IF YOU ever inherit an office, desk and chair from Clive Hamilton, do make sure to have everything thoroughly sterilised and fumigated. Whatever strange virus drives Clive to see benefits in democracy’s suspension* and to know with every fibre of his being that global warming will kill us all, possibly as soon as Wednesday, it must be catching. What else but a brain-rotting infection of Hamiltonian virulence can explain the bug-eyed alarmist’s successor at the Australia Institute, Richard Denniss, who has a phobia of white goods in general and refrigerators in particular.
"When billions more people in China, India and other developing countries decide they want a fridge, quite frankly we'll be in big trouble … but I don't hear many Australians saying that in order to reduce our emissions I'm going to give up my fridge."
Clive has cried wolf quite a few times in the Fairfax press, so that explains the condition afflicting Silly stenographer Matt Wade, who quoted Denniss and penned today’s column. Let Australia’s very own Typhoid Mary enter your building, perhaps just once, and the contamination will consume every ounce of grey matter it can find on the premises.
Some readers may doubt this diagnosis, rightly pointing out that there was precious little mental capacity inside Fairfax to begin with, so how to measure the erosion of the negligible. Fortunately there is a control, Clive’s admirer Robert Manne, whose diseased mental state led him not only to believe that his mate might replace Peter Costello as the Member for Higgins, but also to urge the Australian’s readers to believe it as well. Manne shines in the pantheon of Australia’s Silly-designated public intellectuals, so no one is safe.
Watch as Clive's madness further infects Manne:
Watch as Clive's madness further infects Manne:
FOOTNOTE: Because Clive’s delirium now leads him to deny saying many of the bug-eyed things he does, here is the quote as published in the Courier-Mail: “This is because the implications of 3C, let alone 4C or 5C, are so horrible that we look to any possible scenario to head it off, including the canvassing of ‘emergency’ responses such as the suspension of democratic processes.”
