Today, The Outsider considers knobs, votes and 50 shades of grey.

Did they even vote for themselves?

Counting still has some way to go, but the latest South Australian Senate figures would have some candidates worried that even their Mum didn’t vote for them.

Several have a lonely single vote to their name so far.

When we last checked this morning, the ‘Stop the Greens’ collective had not yet recorded a single above the line ticket vote.

Maybe a new political adage is in the making – “If you can’t vote for yourself…”

Getting the band back together

The Outsider has reported previously that State Labor has hired ad man Neil Lawrence to run the messaging for Jay Weatherill’s 2014 re-election bid.

We can also reveal that he’s being joined by pollster Tony Mitchelmore, who criss-crossed the country before and during the Kevin 07 campaign conducting focus groups and taking the pulse of voters to help “shape” messages for the ALP.

His qualitative research also helped hasten the end of Kim Beazley’s leadership, showing, as it did, how ineffectual the affable Opposition Leader was in the face of John Howard at the heights of his powers.

Christine Jackman in her book, Inside Kevin 07: The People, The Plan, The Prize, describes Mitchelmore as “looking a bit like a younger, fitter Jimmy Barnes”. Which means he’ll feel right at home in Radelaide.

Kevin peers within.

Labor-oriented communications firm Essential Media Communications – which helped run the successful campaign against John Howard’s WorkChoices – has also been brought in to work on the state campaign.

Not everyone in Labor circles is impressed by the team, particularly those who question the absence of veteran strategist Bruce Hawker who, as this upright online organ reported this week, had worked on every state Labor campaign in SA since 1997, but won’t be coming back.

Even if asked, though, Hawker would have been unlikely to jump on board with the team that hastened Rann’s demise – he and Mike are close, and Hawker made his disapproval very clear after the factional boys tapped Rann on the shoulder.

Some Labor war horses have adopted a wait-and-see approach to Lawrence, not giving much weight to his work on Kevin 07. The phrase “drover’s dog” has been mentioned.

More knobs than a cabinet

Rupert Murdoch’s Adelaide newspapers have been deeply worried about photographer Bill Henson having his work displayed at next year’s biennial.

In an apparent attempt to capture some of Murdoch’s interstate tabloid ‘magic’, they launched a pre-emptive strike in the Sunday Mail this week, suggesting that Henson is creepy and questioning his inclusion in the exhibition.

It didn’t matter that they had no idea what kinds of photographs Henson would be providing for the exhibit: they went in with all guns blazing and their eyes firmly shut.

John Wayne never went off half-cocked.

It turns out that the works depicted landscapes and doors. We suppose that there’s a door fetishist somewhere out there who’s now devastated about his lack of access to sensual images of knobs.

In a metaphorical raised middle finger to Adelaide, Henson withdrew his photographs from next year’s exhibition in response to the controversy.

The kicker is that a Bill Henson image – a very large one – is on permanent display at the Art Gallery.

You’ll find it in the Melrose Wing, as part of a collection of works on the theme “Seduced”.

The subject is wearing clothes, in contrast to the dozens of nudes adorning the gallery.

More cocks than John Wayne’s gun.

Shades of grey

The dear old Tiser has gone all retro this week, with two editions having numerous pages in old-fashioned black and white.

We’ve been used to glorious colour in the old dame for the past 20-odd years, but even today’s cartoon is in various shades of grey.

Cost-cutting, or are they experimenting with newspaper-noir?

Whatever, it makes us pine for the old days of Des Colqhoun’s page one column,  Samela Harris’s “Backchat”, and, the greatest Advertiser column of them all, Robbie Brechin’s “Thor Fingers”.