Attention that starts as limelight can quickly turn to a sickly green, as state and federal politicians selling their Budgets, IR policies and themselves as electoral prospects to an observant public re-discovered this week.
"There are certain shades of limelight that can rack a girl's complexion" - Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Attention that starts as limelight can quickly turn to a sickly green, as state and federal politicians selling their Budgets, IR policies and themselves as electoral prospects to an observant public re-discovered this week.
Pre-Budget leaks gush from WA's Parliament
It's pre-budget week for both the Commonwealth and Western Australia, and both governments hit the media campaign trail with a series of pre-budget interviews and policy announcements.
Alan Carpenter was first, announcing a $447 million spend on public housing and improving housing affordability.
The allocation, to be spent over four years, will also include $21.1million to develop an electronic Land Development Process, a direct response to industry claims that the approvals process has become bogged down.
It will allow tracking of the government approvals process and ensure that relevant agencies meet timelines for subdivision approvals.
While Real Estate Institute of Western Australia president Rob Druitt approved of the measures, he nonetheless labelled stamp duty and land taxes as "the elephants in the room that the government must still address."
The elephants remain, and were added to when Housing and Works Minister Michelle Roberts was asked how many of the predicted 1000 new units to be built would be above current expectations.
"There will not be significantly more new houses delivered to the market, this new money is required to deliver more than what we're currently delivering," she said.
The next day's announcement, an $18 million funding allocation to provide 1,500 new parking bays along the Joondalup rail line, was more successful.
AWAs for WA?
But some in the Labor party may be thinking a lack of positive publicity for the Premier's pre-budget announcements are some form of Karmic retribution following the Premier's comments on Monday that Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd's plan to abolish AWAs could be detrimental to Western Australia's booming resources industry.
"You have to be sensitive to the fact that in some parts of the economy and in Western Australia in particular individual employment agreements have become almost the norm and are an integral part of that particular industry," Mr Carpenter told Perth reporters.
"So we have to have a model which respects that fact in Western Australia but allows for pay and conditions of ordinary working people to be underpinned by fair standards - now that's the balance they have to strike.
"The resource part of our economy is pivotal to our economic success and so you have to be aware of that fact and not put in place any sort of industrial relations regime which is detrimental to that industry."
Liberal Leader Paul Omodei said the Premier's new position highlighted a lack of sincerity and leadership ability on major issues.
"It's ironic that Alan Carpenter now says he supports Australian Workplace Agreements when one of the first things this State Government did when it came into power in 2001 was to scrap State-based individual workplace agreements," Mr Omodei said.
"If Alan Carpenter is dinkum with his newfound support of AWAs, why doesn't he instruct his Minister to draft a bill to reinstate State-based individual workplace agreements immediately?"
But the Premier later told the general meeting of the Chamber of Minerals and Energy's that he would not do so, because businesses wanted consistency in IR policy formulation.
"It would be much better if we get a national model, which is consistent, fair, balanced and flexible," he said.
That said, Mr Carpenter told the crowd he would not cede state powers to a Federal Labor government if industries, such as the mining sector, were disadvantaged under a new IR system.
That isn't to say he was opposing Australian Workplace Agreements, he said.
"I'll make it quite clear, my view is that John Howard's workplace relations reforms went too far and were too extreme," he said.
"Our government has been and is opposed to AWAs because they have been used to exploit workers. The issue is undeniable and can't be defended."
But by then the damage had been done, with Federal Labor's Industrial Relations spokeswoman Julia Gillard telling ABC radio that nothing the Premier had said was contrary to her plans.
"I have spoken to Premier Alan Carpenter and I have spoken at length to the resources sector in Western Australia and I have assured them under Labor's new system we will be able to meet their needs," she said.
"What Premier Carpenter has raised with me is simply the need to be mindful of the resources sector in Western Australia."
Gillard's "Bully-boy tactics"...
The week had started poorly for Ms Gillard, who - after leaving the national ALP conference's uranium brawl exercising the policy of least said, soonest mended - entered a round of talks with big businesses about the party's IR platform.
They hadn't been overly successful, with prominent business groups claiming a scrapping of AWAs would slow productivity and cut jobs, while BHP Billiton called on the party to come up with an alternative policy that guarantees continued stimulation of Australia's mining boom.
Then came what she later termed a mangled sporting analogy, which had Prime Minister John Howard accusing her of threatening businesses if they became involved in the industrial relations policy war.
"In election year the political contest is a pretty hard, fast place to be, it's a contact sport if you like, with a lot of injury," she told Southern Cross Broadcasting.
"That sounds like a threat to me," Mr Howard told reporters in Sydney.
"When you talk about companies getting injured, that sounds like to me that Julia Gillard ... (is) saying to business, if you speak out in support of coalition policy, then we will then bash you up.
"I don't think the deputy leader of the Labor Party should be engaging in bully boy tactics and threatening businesses with retribution if they express their views on our policies."
While Bully causes Heffernan apology
Then, on Wednesday, an early edition of the Bulletin changed everything.
The magazine had interviewed the New South Wales Senator, talking to him about his leadership of the Prime Minister's Northern Taskforce, dedicated to turning Australia's north into Asia's food and water bowl - a policy shared by WA Opposition Leader Paul Omodei.
The Senator had recently secured a coup by attracting Lachlan Murdoch and Noel Pearson to join the group.
Nonetheless, the interview gave the magazine the opportunity to question the Senator over a comment he had made the previous year, when he labelled Ms Gillard "deliberately barren".
"I won't walk away from that," he told the magazine.
"So rude, crude and unattractive as it was ... If you're a leader, you've got to understand your community. One of the great understandings in a community is family, and the relationship between mum, dads and a bucket of nappies."
The comments inspired a significant electoral backlash, with Premier Carpenter calling for the Senator's resignation from the committee.
In a joint announcement with Northern Territory chief minister Clare Martin, Mr Carpenter said the senator was so out of touch with modern Australia his appointment as chair made a "mockery" of the taskforce.
"At best, his chairmanship of this taskforce has been erratic and this latest outburst is the last straw," Mr Carpenter said.
Lightfoot hot-foots it out of the Senate...
Someone else who had the last straw this week was WA Liberal Senator Ross Lightfoot, who announced he would retire from a 21-year career in State and Federal politics the day before the state Liberal Party was due to set out its Senate ticket for the upcoming Federal election.
"I made the decision about six months ago that I wouldn't run again, but I'm determined to do whatever I can to ensure that the most appropriate person gets up in my place," he told ABC television.
"If I didn't nominate, I thought that would give an extra impetus to the person who is sort of bragging around town that he has got the numbers to get up, so I went right up to the edge and that was the reason."
The ABC presenter asked whether named Liberal Party senior vice president Mathias Cormann was that person.
While saying he could neither confirm nor deny the presenter's question, the Senator did have this to say.
"Well, I think there are more appropriate people who have served the party longer, who have been in the country longer, who are more appropriate with respect to family values and who have a track record that is easily and clearly scrutinised, so that they would make a more appropriate type person because you can see by their history what they're going to do in the future, and those who don't remember history are condemned to repeat it."
Mr Cormann, who won nomination for the third seat on the party ticket, made no comment on the Senator's statement.
Meanwhile, today's announcement from WA's Senator Ian Campbell that he would resign in a month could give a boost to the unsuccessful candidates from the Liberal preselections - 46-year-old financial planner Nick Bruining and hairdresser Millie Zuvella.
While Fremantle takes a walk in the Parke
In other party pre-selection news, Carmen Lawrence's nominated successor to the federal seat of Fremantle - human rights lawyer Melissa Parke - won ALP preselection after no other candidates nominated.
Ms Parke said in a statement that she would spend time in consultation with the community before the election.
But her preselection drew criticism from Fremantle Mayor Peter Tagliaferri, who said she was not sufficiently familiar with local issues.
While Ms Parke, who currently lives in New York, was unavailable for further comment when contacted by AAP, Dr Lawrence said Mr Tagliaferri's comments were unfounded.
"She's someone who will get involved as soon as she gets back here and will buy a house in Fremantle and then she'll be a Fremantle resident."
"Anyone standing for federal government is on a steep learning curve no matter how long they've lived in the community."
The final word
In a week when Dean Mighell, the Victorian secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, described Prime Minister John Howard as a "skid mark on the bed sheet of Australian politics", the final word must go to Labor's candidate for the Adelaide seat of Boothby - Nicole Cornes.
Boothby has been held by the Liberal Party since 1949, with sitting member Andrew Southcott currently sitting on a 5.4 per cent margin - making the seat safe, but not certain.
Selecting a columnist at Adelaide's major Sunday paper, the Sunday Mail, and the wife of local football legend Graham Cornes in the seat may have looked like a smart move, but it backfired when the candidate admitted she had only joined the party the day before her candidacy was announced.
When asked by the local press for an interview, she replied "What is this for? I won't have to answer any tough questions, no hard-hitting questions, will I?"
"This is all really new to me. I, I've really got to get my head around all of the policies in a more in-depth, in, in a more in-depth way before I can really make a, an educated comment on that," she told reporters.
Arch reckons Mrs Cornes is entirely correct.
