A Handy New Tool

THE BILLABONG’S elderly neighbour is one of those human fixtures every street should have. More than a little deaf and quite a bit dotty, her antics and misadventures are a source of mostly harmless amusement. There is her crusade against possums, for example, which involves midnight shrieks and a broomstick as she barrels from the backdoor to defend the passionfruit vine. Then there is the habit of locking herself outside, usually while dressed only in a nightie. It is an alarming spectacle when she comes knocking late at night to request help getting back inside.  Young Master Bunyip, who runs a deficit of respect for the elderly, calls her Mrs Richards, a reference to the hearing-impaired guest who cost Basil Fawlty a large sum in a particularly humorous episode of Fawlty Towers. It is a fair but inadequate description. The fictional Mrs Richards is not half so unhinged. 

Just lately relations have been a little strained, as  Mrs Richards has taken it into her head that the Professor should carry the entire cost of replacing the dilapidated side fence that divides our properties. Apparently, because the horizontal cross members are on the Billabong’s side, the fence is a Bunyip’s responsibility. Who knew? Certainly not the solicitor who will need to be paid for spelling out the law in a stern letter. Until this week it seemed the only option, the sole path to a settlement of this prickly matter.

Now, thanks to the Gillard government, there is hope of a handier solution. The next time Young Master Bunyip spends the night he will be handed the fairway iron of his choice while the Professor takes up a cricket bat. Then father and son will pay Mrs Richards a visit, kick in her front door, smash her furnishings and corner the old girl at the point of a sharp stick in the lavatory. All that should make sure she puts her signature on the dotted line and undertakes to cover the entire cost of a new fence out of her own pocket.

It may seem brutal, but our PM reckons such an approach is just and fair and all above board. It is, after all, a plank of her government’s new industrial policy, which forbids authorities proceeding with complaints and prosecutions once an agreement has been reached.

Team Gillard has not yet recognised the reform’s potential for settling matters other than industrial disputes, but the logic’s application to a wider range of disagreements would seem beyond argument. After all, if a union can obtain a legally binding agreement by breaking the law, why should a poor Bunyip be denied the same option?

Mrs Richards had better begin being reasonable, as should Australia’s employers. The cricket bat is about to be fetched from the attic.

Another Bogus Signature

WHEN reader The Dishourable Schoolboy sent along the picture below, pulses raced at the Billabong. Could this be the missing link, the evidence to establish beyond doubt what Craig Thomson was really up to when credit card records suggest he whipped out his purse and wad? Thompson, remember, claims a sly impersonator appropriated his wallet, signature and driver's licence and replaced them before dawn. The impersonator did this a number of times in several different cities.

The clue was not obvious at first, but get up close, stare hard and the naked eye will just make it out.

For those who do not eat their carrots, a little help:

At the point of dashing off a note to thank the Schoolboy for the many years of effort he has put into monitoring photographs like this one, doubt's whisper said it would be best to do some checking. Just as well, too.  It turns out the Member for Midnight has a shutterbug namesake in Canada in the United States, so it could not have been our very own Craig Thomson who steamed up the lens.

Pity. Now we will all have to wait. The mystery of Thomson's rambles will be revealed sooner or later, with any luck in no more than a year or three.

The Hun In The Sun, er, Moon

MOVIE trailers are often better than the films they promote, but this offering looks like it might do justice to a choc-top and popcorn.

Follow The Real Money, Mr Cubby

IT’S FUNNY the things that get Fairfax journalists in a tizz. Forget the past three Question Times, each a ding-dong exercise in red-blooded democracy and not bad theatre, either. A Prime Minister who won’t answer questions, a sleazebag Speaker bestowing favourable rulings on his government patrons, the PM-in-exile who can barely suppress his smile while upstaging his replacement at the Dispatch Box – that has been spectators’ delightful daily fare. Even as we pay our political class for the pleasure of watching it confect the means to relieve us of cash and liberty, this week in Canberra must be acknowledged for its sweet compensation of superb entertainment.

Well that is one Bunyip’s opinion, but not that of the Phage’s chief eco-warrior Adam Morton, who is greatly saddened by the hubbub in the House.

One is inclined to urge poor Morton to look away, lest the spectacle of so many scandals worth investigating brings on a nervous collapse. Already anxious at the prospect of climate change's encouragement of bushfires, floods, cold weather and hearing-impaired clownfish, the very idea that the architects of the carbon tax might soon be out of office could push the poor boy right over the edge.

Fortunately, Silly colleague Ben Cubby is made of sterner stuff, keeping his advocate's eye on both the ball and all the latest catastropharian talking points. While he paid scant attention to the Climategate emails, except to dismiss them, no such restraint is evident in his immediate coverage of a warmist front’s revelation that its enemies raise and distribute funds in the name of encouraging public debate. As Andrew Bolt points out, Cubby has shown no interest in looking at the vast sums supporting the alarmists he endorses. That wouldn’t be quality journalism, which apparently demands reporters present only information which concurs with their preconceptions and personal points of view.

Still, if Cubby were to engage in unauthorised curiosity, he might put a few questions about funding to some people much closer to home than James Cook University's Bob Carter.

He could, for example, ask Adam Morton if he received a per diem for playing straight man to the preposterous David “Mr Mega-Grants” Karoly in this wince-making video?

Or he might ask his employer’s chief financial officer if Morton’s colleague, Melissa Fyfe, drew her standard salary plus expenses while jogging for several weeks down the length of Australia’s east coast to “raise awareness” of climate change.

And while he has the big bean-counter on the phone, why not ask about Fairfax Media’s part-ownership of Earth Hour? If Cubby cannot get a comprehensible answer on that one, not to worry.  Boy On A Bike – not, fortunately, a quality journalist – has unearthed all the details.

If Cubby finds the answers embarrassing, no problem. He can deep six them, along with all those un-put questions about Climategate and its local players.

That’s quality journalism, folks, just in case you hadn’t noticed.

UPDATE: The Heartland Institute says the documents the ardent Cubby has re-broadcast are of dubious provenance. "One document, titled “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy,” is a total fake apparently intended to defame and discredit The Heartland Institute. It was not written by anyone associated with The Heartland Institute. It does not express Heartland’s goals, plans, or tactics. It contains several obvious and gross misstatements of fact."

Expect Cubby and his Fairfax climate crew to go the full mea culpa in tomorrow's paper. All he need do is admit to being gulled once again -- an announcement few readers would have trouble accepting.

UPDATE II: The Silly has just updated its story to make mention of theHeartland Institute's objections, linking to the relevant press realease. At the foot of its story, however, it persist in providing a direct link to the disputed documents.

Funny, that. Can anyone recall Fairfax providing a hot link to Climategate I and II?

The Dirt On Muckraking

OUR Prime Minister (for the moment) has thrown about the word muckraker during each of the last three Question Times, which all must agree have provided some of the best entertainment on afternoon telly since the sad death of Vi Greenhalf. Gillard spits the word at the Abbott with a theatrical venom, perhaps imagining it to mean something wholly repugnant -- what a cleaner might find limp, warm and rubbery, for instance, beneath a bed recently occupied by Craig Thomson.

If Gillard uses it again today, someone on the Opposition benches should thank her for extending such high praise, as muckraking has a brave and noble past. Indeed, many of the modern left's proto-heroes were muckrakers, and it was their efforts and intrepid investigations that exposed racism, mistreatment of children and lunatics, dire poverty, forced prostitution, diseased meat and, a favourite topic, corruption in government. You can read about some of the first muckrakers here.

When Gillard is gone from office and has quite a bit more time to fill, she might like to pick up a copy of Joyce Milton's The Yellow Kids. A history of so-called yellow journalism in the US at the turn of the last century, it is one of the most entertaining books about the period, its publishers and the politics of the Spanish-American war a reader can take up. Reporters didn't defer to authority figures back then. At the ceremony to mark America's victory in Cuba, one of Milton's subjects walked up the commanding US general and punched him in the nose.

As Milton explains, Theordore Roosevelt coined the term to describe reporters who were making his life difficult. They drove him to a greater fury by adopting it as a badge of honour.

So should the opposition, which deserves recognition for its ongoing determination to wring the truth from a congenital lawyer and liar.

Until the book becomes available in a Kindle edition, several chunks of the The Yellow Kids can be viewed here.

Help For a Failing Memory

IN CASE you haven't seen it, here is the inside dope (no, not Tim) via Wikileaks on what the US Embassy knew to be going on Canberra in June, 2010, even as our for-the-moment PM insists -- swears on her love for Tim, even -- that she did not.

Below is the most interesting bit. And remember, it was sent off to Washington on June 10. Gillard knifed Rudd 15 days later.

She's such a liar.

THE FRONT RUNNER 
 
¶11. (C/NF) COMMENT: All the ALP MPs we have spoken to have 
enormous respect for Gillard.  However, as one ALP Right MP 
told us, choosing a leader from the Left would be a massive 
cultural change for the ALP.  Don Farrell, the right-wing 
union powerbroker from South Australia told us Gillard is 
"campaigning for the leadership" and at this point is the 
front-runner to succeed Rudd, conceding that the Right did 
not yet have an alternative.  Agriculture Minister Tony 
Burke, one of the early NSW Right backers of the Rudd-Gillard 
team, confided that Gillard is the clear front runner to 
succeed Rudd and in the end, the ALP caucus will follow the 
opinion polls if she is the one the public wants.  Two keenly 
anticipated books on Gillard are expected to be released 
within the next 12 months (one of them authored by the wife 
of Beazley's former Chief of Staff).  At present, the 
question of a successor to Rudd is probably two elections 
away.  Several Rudd confidantes have told us that Rudd 
appreciates Gillard and sees her as a possible PM, but that 
he wants to avoid anointing her to head off a possible 
leadership challenge when his poll numbers inevitably sag. 
The PM's brother Greg told us in April that Rudd wants to 
ensure that there are viable alternatives to Gillard within 
the Labor Party to forestall a challenge.  Mark Arbib once 
told us a similar story, though he stressed that Rudd 
appreciates Gillard's strengths.  However, another Rudd 
advisor told us that while the PM respects Gillard, his 
reluctance to share power will eventually lead to a falling 
out, while Gillard will not want to acquiesce in creating 
potential rivals.  In the meantime, Gillard has proven her 
value to the Prime Minister and we expect her to remain the 
most important member of the Rudd Government, after the Prime 
Minister himself. 

The Education Of Young Mr Hodges

AMONGST THE many questions it would be good to hear put to fugitive spinner Tony Hodges, there is a minor one – a curiosity, really – which some policeman or inquiring QC might want to toss into the mix toward an interrogation’s end. By then the really important stuff will have been covered and the sum of human knowledge expanded in regard to the PM’s efforts to stir up the Blacks for political gain. It is an unfortunate way to put it “stir up the blacks”, so ugly with echoes of the racist past that Gillard and the loudest of her Sorry Day breast-beaters would shudder at the sound of it, especially if news cameras happened to be handy. But with apologies, it is the only description for that madcap caper at the Lobby restaurant.

“Hey, let’s get those simple, excitable Humpytowners all riled and waving spears at Tony Abbott. Lights! Camera! Evening news! See, Australia, he’s a nasty, racist, extremist bastard and the blackfellas hate him too.” Can’t you just imagine the sounds of high-fives slapping as the PM’s twentysomethings whooped it up at the sheer genius of their slick, political smarts. Golly gosh, such operators! Start a race riot and lift the PM’s polls? Worth a shot. Yeah, why not? Sounds like a plan. Let’s do it!

And that is why, if we do get to see Hodges under oath, someone has to ask the most fascinating question of them all. It is simple and it is this: What TV shows and films did you grow up with?

Don’t laugh, this is serious. Hodges is a young fellow. If he is a day over 30 it would be a surprise, so let’s say he graced the planet for the first time in 1981. Ten years later, Bill Clinton was almost in the White House and Hollywood churning out the first of what would be a decade's crop of  just, fair, inspirational and entirely fictional presidents. Indeed, the more tawdry Clinton’s record grew, and the grubbier third-parties’ dresses became, the more ennobled his fictional counterparts. America had itself a low dog in the White House and knew it, so it invented Jed Bartlett and beamed the preferred fantasies of a righteous leader to the world. Sure, President Martin Sheen’s staffers cut deals and corners, but right was on their side and that made the smarty-pants strategems OK.

Let’s also figure that Hodges is the product of an educated, middle-class home, the sort of place where politics gets tossed around the kitchen table, maybe even with a passion. By sixteen, the West Wing is making its weekly mark on young Tony’s evolving mind. So, too, most likely, docos like The War Room, with the snappy James Carville making no bones about putting politics above principle and winning above everything. It had to make an impression on a kid who was nearing his franchise and would have been off to uni at about the same time a rapist president pardoned his brother’s drug dealer and finally went away.

By the late Nineties, young Tony would have been ripping into student politics and that political brain was being moulded into some increasingly narrow channels. John Howard? Boo! Hiss! to that baby-drowning scumbag. Any line, no matter how slanderous or vile, was fit to be deployed against the little jerk. The papers lapped it up, much to young Tony’s secret astonishment. He is a sharp kid and cannot seriously believe, not in his heart, that Little Johnnie has frogmen sinking SIEVs or aims to see chattel slavery in Australia’s satanic mills. But some of that is what a former ambassador is saying, which lends credence to the absurd, so why not urge the poor loon on? Sling him a book prize or two, put him on the ABC, extol his madness as proof of a crusader's heart. Surround Howard with enough jabbering self-publicists and some of their spittle will stick.

And over there in gallery, what fun!  It is the likes of David Marr, who has hijacked the pulpit of the once-serious press as thoroughly as did a posse of illegal aliens the Tampa’s bridge. Marr and his mates are hissing warnings about fascism on the way, and if you are sharp as young Tony it is funny as all hell in a deliriously cynical sort of way. Pantomime dames as a Greek chorus, who could take seriously Marr and Manne and the caterwauling choir? Certainly not Young Tony, professional political operative-to-be, who has by now figured it all out. Politics, it’s about advantage and distortion and carrying the mob, so a lie is the truth is a lie if any of those options is what you must make the voters believe. On weekends, when he catches a movie, it will be Wag The Dog or something from Michael Moore. The utility of lies is further re-inforced.

It is all a game, a glorious, silly, all-engrossing game – that is what young Tony has come to conclude as he moves with some nice new suits from campus intrigues to Canberra, where he can celebrate the special dispensation his spinner’s job confers -- the right to deal deception in the name of Higher Truth. He’s of the left and the left is by definition more virtuous, so anything that advances its cause must by definition be even moreso.

If you have wondered, as decent people outside the Canberra press gallery surely must, how a young man could have set in motion the lie that sparked Australia’s birthday riot, embrace the left’s conception of charity and grant young Tony at least a little slack for the nurturing amorality of his political upbringing. The kid was brainwashed from the start, taught to know the price of power but never to recognise the value of the decencies he and his kind have been so prepared to shred in its pursuit.

A faltering economy, racial  suspicions fanned and glowing, class resentments, ethnic ghettoes and green, cash-hungry monsters, they are the more obvious elements of the Gillard government’s legacy. But it is the amoral rot at the core of her leadership, that adoration of deceit and obfuscation, which may be the most damaging thing she leaves behind.

Inhale deeply, catch a whiff of this dying government’s grasping venality.  It has poisoned the likes of young Tony and the stench is spreading. Indeed, to a soundtrack of Gillard's ongoing lies and dodges, it grows more pungent by the day.