About

Glen - Breakfast presenter …

Best not comment on what’s going on in politics at the moment.
God knows too many people have said too much already.
Only advice I’d give to whoever wins the Liberal leadership is: don’t get comfortable - it doesn’t appear to be a long term occupation anymore.

Elsewhere in news…

Nothing’s sacred.

The Vatican has warned Italy’s bishops against letting deserted churches be transformed into nightclubs.

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican’s new culture commissar, urged “the greatest caution” after announcing that Roman Catholic churches with few worshippers could be sold off.

He gave the example of a church in Hungary which was “transformed into a nightclub and where striptease took place on the altar.”

The archbishop, who is president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said dwindling numbers of worshippers at some churches meant it now made sense to sell, or even destroy, the buildings.

“Faced with falling number of worshippers, a phenomenon which we are also unfortunately witnessing in the centre of Rome, churches without any artistic value and which need significant work can be sold or destroyed,” he told reporters.

Italian bishops’ groups would be responsible for deciding whether the sites should be sold, said Ravasi, adding each case would be separately assessed.

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And speed kills…

Toyota says it will fix accelerator pedals on 3.8 million vehicles in the US, to prevent them from becoming stuck and leading to unintentional acceleration.

Toyota Motor Sales, the US division of the Japanese automaker, announced details of a major vehicle repair program.

Toyota issued a consumer safety advisory in late September on the potentially fatal defect of an unsecured or incompatible driver’s floor mat, which could cause the accelerator pedal to be trapped “in the wide open position.”

The company recalled the vehicles in early October, in what it said would be its largest recall to date in the US market.

This came after a fatal accident in California, involving an accelerator pedal entrapped in the floor mat of a Toyota vehicle.
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Less than ideal, I’m sure you’ll agree.

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Marius - Politics

The phrase “fear and loathing” is the most lasting gift of the American writer Hunter S. Thompson to political reporting.

It is now a cliché - but for the reason that it so precisely captures the febrile and paranoid sprit that periodically seizes the political world.

That spirit is abroad in Canberra today, percolating through the national capital in a heady mix of policy, personality, passion, treachery, ambition, mendacity and duplicity.

Wilson Tuckey has been the most open in his expression of loathing for Malcolm Turnbull in the dying days of his leadership; he has been enthusiastically stoking the fires of dissent for weeks.

His disregard for his leader has been expressed bluntly. Others have wrapped themselves in the mantle of policy, or made ennobling appeals to moral high ground, or protested they are doing the honourable thing.

Malcolm Turnbull has responded to his critics in almost equally blunt terms.

Well, there is a policy war going on, the soul and mind of the Liberal party is now a battleground. But mixed in with that war of ideas are the personal hopes of would-be leaders, the personal fiefdoms of power brokers - their dreams, aspirations, jealousies, resentments and, yes, fear and loathing.

Careers are riding on the outcome of the leadership battle.

It is a complex gathering of human strengths and vices, which a leader has to orchestrate into playing a single tune.

It hasn’t worked out that way for Malcolm Turnbull, who is now slumped over the conductor’s stand with an array of daggers in his back.

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Mark - Breakfast EP

Occasionally you hear something so breathtakingly wrong it makes you want to scream at your radio.

I had one of those moments last Friday.

I’d actually taken the day off and was coming to the end of a really terrific long bushwalk (if you don’t count losing my way about three times because the paths weren’t marked and the tiny spider who wanted to burrow itself into my leg!).

Feeling a bit news-starved on what I knew was a tumultuous day for the Liberal leadership, I turned on my brand new portable digital radio (highly recommended, by the way) and tuned into the ABC Radio’s PM program, where I heard the commentator and climate sceptic Andrew Bolt say the following
ANDREW BOLT: I’m certainly seeing that it is insane that we are embarking on this massive tax that will hurt everyone, be followed by no other country, won’t achieve any cooling at all, and this after Tim Flannery himself, who’s Australia’s leading alarmist as you well know, Tim Flannery himself this week on ABC TV admitted that in fact the world was not warming, it was cooling, and it was doing so against what the climate change models on which Kevin Rudd is relying were predicting.

How on earth can we do this?

Don’t get me wrong. I really enjoy Andrew Bolt, especially when he’s doing battle (in the ideological sense) with David Marr on The Insiders.

And despite the often confected outrage, he writes well.

His piece on turning 50 is one of the finest pieces of writing I’ve read in a long time.
But he’s dead wrong about what Tim Flannery said on ABC TV.

Bolt was referring to Tim Flannery’s appearance on Lateline last Monday night.

I know, because we ran part of the interview (the bit which supposedly included the killer admission) on ABC NewsRadio early the next morning.
Professor Flannery was speaking to Tony Jones in his role as the Chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council, a body which brings together scientists and business leaders from around the world to talk about climate change.

He was reacting to the story of the leaked emails to and from academics at the climatic research unit at the British University of East Anglia, some which appear to cast doubt on some of the mainstream scientific thinking about climate change.
TONY JONES: Are they (climate scientists who are members of the IPCC) right that cooling is occurring? I mean, 1998 was the hottest year, and there are many other of the hottest years since recorded history in that 10 year period. So are they right to say it’s cooling, or not?

TIM FLANNERY: We had a huge cooling event in Sydney between yesterday and today. The time scales are important. If you take too short a time scale, you won’t get a climate signal, you get a regional weather signal or whatever else. The scales that climate scientists use to look at the overall warming trend on the planet are century long, and on a century-long trend we are still warming. Sur,e for the last few years we’ve gone through a slight cooling trend, we saw it in the 1940’s the same sort of thing, but that does not negate the overall warming trend.

The last bit is really important:
“…for the last few years we’ve gone through a slight cooling trend, we saw it in the 1940’s the same sort of thing, but that does not negate the overall warming trend.”
You can see Tim Flannery is NOT saying:
“..whoops the theory isn’t working, the world is not warming, it’s actually cooling”, as Andrew Bolt said elsewhere in that PM interview.

And don’t worry, if Andrew Bolt gets misquoted and I find out, I’ll be the first person to correct the record.

Marius - Politics …

One of the disappointments of political journalism is that some of the most interesting things said by politicians are in private and not for publication.

This morning, Friday morning, I spoke to some Liberals on air about the rockslide that is Liberal politics this week. Wilson Tuckey was in characteristic boulder-tossing mood. He’s been giving ever blunter assessments of Malcolm Turnbull over the past week or more.

Another interview was with the Tasmanian Senator Eric Abetz, who was engaged in that most difficult art of trying to preserve and even improve your position in the midst of a rockslide.

But the most interesting conversation was with a veteran Liberal Senator who will remain nameless. If that anonymity was not preserved, my fate (he explained) would be very uncomfortable - something about a penknife.

He was not interested in talking on air, he said: “…that’s just a fast way to make a lot of lifetime enemies at a time like this……don’t need the publicity…leave that people like Cory Bernardi who want it.”

But in his unforthcoming way, he was very forthcoming.

Malcolm Turnbull, he said, was finished. He was saddened by the prospective loss of him as leader, but he felt that Turnbull had brought that fate down on himself to a significant extent, by not consulting enough and by not delaying the emissions trading bill.

As Turnbull was up against a group who are opposed to any ETS bill, a group that would like to see it delayed at least until hell freezes over, or both polar ice caps melt, whichever comes later, that is arguable.

But that argument has been had often enough in recent days.

“Will Turnbull stick around?” I asked.

“No, he’ll go…and he’s a loss.”

With another laughing reference to penknives and the fate that awaits journalist who reveal the sources of off-the-record conversations, the affable Senator rang off.

So if he’s right, the next stage of politics goes something like this…

Monday: Turnbull is rolled and Tony Abbott or Joe Hockey take over.

They get the job on the understanding they’ll back stalling the ETS bill. The Government then has grounds for an early election with climate change as the big issue.

Malcolm Turnbull said today that the Government would have to call that early poll - and, by general consensus, it’s not one the Opposition can win.

On that basis, we know Labor is in for a second term.

The only remaining questions are: will Malcolm Turnbull go immediately - thus forcing a by-election in his seat of Wentworth, a seat which is quite green and gay and generally ‘urban elite’ enough to perhaps turn on the Liberal Party that tossed out their local boy?

Beyond that, how long will the losing Liberal leader last after taking the party to the predicted resounding defeat?

Kevin Rudd already has a handsome array of Liberal scalps over the Lodge mantlepiece: Howard, Nelson and (presumably) Turnbull.

Bagging a fourth Liberal leader inside three years would make Kevin from Queensland the most formidable hunter the ALP has ever followed on its electoral safaris.

Marius - politics …

Many substantial political careers have involved a near-death experience.

John Howard, Winston Churchill, Robert Menzies, Richard Nixon - any number of public figures have seen the guttering flame of their careers almost snuffed out, only to burst back into renewed life.

Of course, renewal and reaffirmation are not the only things that follow such experience. Sometimes what follows near-death is, well, death.

At the moment, Malcolm Turnbull is being assessed as being somewhere between political life and death - with a preponderance of opinion putting him more towards the latter end of that scale.

It is easy to make a case for the Liberal leader being doomed, if not immediately then in the fairly short term. He survived what was effectively a leadership vote this week by 48 to 35 and that was against a candidate in Kevin Andrews who was demoted in the Howard Ministry and associated with a string of policy failures.

That, so the argument goes, shows the anti-Turnbull forces, at a minimum, number 35.

Wilson Tuckey, who moved the motion against his leader, says it’s not the first vote that gets the incumbent, just wait for the next one.

If Turnbull does survive, he will face an election next year which nobody, certainly no analyst, thinks he can win.

Maybe the most reliable a guides to the election outlook are the bookies. They now give the Coalition about a 20% chance of winning the next vote.

Put a dollar on Labor to win now and you’ll get $1.18 back - put a dollar on the opposition and, if they bolt home, you’ll pocket $4.50.

They don’t have a market on Malcolm Turnbull, but you’d want good odds to back him to survive his continuing political near-death experience.

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Debbie - sport

After trying to keep up with eight European Champions League matches, two English Premier League games and a clash between Rafael Nadal and Nikolay Davydenko across most of the brekkie show this morning, I’ve not much energy left and saving what little is in the tank for the start of the first test between Australia and the West Indies.

So only time and brain space left for something light!

During banter in the NewsRadio office the other morning, Marius Benson was regaling us with reports of his weekend tennis prowess. As he was talking, I looked up at my TV screen to see the Russian Nikolay Davydenko in action and it struck me Marius on court must bear a reasonable resemblance to Davydenko.

Don’t know he’d handle Rafa Nadael with quite the same ease that Daydenko did this morning, when he dispatched the world number two 6-1 7-6 - but I couldn’t get the similarity out of my head as I watched that victory this morning.

So, in the time-honoured sports section tradition of “Separated at Birth” I offer you:

Nikolay Davydenko

Marius Benson

Glen - Breakfast presenter …

Some favourite stories of the week so far:

AFP reports dealing with the sublime , the ridiculous, and possible…
The manager of a bank branch in Germany who secretly transferred money from rich clients to heavily indebted customers was sentenced to a 22-month suspended jail term on Monday, a court spokesman said.

The 62-year-old woman, dubbed the “Robin Hood banker”, was found guilty of moving a total of 7.6 million euros (11.4 million dollars) between December 2003 and February 2005, in 117 separate transfers.

Her altruistic aim was to prevent clients from seeing their accounts closed for want of funds.

As a rule, she transferred the money back when the indebted clients were solvent again, but 1.1 million euros were lost when certain customers were unable to pay their debts.

The court, in the western city of Bonn, took a lenient view of the fraud as she owned up immediately and took none of the money for herself.

They also judged she had suffered enough after losing her job and paying compensation.

According to press reports, she now lives off a tiny pension.

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US Santas want swine flu vaccine, so that sneezing children don’t give them an unwelcome present this Christmas.

Ernest Berger, head of “Santa America,” told NPR that the organization’s 200 volunteer Father Christmases want to be given the same priority as school teachers and health care workers for getting the H1N1 vaccine.

The website of “Santa America,” which visits sick and traumatized children in the Christmas season, instructs the men in red to take no chances.

“As wonderful as it is, be cautious of children burying their faces in your beard for a hug. If this happens, use sanitizer in your beard,” the website advises.

“Avoid touching your face, nose, eyes, or mouth. Do not touch children’s faces. If you do, immediately sanitize your hands,” the site urges.

“Santa should be taking needed vitamins and other doctor approved boosters to keep his immune system at peak performance.”

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A Boeing 747, with one of its four engines powered by a 50-percent biokerosene mix, circled the Netherlands for an hour on Monday for what airline KLM called the world’s first passenger flight using biofuel.

“This is technically feasible. We have demonstrated that it is possible,” KLM chief executive officer Peter Hartman said after the flight, which took off and landed at Schiphol airport near Amsterdam.

“Government, industry and society at large must now join forces to ensure that we quickly gain access to a continuous supply of biofuel.”

KLM spokeswoman Monique Matze told AFP that of the Boeing’s four engines, one was powered by a mix of 50 percent sustainable kerosene and 50 percent normal fuel. The biofuel was manufactured from the camelina plant, sourced from a biotechnology company based in Seattle in the United States.

The test flight was also the first of any kind in Europe powered partly by sustainable biofuel, according to KLM.

KLM said its quest for biokerosene was conditional on forests, food and water sources not being jeopardised.

Matze said the company “dare not name any targets” for switching to biofuel for its commercial flights, saying “the difficulty now is the availability of biofuels.”

Monday’s flight, she said, was “the first step towards ensuring clean and sustainable air transport.”

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Mark - Breakfast EP

Wilson Tuckey listens to ABC NewsRadio.

Religiously.

That’s the big headline out of the last extraordinary 24 hours in Federal politics.

A notorious early riser (the 74-year old thinks nothing of ringing in from a racecourse in Perth, or his Albany office for a chat at 4am WA time), Mr. Tuckey was this morning in full flight with Marius Benson at the relatively late (for him) hour of 7:15am EDST.

“I hear on your program this morning some suggestion from his (Malcolm Turnbull’s) selected spokesman, Senator Brandis, that he might not turn up (to a party meeting where a leadership spill would be on the cards)”, chuckled Mr. T.

He was referring to the Lateline interview with Senator George Brandis we re-broadcast earlier at 5:45am.

Mr. Tuckey was is no doubt Senator Brandis was trying to send a “Go ahead, make my day” message from Malcolm Turnbull, to all those in his own party opposed to the ETS.

Mr. Tuckey went on to send a none-too-subtle message of his own:

“If he (Malcolm Turnbull) attempts to avoid it (a party meeting at which there would be a leadership spill), then of course it is patently clear that he knows that he can’t win.”

Like John Howard, Kevin Rudd and Senator Nick Xenophon, Wilson Tuckey is a voracious electronic media consumer and knows all about the power of a few carefully chosen words uttered over the airwaves…especially in internal Liberal party battles.

About 10 years ago, John Howard talked about how when he was Treasurer in the Fraser Government, he’d use ABC Radio’s “AM” program to “send a message” to his Liberal Party colleagues.

Presumably, even to Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, with whom he had fundamental disagreements about the direction of economic policy as Australia slipped into a deep recession.

So the moral of the story is: listen to ABC NewsRadio.

We have the big political stories covered from all angles.

All the coded and not-so-coded messages.

More political intrigue than you could poke a stick at.

Marius - Politics …

One political theory is that when a party goes into Opposition, it comes increasingly under the sway of the zealots, the true believers, at the expense of the pragmatists.

The battle between ideologues and pragmatists is a permanent tension in politics. In fact, it’s a permanent tension in politicians.

John Howard’s public life can be usefully analysed as a battle between Howard the ideologue, pushing a heartfelt agenda in areas like industrial relations and Howard the pragmatist whose first political priority was to be in power.

Look at political history and you can see support for the view that defeated parties head off into their own preferred political wilderness. Labor’s long-dark night of the Menzies years saw it tear itself apart on issues domestic and international, keeping it on the wrong side of parliament for 23 years.

In American politics, the early, overwhelming dominance of Lyndon Johnson as President saw the Republicans heading to the far right under Barry Goldwater. Richard Nixon’s political life was made easier when the Democrat left secured their party’s candidacy for George McGovern.

Some political analysis now suggests something similar may be happening to the coalition.

The right part of the right-centre coalition has cut itself some slack and feels able to give its views on issues like global warming, regardless of what Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull might be advocating as the party line.

This tendency for Oppositions to become less pragmatic and more ideological is - according to the theory - increased by the fact that those surviving an electoral loss are those in safer seats as well as Senators, who are even better insulated from the sharper edge of community opinion.

That’s the theory: drop it on top of current events and see how well you think it fits.

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Debbie - sport

For some months now, I’ve been wondering if anyone else was looking at Rafa Nadal and pondering what’s happened to his bulky upper body.

Since his injury layoff after defeat in the French Open in May, Nadal has seemed lighter in the shoulders and uppper arms to me.

For a while, I put it down to the fact that he’s wearing a t-shirt now, as opposed to the cut-off sleeved “muscle shirts” that he wore earlier in his career. But then, watching him change his shirt during a change of ends at the US Open a couple of months back, (for professional reasons, of course!) I decided it wasn’t just an optical illusion. He is slimmer.

A couple of times in recent months, I’ve googled “Nadal” and “weight loss” to see if anyone else was commenting on it, and couldn’t find anything. But there have been plenty of comments about him not playing like his old self. Finally today I notice it has started to become a topic of discussion.

At the Paris Masters earlier this month, where he was beaten in a semi final by Novak Djokovic, Nadal was asked about whether he’s lighter than he was and he denied it quite emphatically.

“I am still 86 kilos, the same as I was four years ago,” he said. “I think it is the clothes that make me look lighter but I am not, for sure.”

After today’s loss to Robin Soderling at the ATP World Tour finals in London, The Guardian’s Steve Bierley wrote an article headlined “Slimline Rafael Nadal suffers another defeat at hands of Robin Soderling”.

If you want to try judging for yourself, have a look at these two clips.

This one is from 12 months ago in the end of season tournament in Shanghai

And this is footage of him practising in the lead up to the current tournament in London.

…..

I’ve got mixed feelings about this morning’s story that Wigan players have decided to offer ticket refunds to the fans who travelled to London to watch them lose 9-1 to Tottenham yesterday.

The Wigan captain Mario Melchiot is quoted on the Wigan club website saying the players feel they let the travelling fans down and they want to give them back the money they spent on tickets.

Nice gesture and it’ll be interesting to see how many fans take up the offer. Personally, I think if you’re a fan you have to take the good with the bad — even when it’s really bad. At least they got beaten by a team playing football, not handball.

On that theme, the France coach Raymond Domenech is this morning denying that he got a bonus of nearly $1,400,000 (AUD) for guiding France to the World Cup finals.

He says the figure being quoted is ridiculous. Well, even if he got only half of that, he’s the one who should be offering refunds — to the Irish fans who travelled all the way to Paris to see their team cheated out of World Cup qualification.

Domenech would do well to just stop trying to justify whatever it is he’s being paid, instead of coming up with the theory that people in football cop more flak for the money they earn than do tennis players, or racing drivers.

“One is given the impression that those who make money in football are cheating. It is astonishing.”

What’s astonishing is that Domenech has even got the gall to use the “C” word.

Glen - Breakfast presenter …

So, things have certainly been getting hot & heavy lately:

Temperatures rising to heat wave levels in many states as November records fall - and all this before Summer has started.

What’s going on? Could the climate be changing? Could the globe be warming ??

To that end, the Federal politicians continue to wrestle with the so called solution to our continued carbon pollution problem.

But is the right solution or is it the wrong answer to the right question ? Can’t help but think sometimes that the longer this has gone on - the more exemptions, compensation, trade-offs, and pay offs get added to the scheme - the further away it gets from being an adequate way to address the issue.

Why not a carbon pollution tax - a CPT if you like - that, like the GST, would apply only to domestic use not exports? It would act as a disincentive to emitters, while raising revenue to boost the budget to allow for the funding of other initiatives and/or the removal of other taxes to compensate those hit hardest by the new impost.

God knows it would be easier to comprehend and perhaps support.

Also hot stuff going on in South Australian Parliamentary offices, or so it is claimed. Way too much information provided in that story of the Premier, the waitress, her car, and his desk. Steamy stuff that must’ve made the media mob involved think it was worth paying big bucks for.

Very interesting reactions already. Our poll question responses suggesting some people would rather not know the gory details. It’s been a big year for political sex - and there’s still 6 hot weeks to go.

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Mark - Breakfast EP:

She says they were both guilty of “bad behaviour”.

He says he rejects any suggestions he “preyed on her vulnerabilities”…

She says they had sex on the desk in his office.

He says the television program in which she went public about their alleged affair “included a series of allegations that were totally false”.

She says he coached her to lie about the alleged affair to her husband.

He says she WAS “a friend” and is a good mother.

I am, of course, talking about the former South Australian Parliamentary bar waitress Michelle Chantelois and the Premier of that state, Mike Rann.

Did they have an affair?

Don’t know. Don’t care.

Far more interesting is this wonderful piece by The Australian’s Pia Akerman on the sensuous surrounds of the leader of the Festival State’s office.

It’s enough to get you hot under the collar.

I’m moving to Adelaide…

Glen - presenter …

Issues to watch:

The implications of the US Federal Court ruling that the deadly levee failures which led to the flooding of New Orleans during 2005’s Hurricane Katrina were due to negligence by the US Army Corps of Engineers. The $720,000 awarded to three homeowners and a business sets the stage for up to 100,000 more lawsuits which could end up costing the government billions of dollars.
Ouch ! Just what the Obama Administration needs - another billion dollar bill for a problem they didn’t create.

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Whether the frequent use of Catastrophic fire weather warnings leads to alarm fatigue among the populace in such areas. Beware the boy who cried catastrophe !

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Sarah Palin’s de facto run for the US Presidency as it picks up pace in the hand-picked parts of the American heartland she’s chosen to go to in promoting her new book - Fort Bragg Army base, for example. Will the return to the spotlight see her firm as a realistic candidate for 2012? Or see her stay as a kind of well paid cheerleader-in-chief who chips in from the sidelines between spots on Fox News without having to nut out and explain some coherent policies capable of demonstrating a capacity to lead the free world into the 21st century ?
What could possibly go wrong ?
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And further to our previous discussion of the push to make us all pay for news content online, this report from the AFP news service:

Britain’s Times newspaper plans to charge for digital content from next spring, two weeks after his boss Rupert Murdoch said such plans may be delayed beyond next June.

In a speech to an editors’ conference this week, Times editor James Harding said newspapers had to “re-establish the public expectation that they pay for what is a valuable — sometimes invaluable — part of their daily lives.”

“We are going to take on the culture of free. We have seen it all but destroy the music business. We cannot afford, as a business or a society, for that to happen to news,” he said, according to the speech given on Tuesday.

“So from the spring of next year, we are going to start charging for the digital editions of The Times,” he told a meeting of the Society of Editors in Stansted, northeast of London, according to the text released by the paper.

And he added: “We are still working on the exact pricing model, but I expect we will end up with a price to buy the day’s paper — ie a 24-hour price for The Times online — and a subscription price too.”

Speaking earlier this month, News Corp chairman and chief executive Murdoch said that a plan to begin charging readers of his newspapers online may be delayed.

Murdoch had previously outlined plans to erect pay walls around his vast newspaper empire by the end of News Corp’s current fiscal year in June, but he indicated that was now unlikely.

“We are working all very, very hard at this but I wouldn’t promise that we’re going to meet that date,” he told reporters in a conference call after releasing News Corp.’s first-quarter results on November 4.

The Times editor, addressing a conference on what the newspaper industry will look like in 2020, said: “We have to put the news business on an economically sustainable footing.

“For a democratic society requires a real Fourth Estate, a genuinely independent check on power and a real capacity to investigate the powerful. We are in the fight of our lives. And we are fighting to protect what we really believe in: namely what is at the heart of our journalism.”

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Marius: politics

Anyone who wants to see how good Malcolm Turnbull is should go to youtube and pull up his conversation with the broadcaster Alan Jones of November 2.

If democracy is a pantomime - and it is - Alan Jones is the Liberal Party’s Panto Dame.

Flouncing on to centre stage - he would be nowhere else - Alan Jones fills an auditorium with his shrill tones. Young Liberal chicks are gathered under his skirts as he thumps into the Rudd Government, belabours the Liberal doubters and sets out the one true path ahead.

Jones is brilliant and not un-mad.

He has the degree of certainty available only to shock jocks. And he has genuine standing in Liberal ranks which makes him a feared enemy and daunting interviewer.

Joe Hockey was recently hauled into the headmaster’s office at radio 2GB to be sharply reprimanded by Jones for causing needless grief to Turnbull with a clumsy answer when he was asked if anyone had approached him about being Party leader.

Jones hit him with the same question and rehearsed answers until the chastened Joe Hockey got it right to the headmaster’s satisfaction and he was allowed to leave.

On November 2 it was Malcolm Turnbull’s turn to face the music.

Jones had had enough of this climate change nonsense and he was ready to explain a thing or two to the muddle-headed, stands-for-nothing, aimless Liberal leader.

Being interviewed by Jones in this mode is a bit like being interviewed by a hurricane. The strongest can be blown away, the clearest thinker can lose their way.

Not Malcolm Turnbull.

MT: “….you believe climate change is a hoax

AJ: I do

MT: …and your view is shared by about 15% of Australians…..I believe climate change is a real threat, I believe the world should take effective global action……I believe you are a great admirer of Margaret Thatcher: well, Margaret Thatcher set up the the international panel on climate change, she was the first world leader to argue for strong action…John McCain….your friend John Howard….”

Turnbull remained calm and logical in the face of an increasingly pyrotechnic display by Jones. If there were 15% of Australians in the “climate change is a hoax” camp at the beginning of the chat, there were likely to be no more by the end.

I know Turnbull supporters who are already mourning his departure. His timing’s wrong, they say sadly. The next election is lost, after that he’ll be tossed out with a canteen of cutlery down his spine or simply leave the tent and walk off into the Point Piper non-wilderness.

If they are right, the theatre of politics and the national debate will be the poorer.

Debbie - Sport: …

Who’d have thought when Guus Hiddink departed the Socceroos for greener pastures at the end of the last World Cup campaign that we’d be going to the next World Cup finals and the Dutch Master would miss out?

Hiddink’s Russian team were beaten this morning by Slovenia in Maribo in a European playoff.

Russia had missed direct qualification when they finished second in their qualifying group behind Germany. But, like other group runners up in Europe, they got a second bite of the cherry. They had a playoff over two legs against Slovenia — for which they were hot favourites. They won 2-1 in Russia on the weekend, but lost this morning 1-nil. That meant it was 2-2 on aggregate, but Slovenia had an away goal and Russia didn’t. Net result = Russia gone-ski.

Wonder how long before the rumours start that Hiddink might bump Pim Verbeek out of the Socceroos gig before South Africa 2010?

Sure, Verbeek’s got us there, but he seems to have some entrenched critics in the Australian media. I’m not one of them, by the way. I think he deserves more respect than he’s been getting. Nevertheless the prospect of Guus without a guernsey for a World Cup will probably have a few coaches looking over their shoulders.

Earlier this year, I would’ve thought the first cab off the rumour rank would be that he’d go back to Chelsea in the English Premier League, but Fabio Capello has the Blues top of the table and the Italian is one of the few in the world who matches Hiddink in terms of managerial clout.

Actually, here’s a random, off the cuff prediction.

What about Hiddink for France? Given the trouble France had even qualifying (they got taken to extra time by the Republic of Ireland this morning) the immensely unpopular and apparently barely competent Raymond Domenech has to be on borrowed time. Last week, he and the French team turned up at the Paris Masters tennis. When the big screen showed Domenech in the crowd, the stadium erupted with booing and hissing.

By the way, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth this morning in the NewsRadio office — and the odd bewildered cry of “you’re kidding!” — when the coverage of the World Cup qualifier between Greece and Ukraine finished. Given that the France v Ireland and Ukraine v Russia matches were about to kick-off, it was something of an anti-climax when ESPN crossed to their coverage of a women’s billiards championship in the US.

I’m all for women’s sport getting a fair crack of the whip, but …. aarrrghhhh!!!!!!

Glen - Breakfast Host: …

Not far away from Christmas and already the strange stories have started appearing :

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From the wires :
Santa has promised children he would travel around the world to bring them Christmas presents despite the global swine flu pandemic.

“I swear that Christmas will not be cancelled this year,” Father Christmas told Finnish national broadcaster YLE, explaining that many children were worried he would catch swine flu.

Santa told the world’s children he would definitely see them at Christmas and added neither he nor the elves would fall ill thanks to his wife’s good care.
(Think the Claus family mightn’t be the most progressive bunch)

“Take care of yourself. But if you have caught swine flu, take it easy and follow the advice given by your father, mother and doctors,” Santa said.

According to Finnish legend, Santa Claus lives in a cabin atop the Korvatunturi mountain in Finnish Lapland.

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Not sure what the North Pole types think of that…

All I want for Christmas is Sarah Palin’s book - don’t want anything too heavy over Summer.

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Marius - Politics:

In politics, as in life, silence often says more than words.

In any political debate it is as important to notice who is not talking as who is. And today the silence from the government in the national debate over asylum seekers is deafening.

The past month, with the asylum seekers refusing the leave the Oceanic Viking, has been the toughest time politically for the Government in its two years in office.

It has lost some altitude in the polls - plummeting to a position where it is now facing the prospect of winning the next election with a thumping, increased, majority. The Prime Minister himself has seen his personal support collapse from towering to now merely dizzying.

Not the most threatening position for a government, but still enough to get some Labor nerves jangling. The Government’s response has been to limit the debate as far as possible, principally by not participating in it, while the opposition has been trying to make as much hay as humanly possible while the political sun shines.

My evening round of calls to line up politicians for a morning interview on NewsRadio was largely taken up on Tuesday evening with trying to find “talent” to talk about the prospect of the asylum seekers leaving the Oceanic Viking today.

The Opposition, understandably, was very available. The Government, naturally, was not.

Still you have to put in the requests, and as I was sending a sequence of unproductive texts to government minister press secretaries, I had one eye on SBS News and its coverage of Barack Obama’s visit to China.

His “town hall” style meeting in Shanghai had seen the authorities lift the curtain of censorship a little to allow some questions from the carefully vetted audience and a restricted broadcast, which didn’t go much beyond the city itself.

The SBS coverage showed an American journalist at the end of the meeting trying to talk to one of the students in the audience, but being prevented by a very insistent official.

Back here, my texting continued and two more ministers declined my request for an interview on asylum seekers.

There’s no substantial common ground between what was happening in Shanghai and the stonewall I was getting from Canberra - but there are diverting similarities. China is an autocratic state, its leaders do not have to deal with a free press.

Australia is one of the world’s oldest democracies, with politicians, from the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader down, who genuinely in favour of freedom of the press. But they are also passionately interested in a favourable press.

Right at the sharp end of message delivery all political figures and their media minders from Shanghai to Sydney are trying to achieve the same end - favourable coverage. They want to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.

China’s leaders do it by edict, Australia’s politicians do it by practising the sometimes dark arts of media management.

One of the key tools at a government’s disposals is to turn down the volume on a politically damaging issue.

The level on asylum seekers has been turned down to zero - and that silence speaks volumes.

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Mark - Breakfast E.P.

Independent Senator Nick Xenophon has certainly stirred up controversy with his attack in federal Parliament last night on the Church of Scientology:

” Scientology is not a religious organisation; it is a criminal organisation that hides behind its so-called religious belief”, he told the Senate, “What you believe does not mean you are not accountable for how you behave.
The letters received by me which were written by former followers in Australia contain extensive allegations of crimes and abuses that are truly shocking-crimes against them and crimes they say they were coerced into committing. There are allegations of false imprisonment, coerced abortions, embezzlement of church funds, physical violence, intimidation, blackmail and the widespread and deliberate abuse of information obtained by the organisation. It is alleged that information about suspicious deaths and child abuse has been destroyed, and one follower has admitted he was coerced by the organisation into perjuring himself during investigations into the deaths of his two daughters. These victims of Scientology claim it is an abusive, manipulative, violent and criminal organisation, and that criminality is condoned at the highest levels.”

He wants a Senate inquiry into the Church of Scientology and its tax-exempt status.

You can read the full text of his speech here - and then vote on the issue via our news poll, in the middle of our web page!

By coincidence, last week the NewsRadio Breakfast team received a letter from Cyrus Brooks, the vice-president and the head of Community Relations for the Church of Scientology in Australia.

He was writing in response to a short BBC piece we ran recently about the Church of Scientology being convicted of fraud in France.

The case revolved around complaints from two women, one of whom said she was manipulated into paying more than $32,000 to the Church in the 1990s.

Mr. Brooks says all the money was returned to the woman, “yet the unusual French justice system allows it (the original complaint) to be used vindictively by an anti-religious group and in France’s case, there is a long history of discrimination against minority religions. We are appealing the ruling and feel confident that this will be reversed.”

For the record, the French government does not accept that Scientology is a religion.

We rang Mr. Brooks this morning to ask him for a reaction to Nick Xenophon’s attack.

He described the Senator’s speech as an outrageous abuse of Parliamentary privilege and he categorically rejected the allegations.

But Cyrus Brooks says the Church of Scientology would be happy to comply with any parliamentary inquiry into its activities.

Perhaps Mr. Brooks would be well advised to start gathering the information he would need for such an inquiry now.

For example, this morning he was unable to say how many Scientologists there are in this country, or give even a rough, ball-park figure of the Church’s annual income.

Quite unusual for someone who is the Vice-President and the Head of Community Relations for the Church of Scientology in Australia

Mark - Breakfast E.P. : …

Vale Edward Woodward.

The iconic British stage, screen and film actor died overnight in hospital.

He was 79.

When I was a kid, my parents were great fans of the spy show “Callan”, where Woodward first cut his teeth in television.

When those titles with the twangy guitar and the swinging light bulb that gets shot out came on Aunty, I knew it was bedtime.

Not only because it was 9:30pm , but because you were unlikely to get another sensible word out of the parentals.

Why?

They’d be riveted by Edward Woodward’s performance.

“Mmmmmmmmmm….yes dear”, was about the extent of the answer to any question, eyes never moving from the screen.

I finally found out what I was missing when I was 13, when my aunt dragged my parents and me along to see a new Australian movie about some bloke in the army who was good with horses….and got court-martialled and shot for his trouble. Boring!

In fact, it was exactly the opposite.

I knew straight away I was watching a work of greatness….and a performance by a master.

I couldn’t take my eyes of “The Breaker”.

It was clear straight away Woodward’s mere presence on the set had lifted Bryan Brown and Jack Thompson to a new level.

On NewsRadio Breakfast today, we played some of Jack Thompson speaking about Edward Woodward and “Breaker Morant”:

“We had a sense of the strength of it. It was certainly an extraordinarily ensemble and we understood that it would always be a very good film. We had no idea of the stature of the film, really. I didn’t think any of us did, really.”

Have a look at this clip:

Amazing.

Edward Woodward - R.I.P.

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Debbie - Sport:

The old cliche “first in, best dressed” doesn’t appear to apply in cricket these days. Seems the fixture that arrived last on the international scene could end up being the one with the best outfits.

The Indian Premier League might stand to gain the most if Brett Lee finds his body can’t take the rigors of Test cricket anymore. Lee is apparently weighing up his options after finding the elbow injury that forced his early return from the recent one-day series in India has flared up again. He’s told Channel Seven this morning that he’s going to look at alternatives to surgery but, with or without the knife, it seems highly unlikely he’ll be able to get back into the test team during the coming series against the West Indies.

Even if he gets himself fit in time for the test series against New Zealand in March, he’d be battling to earn selection. And he’d have to choose anyway between the Test series and the mega-bucks on offer in the Indian Premier League, which is on at the same time.

It would make sense for him to go the Andrew Flintoff route and take the easier-on-the-body, more-beneficial-to-the-bank-account route of focusing on the shorter forms of the game. Lee is particularly in demand in India where he’s also a recording star, having had a single reach number two on the charts.

If the cricket authorities don’t somehow rationalise the current calendar for Test and one day matches, they’re going to put more and more stress on the bodies of their established stars. And that’s going to herd them more towards the less physically demanding Twenty20 format. Remember when the argument against the IPL was that it was going to overload the playing schedule? Well, now that overloading is taking effect, the IPL stands to gain. What came first, the chicken or the golden egg?