Wankers One And All

They used to call Derryn Hinch the Human Headline, but it looks like Dennis Shanahan has taken over the title. Whatever may be happening in reality, you can always find a wilfully misleading Shanahan headline plastered across the front page of Teh Oz.

Today it's "PM Defies Rates Backlash". Never mind that there hadn't even BEEN a rates rise, let alone a backlash, at the time of writing (UPDATE: 0.25% now) our stoic PM was already defying it. According to Dennis (and despite a never-ending parade of polls pointing to a Labor landslide) this "news" has "further confused the politics of the 2007 campaign."

One Murdoch hack who is not at all confused is Paul Kelly. He has reached "an inescapable conclusion" - Rudd would seize more power as PM. I'm not even going to bother with the contorted logic that leads to this fear-mongering conclusion, I'll just point out that the entire Coalition front bench wanted to get rid of Howard at APEC, and they couldn't do it.

Still in the Murdoch stable, that old nag Janet Albrechtsen has a go at Julia Gillard:

This is not just about her image as the unmarried, childless woman eschewing all the ordinary ambitions of Howard's middle class and the working-class aspirationals.

No, it's "deeper" than that. It's about her - gasp! - "anti-American sentiments" and her "long history of left-wing politics". Who would ever have expected a senior Labor Party member to have such a background, eh? Give me a break.

Crossing to the Fairfax stable, we find Tony Abbott pulling out his hair (what's left of it) with frustration:

Rudd thought that the Howard Government had forfeited all legitimacy. Now, he wants voters to think that he is actually a leader in Howard's own tradition. But for the opinion polls, it would all be dismissed as a shameless fraud.

In a recent profile, The Australian's Paul Kelly described Rudd as "a political identity still under construction" and concluded: "whether he can control the hubris generated by any political victory and possesses the personal qualities needed to run a government are unknown".

All that can be said with certainty about Rudd is that there is nothing he won't pretend to be if it helps him to become prime minister.

How's that, eh? A Howard minister quoting a Murdoch hack for proof that Kevin Rudd cannot be trusted. We have come full circle.

Before I go, just one more wanker: Alexander Downer on Lateline last night:

TONY JONES: Is the government - like your MP, Cameron Thompson says - looking forward to the positive news of a rate rise tomorrow.

ALEXANDER DOWNER: Oh, I'm sure he didn't say that...

But actually Cameron Thompson did say it! He said a rise would "underline the strong economic performance of this Government". But two and a half weeks out from the election, nobody in the Howard camp wants to acknowledge reality. What a pack of miserable wankers!