From the Crikey grapevine, the latest tips and rumours …

Bishop wedged by Kiwi duo. Much ink has been spilled regarding the presumptive awkwardness between Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and incoming NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, the leader of the party Bishop said she’d not be able to trust if they were elected. Now she has another layer to confront — the world’s second-greatest “own-name-tweeter“, Winston Peters is tipped to become New Zealand’s new foreign minister (his second tilt at the role). Peters is an unpredictable contrarian, a berater of journalists and other politicians and, let it not be forgotten (he certainly isn’t about to) the whole reason that Bishop has to deal with this shifty New Zealand Labour government in the first place. Ms Tips joyfully awaits their first press conference together.

Rudd, ex-PMs, weigh in. In addition to defending himself against attacks on his historical NBN policy, Kevin Rudd has weighed in on Victoria’s assisted dying debate, saying he would oppose the bill. He joins former prime ministers Paul Keating and Tony Abbott in publicly opposing legislation allowing doctors to assist terminally ill patients to end their life. Of course, all three have rarely been shy about giving their opinion on policy since leaving office.

We can only assume that an announcement from John Howard, passionately decrying euthanasia, is but moments away, assuming he can find time around opposing marriage equality and denying climate change.

Katter playing his own game. While he is often grouped with the right-wing populists like Pauline Hanson, Kennedy MP Bob Katter is more of an enigma than his fellow Queenslander. He’s progressive on many indigenous issues (albeit in a characteristically eccentric way), and bizarrely, bizarrely homophobic. He’s apparently well read, but asks questions in parliament that seem to be word association beat poetry. He is against a price on carbon, yet is in favour of clean energy. And, today, he distanced himself from Hanson’s comments on Sunrise calling for cuts to welfare.

Katter’s Australia Party put out a statement saying “our party is closely identified in the public mind with the Hanson party on many issues, and quite rightly so. Often as not we sing from the same hymn book. However, KAP distances itself from Senator Hanson’s advocating cuts to welfare. Most welfare recipients are in the main retirees, receiving only $700 a fortnight. Our retirees suffer exploding costs for electricity, home insurance and council rates.” 

This last point, amazingly enough, echoes what Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said in response to Hanson’s initial comments. Hanson-Young belongs to a party whose views are so antithetical to Katter, that when he was briefly entangled in the citizenship debate, he used them as the reference point to illustrate how purely Aussie he was: “There’s as much chance of my father being a citizen of Lebanon as me becoming a left Greenie. I am one of the most pure Australians that you could ever find.”

Truly, Katter contains multitudes.

Latham caption contest results. Yesterday we showed you six exquisite seconds of Mark Latham toppling over in his chair, and asked for some ideas on how it might be captioned. You didn’t let us down: “Arse first & backwards, mad Marky pulls down those around him”

“Latham lurches uncontrollably to the right”

“House of cards”

And our personal favourite; 

“Devine intervention: plastic goes elastic under Latham.” 

 *Heard anything that might interest Crikey? Send your tips to boss@crikey.com.au, use our guaranteed anonymous form or other ways to leak to us securely