GAME ON: Victorian Liberal Senate fight night looms

Friday night is one of those evenings of political showdown we all love. Incumbent Senator Julian McGauran confronted by a pesky and well-credentialed incumbent Ross Fox. We look at the process, weasel out of making anything that sounds too much like a prediction and then share one of the biggest bucketings of all time from someone who seeks to bury Ross Fox, not praise him. Beware the Ides of Friday Night.

UNION OF SLEAZE: The health of sick kids jeopardised by CFMEU greed

Some of the nation’s best paid unskilled workers are pulling one of the outrageous rorts we’ve ever seen. And it’s all facilitated by a union whose worst exploits are reminiscent of mafia controlled unions in America. The fact that working people are left to pick up the tab and that they’re delaying a hospital for sick children doesn’t discourage them one bit. Bill Oliver’s CFMEU is the unacceptable face of modern unionism.

THE DON: Mark Butler might be factionally shy and retiring but Don Farrell remains large and in charge

The Adelaide Advertiser reports a changing of the guard in Labor’s South Australian Left faction as Mark Butler hands off to his apprentice David Gray.

They kind of half suggest that SA patriot Senator Don Farrell, the leader of the …

THE TIMES SUIT HIM: Peter Costello early riser

Anyone doubting Peter Costello’s ongoing interest in public life would have had that removed by his appearance this mercifully chilly and drizzly Melbourne morning on the Today show at seven minutes past seven o’clock. That would have required a departure …

GOT WOOD: Former cop politician fondly remembers police groupie conwoman as "breath of fresh air"

Federal MP and ex-cop Jason Wood has told the Herald Sun that his former squeeze notorious conwoman Jodie Harris was a “breath of fresh air.” His non-denial denial of sexual relations exposes much of the sadness of the story of a woman who sought love in the arms of many Police officers but was used just as much as she used them.