Don’t tell Glenn: “In a little more than a week, a new grass-roots political movement here has gathered more than 7,000 names of supporters on its Web site in a campaign to free David Hicks, an Australian citizen being held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba,” The New York Times reported on Sunday. Don’t tell Glenn Milne. He and his Graydon Carton hairstyle still seemed very het up by GetUp in The Australian yesterday. And now Eric Abetz is getting interested. It suggests GetUp might be doing something more than spamming.

Home is where the debt is: It’s four months since we first mentioned the Demographia report into housing affordability, and the Prime Minister is still getting questions on our status as a “severely unaffordable market.” What’s changed? Not much. China and the commodities boom has saved the Australian economy and – to a certain extent – kept the housing market afloat. That’s it. And in all the tax talk, negative gearing seems here to stay.

God’s chosen people, or his preferences: An email from an Adelaide resident: “I managed an invite to a Liberal party function in Southern Adelaide at the Southside Christian Church when Howard was in town last week. On the way into the car park everyone was greeted by one solitary guy holding up a placard calling Howard a war criminal, but once inside if you look at this photo and include Kingston MP Kim Richardson and John Howard on the stage you have the picture. The introduction to proceedings came from Pastor Danny. Richardson spoke, then Howard talked about all the wonderful things he was doing/had done and Christian values.” And – surprise, surprise – the next state to have an election will be South Australia. The birthplace of Family First. All those preferences, just going begging…

Tasmania on the slippery slope: Governments should get out of things best left to the private sector. Like telcos. And theme parks. According to the Burnie Advocate, the Tasmanian Government, through its wholly owned business entity, Forestry Tasmania, operates a slippery-slide amusement ride that lets people pay to hurtle down a big, spirally slide into a rain forest. If that doesn’t sound surreal enough, the name of this, er, attraction is Dismal Swamp. And now it has been closed because of an injury tally to riders which includes eight broken ankles. Which is why you get the absurd situation of a minister of the Crown having to defend his government’s role as theme park operator. Well, they say politics is a circus…

Black holes: A subscriber writes: “In response to Christian Kerr’s revelation that mobile phones don’t work in Parliament House, add to that the fact that those of us using the Telstra network at the Department of Communications, IT and the Arts can’t get reception either. More embarrassing is the fact that those using different carriers, for example Vodafone, have no problems at all getting a signal in the building. It’s a bit sad that staffers from the Department of Communication can’t communicate.”