The Australian, The Punch, and punch drunk clouds punching on in Murdoch land ...

(Above: Go for Growth!)

It was a nice bright day with fleecy cotton wool clouds scudding across the blue skyline. So we spent a pleasant hour or two yelling at the clouds, then came inside.

Naturally after floating high o'er vales and hills doing a Wordsworth, harsh reality always intrudes.

And so we came to read The Australian. And lordy what a surprise. Why there's that old dinkum digger and Murdoch lover Mark Day discovering Make no mistake, NBN will truly change the way we live.

One side is planning to try to bolt together an old Commodore with an old Falcon, using bits of a P76. The other is offering a shining new Rolls-Royce. You choose.

Choice made. Anything else to say?

For years Telstra has gone on about being focused on customer service. It's drivel. The company has zero service and zero concern for its customers. That's why we're all deserting it as quickly as possible and why its profits are falling.

And in my view it's another valid reason to support the government's proposed NBN structure. Frankly, I don't really care who builds it or runs it, as long as it's anybody but Telstra.

Sheesh, not a single cloud to yell at. Surely Henry Ergas will find something in More migrants yes, but weigh the risks?

Oh dear. It seems good old Henry, Telstra lover and NBN hater, would love to be a Dick Smith lover, but can't quite bring himself to the point. All that said, immigration can still be highly desirable, he scribbles, before managing a fine flourish of Sheehan foolishness:

Specifically, nothing saps integration more than the welfare state, which can make it optional for migrants to find their way in the local society and labour market. Little wonder the great miracles of migrant absorption occurred in the Australia of the 1950s and 1960s, when income transfers barely existed. And little wonder Europe is now trapped in migrant ghettos and rampant xenophobia.

Income transfers barely existed? Give me some of what the man tokes, it must be excellent.

Because you see, it was the Chifley government that set up the Commonwealth Employment service in 1946, and offered a conditional unemployment benefit for a married couple with three children which amounted to a third of average weekly earnings in '48-49, and the Menzies government maintained the notion with little change through his long reign, though he chanced upon a time with full employment, helped along by the notion that employing women had nothing to do with full employment (here).

Now I'm thinking, after being confronted by this now standard bile about Europe - when between Lubbock Texas and Paris, France, allow me to choose Paris every day of the week - what we need is a little bit of 'on the one hand', up against 'on the other hand'.

Overall, there is a compelling case for immigration.

Yes, a solid point. But on the other hand:

... high, sustained population inflows raise issues more troublesome than boosters of a Big Australia recognise.

Well there's a nice straw man, or straw dog, take your pick, as 'sustainable' somehow morphs into 'sustained' in a nice John Howard 'go for growth' way.

How about a nice rhetorical flourish to prove that the artful nonsense can still be given a good front?

Those issues cannot be wished away, nor papered over with mealy-mouthed insincerities. Until they are properly addressed, our population debate will remain a pitiful sham.

Yes, and a fine mealy-mouthed pitiful sham is Mr. Ergas's each way bet column. On the one hand, I felt like yelling out "Mark Day, Telstra, NBN" at Mr. Ergas.

On the other hand, it felt a bit like a vaguely pitiful mealy mouthed sham excuse for some cloud yelling.

How about the editorial in The Oz, always a sure energised source of cloud yelling power? Oh dear, it's also part of the same sham pitiful mealy mouthed debate:

Three years ago, John Howard's campaign slogan, Go for Growth, sounded like a statement of the screaming obvious.

So screamingly obvious he was voted out and lost his seat.

Never mind, The Australian is rightly appalled at the blubbery Dick Smith worried about where he might be able to park his helicopter, what with all the furriners swamping the country:

Rather than being afraid of the growth offered by our mining boom, activists such as entrepreneur Dick Smith should be embracing the potential. Instead, Mr Smith is spending his time dissing the capitalism that has made him extraordinarily wealthy and talking against the population that has provided such a growing market for his products. Rather than offering a $1 million prize to anyone who can come up with alternatives to "our population and consumption growth-obsessed economy", Mr Smith should consider using those funds to find ways to improve infrastructure. Size is not everything, but Australia's history shows people create wealth.

Ah yes, it's 'go for growth' but along the way, an extraordinary confession:

The issue of migration has nothing to do with the problem of managing boatpeople, yet both political parties have been happy to dogwhistle to their constituencies on this spurious link. Labor may feel it has no choice.

Uh huh, and why might that be the case? Perhaps the Liberals dog whistling incessantly about it?

Phew, no, it's because Kevin Rudd was a failure on border protection, no mention of the nine long years of futile war in Afghanistan, and let's not forget Iraq, which has seen some want to settle in their warrior home country, since the troops do such a good job at promoting paradise, because it seems there's an unwritten contract with the electorate: immigration can remain high so long as our borders are secure.

Yes, with the Liberals caught in the cookie jar, 'go for growth' written all over their fingers, and telling anyone who might overhear that they'll determine who comes to the country, The Australian can manage to slam Dick Smith and the Labor party, and yet somehow the Liberals come up trumps with their population policy, because they've set a specific target however disingenuous. Which just happens to be the figure that was going to happen anyway. And never mind their baiting over the Asian peril swarming down from the north along the way ...

Surely if the circus needs a contortionist for their freak show, they should set Mark Latham aside and call in the editorialist for The Australian.

After being starved of the splendours of the internet, it felt like there was just time to duck over to The Punch, Australia's most unscientific discussion, for a swift round of cloud gazing, and sure enough there was the eternally reliable Paul Colgan, furiously scribbling Bass, where the lesson of history is to ignore it.

Colgan's methodology? Well he strides around Bass, talking to a few people in Launceston, and discovers in the process that Labor might be in trouble. Oh it's hard hitting stuff, and really probing:

His family have always been rusted-on Labor voters but get this: he thinks his mother, who recently started a business, may have changed her mind.

May have changed her mind? The doofus doesn't even know if she has, and and Colgan sets it all down like a goose armed with a quill plucked from his bum?

But he does get one thing right, with a sharp, incisive insight:

Articles about Bass tend to slide into historical tedium about its record of defying or starting trends.

Damn right. Tedium, ennui, and utter simplistic, drivel-driven boredom.

If that’s your thing you can dive into it here, here, or here; but really the only thing Bass’s history teaches is that it is no guide.

And Colgan no guide either.

Political rules of thumb don’t apply here.

Is that why Colgan spends his entire piece sitting on his thumb?

But wait, there's a capper:

If an election was based on counting signs in people’s front yards were votes, Titmus would win in a landslide. On a drive around Launceston suburbs with him he was surprised to see some of them in place. There were signs for Lyons, too, but not as many, and the Labor branding was inconspicuous.

Ah so that's how it's done. You count the street signs, and ineluctably you reach a mysterious conclusion, as reliable as delving into chicken livers.

And then there's Colgan's discovery of push pull polling:

On the town streets there were plenty of voters who were leaning towards voting Labor but were prepared to consider Titmus once you raised his name.

Dear sweet absent lord, that sounds incredibly scientific. So you'd vote for Titmus, would you, if I mention his name? And a fine chap, a grand fellow he is?

Oh wait, this late breaking news:

It’s totally unscientific ...

As my dear sweet grandmother used to say, fuck me dead and bury me in an unmarked grave.

... but it’s an indication that the outcome in Bass could come down to a matter of a few thousand of the good people of Launceston making their minds up when they head to the polling place on Saturday.

Thanks be to the long absent lord, we know now Bass is in the balance. And that just when there seemed like a glimmer of sanity in a few pages in The Australian, the loonacy settled in another part of Murdoch land.

By the punch-drunk time I reached Lyall Mercer's offering Gay marriage row: in defence of Wendy Francis, wherein he defends the woman for whom he once acted as a consultant, the woefully inept Wendy Francis, I was feeling like everything was back to normal on the pond.

Don’t agree with Francis; don’t vote for her. That’s your right. But she – like all of us – deserves to put forward her views. If her comments were extreme, she deserves the chance to acknowledge this and to be offered forgiveness.

By golly, at last I've worked out how the Germans should have responded to Hitler. I say, old chap, that's a tad extreme, you know about gays being around kids constituting a form of child abuse, but why not acknowledge it, and we'll offer you forgiveness and the keys to the Reichstag.

Dammit, that's a dollar in the Godwin's Law swear jar.

And it's all your fault, Lyall Mercer, hot contender for goose of the week, attempting to defend the indefensible in a way that defames all geese.

Let’s not create a public environment so brutal that decent people – like Wendy Francis – will be too scared to put their passions and views on the line. Australia would be worse for it.

Uh huh. Put it another way. Let's create a public environment so brutal decent people can kick the shit out of gays, acknowledge they might be a bit extreme in their views, and then apologise for their extremism, and we'll all have a group hug, and offer forgiveness, and perhaps flop together and roll around on bean bags (sorry, no gays allowed - that would be a form of bean bag abuse).

Ah yes, it'd taken awhile, but I was up for it, and the puffy white clouds were rolling across the sky, and I was ready to spend a few hours yelling at their ceaselessly changing dumb fuck wispy cottony ways ...

Oh look, a camel, 'n elephant, a dope. Oh wait that's just an embittered Ben Power scribbling You know it adds up: Labor are innumerate, ranting about Labor types, and former comrades, and ...

Because Labor types don’t earn or create money, financial waste doesn’t matter as much to them. When Labor sees money they only see numbers to be manipulated. Earners and creators see time, sweat, risk, hard work, commitment.

Is Power suggesting that since Labor types don't earn or create money, they live on free floating cloud juice? Who knows?

All I know is that when someone blathers on about Labor types, they sound like deeply dumb mono types, incapable of getting to the point of being stereo types.

Does Power have the remotest idea of how stupid his kind of rhetoric sounds?

Probably not. That would be like asking a cloud to show a little common sense, instead of doing the Melbourne cloud thing and drenching us, so that we end up sodden, saturated, la la land readers of Murdoch rags ...

(Below: and now release the hounds, or at least the savage chickens).