The Australian, and another day of Napoleonic paranoia on parade ...

Exterminate, exterminate.

The ongoing three ring circus being operated by The Australian's editorial team keeps on providing first class clowning, and more than a little commentary, as emboldened by the comedy, scribblers outside the House of Murdoch come out to play.

Not many care, because not many people bother to follow The Australian's editorials, for obvious reasons - can we start with dull pompousness and righteousness - but for a beguiling read try Crikey's The Oz versus the Greens: well beyond the normal News Ltd bias.

It’s one thing to be biased in your coverage. The paper’s consistent partisanship and open hostility to Labor is taken as read by all except its most blinkered adherents — even, perhaps, by its own journalists, some of whom are prone to reassuring people outside the News Ltd bubble that they don’t really agree with many of the things they write and shouldn’t be judged on them. And to an extent it’s understandable, given the paper’s declining readership that skews much older and wealthier than even other newspapers.

Indeed. It reminds me of a conversation I had once with a respectable and in her area respected journalist who was lured in to The Australian to do her thing. She left after a few months, noting that the atmosphere in the bear pit was toxic, and counter to productive scribbling. If you had a conscience ...

Doubtless at some point after that editorial, the penny dropped in the minds of News executives and Chris Mitchell that, having declared that the goal of the paper was the destruction of the Greens, nothing The Australian reported about the Greens could henceforth be taken at face value. Anything it reports about the Greens, or policy issues of concern to the Greens, is now automatically suspect. How can anyone trust it to report accurately on the Greens or environmental issues?

Well yes, you would think a penny might drop, and you would think the fun Bernard Keane and others have had ridiculing the paranoid victim theories trotted out by The Australian - in relation to the ABC and Fairfax observations of the bleeding obvious - would add to the pressure for a change of pace.

How's this for a change of pace? Hypocrites? Greens would block clean power sources.

It is of course the business of paranoid delusionals to maintain the business of paranoid delusionalism. It goes with denialism. The Oz, has of course for years, been publishing a relentless barrage of denialist climate change opinion pieces, in the righteous guise of printing the controversy (and never mind over-looking those reports that bring us up to date with mainstream views of the science).

The Oz has hunted in the same pack as its tabloid cousin commentariat columnists, of the Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair kind, and so it's remarkably funny to see it draw itself up to its full Napoleonic height and take a righteous position on climate change:

After establishing their credentials as economic dunces, the Greens, contrary to their own propaganda, are increasingly emerging as environmental dunces over the core issue they claim as central to their platform -- man-made climate change.

What a hoot. After its services to denialism this year, The Australian has already earned the lead cross with mercury plated chrome bar.

But it gets funnier, as The Oz seizes on uranium and nuclear energy as another way to bash the Greens:

... readers would be shortchanged badly if we failed to point out the flagrant duplicity of their policies and the serious threat they pose not only to jobs and living standards but also to realistic action on climate change.

Realistic action? You mean as opposed to publishing week in, week out columns and pieces urging that absolutely no action is needed or required?

Flagrant duplicity? Yes that would be a better line at the top of the masthead, way more accurate than the heart of the nation.

But on to the whiff of paranoia that always makes The Oz a fun read:

Last week, Greens leader Bob Brown and his ABC ideological soulmates took rank exception to our observation that the Greens "are hypocrites; that they are bad for the nation; and that they should be destroyed at the ballot box". Only the voting public can do the latter.

Hmm, they left out Fairfax. As for the ABC, Keane sees a problem:

The ABC, which is used to taking its late night and morning news agenda cues pretty much directly from The Australian, will now have to vet and fact-check even the most anodyne report if it touches on a party that outlet has vowed to destroy.

As for the destruction of the Greens via the ballot box, the belated realisation that only the voting public can do that sees the The Oz jumping up and down on the spot in the most comically futile way. Us? Did we say exterminate, exterminate, like Daleks?

Um, well the way it was originally worded was a little more threatening:

We wear Senator Brown's criticism with pride. We believe he and his Green colleagues are hypocrites; that they are bad for the nation; and that they should be destroyed at the ballot box. (here).

Exterminate, exterminate.

No reference then to the voting public doing its thing, rather a more heartfelt notion that "we" "the heart of the nation" should destroy the hypocritical bad Greens at the ballot box.

Naturally the troops have already fallen into line with the new line, in relation to the uranium industry, with Peter van Onselen offering up Greens' uranium stance dated.

For all the criticism about The Australian's readiness to use its front page to target the Greens, thank goodness it did so yesterday.

Say what?

Not only does its contributing editor acknowledge that The Australian uses its front page to target the Greens and destroy them at the ballot box - always ready and waiting for action, suh, yes suh - he's really pleased they do. More hypocrisy gruel please!

Well so much for fair and balanced on the front page. The rest of van Onselen's scribble follows the Oz editorial line, to the point where the end result of the read is to think, well he would scribble that, wouldn't he ...

And in the usual Oz way van Onselen manages to avoid the actual divisions in the community, as reflected by polls, and dump it all on the Greens. A little reading of those fearful Fairfax rags helps provide a little more perspective:

Australians are warming to the idea of nuclear power, with almost one in two saying it should be considered as an alternative source of energy to help combat global warming.

A Nielson poll found 49 per cent of Australians believed nuclear should be on the nation's list of potential power options, while 43 per cent were opposed outright.

The finding marks a big shift of public opinion from 2006, when a Newspoll showed just 38 per cent in favour of nuclear power and 51 per cent opposed.

Instead of rabbiting on about the Greens rabbiting on about the size of the vote, might it not be worth noting that most Australians prefer renewable energy to the idea of nuclear energy? And that the Labor party knew it when they forced a change of government?

Despite the poll findings showing more support for nuclear power, the Rudd Government yesterday restated its total opposition to it as an option to help Australia meet its future carbon reduction targets.

During the 2007 election campaign, after prime minister John Howard put nuclear power on the agenda, then opposition leader Kevin Rudd said: ''If you elect a Labor government, there will be no nuclear reactors in Australia, full stop.'' (here)

Yep, van Onselen could have spent his entire column bashing the Labor party but spent his time Greens bashing with his wedge (I'm told that's a golf club that imparts plenty of spin to the ball). Back to Keane:

The Australian complains about “delegitimisation” of its coverage. The delegitimisation is entirely self-created, and started when it switched from being a conservative paper — for which there is a strong case in the Australian media landscape — to a partisan paper. But an open declaration that it intends to destroy, rather than accurately report on, an important aspect of Australian politics takes The Australian’s degradation of its own reputation to a new level.

Indeed, it's now reached such a high level of pure French farce, that I simply had to open Greg Sheridan's column PM, your choice is quite impeccable in order to fall about laughing hysterically:

Kevin Rudd, if he can put the party first, may emerge as Labor's star performer.

How strange. And here was I thinking that the nation had to abandon the Rudd experiment, that the man was a one person nation thrashing, wrecking and ruining machine.

One thing is abundantly clear, however: Kevin Rudd's big-government experiment was a disaster. Whichever party is returned, this ugly revival of old-style central planning must be buried and cremated. (A vote to end the curse of big government).

Now I get it. By sending Rudd out of the country, Gillard has saved the nation. Well played Greg Sheridan.

And now, since a three ring circus always requires a third act, here's The Australian's stunning denunciation of the NBN, in yet another fine editorial Hocus-pocus protection of Labor's minority rule:

We are not Luddites. We are as excited as anyone by the prospect of a minimum 100Mbps broadband to every house in the country. We agree it is a lot faster than the 12Mbps the Coalition's plan promises to 97 per cent of the population. We appreciate that wireless technology, despite being the big growth area with potential speeds of up to 45Mbps, may not be an adequate replacement technology for fibre in densely populated city and urban areas. And as we have said before, who wouldn't want to see high-speed broadband in the bush where some Australians still struggle to make a mobile phone call? Above all, we recognise that even though it is difficult to tabulate, there will be a productivity boost from high-speed data carriage.

Oops, I got that wrong. Excitement, agreement, appreciation, said before, recognise? Yep right, it's only a precursor, a kind of hint at rationality before unleashing the rant.

The rest of the piece spends its time explaining how we can't afford a good system, and how much it will cost, and how good it is that Malcolm will take it to the cleaners, based on his experience with a dial up start up (and never you mind that if we taxed the weeping billionaire miners we might be able to afford a little quality infrastructure).

But by this point in the day, I realised I'd spent too much time with The Oz. I was starting to get a ringing in the ears, and flashes of light and spots in the eyes. It takes a particular skill to summarise the virtues of a project, declare yourself not a luddite, and then proceed to a full and ample display of ludditism ...

You support The Australian by buying it? Please explain ...

(Below: please Mr Gutenberg, don't consider us luddites, but we're still waiting on your full cost benefit analysis of your fiendish new machine. You know, considering the cost to humanity involved in the publication of The Australian and associated House of Murdoch products).

(Below: a useful lesson from the American and Saudi owned House of Murdoch).