Gillard’s speech fails to match the hype. It isn’t such a bad thing for Julia Gillard — and her newly-imported communications guru John McTernan — that yesterday’s much-hyped speech to the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce has been overshadowed by leadership speculation and Gina Rinehart’s Fairfax raid. Soaring oratory it wasn’t.

“I was recently reminded, while reading about the cricket of all things, of the famous oath of the American Civil War general Ulysses S. Grant, who said he would ‘fight it out along this line, if it takes all summer,'” Gillard intoned. — Matthew Knott (read the full story here)

Megaphones watch: Mitchell, Hadley, Ackerman. Neil Mitchell editorialises on Gina Rinehart’s Fairfax raid, Ray Hadley sets the pace on the tent embassy fracas and Piers Akerman fears indigenous constitutional recognition will lead to apartheid.

Here’s what Australia’s most powerful media megaphones have been up to over the past week … — Matthew Knott (read the full story here)

Power Play #18: know when to walk away. For most of us, it’s hard to walk away. It’s hard to let go, especially when you’ve worked on something for a long time. But sometimes walking away is the only smart, decent and prudent move.

I was once part of a team working on a country’s FIFA World Cup bid. We were asked to produce a film from perhaps the most awful script we’d ever read. Against all the pressure of some of the country’s most powerful players, we said no. Why? Because you always have to know when to walk. — Rose Herceg (read the full story here)