In Orderly File

This is the NSW Premier Morris Iemma talking to a Surf Rescue chap just prior to the NSW Election; as part of the 75th bridge celebrations. He has this low, understated way of just being there, and talking to whoever is next to him. He isn't striding out and grinning and gripping like a lot of them; and in this quiet, shy, kind of under-stated way, he won the last election absolutely convincingly. The Labor machine was impressive, considering they couldn't run on their rotten record, but there was something about Morris, too, that people don't dislike.

Bob Carr, as I've said before, had them all boxed; sweeping into press conferences, making his grand announcements, picking the two dumbest hacks in the pack, answering their questions in full and sweeping on, an important man with important business. I remember, particularly, about Bob, being stuck with him for much of three days when he was Environment Minister; tromping through the national parks and state forests of the north coast, the dripping, exotic richness of it all, with the national parks guys running around; Bob being dropped at one end of the walking trail with the little herd of journalists and guides, and then at lunch, chicken sandwiches on the top of a waterfall, beer for those indiscreet enough to want one.

Bob never drank. While the rest of us would be nursing blinding, disabling, and very indiscreet hangovers, and I was battling deeper orders of melancholy which kept seeping like an evil surf around our feet, Bob and his wife would be sitting, already neat, at the motel breakfast table. She would be sipping hot water with a slice of lemon in it. I'd never seen anyone drink hot water before; and thought this was amazingly exotic; some rigid puritanical rite; but she insisted it was good for you. Bob, too, was keen on the iced water and fruit juices and while the rest of us swapped notes about the exploits, or failed exploits, of the night before, he sat engrossed in Primo Levi's latest novel; whatever it was. The eighties seem so long ago now. I've got a really busy day ahead, one more week till the school holidays; helping Suzy at work with a project she's pitching at the web editor; finishing the introduction to Crossroads; doing a 800 word "meditation" for the arts pages on war artist Lambert; and of course whatever trivial pieces of crap the day throws up.

THE BIGGER STORY

Channel Four:

At least 12 people have died after an earthquake and tsunami struck the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific.
The quake, which measured at least 8.0 on the Richter scale, levelled buildings and damaged a hospital on Gizo island northwest of the Solomons capital, Honiara.
A tsunami, described by witnesses as the height of a two-storey building, sucked homes into the sea as thousands of panicked residents fled for higher ground. The tsunami alert in the region has now been lifted.
One of the worst affected areas was Gizo, in the west of the Solomons, which was only 28 miles from the epicentre of the quake.
At least seven people died in Gizo, many trapped in their homes when waves swept through the town. Other bodies could be seen but not reached because of huge waves crashing ashore, the government said in a statement.