Gerard Henderson, John Howard re-dux yet again, just a kindly uncle up against those tough Labor dudes ...

(Above: time for some deep thinking. Edwin Booth as Hamlet, with one of the great tragedies of history not the play, but that he never managed to play opposite Gerard Henderson).

Is there any explanation for the contrast between the satirical musings in Gerard Henderson's Media Watch Dog (here) and Gerard Henderson's desiccated, dry as dust - so dry even adding water doesn't help - regular Tuesday musings in the Sydney Morning Herald?

Well of course the Media Watch Dog is designed to ferret out incorrect political thinking and leftist waywardness in the ABC and the Fairfax Media. After all heresy hunting for heretics is a tough business and a little humor is needed, even if the humor is of the kind favored by an arch maiden aunt with Tory leanings and a castle out on the moors.

Naturally such flippant thinking isn't appropriate in the mainstream media, especially when the column is the subject of a vast international gambling operation, as a dozen or so addicts speculate on the number of times John Howard will get a mention in Henderson's scribbles.

That's right, in the Herald, Henderson - known hereabouts as the prattling Polonius - always likes to indulge in ancestor worship, and we never tire of his love of John Howard. Just as he never tires of his love of John Howard.

In this week's outing, under the header Wielding the whip on asylum seekers: both sides have done it, tipsters seeking a guide to the Melbourne cup will note that carrying a heavy weight doesn't necessarily handicap a reliable, steady stayer with a lot of gumption and a plodding willingness to do the hard yards.

Which is a roundabout way of announcing this week's results:

1st mention of John Howard: second paragraph.

Number of mentions of John Howard: seven

Sure it's a short odds result, a highly predictable low yield blue sky return, but it's this kind of safe betting that makes Henderson such a favorite amongst the punters.

But why do we get such regular, reliable results? Well it's because as well as prattling, our Polonius loves to pontificate, and give little lectures about Australian history, often with a skew which would suggest that billiards might be a more natural game than punting for his skills. Hold on, here we go:

... Over the past couple of weeks Rudd, with Labor ministers and backbenchers, and even pro-Labor spin-doctors like Tim Gartrell and Bruce Hawker, have successfully identified the Howard government with the incarceration of children behind fences in mandatory detention. Few Liberals or Nationals ever challenge this assertion.

The fact is that mandatory detention was introduced during Paul Keating's prime ministership, in 1991 , as is documented in James Jupp's book From White Australia to Woomera. Moreover, in 1994 - the midpoint of the Keating Government - about 350 children were in detention. It was Howard who abandoned the policy of detaining children with their families - in response to considerable criticism from Coalition supporters and opponents alike.

You see, poor John Howard stopped locking up children, unlike the wretched Paul Keating, and never you mind about idle ABC leftist talk about lying about children overboard, or contriving sundry solutions such as the Woomera Immigration Reception and Processing centre, the Baxter Immigration Reception and Processing Centre, or "reception" facilities in Nauru, while cranking up the dog whistling rhetoric in a way designed to appeal to both Wilson "Ironbar" Tuckey and Pauline Hanson supporters.

No, no, no, it's all Paul Keating's doing. John Howard was just a softie, doing what he could to repair the damage left by Keating. It's the Labor party that's always been the tough guys:

Historically, Labor has taken a hardline approach on unauthorised boat arrivals. In 1975, during what turned out to be his final year in office, Gough Whitlam went out of his way to stop South Vietnamese anti-communists from settling in Australia. This was despite their having a genuine fear of persecution from the Vietnamese communist regime that came to power that year.

Come to think of it, Howard was just channeling Bob Hawke when he muttered something about determining who could come to the country:

In 1977, speaking as ALP president, Bob Hawke campaigned against the arrival of Vietnamese boat people in Darwin. He declared: "Any sovereign country has the right to determine how it will exercise its compassion and how it will increase its population". Howard quoted Hawke's statement in Parliament in August 1984. Howard's 2001 claim that "we will determine who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they will come" effectively channelled Hawke's position of a quarter of a century earlier.

Eerie, ghostly, especially when you consider that Malcolm Fraser - that turncoat - did it best of all as a precedent:

Many Liberals have scant knowledge of, or interest in, contemporary history. So it's not surprising when they are outflanked by Rudd Labor and presented as heartless types who, alone, would maintain a policy of mandatory detention while children suffered and adults harmed themselves. The truth is that all recent Australian governments have struggled with the problem of how to handle unauthorised arrivals - particularly visible ones by sea. Malcolm Fraser's Coalition government did best. Even so, most Indochinese refugees who arrived at the time were taken in an orderly fashion from camps in Malaysia and, later, from Vietnam itself.

Now you can see how villainous history can be, especially if Liberals fail to know their history. Which goes like this. John Keating and Bob Hawke evil, dour, malign, bleak-hearted socialists; Malcolm Fraser and John Howard kind and caring, and doing what they can to repair the damage left by the leftie savages.

Okay, but now that John Howard has been established as just a kind hearted avuncular type, a hapless helpless follower in the footsteps of the heartless Labor regimes that preceded him, what next?

Well what next seems to be a befuddled mix of P. J. O'Rourke, Chris Berg, and weird signals. First the Berg and O'Rourke bit:

Unauthorised arrivals, whether by sea or air, tend to be both personally courageous and entrepreneurial. Consequently, they invariably make first-class citizens when given the chance to become Australians. Often unauthorised arrivals, who successfully claim asylum status, adapt better than those who come under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees-authorised annual refugee intake. However, both Labor and Coalition know unauthorised immigration is politically unpopular.

Invariably? And you thought they were potential terrorists full of drugs and disease. Take that Wilson Tuckey.

Then the weird signals bit, which somehow reminds me of Virginia Trioli at the ABC making strange finger signs about weirdos like Barnaby Joyce:

The best way for Australia to stop the odious practice of people smuggling - and prevent an inevitable loss of life at sea - is for Australia to put up a large red "stop" sign out the front. This can be accompanied by a small green "go" sign out the back. In other words, Australia should be sympathetic to boat people who claim persecution and pass security checks. But we should proclaim the need for the orderly arrival of refugees.

But if it's a traffic light, where's the amber? And where on earth are we going to put the small green "go" sign out the back? Mad uncle Wilson Tuckey is sure to find it, and it'll send him into yet another frenzy. Hmm, in the old days when the Indians spoke about whites speaking with forked tongue, is this what they meant?

Ah golly, it's all sounding too hard. How about a final wrap up with a bit of fudge, and a yearning to return to the kindly days of the John Howard Pacific solution:

The unintended consequence of the Government's criticism of the Opposition on this issue has been to send out a message that Australia is now softer on border protection. In reality, Rudd's Indonesian solution may turn out to be tougher and crueller than Howard's Pacific solution. Australia had some say about how asylum seekers were handled in Nauru and Manus Island. We will have less influence about what goes on in Indonesian detention centres.

What a pity Henderson falls at the last hurdle and fails to call for a return to the Pacific solution. Perhaps that's why racing over jumps should be banned, it's not for the faint hearted.

Yep, it's just another week where everything continues the same: a quick jab at the ABC and Kerry O'Brien for a "soft interview" with Chairman Rudd, and then a trawl through history to establish that John Howard got it right, and everyone else has always regularly, reliably got it wrong.

It's a bit like going to the Catholic mass - here's a wafer, rejoice that Satan is defeated once again, and never mind the next week's sinning, a little confession and contrition will see you right.

Which leads me to ask if Gerard Henderson should now be crowned the most boring repetitious commentariat columnist going around at the moment? Almost as dull as his hero John Howard.

Never mind. While writing about Henderson is a guaranteed way to ensure the hits on this site plummet to abysmal lows, we live in hope for that fine White Cotton ring-in day when his column features zero mentions of John Howard. That'll mean the international betting ring will collapse, and Henderson might have stepped out of his ABC-fixated world, and found something interesting to say ...

More matter with less art and history? Good luck with that, I'm betting third paragraph and five mentions for John Howard in next week's column ...

Polonius: What do you read, my lord?

Hamlet: Words, words, words.

(Below: you got this far? Poor dears, here's something for the gentleman reader, and ladies too, as we mingle sex and death in a chilling evocation of the best years of the long playing record. Now there's history for you).