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GLEN - Host

It was only a matter of time. The banks have started their move on interest rates - onwards and upwards from here. Just watch.

The Commonwealth Bank has increased interest rates on its fixed-rate loans, a day after the Reserve Bank Governor said the official cash rate won’t stay at historically low levels for much longer.

The Commonwealth told brokers its one-year fixed rates will rise by half a percentage point, to six-point-1-9 per cent.

The bank says it still faces higher funding costs associated with its fixed-rate loans, even though conditions in global money markets are settling, after the global financial crisis

Its two-year fixed rate mortgage is going up by 30 basis points, while three-year fixed home loan rates will increase by 15 basis points.

It lifted the rates independent of any movement by the Reserve Bank, after earlier declining to pass on all of the RBA’s cuts.

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Elsewhere, interesting to see your thoughts on the Polanski arrest in our online poll.

About 83% in favour of his arrest and extradition. Some do think differently though, as reported this morning on the wires:

Top film directors across the world rallied around Roman Polanksi, declaring themselves “astonished” at the arrest of the film-maker over a 1977 underage sex case.

Michael Mann, Wim Wenders and Pedro Almodovar were among more than 70 film industry figures who signed a petition in protest at the detention of the Polish-French director on Saturday in Zurich.

“We demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski,” the petition urged, coordinated from France by the SACD, an organisation which represents performance and visual artists.

“Film-makers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision,” the petition said, adding the arrest came as “astonishing news” to the SACD.

“It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary film-makers, is used by police to apprehend him.”

Names were piling up on the petition late Monday, and included directors Julian Schnabel, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Walter Salles and actress Tilda Swinton.

Polanski, who directed “Rosemary’s Baby”, “Chinatown” and “The Pianist”, was detained as he arrived to receive a lifetime achievement award at the Zurich film festival.

The five members of the film festival jury said that the event “had been exploited in an unfair fashion”.

Posters were stuck on the cinema where Polanski had been due to receive his award, declaring “Free Polanski” and “No extradition”.

The director pleaded guilty three decades ago to having sex with a 13-year-old girl. His lawyer said he had refused to be extradited from Switzerland to the United States.

The 76-year-old fled the US in 1978 before sentencing on a charge in the underage sex case. He has never returned, even missing the Oscar award for “The Pianist” in 2003.

France’s Society of Film Directors also voiced concern the arrest “could have disastrous consequences for freedom of expression across the world”.

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Today’s poll is about which city should get the Olympics with the IOC deciding its next venue this week.

Rio gets my vote. South America is way overdue and what an opening ceremony !

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MARIUS - Politics

One of the continuing themes of current politics is the question of the extent to which Malcolm Turnbull is changing the Liberal Party and the extent to which the Party is changing him.

The Liberal Party - and the Coalition as a whole - are certainly changing in opposition.

Defeat at the last election left no doubt the voters wanted something different.

But there is still much debate about how the party - and parties - should change.

Malcolm Turnbull as leader is notionally the chief architect of the new order, but every worker on the project has an independent view and the word of the leader is likely to begin a debate but not end it.

The extent of independent thinking was revealed in the Australian when Peter van Onselen went to the trouble of ringing around the Liberal backbench to ask what they privately thought of the official Turnbull-MacFarlane line on an emissions trading scheme - that is: let’s negotiate with the government to get some concessions.

The alternative, the frontbench advocates of this line argue, is to face a double dissolution election which they will lose, leaving the Government free to introduce its own ETS, unfettered.

In private, it seems that view’s not going down well. In fact, the level of discontent is reflected in an overwhelming majority of Liberals privately rejecting that line and some publicly questioning whether they even support an ETS.

Malcolm Turnbull says support for an ETS is the policy the Opposition holds, having adopted it before the last election. But the Nationals Ron Boswell and Liberals Cory Bernardi and Wilson Tuckey have questioned that.

Bernardi and Tuckey have told NewsRadio that supporting the ETS was never put to the party room - it was just a private deal cooked up pre-election between Howard and his then Environment Minister, one Malcolm Turnbull.

On the ETS the Opposition joint party room now looks more like a brawl in a wild west tavern than a united political group.

And that figure you can see in the middle shouting to be heard is the Opposition leader, showing just how hard it is to lead when nobody wants to follow.

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DEBBIE - Sport

Before you read any further, let me stress I’m glad Parramatta fullback Jarryd Hayne is available to play in Sunday evening’s NRL grand final.

You want the best players on the biggest stage in any sport; what’s more, I’m impressed that Melbourne captain, Cameron Smith, has the grace to say the same thing — despite the fact he got rubbed out by the judiciary and missed the big one last season.

But really, the apologists should give the it a rest now. It’s nonsense to suggest that Hayne couldn’t help ramming his knees into the head of Bulldogs winger Bryson Goodwin after a try had been scored last Friday night.

We’re talking Jarryd Hayne here: the master of elusive stepping, jinking, dodging and ducking.

Don’t tell me the evasion skills that have made him almost impossible to lay a hand on when he’s the ball carrier totally evaporate when he’s defending.

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On a related theme, someone needs to come up with a better term than “eight point try” to describe incidents like that one involving Bryson Goodwin in Friday night’s game.

“Eight point try” doesn’t do the job, because it’s only worth eight points if both the conversion and the penalty kick are successful.

On this occasion, Hazem El Masri had a rare miss from the sideline, but got the penalty from in front to make it really just a six point try. And it’s certainly not a “penalty try”, as one newspaper report refers to it today. Why not call it just a “penalty after the try”, or “try plus penalty.”

Those terms are no more cumbersome than “eight point try”.

And definitely more accurate.

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One of the main protagonists in a couple of Australia’s greatest athletics moments in the last decade has retired.

Yuliya Pechonkina of Russia was — and remains — the world record holder in the 400 metres hurdles. Twice at the world championships, in Paris in 2003 and Osaka in 2007, she was the main rival for Australia’s Jana Pittman-Rawlinson. I’ll always remember watching that race Paris race in 2003 and thinking the Russian was so far in front as they turned into the straight that Pittman had no chance. But Pittman kept closing, Pechonkina got the staggers coming off the last hurdle and the Aussie snatched an improbable victory.

In Pittman’s absence in 2005, Pechonkina won the world title, and then in 2007 they locked horns again. This time Pittman-Rawlinson passed her earlier in the straight, but Russian threatened momentarily to fight back. More spine-tingling stuff.

Allergies have apparently given Pechonkina as much trouble as our Jana’s given her over the years and she says she’s retiring because of ongoing problems with sinusitis and other allergy-related issues.

She’s going to pursue a career in banking….dare I say setting out the hurdles, instead of going over them?