Our own little hillary, Maxine McKew has been at it again. On this week's Q&A, Miss rata-tat-tat had lots of words but little to say .... In one of the greatest cons perpetrated on the Australian electorate, Maxine was credited with having knocked-off old rattus in the last feral election .... truth is, of course, that even Hannibal Lecter could have blitzed the little fella; Maxine was just collecting the prize on behalf of the party .....

Anyway, back to this week's effort: Maxine is an embarrassment. Whoever the Party idiot was who thought it was possible to take a talking head "journalist" - trained to ask questions prepared by a research assistant & that they don't understand themselves - & turn them into a serious politician, just by having their teeth fixed & hair done .... what chance Awstrayla ..... struth.

Maxine on .......

the latest opinion poll .....

MAXINE MCKEW: I am saying it's an odd poll, right, and we'll have to wait and see what Newspoll says in a fortnight. But I do my own local polling all the time. I have a conversation with my electorate and in the last fortnight clearly this issue has come up. It's not the first thing people raise but, you know, it's - people are almost split down the middle on it. There are some people who think we are not being generous enough; others who think we are not tough enough. But, do you know, this...

TONY JONES: That goes back to the question. Tough but humane. People are confused.

MAXINE MCKEW: Well, this is - no, I think it's exactly what the Prime Minster says. You know, this is not about popularity. It is about finding a sensible approach to what is a complex problem.

on boat people .....

JOE HOCKEY: What is the Government's policy on this?

MAXINE MCKEW: Will you just calm down on this? You've just hit the nail on the head. We're talking about human beings here. There has been a vicious, vicious civil war raging in Sri Lanka for over a decade. Now, the Sri Lankans, the Singhalese, have prevailed there but as yet they have not prosecuted the peace. And there are 250,000 displaced people there. Within the next couple of days, John McCarthy, who has just returned as our High Commissioner from Delhi, will be going on behalf of the Prime Minister to Sri Lanka to talk to senior officials in Colombo about a couple of things - about greater cooperation...

TONY JONES: But while this conversation is going on, while all these high-level meetings in Sri Lanka are going on, what's going to happen to those 78 people on that boat?

MAXINE MCKEW: I can't give you an answer because I don't know.

on Peter Costello .....

TONY JONES: Maxine, what is going on here?

MAXINE MCKEW: Kevin has a particular view that we're 22 million and we can't afford not to use those people who make a considerable contribution to public life. And Peter Costello has certainly done that.

TONY JONES: A good economic manager, was he?

MAXINE MCKEW: I happen to have the view that this is perhaps just the right job for Peter. If you are managing the Future Fund you are required to be very sober in your judgments and, I would suggest, not take any risks. You'd have to say that Peter Costello never took the big risk and went for the big job. So, I think it's very good placement by Kevin.

on using the whip .....

MAXINE MCKEW: I mean, you know, I sit here with zero expertise in this matter. I don't know. I don't know. No one...

TONY JONES: You're just lucky you don't have a jockey on your back.

MAXINE MCKEW: Yeah, no one would like to see that. Of course, we have whips in the parliament, you know. Oh. And there is a - you know, there is an actual whip they have in a sort of a show case, just to show they mean it, you know. They sort of whip us around and whip us into the building and keep us there for ridiculous hours.

TONY JONES: None of us had any idea how kinky parliament really was.

MAXINE MCKEW: Well, as you know, the whip is really only associated with certain Tory politicians of particular disposition. That sort of inclination to be whipped.

on nothing .....

TONY JONES: Maxine, the question was really about fear versus opportunities. It's a kind of philosophical question. What are your thoughts?

MAXINE MCKEW: Yeah, well, I tend to be on the side that says a country that is not growing is probably stagnating and that's probably because I grew up in Brisbane in the 1950s and '60s, when about 10 people lived there and it was a really dull place. It is no longer a dull place. It's - you know, it's one of our fastest changing urban centres because of spectacular changes in terms of - in migration from other parts of the country and from overseas. And it has a lot of infrastructure. If you go into Brissie, you know, it's very hard to get around at the moment, but they are building, you know, the Brisbane of tomorrow. Could I also come back to this young man's question her? He asked about regional development, and I'll link the two. Very important point. There are great opportunities here. If we are to become, say, 35 million, which is what has been discussed in the last couple of weeks, we're all not going to fit into the major urban centres, but there are marvellous opportunities there. And if I can just, say, mention New South Wales. If you look at the central western towns - places like Bathurst and Orange and Wagga and Dubbo, these places, they've actually already come together very smartly and they are doing a joint marketing exercise to sell themselves as the Evo Cities and that's about energy, vibrancy, opportunity, and they're selling themselves to families in western Sydney, saying, you know, come across the Blue Mountains and we'll build up the populations in those centres and they have got a lot of the things that families want. They've got good, competitive schools. They've got a good health system. They've got marvellous cultural facilities. A lot of that work is being done by creative local councils and, in turn, the Commonwealth has got a direct relationship now. Through the community infrastructure program we're putting nearly one billion dollars into councils directly right across the country to help bring all those things together.

It's called fluff .....