Andrew Robb, and more political correctness from the minions of Dr. No ...

(Above: well played Jacki. You survived Hinch and the industry to get the nod).

Meanwhile, the anonymous editorialist at The Australian strikes again in No cliches please, it's Australia, as he or she celebrates the Oscar nomination for:

Jacki Weaver's performance as an underworld matriarch in Animal Kingdom, an indie film set in the streets of suburban Melbourne ...

Indie film? Wash out your anonymous mouth with government-funded soap ...

The principal investor was Screen Australia, an Australian Government body, and Porchlight Films, the production company, was one of four companies slipped a casual $720,000 in grants and loans back in 2008 by the Australian Film Commission, before that body got rolled into Screen Australia.

Indie film? Dammit, sir or madam, it's pinko pervert socialist governmental film-making worthy of Mosfilm at its finest. Sssh, don't mention the government, just meander along in your free market thinking, as you quaff your champagne and celebrate:

At a challenging time for the local film industry, these nominations for Australian talent are particularly heartening. They show the world the depth of the industry here as well as the diversity of Australia -- warts and all.

Yes, and they also show the world the depth of The Australian's heartfelt unwillingness to note how the Australian film industry is actually funded. Suffice to say, it would collapse like a dwarf star the moment government funding was withdrawn.

Well played anonymous sir or madam free marketeer ...

Meanwhile, somehow it feels like Friday, and a time for the meandering thoughts of a Liberal politician taking up space in The Punch, punching on in a punch drunk way, and sure enough there's Andrew Robb delivering up Let's get over our dam phobia, and taking a swipe at Bob Brown for daring mention climate change and coal in the context of the recent floods.

Robb starts off with a couple of bon mots sure to excite the populace:

All the experts, whatever their views on climate change, agree that the increased rainfalls are driven by the long-established cycles of La Nina weather events, just as El Nino is associated with drought.

There that takes care of climate change, whatever your view of it might be, though whatever view of it Andrew Robb takes must remain an eternal mystery.

That incisive insight is followed up by this one:

No-one in the Coalition is suggesting that additional dams would have prevented the tragic Queensland floods.

Uh huh. So why the sudden rage to have a damn sight more dams right here, right now. Is it simply a way of embarrassing the government?

The onset of the floods did, however, prompt a renewed resolve from the Coalition to ignore political correctness and to put dams back on the agenda as part of the national water management debate.

Dams are by no means the answer in every instance, but nor should they be automatically excluded purely because of politics.

Uh huh. Well here at the pond - a natural feature of the landscape formed by damned beavers beavering away to erect barriers formed from all kinds of political correctness and political folly and political bile and spite - lordy how those beavers find plenty of raw material - the tendency to deal with dams hasn't involved political correctness so much as NIMBYism across the political divide.

When you get a politician blathering on about political correctness, you're close to the smell of humbuggery in the air, and sure enough so it comes to pass.

Did we mention the Traveston dam? If you look at reports in the day - the short piece Greens, coalition slam Traveston dam will do - you find the coalition outgreening the Greens, and acting in overt alliance with the Satanists, and chief Satanist Bob Brown himself as they smote mightily Bligh and the dam:

A motion, put forward by the Australian Greens with the support of the federal opposition, says the plan presented real threats to "these species".

It calls on federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett to reject the "premiers's crude and misinformed assessment".

How about the rampant political correctness of Greg Hunt in Traveston Dam fight taken up by Federal Opposition? I like the political correctness so well, let me quote it at length:

The Federal Opposition says it will take on the fight to stop the controversial Traveston Crossing Dam proposed on the Mary River near Gympie.

Opposition climate change, environment and water spokesman Greg Hunt today said the proposed dam was one of the "worst sites in Australia".

He said the dam would have major adverse environmental impacts - including water wastage and on native species.

Yes, back in those days, dams were assessed on their merits:

"I visited the Traveston Dam site, I've met with the people and I've looked at both the lower and the upper Mary and the message is very clear that we're not against dams but this is a bad dam site," Mr Hunt said.

"The site is a large, flat evaporative pond ... (and would be) a massive waste of water.

"It would destroy one of the great food bowls in Australia.

"You have all sorts of different foods that are grown there and an incredible loss of productive land of capacity.

"The dam itself is (also) likely to have a major impact on scarce species including the Mary River turtle and others."

Damn it, is there any solution?

One alternative would to use deep chasm dams which would be subject to a lower evaporation, he said.

"We're going to have the fight.

"It was a politically chosen site and by all accounts all the advice to the government is is it's an unwise site."

Yep, it's a wondrous bit of political correctness, treating the dam as a political issue, and how does Robb deal with this giant turtle of an issue?

The Coalition opposed the Traveston Crossing Dam for a variety of reasons which have been well documented, and we absolutely stand by that decision. The Bligh government, to its credit, was at least prepared to seriously canvas the option of a new dam, albeit one of unacceptable design and location.

Yes, there's the stench of double-dealing hypocrisy in the morning. And yet, such is the mealy mouthed capacity of the double dealing politician for pious hypocrisy, there's Robb with the cheek to berate Julia Gillard and Bob Brown for 'predictable negative, knee-jerk reaction' to the coalition's new found attitude to dams.

You know, a bit like the predictable negative knee-jerk reaction the coalition offers to everything.

So how will the coalition proceed with its new found zeal for dams?

In terms of the Coalition’s work, the consideration of appropriate dams will include looking at all areas of water management, including new technologies and innovations and consulting widely with the scientific and engineering communities, land owners as well land management and environmental groups.

Yes, in the usual way, the Coalition's work will proceed by way of blather ...

Well with an eye to the controversy, the Australian Geographic has rediscovered an article penned back in 2008, To dam or not to dam?, which explains exactly where rhetoric and posturing and blather gets you when it comes to reconciling all the interests involved in building a large scale dam ... and politicians get the smell of blood and a cheap political kill ...

As cities expand and demand new water, and the solution involves flooding large areas of countryside, the issues get tricky, and the heat goes on politicians to reconcile the irreconcilable.

As well as seeping through one of my favourite films, Polanski's Chinatown, the history of the supply of water to Los Angeles, the acquiring and ruining of the Owens valley, and the work of William Mulholland earns a couple of chapters in one of my favourite works on the subject, Marc Reisner's now somewhat aged Cadillac Desert.

Whenever Australians think they have water management issues, they only need to look to the United States for relief, and Reisner's book, a history of water management in the American west, and available here, is a great way to start ...

And then there's the St. Francis dam story - you can even sing along to Frank Black's St. Francis dam disaster song - and the Teton Dam collapse, and why there's a handy list of dam failures here, and we haven't even got on to soil salinization in California ...

Meanwhile, back to the blatherer to wrap up the discussion:

While Julia Gillard and Bob Brown will no doubt attempt to whip up a scare campaign against our work, we will not be deterred. It is time to put political correctness aside and to overcome our dam phobia.

Well that's good news, if it means the coalition is capable of putting political correctness and political negativity and cheap mindless point scoring aside, though that might be a tad optimistic so long as Tony 'Rashomon' Abbott remains in charge.

When, you might wonder, will the coalition be able to put their political correctness aside, and overcome their climate change phobia? So that we no longer have to read articles that start off with a kind of priestly ritual incantation along the lines "the experts, whatever their views on climate change ..."

Until the twelfth of never, and that's a long, long time ... though if you want to see an angel - one who actually wrote a thesis on the topic - dancing on the head of a pin, look no further than Greg Hunt discusses shadow climate policy, another blast from the past.

Ah yes, Hunt knows how to oppose dams, and Janus-like show whichever face best suits the mood of the day ...

Robb opened his piece by labelling Brown's claims as absurd and insensitive, and Brown an opportunist with timing that leaves a very bad taste in everyone's mouths.

That doesn't even begin to conjure up the wave of nausea experienced by reading the always opportunistic Robb doing the work of Dr. No in this little offering ...

Talk about Animal Kingdom ...

(Below: and speaking of doctors, a little light relief from First Dog. More First Dog here).