Let's drop the drivel and find a real story.

We've come to a pretty pass when journalists are again engaging in petty cut-and-paste politics, and puerile analysis, this time about disunity in the Federal Liberal Party.  

The leaked email, leapt on first by the leaper of leapers Glen Milne, was initially referred to as a liberal party squabble, nyer, OK, maybe he has a point, but then it became a division in the party and not just in one paper. Almost as soon as the story has been whipped up out of nowhere, poorly analysed and reported, we get a flurry of contradictory stories suggesting poor Mr Nelson is calling for party unity, burying the hatchet (in whom we might ask), and generally trying to ease his way out of a major conflagration.

A major conflagration entirely lit and fed by poor analysis on the part of headline grabbing journalists, editors, sub-editors and the rest.

With thousands of words and dozens of column inches now dedicated to this drivel, I can only bury my fingers in my keyboard to bemoan this kind of cheap trick journalism, and hope that it soon gives way to some real investigative reporting which will contribute, rather than detract from, our democratic process.  

By Nicholas Gruen

It's not just bad politics to turn up somewhere in a powerful position and tell the locals that they don't quite measure up to standards back home.

I haven't paid much attention to Telstra's participation in the public policy debate. It usually manages to get itself seen in a fairly poor light at least if one is not paying much attention as I haven't been. Even so, I've just read this speech by Phil Burgess, and I'm impressed. I'm impressed with it because its argument is interesting, and quite persuasive - except for one thing. He outlines some differences between Australian and American political culture. He does so in a very informed and perceptive way (at least for someone who's only been here a while - and I presume he had some decent research assistance, and indeed wonder whether, as such leaders often do he's passing off research assistance as his own wide reading. But I may be being ungenerous.)

In any event, Phil thinks that Australian debate is not vigorous enough. That people defer too much to what the government and senior government figures think...

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