Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

You will have to forgive me for being rather reticent on the blogging front, but I have simply been unable to tear myself away from Shane Warne and Liz Hurley's Twitter feeds.

Was it a coffee table or a mattress that was delivered on the eve of her arrival? Where should Warnie take this English rose for a "sexy lunch?" And he doesn't mean "spaghetti on toast". Oh no, Warnie is a man of great culinary refinement. I have been able to think of little else.

Always with an eye on fashion, La Hurley has followed the recent British trend of heaping praise on the land down under, adding her name to a fan list that already includes Parkie and the Prince of Wales. "Loving Australia..." she tweets from inside Warnie's Melbourne "loveshack," as the tabloids have been calling his Brighton mansion.

But I want to talk about something far less racy - what to Australian business journalists are what Warnie and Liz have become to Australian gossip columnists. You know who I mean. That Anglo-Australian couple who are always hogging the headlines. Those corporate titans which have us hanging on every word. I speak of course of BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto (is that the sound of clicks I hear?).

Their recent profits are so whopping that they are attracting tabloid-style headlines. I'm half expecting to pick up the Australian Financial Review in the morning to find "Phew, what a scorcher of a half year profit" in bold letters across the front page. They are indeed huge.

for the six months between July and the end of December, a rise of 71.5% which equates to $58m a day. Last week, Rio Tinto unveiled profits of $14bn for the year, a near tripling on the back of rising commodities prices.

This time last year, the big debate in Australian politics was whether the resources sector should pay super taxes on its super profits. Following a multi-millionaire advertising and lobbying campaign, the mining sector - always Australia's strongest lobby - managed to force a government climbdown. Some might even go as far as to suggest that they also forced a prime minister from office, since the campaign contributed heavily to Kevin Rudd's demise (indeed, the first policy shift from the new Prime Minister Julia Gillard was a compromise deal with Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton).

At a time when the government has introduced a controversial $1.8bn flood levy to pay for reconstruction in Queensland, it is being estimated that over the next decade because of the back down over the mining tax.

These record profits may well revive the public debate over the super tax proposals, but not the political debate. Having seen what happened to her predecessor when he took on the mining sector, Julia Gillard, the head of a minority government, would never risk the same fate. The Liberal Party is also against the mining tax, even in its diluted form.

No wonder the mining sector is enjoying such a romance with the land down under.

Were the chief executives of Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, Tom Albanese and Marius Kloppers on Twitter, perhaps they, too, would be saying: "Loving Australia..."

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