Glenn Milne, Chairman Rudd, Tony Abbott, the fearfully powerful Greens, and a little switcheroo ...

(Above: ah, hits and memories, and with 12,707 views to date. Why not pump up the numbers? Or pump up the volume?)

Here at the pond it's hard to rustle up regular reliable readers of Glenn Milne - devotees of the art of fisticuffs tend to watch channel One - so we were startled to read Tony Abbott driving the electorate green.

Here's a few tasty excerpts:

This is no longer a joke. For those in the Liberal Party who looked at last week's Newspoll showing the Greens' vote peaking at a record 16 per cent, they should know that this is no aberration. The hard heads will make the necessary recognition and respond accordingly. Or not. Depending on whether they still have the will to win.

Such has been the collapse in the centre wets' confidence in Tony Abbott, the Greens now represent a real threat to the Liberals, not just as a party of protest but as a party of constructive policy.

The Newspoll numbers are backed up by private research commissioned by the Greens. The message here is that the very fact they are carrying out such research should put the main parties on notice that the Greens are now acting increasingly as a professional and serious party of the Nick Clegg variety.

The private research was conducted in April with younger, inner-city voters and older regional voters. All were classed as Green leaning. They are precisely the group that make up the 16 per cent in the first place; the group that the Liberals should fear in any case when it comes to the election. Just ask Malcolm Turnbull ...

... "In terms of reasons not to vote Green, one younger male brought up concern regarding 'Stopping Kevin Rudd getting back in', but when asked to differentiate between upper and lower house vote, this was less of an issue."

Says one senior Green who parsed the research: "On my analysis, asylum-seekers was an issue that symbolised a general value set for all the parties. For younger males the government's failure to do better than the Howard government on the issue encapsulated their broader disappointment with Tony Abbott's Liberals.

"For older voters, treatment of asylum-seekers was an important symbol of compassion and demonstration of looking after the vulnerable, 'doing the right thing' and assisting the disempowered, like themselves."

Another thing to worry both main parties. If the Greens' 16 per cent vote was maintained at election time they would gain an extra Senate seat in every state plus those senators not up for re-election ...

A powerful force indeed. Not that Bob Brown is kidding himself, which makes him somebody to be reckoned with. The last time a minor party's vote peaked in this fashion, he says, was in the run-up to the 1990 election, where one month out from polling day under the leadership of Janine Haines, who ran for a lower house seat, the Democrats rated 17 per cent. On election day that dropped to 11.5 per cent.

Against that scenario, and according to the preference flow vagaries of the proportional representation of the Senate, Family First's Steve Fielding is in the Senate on 1.8 per cent of the primary vote. The point being that as a result of Tony Abbott's catastrophic policy and political failures the Greens now have the best opportunity in a decade of exercising real clout.

And do you know what Bob Brown told me yesterday would be his first priority after the election, with an additional senator in each state; to sit down with whoever the government of the day was and work out how to implement a national carbon tax.

Now that's power.

Oh dear, I'm sorry, it seems that the wags at the pond have had a field day.

If you clicked through to read the actual Milne story, you would have read Kevin Rudd driving the electorate green, a story that proposed that the rise of the Greens was entirely due to the Labor party and Chairman Rudd, as if Tony Abbott and his desire to swing to the Right had nothing to do with anything.

Well credit where credit is due, and surely any half way decent political correspondent might have noted that the middle might have wanted to swing to the Liberals if they'd managed to put someone other than Abbott at the head of the circus.

Still, as a piece of scare mongering Milne surely takes the crown - or is that the cake - away from Miranda the Devine when it comes to demonising the power of the Greens.

It's such a catch all piece of 'Chicken Little, the sky is falling' rhetoric that some might think it no longer a joke.

What the heck, toujours gai. We thought it would be fun to show just how easy it would be to write a scare story blaming Tony Abbott for everything, when truth to tell, the two mugs in charge of the major parties can both take a fair blow to their very large chins.

But that's the way we are at the pond. Fair and balanced.

Or is that a slogan for another topsy turvy news organisation?

Is there a new slogan we can adopt? Fair and Milned?

(Below: loved the video footage so much you wanted a snap to take home with you as a memento? Here you go ...)