Divine intervention for Clubs Australia campaign. Clubs Australia hinted that it had a trump card up its sleeve, but we couldn’t have predicted this one. The clubs have managed to get one of Sydney’s most respected religious leaders to front their campaign against Andrew Wilkie’s poker machine reforms.

Father Chris Riley, Youth off the Streets founder and NSW Australian of the Year, has put his name to a new Clubs Australia flyer in which he declares that mandatory pre-commitment technology for poker machines will not help problem gamblers and will strip money from charities. — Angela Priestley (read the full story here)

Howard to launch Ian Plimer’s new book. If you’ve got $60 spare and are free on Monday night, you can splurge on a night out with former prime minister John Howard and king of the climate sceptics Ian Plimer. Plimer, a professor of mining geology at Adelaide University, has written a new book: How to Get Expelled from School: A guide to climate change for pupils, parents and punters.

Howard will launch the so-called “anti-Warmist manual for the younger reader” at the Tattersalls Club in the Sydney CBD. — The Power Index (read the full story)

Megaphones watch: Bolt, Albrectsen, Jones. Andrew Bolt slides down the slippery slope, Janet Albrectsen goes to the movies and Alan Jones talks climate change with Ian Plimer. Here’s what Australia’s most powerful megaphones have been up to over the past week. — Matthew Knott (read the full story here)