A PEP talk? As well as TPG still circling Coles, Pacific Equity Partners have had several meetings with Wesfarmers regarding Kmart. The word is that PEP are trying to merge the Warehouse Group from NZ with Kmart.

Defence contractors and racial discrimination exemptions. A friend of mine who had been working at Tidbinbilla lost his job there recently — why? he was born in Vietnam. He left there aged 2 and was adopted by an Australian couple. He has not been back, nor had any communication with his mother — his father is a US citizen. The reason he lost his job — the organisation now needs to satisfy US security requirements because of the sensitive US defence work they are doing there. Apparently being born in a country he hasn’t visited since he was two is a security threat. The guy was in the Australian Navy for over 10 years too.

The house always wins. Melbourne’s Crown Casino held a “charity” poker tournament on Sunday — the only problem was that “charity” didn’t begin at home. The buy-in was $120 with $50 going to the Camp Quality charity. But players were not advised that $20 was going to Crown to run the so-called charity event! Where is the Crown Chaplain when you need him?

Name dropping. Looks like Chris Bowen thinks Labor already have the election in the bag — he’s dropped that ugly word ‘shadow’ from his title and is now just calling himself the Assistant Treasurer on the Official Website of the Australian Labor Party.

Vote early and vote often. It was interesting to note this morning the Sky News voting on the issue of the immigration Minister’s handling of Dr Haneef’s visa did not have the usual block on multiple voting. For those readers unfamiliar with this control, you are only allowed to vote once and you get a message informing you of this control if you attempt a second vote. Mysteriously this control appeared to be missing this morning and taking note of the old adage “vote early and vote often” I decided to have a second vote. Again I was not stopped. After attempting a third vote I noted that the approval rating for Minister Andrews had improved significantly in the intervening milliseconds. Smelling a rat, I then voted against approximately 100 more times and could not make a dent in the minister’s approval rating which steadily improved over a 10 minute period by over 15%. I wonder why the block on multiple voting online appear it appears to have stopped. Has Sky News provided a back door to facilitate political manipulation? Accordingly the credibility of Sky News must be viewed with the deepest suspicion as it would appear that two or three dedicated individuals can significantly alter these results if they have nothing better to do with their time. Accordingly I will take no further notice of Sky News polls as a serious measure of community feeling.

Sighting 1. Spotted lunching in a North Melbourne cafe yesterday were Anthony Albanese and the ousted Dean Mighell … could there be a reconciliation on the horizon? Looked to be lunching very comfortably!

Sighting 2. Sir Ian McKellen, currently starring in King Lear at Melbourne’s State theatre, spotted in the confectionary aisle of the David Jones Foodhall in the CBD, looking like an ageing Bono. His staff was nowhere in sight.