Telstra Tequila

It promises to be a great morning for Senate watchers - and increasingly alarmed Telstra watchers - with a gun-shy Barnaby Joyce un-rubbling, according to the major Sunday papers, and withdrawing his support for the full sale, and ABC's Inside Business to do a special on the Telstra gymnastics at 9:45.

I belatedly note this cracker of an interview Kerry O'Brien conducted with John Howard on the Telstra sale on the 7:30 Report this week. Ah, always so nice to see someone getting Howard all hot under the collar ... as Mike Carlton noted in his column this weekend, `Viewers got five"Well, Kerrys" on Wednesday night, as well as a bunch of "Hang on, Kerrys", "Kerry, Kerrys" and even a "No, no, no, I'm sorry, Kerry."'

Update: Well, Alan Kohler didn't disappoint, with a succinct summation of the situation and a curt editorial, in which he attempted to work out exactly who had been made more pissed off by the past week - Telstra execs, Telstra shareholders, Nationals senators (didn't get a chance to sample Barnaby Joyce's spray over on Channel 9 but the transcript's here), ASIC? The only certainty he could identify was that it's been a shitty week for one John W. Howard, and that the `2007 election might be too soon'. Phwoar!