Jones, Katter, Greens unite to shut down mining. An unlikely alliance of protestors led by Bob Katter, Alan Jones and the Greens has upped its campaign against mining companies acquiring valuable farmland by blockading a coal-loading facility in Queensland.

Jones, a passionate opponent of coal seam gas expansion, teamed up yesterday with Katter and the Lock The Gate organiser and co-founder of the Australian Greens, Drew Hutton, to protest the expansion of New Hope Coal in Jondaryan west of Brisbane. Jones, who was No. 2 on our Media Megaphones power list and No. 8 on our Sydney list, said LNP opposition leader Campbell Newman had indicated to him that they would stop expansion in the area. — The Power Index (read the full story here)

It’s a boys’ world after all, more so in Melbourne. Men still dominate board positions but according to Macquarie and Origin Energy chair Kevin McCann, the problem’s worse in Melbourne where there’s a strong tradition of male board members of ASX listed companies schooling and holidaying together.

”They went to the same schools, they went to the same universities, they married each other’s sisters,” McCann told a Centre for Economic Development of Australia forum yesterday, according to Fairfax reports. — The Power Index (read the full story here)

Clive Palmer’s love of the game. When Westfield founder Frank Lowy started to remake the way soccer is run in Australia, one of the keys to ensuring the long-term viability of the national league was to get lots of rich blokes (and yes, they are all blokes) to own the various clubs dotted around the country. So when the Gold Cost entered the competition in 2009-10, Lowy had found the ultimate deep-pockets man in mining billionaire Clive Palmer, who has a fortune of somewhere between $1 billion and $5 billion.

Clive enthusiastically backed the team at first, pouring money in, buying players, predicting premierships. But then the trouble started. — James Thomson (read the full story here)