Bligh’s birthday crashed. A few uncomfortable moments for Queensland’s political elite at Brisbane’s Urbane restaurant last Tuesday night. In one corner Premier Anna Bligh and her office staff celebrating the premier’s 50th  birthday. In the other, Liberal-National Party deputy and former leader Lawrence Springborg, long-time adviser Jake Smith and LNP president Bruce McIver, all deep in conversation with Courier Mail political scribe Steven Wardill. Diners noted LNP leader John-Paul Langbroek managed to turn up much later in the evening — perhaps to check up on the Bligh party, or was he more concerned with what his own crew were up to in his absence?

A letter from Malcolm, minus the Libs. I recently received a mail out from the Member for Wentworth (in an envelope of seriously rough brown recycled paper). As well as the usual fridge magnet there was a letter and a newsletter. Malcolm Turnbull must have pulped the first version of the letter as this one read: “As everybody knows the Labor Government in Canberra unexpectedly changed leaders, at the very time my newsletter was being printed.” How inconvenient!

How inconvenient too it seemed for Turnbull to acknowledge the political party he represents. In addition to the 20 images of smiling Malcolm, hardhat and fluoro vest Malcolm (mining tax), and open shirt and Akubra Malcolm, there were 28 mentions of Rudd, Gillard and Labor and only eight mentions of ‘the Coalition’. One of those referred to an initiative of 1997. Not one mention of the Liberal party. No logo. No mention of Tone or an ‘Abbott government’. No picture of Tone. Lots of blue ink though and a colouring-in competition.

Henderson is everywhere in Corangamite. Gee, Sarah Henderson seems to have a big adverting budget for this neck of the woods. Even before the election is announced the former journalist and Liberal Party candidate for the seat of Corangamite had ads running on local radio, in the cinema and newspapers. Her billboards are everywhere and I saw a car on the road wearing her advertising. I don’t recall a local candidate ever having such a high profile campaign.

The complex world of online enrolment. Have you actually tried to enrol to vote? The process is maddeningly not helped by badly designed websites. Each time you try to download the form the AEC tells you that you don’t have the right Adobe reader — and keeps asking you to download it — but even when you do it, it doesn’t work. Your alternative is to fill in five secret questions and answers and enrol at australia.gov.au which also never loads the form it promises. I work in computing but am bamboozled by the site; god help the average voter trying to enrol.

The stingy millionaire bankers. Your story on Friday about the poor level of philanthropy among Australia’s wealthy was right on the money. Some of the highest paid and wealthiest people in this country are investment bankers and fund managers. Up until recently I have been a PA to a number of bankers on multi-million dollar packages — I could not believe what a big deal they would make about giving $1,000 or so to a charity.

Myer turnaround? Not quite. Myer’s much vaunted and discussed 50 month turnaround comes to an end this month. It marks 50 months since the purchase from Coles Myer, and many things have been achieved (such as supply chain improvement and an impressive EBIT margin north of 8%). Many things, however, have not been delivered. Full year’s sales for FY10 are expected to be in the order or $3.3 billion, according to Bernie Brookes in The Weekend Australian, which is about $100 million more than Myer achieved under the previous owners in FY06, when Myer’s sales hit $3.2 billion. Aggressive cost reduction has driven profit growth, rather than sales growth.

Myer has added about $100 million despite opening five new stores and renovating countless others, including the flagship Sydney outlet. The partial closure of Myer Melbourne has not helped, but overall the sales growth has been woeful, despite much heavier discounting and sale activity than Bernie promised. Bookes promised that Myer would be fixed in 50 months, not starting its journey…

Townsville Airport dramas. It’s amazing how a mayor incident  at Townsville Airport never made the local bulletins, let alone the southern press or TV news. May be someone should ask the Townsville Port Authority why the airport was closed for one and a half hours on Wednesday and flights diverted to Mackay…

Thunderbirds are go! Crikey reader Peter McDonald was watching Channel Ten’s interview with Bob Hawke and the missus last night, when it struck him that he’d seen them before…

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