On Wednesday this week, Dollar Sweetie, the junior counsel in the Dollar
Sweets case, is getting together with a bunch of fellow veterans from
the IR battle that made his name for a black tie dinner in Melbourne.

His younger acolytes have been invited along, even though when the case
was in the courts, they were at high school or uni… and, yes, you’ve
guessed it. They might still be pumped up after Friday, but they’re
wondering about skipping the oldies’ do and holding a shindig of their
own to celebrate their union victory, Friday’s VSU vote.

And, in politics, a win isn’t a win without a purge – and the knives
are being sharpened. We reported last week on the party room wimps who
suggested that the VSU bill be pulled, who worried that the legislation
would go down.

“Liberal senator George Brandis told the Prime Minister he ‘hated to hear leaders talking the language of appeasement’,” The Oz
reported last week. That ranks with talk about lying rodents in the
diplomacy stakes, but Brandis needn’t be worried. Harsher words are being
said about the VSU wimps. And don’t they know it.

Queensland national right Senator Santo Santoro was spotted making a
dash for the Swiss border and safety over the weekend. In the past he’s
been a strong supporter of the VSU ultras in the Australian Liberal
Students Federation – and a strong beneficiary of their support.

As we reported last week, though, he blinked in the party room VSU
discussion. Now, Crikey hears all sorts of stories about the faux tough
guy – that he’s supposedly saying that he was in on the meetings with
the PM and Steve Fielding on Friday and has put in a grovelling call to
Michael Kroger, a veteran of the student stoushes of the 1970s, to
explain himself.