FURTHER to the earlier post in regard to the Walkley Awards, reader Bob on the Murray writes to point out that this year’s winner of the commentary & analysis division was none other than Laura Tingle of the Financial Review. “Have you read any of the columns she submitted?” he asks. “I had a bit of a look and they’re shockers.”
The supplied URLs led to three pieces of work by the AFR’s piece of work. Bob wasn’t joking. This is the temperate and reasonable way Tingle begins the first of three submitted articles judged to represent the best political writing of 2011:
There are two possible explanations for how an opposition presenting itself as an alternative government could end up with an $11 billion hole in the cost of its election commitments.
One is that they are liars, the other is that they are clunkheads. Actually, there is a third explanation: they are liars and clunkheads.
But whatever the combination, they are not fit to govern.
The AFR was once an eagerly anticipated guest in the Billabong’s brekkie nook, but these days it is seldom given the opportunity to make toast taste bad. Indeed, since Peter Ruehl’s death, only two or three copies have darkened the doorway. The dismal circulation figures, which have shed some 17% in three short years, suggest it has worn out its welcome in many other households and offices as well.
Do you think the likes of Tingle might have something to do with the rejection? Nah, that couldn’t be the case, not when her peers judge her to be the best there is – unless, of course, the collective esteem for a harpy and partisan hysteric reflects a mindset that might also explain the judges’ own publications’ current ills?
