the election date will be known as will whether Maxine’s electoral allowance will commence in early December or she will have to wait two months. But then if you wanted to maximise your super, a February 2008 sitting date for a new Parliament looks more attractive.

The WA Liberal Party has been buzzing this week as people try to figure out the fallout from last weekend’s Young Liberal AGM. It appears that despite an appeal by Senior Party President Danielle Blain for the various YL factions to work together, the two key non-NCB factions split. In a surprise move, the incumbent “Northern Alliance” YLs joined forces with the NCB faction to maintain their stranglehold on power – a controversial act which must have been sanctioned by the Alliance’s powerbrokers, State MP Peter Collier and Federal Senator Mathias Cormann. With State pre-selections on newly drawn boundaries due early next year, people are trying to figure out what’s in it for the Northern Alliance to bring the old NCB faction back into the fold. Watch this space!

Major health fund NIB whilst demutualising will still be governed by the same 50 voting members who are the only ones that get to nominate and vote on the Directors elected to control the fund with very generous remunerations. Following demutualising approval by the general membership the company charged with putting it into operation only has two directors. Members have once again been kept in the dark.

Regarding the Liberal Party training, the department of finance has about $40,000 worth of disk space taken up by ministerial staff storing training videos for Lib candidates. And last I heard, it it being backed-up regularly.

If Rudd maintains a big lead Somylay and Slipper will be gone. Don’t forget that Rudd and Swan are both Nambour boys and just might promise some big money – the present incumbents don’t do much at all – Howard doesn’t like them – we suffer !

A Labor election win may lead to a re-examination of the AWB Affair, which conveniently looks as if it is not going to lead to the launching of any prosecutions before the poll. The Cole Commission, which entertained us through 2006 with the loyal ranks of our best-and-brightest bureaucrats testifying in a well-trained manner to their collective amnesia, had some notable omissions to its list of witnesses. One was Matthew Hyndes, a colourful identity who did a stint in DFAT’s Iraq Task Force in 2003-04 just prior to being whisked on posting overseas to the tropical languor of Sri Lanka. Dr Hyndes was back in town earlier this year, making a guest appearance as DFAT’s star witness in an unfair dismissal case launched by a former Labor staffer sacked for an innocuous email reply to a Kevin Rudd staffer while on leave. His testimony was eye-opening to say the least, as you can see here. Interestingly, following Dr Hyndes’ testimony, DFAT took the unusual step of extending his posting in Sri Lanka – due to end around September 2007 – by six months, safely into 2008. Another notable omission from Old King Cole’s interview list was John Finnin, Austrade’s director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, who in 2003 met with the Jordanian owners of the Alia Trucking company, despite Foreign Minister Downer’s testimony that the Government had not heard of Alia until the following year.