Meanwhile, over at denialist central, the UN and shearing the sheep is all the go ...

Oh yes, the good old days at the lizard Oz. Back on the 20th October 2012 there was a page given over to Letters: On the world stage, with bonus cartoon and dismissive remarks of this kind:

Yes, the reptiles always edit their letters page to make sure the political agenda of the paper is maintained. Not much point carrying on a crusade if you give too much space to dissidents. Onwards crusading readers ...

So how's it going in denialist central? How are the reptiles travelling?

Into the time machine. Fast forward.

Hey, the reptiles are all over that statesman Tony Abbott, and Julie Bishop as she struts her stuff in New York.

How lucky we are to have a seat on the UN Security Council. What an opportunity to put Russia and Putin in their place.

Remember this?

Mr Abbott said Australia's pursuit of the temporary seat was a waste of money and had distorted the nation's foreign policy priorities. 
 “All other things being equal, yes, better we are on the Security Council than off it. “But it was never worth the $40 million-plus that this government has spent just to win a bronze medal at the United Nations. 
 “And the problem with this whole Security Council bid is that it has cost money; worse it has distorted our priorities over so many years as so much time and effort goes into this, and not into managing the relationships which are absolutely vital to our future.” (denialist central here on 24th September 24 2012, behind the paywall because you have to pay to remember the past)

On and on he wabbotted:

The Opposition Leader today accused Ms Gillard of “swanning around New York”, pursuing a seat on the UN Security Council, when she should be closer to home dealing with the critical issue of unauthorised boat arrivals. 
 “She should be in Jakarta, not in New York, because that is where Australia's national interest is most at stake right now,” Mr Abbott told Sydney radio station 2GB. 
 “Rather than talking to African countries trying to drum up the numbers to get us a temporary seat on the UN Security Council, she should be in Jakarta talking to President Yudhoyono about how we can cooperate better with the Indonesians to stop this flow which is putting our border protection hopelessly under the pump.”


And now Abbott and Bishop strut about making the most of the Security Council position.

Oh there's rich ironies in politics no doubt about it, and so much room for hypocrisy.

Michael Gawenda, more polite than the pond, tried to point this out in a genteel way in Searching for the 'real' Tony Abbott  in the Business Spectator (may be paywall limited, can be googled):

It may be unseemly to point out that the Coalition was opposed to the efforts of Kevin Rudd and his government to win a place for Australia on the Security Council because, they argued, a place on the Security Council would not give Australia any greater influence in international affairs. The whole exercise, it was argued, was a distraction and a waste of time.  
The fact is though, that had Australia not had a seat on the Security Council, Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop could not have played the decisive role they have played in this terrible tragedy and its aftermath. 
 It is with some reluctance that I point this out. But the question no doubt in the minds of most political journalists and commentators, not to mention politicians of all parties, is this: when is the right time to make calculations about the impact in terms of domestic politics of Tony Abbott’s performance, given that the sorrow and anger of so many lives lost is still so fresh and raw? 
Some in the media have already started to make these calculations, at least in terms of what lessons Tony Abbott should learn from the way he has handled this difficult time. Some of his supporters in the media have argued that what Tony Abbott should learn from the last few difficult days is that he has been too controlled, too wary of being himself, too wooden, too contrived, during this first period of his prime ministership. 
 “Fearing the stereotypical criticism of being aggressive and out of control, Abbott started as prime minister too cautiously and appeared anodyne and weak,” wrote one Denis Shanahan in The Australian on Tuesday. 
 “While the MH17 incident has been an unwelcome test, it has displayed the best aspects of Abbott’s strength of character as a leader, a human and a parent.” In other words, Tony Abbott has not been the ‘real’ Tony Abbott until the last few days, though according to Shanahan, the real Tony Abbott was starting to emerge last week when, for instance, Abbott spent extra hours on a plane with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe instead of ‘grandstanding’ in Canberra during the carbon tax debate in the Senate. 
Now, we have heard this before, have we not, about another prime minister? Who can forget the seemingly endless talk, about who was the ‘real’ Julia Gillard and why it was that the real Julia Gillard -- who was supposedly passionate, warm, funny and feisty -- couldn’t free herself from her self-imposed wooden and boring prime ministerial persona? 

And so on. With a cruel punchline:

It is too early to begin to know whether these past few days will one day be seen, as some commentators and supporters of Tony Abbott hope, as the time when the ‘real’ Tony Abbott emerged. Chances are, however, that the search for the ‘real’ Tony Abbott will be as unproductive as was the search for the ‘real’ Julia Gillard.

Indeed. And now the pond looks forward to Abbott shaking the paw of Vlad Putin in Brisbane, as jolly Joe Hockey wants ...

Meanwhile, there's one other bit of business arising from reading denialist central today.

Yes, it's a long standing, exceedingly boring bit of business, which sees the reptiles recycle and put a fickle gold bar on the Lomborgian rhetoric splashed in the rotating digital splash of doom:

Yes, the reptiles want you to fork over a gold bar, to pay to access the usual Lomborg climate denialism, routinely ignored by other publications, but reliably recycled by climate denialist central.

You can get a whiff of the usual Lomborgian chaff if you reward the reptiles with a click:

But as always, you can find Lomborg at his own Lomborg denialist headquarters.

Yes, there it is, the very same piece, published back on the 16th July, and belatedly recycled down under seven days later on the 23rd, stale and with a price tag attached.

No need to provide a link to the Oz. You can find the the Lomborg piece, for free, no gold bar attached, under the header Winds of Vanity.

And as a bonus - if you can consider it a bonus - Lomborg's denialist site manages to rustle up an image of Lomborg, which is more than the reptiles can be bothered doing, not when """ will serve:

Why do the reptiles do it?

Well it's denialist central, and every so often they feel the need to dogwhistle and feed the denialist flock of sheep, and if they can get the bleating mugs to pay for what is offered for free elsewhere, so much the better.

It seems you can still make an indecent living shearing the sheep, while sending the planet down the drain. Talk about a Murdochian win win ...

(Below: more Wilcox here)