The latest legal precinct rumour from Melbourne is that a prominent human rights lawyer is shortly to be appointed by the Brumby government to Victoria’s Supreme Court.

So Rudd thinks the Corio candidate, Richard Marles is a first rate representative. Funny then that a few weeks before the election was announced that Rudd and Gillard visited Geelong but did not tell Marles they were coming. Nope, they drove straight through to Oberon Secondary school to announce their school policy with their Corrangamite candidate Cheeseman. Finding out about it the last minute, Marles rushed to the school to desperately get in the photoshoot. Yep, he gate crashed Cheeseman’s day in the sun with the leader and deputy leader. And just the other day, Martin Fergusson visited Corio but snubbed Marles and would not talk to him as he announced extra Federal funding for the Geelong bypass according to people who were there. Seems strange that such a first class bloke would be so obviously ignored. Obviously the people of Geelong think the same, if the Geelong Advertiser’s recent online poll about the merits of Gavan O’Connor’s decision to stand is anything to go by. 87% thought it was a good thing.

The Chinese-owned iron ore project mentioned in yesterday’s “Tips and rumours” section could well be the Cape Preston Iron Ore project that is south of Dampier, Western Australia. The ore for this project is magnetite located 25km inland. A mine, processing plants, stockpile and reclaimer was planned to feed an overland conveyor that carried ore to the port stockpile. The port consisted of a loadout jetty, stockpile, reclaimer, town, power plant, airport and desalination plant. The engineering design and procurement was to be done in China. Construction and initial operation to be carried out by Chinese personnel.