Few friends for Abbott on Wild Rivers. Tony Abbott has been in Cairns and Cape York this week trying to drum up support for his private member’s bill to overturn the Queensland government’s Wild Rivers legislation, but with very little support beyond that of Noel Pearson and Liberal Party stalwarts. The Cape York Land Council have told him to butt out and even his claimed constitutional authority to overturn state legislation seems to be suspect.

Vacuuming up the Brumby leaks. John Brumby and the Victorian government are so worried about leaks similar to the federal election, the entire floor in Treasury, where policy costing is going on, is not being vacuumed for the caretaker period.

Pike deflects the blame. Bronwyn Pike (MP for Melbourne) really must do her research — in a meeting of the Flemington Association on Monday night (in the heart of her constituency) she responded to outrage around yet another government planning debacle (1 Ascot Vale Road) by incorrectly blaming the local council for the approval of the application. She was subsequently lucky to get out the door, being vehemently and angrily reminded that it was in fact her government’s planning override, and the direct influence of her colleague Justin Madden, that was stated in the VCAT member’s judgement as the reason for the very unpopular approval.

Inside take on anti-siphoning. I work in the pay-TV sector, so I’m contractually bound to keep my opinion to myself, but I’ll give it anyway: Bernard Keane’s views are correct to a point, and that point is at which he offers no suggestions. He neglects to concede that siphoning does exist and has happened before, just that we’re not accustomed to seeing it in this country. Nevertheless, like any good thing, you can have too much of it.

So what’s the answer?  It’s in neither FTA nor pay-TV’s interests to suggest this, but a form of “Laffer curve” that insures the most viewers have access to the most events live is surely the only objective view to have on this area of policy. Naturally, the concept would be semi-dependent on itself, because the siphoning (for want of a less pejorative term) of sports affects the uptake of pay-TV sports.

Thankfully, a “use it or lose it” approach can reactively reach the same result, by harnessing the judgement of the FTA networks, though arguably the trigger is suppressed at an artificially low threshold. Such a provision must also define what “use” and “lose” means. In case that sounds obvious, here are some tips: live; live in which region; lost after one failure to lose; lost for all time.

Have no doubt the lobbyists are discussing these finer points as we speak. One brighter note though: despite the bleatings of Mark Day and Michael Idato, viewers did actually get a good deal out of the last Winter Olympics and Commonwealth Games. The sports bodies may have lost out, as Bernard asserts, but viewers got one full-time channel in HD for free, and six more in HD if they paid. Sounds like win-win to me.

Seismic shift in Bass Strait. The Commonwealth Government has apparently banned all seismic surveying in Bass Strait. This is response to the death of some scallops in an area where seismic data were acquired some time previously. No one seems to have thought to ask why, when some 250 seismic surveys have been conducted all over Bass Strait since the 1960s, it should be the 251st that affects a scallop fishery.  Or why, despite of efforts to find it, there is no evidence of any physiological impact of seismic surveying on invertebrates.

Instead, the response has been to stop all use of the primary exploration tool in Australia’s most productive and strategically located oil and gas (and potentially CCS) province. As well as doing some rational scientific thinking, the regulators would do better to look at the agenda of one of the fishermen involved, who is embroiled in certain other disputes with the Tasmanian Government.

Free newspaper tracker: Seen outside Gloria Jean’s coffee shop in Narrabeen, Sydney, a sign advertising a free Sydney Morning Herald with each $5 purchase.