Gerard Henderson, spiced with a dash of the Pellist heresy and a whiff of traditional dumb broke Labor party voters ...

(Above: Malcolm Turnbull channeling Tony Abbott channeling Malcolm Turnbull).

The story so far.

Last week we were deep in struggle street, with people in the northern and eastern suburbs barely able to scrounge a meal on 150k a year, and forced to make an epic choice between a 60 inch plasma or downscaling to a 55 incher, and there was Gerard Henderson standing by to wipe their tortured, fevered brow and assure them that middle class welfare was a jolly good thing.

This week? Well it seems those deviant well off fools are ruining everything with their support for either (a) Malcolm Turnbull or (b) climate science or (c) even worse, both:

Without question, Turnbull's approach to climate change enjoys considerable support within inner-city electorates, like his own, among well-educated voters in relatively secure financial circumstances. But this stance does not enjoy anything approaching majority support within the Coalition, which is looking to gain votes in the suburbs and regions.

Oh you wretches, you vile vermin. Don't you know how reprehensible it is to be well-educated, and take an informed view of things?

Aren't you shocked by the relatively secure financial circumstances you enjoy because of your snout in the trough middle class welfarism?

Have you no idea that the truth, and therefore policy, and therefore decision making, resides in the suburbs and the regions, where by definition the natives are ill-informed and uneducated - basically just a bunch of sheeple - and the wretches live in totally insecure financial circumstances, suggesting that John Howard's government did nothing for them for an entire decade, since even then in the boom years, the good times, the Valhalla of Australian politics and economic joys, they seemed incapable of securing their financial circumstances ...

Or some such thing, because it's just the usual load of prejudice and bollocks from Gerard Henderson, as he announces this week Prime ministerial baton will never be in Turnbull's reach.

Yep, it's bugger off big Mal, and let the coalition take its climate change policy from the likes of George Pell and Tony Abbott and did we mention Nick Minchin and Eric Abetz and good old Barners?

Speaking of the Pellist heresy, the Jesuits over at Eureka Street recently stirred that climate change pot with Cardinal Pell's climate hot air, in which Tim Stephens attempts to work out why the Cardinal is so obsessed with denialism, and in particular the views of atheist Ian Plimer.

Good luck with that, since strange bedfellows seems to be the order of the day, and Stephens really can't get a handle on what produces Pell's constant interventions in national discussions as one of Australia's best-known climate change contrarians.

But he does foreshadow what should be an epic event down the track:

There are no signs that Pell intends to step back from public discussion on the topic. In October he will deliver the second annual address to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a climate sceptic think-tank in London, established by Lord Nigel Lawson, and which includes Plimer on its Academic Advisory Council. The first Foundation address was delivered by Václav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, who argued that climate change is a ruse to justify a totalitarian ideology.

What makes all this funny is the way denialists talk of dodgy science, and totalitarian ideology, and mass delusion, while Pell's scientific expertise presumable arises from his Licentiate of Sacred Theology from the Urbania University, or his Oxford PhD in church history, or perhaps his Master of Education degree from Monash unversity. (And more on Pell here at his wiki).

Still no doubt you'll be pleased by his democratic support of the ad orientem positioning of the priest during the mass, meaning the priest faces in the direction of the congregation instead of burying his nose in the altar as they used to do in the good old days.

I know, I know, this started off being about Gerard Henderson, and big Mal, but how much can you brood about a one note column?

Enough already big Mal, Gerard Henderson has told you to collect your baton and go, and surely that's enough for you ... off you go and play tiddlywinks with your well-off chums, while Gerard and Tony sort out a climate change policy which won't alienate traditional Labor voters.

Really, there's no point in evoking David Cameron, because we know Cameron is just a hapless puppet when it comes to climate change, a pawn of minority interests:

On Lateline Turnbull effectively supported the climate change approach adopted by David Cameron in Britain and his Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. However, Cameron leads a coalition government because the Conservatives did not win enough seats from Gordon Brown's Labour Party at last year's election. Abbott's political strength is his ability to appeal to traditional Labor voters in the outer suburbs and regional centres.

You see Cameron rides a bicycle, and you'll never see a traditional Labor voter on a bike. Not when they can toot toot like Toad or Tim Blair in a bright shiny red car.

Yes, now we're getting closer to the truth. It seems that traditional Labor voters are in fact (a) hopelessly uneducated and (b) financially woefully insecure, and therefore a mindless ignorant bankrupt rabble, likely to vote for Tony Abbott and help set the coalition's policy on climate science.

Most likely it's the same deviant well-educated and well-off middle class welfarists who are currently inspiring a backbench revolt regarding the coalition's policy in relation to the plain packaging of cigarettes (Abbott faces revolt over tobacco), with threats to cross the floor, whatever the views of ignorant and broke traditional Labor voters yearning to vote for Tony Abbott.

Meanwhile, over at The Australian, the anonymous editorialist has come up with the perfect solution, in Going it alone is pointless.

You see, there's no point in Australia going it alone, and certainly no point in imitating the British, who are also going it alone, except for the Europeans who are also going it alone, nor even plucky New Zealand, who has also gone it alone. But there is a solution, breathtakingly simple in its elegance:

... the hard reality (is) that Australians, who produce 1.47 per cent of global emissions, could abandon the continent and the impact on global emissions, including the future of the Great Barrier Reef, would be negligible.

Abandon the continent!

Yes that would show how serious Australia is in doing its bit for the world. We'd just up anchor and abandon ship, and that'll teach those self-satisfied, smug, financially well off inner suburban types a lesson ...

Yet another moderate contribution from the anon edit by way of genteel language and inspired thinking. We're all gunna be ruined, and even abandoning the ship wouldn't help, and so what's the point, let's just keep littering the nest, even though we at The Australian are all in favour of a market mechanism when not sowing FUD and voting for doing absolutely nothing. As a gesture of solidarity with the world, and as a way of showing Australian leadership, punching above its weight, at its finest ...

Because even if we abandoned the continent, it would have nil effect, since we're just such a small irrelevant carbuncle, a pimple on the gigantic world, or perhaps a modern day Titanic, and Julia Gillard a modern day Captain John Edward Smith, or perhaps a Captain Ahab ...

Not to worry, confronted by the wilderness of the Australian commentariat, we promised to get in the habit of linking to interesting articles, so why not try José Manuel Prieto's devastating piece on Cuba in the New York Review of Books, under the header Havana: The State Retreats.

Gradually over the years the Cuban government has come to admit mistakes (Fidel Castro regrets discrimination against gays in Cuba) and even allowed parades (Cubans march against homophobia in Havana) but still clings to a one party dictatorship and the trappings of the revolution and a hopelessly retro economic system.

If Obama wanted to do something significant for the region, along with proclaiming his Irish-ness (to be sure, to be sure, we're Dorothy O'Parker for the day), he could nudge Cuba and Cubans towards a better system of government and a way out of the economic wilderness ...

(Below: Tony Abbott working hard with some traditional Labor party voters to secure government and impose a totally useless direct action scheme on Australia as a way to shovel billions down the throats of brown coal burners).