Carbon Copies

Apparently there was an election in the United States last week and it didn't end well. Few things do, and sabbaticals never. But now, alas, the rod is stowed, the balls stashed and the merest glance at the backlog of reading by the front door suggests silliness has not abated in the least over the past week.

Why, what's this! In today's very own paper an unintended revelation, very much of the sort that once kept Kremlin watchers pasted to the pages of Pravda, where sometimes small truths could be divined amongst the official lines. We can thank Katharine Murphy, Phillip Coorey and the Fairfax press gallery's stenographic gifts for today's accidental insight into the way things really work with this government and its courtiers.

For reasons that almost certainly owe nothing to happenstance, both quality journalists chose the same day to wonder if Obama's triumph would prove a shot in the arm for our very own, pioneering, world-class GCT (Gillard's Carbon Tax or, as strong women prefer it, Girls Can Tax). Andrew Bolt has dismissed Murphy's essay on its facts, or lack thereof, but one is still left wondering where she found her addled inspiration.

Coorey's effort sheds at least a little light on this mystery, and possibly quite a lot. His prime topic is that things look grim for Tony Abbott because, after winning the next election, he will then have to win another after that. Toward the end of that profound insight he veers briefly off topic and into Murphy's territory, where he has this to say:

Obama, like other second-term presidents, is now free from having to run for re-election and will seek to leave a legacy. This could include reigniting the push to put a price on carbon. More so as it would raise huge amounts of revenue and could be sold as a deficit-reducing measure.

Murphy says almost the exact same thing and in very similar words:

There's speculation carbon pricing is back on the agenda in the US, either as a revenue raising measure (and God knows they need revenue), or as an Obamacare ''vision thing'' equivalent to rally the progressive base.

A coincidence, you might have assumed on any other day, great minds thinking alike and so forth. But Coorey goes on to suggest the source of both quality journalists' speculations, quoting "...a former Democrat adviser now living and working in Canberra, like other second-term presidents....."

Well who do you think that could be? A good bet, a very good bet, would Bruce Wolpe, former Fairfax publicist and, after that, a flack for Californian Democrat Henry Waxman. (Those who enjoy going through other people's desk drawers can find a statement of his personal US earnings here and record of known days worked).

One of those old school Kreminologists would make the connections in a moment. Returned to Australia and appointed in January as Gillard's ambassador to business, Wolpe has instructed the representatives of his party's official media mouthpiece what the commissars would like to see in the next day's opinion pages. Solid comrades both, each has obliged.

Let us hope that one day soon Wolpe's sense of mischief gets the better of him and, just for the fun of it, he orders up a bit of extra special publicity. An explanation in stereo of why surging tractor production is bad for Abbott would be well worth putting in the scrapbook.

Murphy's Oil

QUALITY JOURNALIST Katharine Murphy covers politics, which is footy reporting’s loss. There she is today in the Fairfax press explaining how the Yabby’s push to regulate free speech and the media is going. Some say this, others argue that, this might happen but that probably won’t – her summation of the state of play is all very interesting, reasonably well written and, on the whole, a quite comprehensive overview of the demand for news organisations to be complicit in their own gagging. If Murphy was covering a footy match her tone would be pitch perfect, for there is not a single indication anywhere in her piece that she favours one side above the other.

And that, without mincing words, is what makes her column so bloody disgusting. Murphy may believe she is no more than an observer in the press box, but the fact remains, as surely she must know within her heart, that she is one of the targets for any expansion of the already onerous restrictions on unfettered reporting, investigation and commentary. Perhaps she thinks it is not that much of a threat. As an exemplar of the ideologically sound reporter, the sort Fairfax hires to the exclusion of all others, it may be that Murphy imagines she and her colleagues have nothing to fear from the current Labor government. Heck, they are sympatico with the Gillard/Greens mob and frame their reporting accordingly, so where is the downside in going limp while speech codes are drawn up to hobble the jackbooted beasts at News Ltd?

Someone should take Murphy aside and explain that she is very much a player in this game, no mere commentator, despite her pretensions to indifference. If free speech is further hobbled by legislative decree, sooner or later it will be her side of politics’ turn to front the Star Chamber.

Or perhaps she plans to take one of the upcoming Fairfax buyouts and just does not care anymore.

Murphy's Lore

QUITE a few years have passed since anyone thought a poor Bunyip worth the effort of punching, but the memory of what it is like to be on the receiving end of stinging blows remains a vivid lesson in what not to say and who not to say it to. It seems Katharine Murphy has spent too little time drunk and abusive in the company of St Kilda supporters to appreciate the dynamics of your typical assault, and this can only be viewed as a sad deficiency in the training of a quality journalist, as her column today makes clear.

Now bear in mind that the latest poll is out and shows a further shrinkage of Prime Minister Yabby’s stocks. If she had the decency to call an election, the only reminder of a parliamentary Labor party would be a handful of surviving hacks and the dissipating stench of their booted companions (plus, quite possibly, a collection of hard-centre tisues beneath Craig Thomson’s former perch). So, with the Coalition on top in two-party terms by 58 points to 42, how does Murphy’s ignorance of fisticuffs manifest itself?

The poor girl thinks it possible that, while her idol is flat on her back and being pummelled relentlessly, it remains possible for Gillard “to play with Abott’s mind.” Playing with Bruce Wilson was one thing and Mrs Emerson’s husband another, but how Gillard might go about gaining a psychological advantage over Abbott taxes the imagination. What might Gillard do to put her foe off his game, apart from hand out talking points to dutiful parrots like Murphy, who never quite explains how this punch-me-harder strategy might produce dividends? The closest she comes is this:

Whyalla is still standing folks, and so am I, she is saying. Give us a chance to prove we aren't complete, dissembling dills. The government has managed to establish a prima facie credibility test for Abbott, who has rowed his boat out very hard, and left himself not a lot of room to re-position if the debate starts to turn.

So, Abbott has rowed out from shore, metaphorically speaking, but finds no room on the open seas.

Fairfax has people who occupy editors' offices. We know this because three of them were fired last week. But do the ones who remain actually read their columnists' copy? Perhaps, like so many former readers, they find the effort of wading though such tommy-rot more trouble than it is worth.