Cleaning House At The AFR

THIS BLOG has had many things to say over the past year about the Fairfax press, few of them favourable and none cause for regret. The Silly and Phage remain as successive editors have reduced them, pustules of smugness waiting to be lanced and cleansed by adult supervision or new proprietors, whichever comes first. And it will happen, as the ongoing renovation of the Australian Financial Review demonstrates.

For long years the paper was in decline, a source of annoyance as much as of information, its pages colonised by the same sort of left-leaning groupthinkers who continue to make its broadsheet siblings so excruciating. But at the Fin, well, put it this way: if you have neither bought nor read it lately, invest three dollars in today’s edition and see what genuine leadership can do.

Under new editor Michael Stutchbury the paper is brimming with change and promise. News coverage has acquired a harder edge and the focus, while still very much on business, is expanding to take in the broader vista of the nation’s affairs. Its coverage of IR issues, for example, has been must-read stuff, and if it has over-reached with its recent assault on News Corporation, well Rupert Murdoch is a big boy and can look out for himself.

The most encouraging news came two days ago, when Opinion page bore John Quiggin was thanked for 20 years of lefty lockstep predictability and sent on his way. Some years ago, when the appalling Tina Brown took charge at the New Yorker, she was hailed as a genius for introducing the use of photographs, an innovation other publications had adopted quite some decades earlier. That move was a no-brainer, and Quiggins’ forced exit is in the same vein. One can only wonder why successive editors insisted for so long on presenting a doctrinaire leftist's insights, such as they are, to a readership consisting primarily of investors and believers in markets’ wisdom. Had Green Left Weekly showcased Gerard Henderson it would have been no less discordant.

Now that he is gone, one can only wonder why it took so long. Were former editors scared of his beard? Their immunity to nonsense was certainly high. Here is Quiggin, flushed with triumph, after Kevin Rudd’s victory in 2007:

For once, my electoral predictions haven’t turned out too badly, so I’ll offer one more before we get back to policy: The Liberal Party will never again win a federal election.

This isn’t a prediction of unending Labor rule, rather an observation that the Liberal and National parties are in such dire straits that they can’t continue as they are. They haven’t got enough support, parliamentary representation or ideas for one party, let alone two.

As Quiggin is now saying “the Liberal Party will never win a federal election” does not actually mean the Liberal Party will never win a federal election, it might also be interesting to hear his current thoughts on the so-called culture war, which he declared over and won in the ecstasy of Rudd’s romp in 2007. Here is how Quiggin saw the future not long after that glorious Saturday night:

… the best course is probably the one the Rudd government is taking. Get the big symbolic issues that have to be addressed (Kyoto, the Nauru camps, an apology to indigenous Australians) settled once and for all, and as soon as possible. Then try and move forward with substantive policies that will achieve better outcomes.

The Financial Review is so much better for Quiggin’s  departure that only news of Laura Tingle’s exit could prompt a rosier glow.

Lessons In the Garden

IT was a fine summer for growing things, as the olive tree in the corner of the Billabong’s backyard attests. Throughout the recent drought, yields of the small, dark fruit were decent enough to fill the jars beneath the sink and guarantee a year’s supply, but only if nibbled sparingly. This year, the tree has outdone itself. There is so much fruit it was yesterday’s errand to buy a couple of additional plastic buckets for their curing, and after that to cut back the shoots rising from the root system. Lopped just a month ago, the tallest of the latest risers was just peeking over the fence -- remarkable growth in such a short time.

It may be that Bunyips have a semi-dormant hippy gene, and it could be that this also has been activated by the rain. Whatever the reason there is wonder everywhere. Outside the study, where a ham and tomato sandwich tumbled from a carelessly carried plate some months ago, a tomato vine has taken root and also is producing the goods, lots of them. Interestingly, the dropped sanger featured slices of a big, beefsteak tomato, the sort you get at Coles or Woolies, but these are the cocktail variety. The Rufous Bird, who knows a thing or two about garden greenery, attributes this to commercial varieties’ hybridisation, which apparently means they will never breed true.

Those little tomatoes, sweet and marble-size, are good enough, not least for lifting the spirits. Not so long ago, the garden was a dust bowl and the resident possums thin as wraiths. The ringtail that climbed down from the roof last night to poke about in the compost heap behind the BBQ was fat and sleek and such a solid specimen that the cat, a tireless recreational killer, put discretion above valour and did nothing more than direct its diamond-eyed enmity at the visitor, which had the cheek to turn its back and fossick up a bit of carrot.

It was quite the performance, the moggy’s display of restraint, but even that was cheering in its way. Like a voter observing Gillard’s filth, puss knows patience will pay its dividends, that there will come a reckoning for such insolence. As this shambolic Prime Minister and her toadies and courtiers fudge and obfuscate, play their games and substitute spin and subterfuge for honest decency, we all known their day is coming too. Like the drought, Gillard will go away eventually, and all her lies with her. In the meantime, there are olives, tomatoes, a frustrated cat and a wall calendar from which to cross off the days until the polls are opened.

      

A Father's Pride And Joy

YOUNG MASTER BUNYIP stopped by the Billabong last night with his sweetheart, drawn by word of the tandoori roast about to go in the oven and the need to collect his sporting attire, just washed and hanging on the line. One drink led to another and then quite a few more when Q&A came on the telly, which tends to be the way with the climax of the ABC’s Monday night offerings. If Tony Jones and his standard guests are to be taken seriously, mild derangement is essential, especially when the programme is beamed from Tasmania. Between Jones’ interruptions, the young fellow said something to make a father extraordinarily proud. This talk of legalising drugs, he observed, was very dangerous and needed to be nipped in the bud.

Drugs of all sorts are freely available, he noted. They are mostly good quality and their price is reasonable. If legalised they would be taxed, their strength and quality diminished by regulation, and there would be an inevitable and patronising registration process, which would almost certainly involve compulsory attendance at government-funded and social worker-infested “educational” sessions. There are moments in the life of the successful parent when one can sit back and bask in a job well done and this was one of them. Indeed, the Professor might have hooked both thumbs beneath braces and done a little chest-out preening, except that smoking jackets require no over-the-shoulder support and both hands were occupied with bottle and glass.

The conversation progressed and Young Master Bunyip’s insights deepened. If drugs were to be legalised, that would free more policeman to operate roadside revenue cameras. And on top of that, legalisation would confound Charles Darwin. As it stands, drug dealers shoot each other in disputes over territory and profits, removing each other's influence from the gene pool. These are public service homicides and should be encouraged, much as denying protective custody for convicted child molesters and your more notorious thrill killers would save public monies and allow fellow inmates to do them in – a boost for self-esteem and positive step toward rehabilitation.

Toward the end of the evening, a Bunyip’s pride and joy put the icing on the cake. He had no need to sleep in the guestroom, despite the thicket of empty bottles that had sprouted on the coffee table. A responsible lad, he had monitored his sweetheart’s intake and knew her to be borderline legal. If a driver’s licence was in jeopardy, it would not be his.    

Victoria's Supine Premier

IF FORM is any guide (and it usually is) most members of Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu’s team will today begin another working week with a blinkered determination to stay the course. Having examined their dismal polling and declined to field a candidate in the Niddrie by-election, a contest held on the very same day Queenslanders reflected the national mood and rid themselves of a Labor government, our local Liberals will take comfort in the fact that their own date with voters remains two years hence -- plenty of time, the optimists will say, to lock down Victorians’ respect and build on the government’s one-heart-attack majority in the lower house. Steady as she goes, they will add, assuring each other that the electorate appreciates what it sees as the dignity Team Ted has brought to government. Voters were disgusted by the Bracks/Brumby crews’ daily circuses, of government by press release and photo op, so there will be none of that tawdry and manipulative stuff under this government. That is, quite literally, the party line: ignore the static and it will go away.

There are a few smart Liberals in Victoria, and with any luck one or two might have noticed the Saturday Age’s breathless scoop aboutwind turbines and the purported network of Liberal influence that has seen the ridiculous and ugly towers banned from large swathes of the state. Why, they will wonder, is their government not making offence its best defence? Why does it allow itself to be smeared day after day by Labor-installed leakers in the bureaucracy and its enemies in the Fairfax press? Why does it never fire a shot in return?

The wind generator beat-up provides a wonderful opportunity to do just that – if only Team Ted had the wit to recognise it. Openly and loudly confront and denounce the Age for its dishonesty, that would be a good first step. A second would be to recognise that no Liberal government will get a fair shake, and certainly not by pleading cap in hand for a correction and retraction, which would not be noticed in any case.

Yet the government has its own tools – tools its aversion to playing a two-fisted game has rendered irrelevant.

How much government advertising does the Age carry? Quite a bit, so why not order an immediate review of cost and benefit? The government has its own web operations where jobs are advertised and applications filed, why not announce those will be used henceforth and exclusively? That should get someone’s attention at Fairfax World HQ, perhaps inspiring a sudden desire to install a new editor less inclined to indulge his youthful reporters’ green crusades and confected scandals.

And then Team Ted might attend to getting its own house in order. Ministers are impotent satellite’s of Baillieu’s office. Many lack their own in-office spinners, meaning that responses to critical stories must be processed through a centralised system. The result: Whenever the Age or ABC pushes the latest dubious scoop, the government’s response is very often “the minister was not available for comment”. One gathers Ted would rather be in undisputed control of a sinking ship than give his crew the freedom to defend themselves and their portfolios.

Someone needs to take the shackles off this government, roll up its sleeves and encourage it to throw a few punches. Dignity is all very well and good, but if best suits those yearning for a return to the Opposition side of the chamber.

Robert Manne Writes...

WHILE traipsing about the countryside last week, terrorising fish and cadging soft beds off rustic friends, a note from Bundoora Bob lobbed in the letterbox:

Bunyip,
You seem intelligent if rather, hmmm, right-wing. Did you realise that I have written an extensive comment on the subject of Keith Windschuttle and Robert Edgerton? It is available via The Monthly website. Indeed it has been available there for years. So far not one Windschuttle supporter has commented on it. Nor of course has Windschuttle, who refuses me the opportunity to write about his egregious articles on Aboriginal history in Quadrant, a magazine I edited for eight years. My challenge to you, Bunyip, is to read my Windschuttle/Edgerton analysis and then offer your views. I wait your response with keen anticipation. -- Robert Manne

Alas, Robert, you will be waiting a little longer - and it will not be, as you suggested in a subsequent note, because censorship is the policy at the Billabong. While it will come as a surprise, the reference to your tussle with Windschutle was not primarily about you or, indeed, the current Quadrant editor. Both of you are big boys and can duke it out amongst yourselves -- although Windschuttle may be at something of a disadvantage in that the news and opinion pages of the Fairfax press do not put themselves immediately at his disposal, as they appear to do with you.

Just to recap, the point of the post was to note the different tacks Fairfax takes when investigating accusations of plagiarism. When Ross Gittins, one of its own, lifts and borrows, Fairfax rationalises with an enthusiasm that puts the wiliest Jesuit to shame. When it is a demon of the right on the receiving end, sim-salah-bim, it is on the front page before the author can say "I'm off to edit The Drum".

Robert, there is much pain in this cruel world, and the Professor has no desire to boost its volume by denying you the attention to which, conditioned by ABC and Fairfax's feting, you have come to regard as your due. So, Bob, what about a bargain? Your counterpunch at Windschuttle will get a good look at the Billabong if you undertake to give an opinion on Ross Gittins' plagiarism and his deputy editor's defence of it. The respective analyses will be published on each other's websites and there will be no censoring of reader comments. (Only salty language is censored here, by the way.)

What could be fairer? Gittins is one of your statist allies, and the Professor is kindly disposed to Windschuttle. Let this be an interesting exercise in dispassionate analysis.

Can't Trust Them In The Dark

DONNA LaFRAMBOISE takes a look at Fairfax's interest in Earth Hour and raises a question so obvious only Silly readers editor Judith Prisk and the paper's deputy editor Mark Coultan could overlook it. 

I think this raises a serious ethical concern. One would have to be utterly naive to imagine that the journalists employed by Fairfax Media are free to say negative things about Earth Hour – or about environmentalism in general. Yet Australia’s recent Independent Inquiry into the Media and Media Regulation report makes no mention whatsoever of Earth Hour in its 474 pages.

No chance of a harsh word from the Silly's  Catastropharian in Chief Ben Cubby, who must had a lovely time applauding his intellectual equals. A word of warning, Ben. With Fairfax's finances in such terrible shape, don't speak too highly of the 16-year-old winners. They might make very cheap replacements.

 

Don't forget to download a copy of Ms Framboise's terrific little book, The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert.

What The Age Leaves Out...

THE SUN came up this morning so The Age felt obliged to publish another story about wind generators. This time it was one of those quality journalism investigations, the object being to identify Liberals who dislike the bloody things and want them nowhere near their homes. The conclusion to be drawn from the article is of a silvertail network working its clubby influence on Premier Baillieu, who has implemented restrictions on their construction. Miffed that Gaia has been cheated of her sustainable wattage, authors RoyceMillar and Adam Morton then draw bows long and longer to insinuate how this injustice was done.

Wind-power foe Lady Marigold Southey is “Premier Ted Baillieu’s second cousin”. The Waubra Foundation, which believes turbines may cause health problems, has “Liberal Party links through its creator, Peter Mitchell” whose son “once ran for the party”. Brace yourself, it gets worse because “director Michael Wooldridge is a former health minister in the Howard government”.

The Phage sleuths dig deeper to uncover the web of conservative intrigue. The Woolridges actually own property in an area where turbines have been proposed. How dare they object! Who do they think they are? Inner-city Greens, perhaps, opposing a tunnel under Melbourne Cemetery?

Then there is “former BHP bank chief Don Argus, a major Liberal party backer and personal friend of John Howard” whose opinion of turbines is not quoted but who is said to reside somewhere near a potential wind-farm site. As for the Mornington Peninsula, where turbines also have been banned, it is a known location “where several Liberal party (sic) heavyweights either reside or holiday.”

What more proof could anyone need? Especially when those with a kind word for turbines seem so reasonable, so rational, such honest citizens without an axe to grind.

One supporter is introduced as Bendigo City Councillor Keith Reynard, who thinks it is a really sad thing some local generators won’t be erected. Perhaps exhausted after tracing all those tenuous Liberal connections, Millar and Morton somehow neglect to mention that Reynard is an environmental scientist and, as his official biography notes, “the chair of the Central Victorian Greenhouse Alliance (CVGA)”.

Then there is the article’s other voice of reason, Paul Dettmann, who is introduced as “a sixth-generation Baynton boy” and nothing more. Well he is a bit more than that. Dettman is a principal in Greenhouse Balanced, a company that “pioneered the development of ecological credits, carbon offsets delivering a range of ecosystem services.” Naturally Dettman subscribes to the notion that “global warming has no boundaries and will impact the entire planet. It is everyone's problem and therefore everyone's responsibility.”

The Phage gives us none of this background on the two key witnesses for the turbines' defence.

And in neither case does it name the second cousins of either Dettman or Reynard.

What a devious and dishonest newspaper the Age has become.

UPDATE: The Sunday Age, which has just now gone online, reprints as an opinion item the bizarre speech Greens leader Bob Brown delivered a full seven days ago.With any other newspaper if would be safe to assume the "dear eathians" address was presented as confirmationthat Senator Treebeard is seriously touched. In The Age, however, it can only be read as an endorsement. How very, very sad.