Sunday morning slugfest - Opinion Piece for The Punch

THE HON BRONWYN BISHOP SHADOW SPECIAL MINISTER OF STATE, SHADOW MINISTER FOR SENIORS | 23/02/10

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First we had Ross Garnaut on Meet the Press confirming that his modelling for climate change predictions was done on the balance of probabilities, surely when one is giving support to the ETS, the big tax on everything, it should be on the basis of beyond reasonable doubt. But with all the fudged modelling of the IPCC, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised, just alarmed.

Next we had the spectacle of David Marr – who writes for Fairfax beating up on Piers Akerman who writes for News Limited because Marr did not like the way ‘the Australian’ reports the news.

How’s this for a quote from a reporter from a competing newspaper (Marr from the Sydney Morning Herald) “Here is a newspaper (the Australian) that’s been around now for 30 something years. It’s still not making money. The reason I think is because of its other role, which is this heavy lifting that it does on ideological issues and heavy lifting that it does on the commercial issues of News Limited. And I think we readers of ‘the Australian’, read it with a grain of salt, a grain of salt all the time. The climate change debate was a very good example of that.”

That’s a bit rich coming from David Marr on the publicly funded ABC.

There did seem to be some paranoia in the air about free to air T.V versus pay T.V versus the publicly funded ABC with Minister Conroy being totally unable to justify the $250 million gift to free T.V, nor the anticipated change to the anti siphoning regulations to assist pay T.V nor the favourable funding to the ABC to allow it to run all day news to compete with Foxtel.

It was a hell of a morning!

But we can be grateful to the Australian for reporting on Mr Rudd’s performance on the ABC’s Q&A.

Unlike the usual format with a panel of personalities, this one was just the PM alone, with some 200 young Australians and the result was I’m sure a resolution by Mr Rudd never to do that again. Kids won – PM lost.

The Australian was kind enough to contrast Mr Rudd’s answers to those astute young people with researched answers. The roll out of computers to schools was one such comparison.

Original 2007 election commitment was for every young person at secondary school to have a computer and the program to be rolled out in four years, that is 2011. Mr Rudd’s answer “we would have a computer for every young person in secondary school... by, I seem to recall, 2013 or thereabouts.” He added “we are on track to doing that. We have about 260,000 computers out there in schools now... can I just say that is fact.”

‘The Australian’ points out that according to Senate Estimates, 154,000 of the one million promised laptops are in operation! No wonder he hoped 2013 was the right answer. And on the article went.

But back to Sunday morning T.V and the Insiders.

In that section where each panellist is asked for a final observation, this was Mr Marr’s.

“I’m very worried that people may now begin praying to Mary McKillop for cures, because apart from any doubts about whether or not saints exist, university–controlled tests in the USA say that medical outcomes are slightly worse for those who pray for cures.”

Now who’s sick?