New PM Malcolm Turnbull is the ultimate insiders’ politician, A coup for the chattering classes.

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A coup for the chattering classes

Miranda Devine 
The Daily Telegraph
September 16 2015

New PM Malcolm Turnbull is the ultimate insiders’ politician, a man with an ego so health

The insiders have installed one of their own in Malcolm Turnbull. They never accepted Tony Abbott, with his religious faith, his monarchist beliefs, his humility, his kindness, his old-fashioned notions of duty, honour and loyalty.

You could see it every week on the ABC’s Q&A, the smug TV program that best captures their privileged leftist views. And on Monday night, when news of Abbott’s decapitation was announced, the audience erupted with rapturous applause.

The inner city elites, increasingly preoccupied with symbolic issues, and out of touch with the unfashionable suburbs, never felt Abbott legitimately was Prime Minister. He embarrassed them. He didn’t play their game.

On the totemic issues that bookmarked his leadership of the Liberal Party — on climate change and same sex marriage — he was starkly at odds with them. They saw him as representing an Australia they revile, full of unsophisticated, parochial, materialistic, misogynistic redneck bigots.


His mistake was generously trying to appease the chattering classes with symbolic gesture and big-hearted compromise. But they just reviled his efforts as a sign of weakness, and were emboldened for the eventual kill.

For the leftists who dominate the media, academia, legal circles, who inhabit the Canberra bubble, and the stylish inner circle of Wentworth, Turnbull was more to their taste. He subscribes to all the symbolic “progressive” causes dear to their hearts: climate alarmism, “marriage equality”, a republic.

They don’t wince when he opens his mouth. They can imagine themselves being invited to dinner parties at his Point Piper mansion overlooking the glittering harbour. They anticipate with pride his bustling self assurance on the global stage, whether in New York addressing a UN conference or swanning around a climate change conference in Paris, talking up technocratic solutions to theoretical problems.

Maybe he’s right, and his optimism and self belief are what’s needed to boost economic confidence. Having a competent cut-through Treasurer in Scott Morrison will be his best asset, and one which Abbott denied himself.

But whether Turnbull’s commitment to what he and John Howard both yesterday repeatedly described as “the broad church” of the Liberal Party, encompassing its conservative and “small L liberal” traditions, stretches to subsuming his ego for the good of internal harmony, will determine his success.

Morrison, the future Treasurer, will be crucial to keeping Turnbull’s instincts in check, keeping the conservatives in the party room onside and the Coalition electorally viable.

But nothing will stop the high hopes of the new Greens Leader Richard Di Natale, who sees in Turnbull a fellow traveller on climate and progressive social issues.

Milling around on the lawn in front of Parliament House where the TV networks had set up shop yesterday, Di Natale, in Tommy Hilfiger spectacles, declared himself ready and eager to do business with Turnbull.

Parliament’s youngest MP, Wyatt Roy, who gave up on Abbott in February, at the time of the spill that wasn’t, was equally enthusiastic, declaring Turnbull to be a post-partisan leader in the mode of John Key, David Cameron and Mike Baird.

Turnbull promises so much to idealists, not least the mirage of politics without partisanship, of a frictionless integration of the “broad church”, a bloodless union of left and right. He is the ultimate insiders’ politician, a man with an ego so healthy that in his victory speech he had to say twice how “humbled” he was.

By contrast, Tony Abbott was self effacing to the end. Watching his final speech as Prime Minister yesterday afternoon in the blustery courtyard outside his office, admirers could only lament what might have been.

“There will be no wrecking, no undermining, and no sniping. I’ve never leaked or backgrounded against anyone,” he said, before grimly itemising the mostly unheralded achievements of his abbreviated reign.

“300,000 more people are in jobs. Labor’s bad taxes are gone. We’ve signed Free Trade Agreements with our largest trading partners … The biggest infrastructure program in our country’s history … A spotlight is being shone into the dark and corrupt corners of the union movement … We’ve responded to the threats of terror … The boats have stopped and … we’ve been better able to display our compassion to refugees. And … we’ve made $50 billion of repairs to the Budget.”

He admitted his was not a perfect government.

“We have been a government of men and women, not a government of Gods walking upon the earth. Few of us, after all, entirely measure up to expectations.

“The nature of politics has changed in the past decade. We have more polls and more commentary than ever before. Mostly sour, bitter, character assassination.

“Poll driven panic has produced a revolving door Prime Ministership which can’t be good for our country. And a febrile media culture has developed that rewards treachery.”

It was a searing speech, but ultimately gracious. For those listening in the courtyard, however, it was almost impossible to hear, thanks to a media helicopter hovering noisily overhead. It was a fitting metaphor for a Prime Minister whose fine words and worthy achievements were so often ignored and derided by the chatterati. History will be kinder.

Australia : "They share a stunning lack of humility. What unites them is their opinion that other Australians, “out there” in the suburbs, are selfish, parochial, gullible, redneck morons, easily led by evil Right Wing NutJobs (RWNJ)."

Miranda Devine: Turn Left to take the road to damnation

Miranda Devine
The Sunday Telegraph

September 13, 2015 

IT is in the egalitarian nature of Australia that we have neglected to cultivate a class of genuine elites. Unfortunately, this vacuum at the top means that a bunch of chattering mediocrities have appointed themselves to the role of our moral and intellectual betters.

Some even have acquired posh accents and a haughty tone to give the impression of superiority.

They share a stunning lack of humility. What unites them is their opinion that other Australians, “out there” in the suburbs, are selfish, parochial, gullible, redneck morons, easily led by evil Right Wing NutJobs (RWNJ).
Our faux elites claim they are driven by altruism, at least when it comes to issues that don’t adversely affect them, like refugee, drug and climate policies.

They don’t live in suburbs affected by drug crime, and can afford to pay for rehab for their wayward offspring.

They don’t have to fish dead bodies out of the ocean or face the consequences of their demand for open borders.

They don’t compete for welfare resources or family reunion quotas with asylum seekers or live near areas of social friction.

They barely notice the soaring energy costs that arise from climate policies they push for reasons of guilt, moral vanity, and in-crowd identity.

Their compassion is employed only in those circumstances where it showcases their status and their membership of a virtuous elite.

Thus, the tragedy of Syria’s civil war only merited their tears after that photograph of a drowned Syrian toddler became a media focal point.

What followed was an unseemly contest to trumpet their sad feelings.

To any reasonable observer, these people are irrational and ridiculous, bordering on downright dangerous.

Their self regard is so extreme that it verges into mass delusion.

Or, to apply a more precise diagnosis, they suffer from an affliction know as “pathological altruism”.

This is the inspired coinage of American systems engineer Barbara Oakley.

In a 2013 paper for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, she defined it as “behaviour in which attempts to promote the welfare of … others results, instead, in harm that … was reasonably foreseeable.”

So, for instance, if you accidentally break a vase while helping a friend move house, that is not pathological altruism because the bad outcome was not foreseeable.

But if your brother is going through drug withdrawal and you get him more drugs to make him feel better, you are just “enabling his addiction. In this case, your well-meaning altruism is pathological.

Oakley cites examples such as “the overly attentive ‘helicopter’ father who threatens to sue instructors who give well-deserved bad grades, or the mother who attempts to protect her son by refusing to vaccinate him and who consequently fuels a loss of herd immunity underpinning a local whooping cough epidemic in which an infant dies”.

Closer to home, examples abound: drug liberalisers, who wants ice decriminalised might be motivated by a desire to help drug addicts.

But their remedies only exacerbate the harms and increase the numbers of addicts.

Similarly, well-meaning lefties, who talked Kevin Rudd into dismantling Howard-era border protections caused harm to those people they lured across the ocean, to those refugees whose places were taken, and damaged public confidence in our high level of migration. In other words, what might feel altruistic can end up making the situation worse.

“Altruistic intentions must be run through the sieve of rational analysis; all too often, the best long-term action to help others … is not intuitively obvious, not what temporarily makes us feel good, and not what is being promoted by other individuals, with their own self-serving interests,” Oakley says.

Elevating rational analysis over emotion is what the Prime Minister did last week when considering Australia’s response to the Syrian crisis: “It’s important that we act with our head as well as with our heart here.

“While I think we are all in the grip of grief, really, as we saw the tragedy unfolding on our television screens, the responsibility of government ... is to act in a measured and considered way.”

But for taking time to consider, he was criticised.

In our emotionally incontinent culture, driven by the sentimental narcissism of social media, true altruism can seem cruel.

Oakley cites examples of saying “no” to the student who demands a higher grade or to the addict who needs another hit.

“The social consequences of appearing cruel in a culture that places high value on kindness, empathy, and altruism can lead us to misplaced ‘helpful’ behaviour and result in self-deception regarding the consequences of our actions.”

Thus our faux elites damned the Abbott government as cruel when it went about rescuing our immigration system from criminal people smugglers.

They refuse to acknowledge that only because we “stopped the boats” is it possible to offer 12,000 Syrians a new home.

Similarly, they slam the government for skewing the intake towards persecuted minorities, particularly Christians against whom a religious genocide is being waged in the Middle East.

In order to showcase their tolerance they falsely claim helping the most needy is ­Islamophobic.

No, the altruism flaunted by our phony elites isn’t really about helping refugees or drug addicts or saving the planet.

It’s all about burnishing their reputations.

The road to hell is paved with their good intentions.

Andrew Bolt Australia's ONLY Conservative Political TV Commentator and his guests discuss the past week in Australian Politics.

Andrew Bolt and Miranda Devine speak up for Israel and Christians in Iraq

Labor Green Loons and THEIR ABC

Why the ABC distorts the news agenda

Piers Akerman – 
Sunday Telegraph
December 01, 2013

IT came as no surprise to be quoted by the extravagantly paid Tony Jones, the host of the ABC’s Green-Left oriented Q & A program, last Monday as he sought to justify the taxpayer-funded media organisation’s attack on Australian-Indonesian relations.

Jones’ sniggering, simpering remarks are usually aimed at the luvvies and no doubt he hoped to embarrass me and all those in the media who believe that the national interest might just trump the public interest occasionally. 

During a program which featured an extraordinary riff about a truly inexplicable conspiracy theory from the human rights lawyer Julian Burnside, Jones reverenced my view in response to a serious question from Roslyn Coutinho, who asked: “The Australian public trust and value the ABC as a source of truth, however, the Indonesian phone tapping story could potentially have negative consequences for innocent parties, such as Australian cattle farmers and asylum seekers in Indonesia. So my question is for the whole panel, including Tony, but this could be wishful thinking, was the choice to run this story a selfish decision by the ABC or should governments be more careful about the potential implications of their intelligence operations in general? 

His reply, which must have been researched and prepared in advance, was: “I might answer your question by quoting News Limited columnist Piers Akerman who wrote last year, ‘I believe freedom is absolute. You either have a free press or you do not.’ The information came to the ABC, they published it. I wonder whether News Limited would have published it or held it? That’s a very interesting question we probably won’t know the answer to.” 
The quote is accurate, although it came from a blog written on March 18 this year, not last. 

But Jones was, as usual, a little too smart. He needs to be reminded of the context of the quote and it was this — and I shall now quote from blog which the ABC employee found irresistible. 

“It would not be news to readers of this site that this dysfunctional government’s ham-fisted attempts to muzzle the media anger me. 
“Unfortunately, I permitted that anger to show on the ABC’s Insiders program yesterday. 
“Flanked by two people who laughed at the notion that press freedom was threatened, and mocked by the show’s host, I raised my voice. 
“Perhaps I should not have. 
“I was angered by their naiveties, by their apparent belief that freedom can be trifled with. 
“I believe freedom is an absolute. 
“You either have a free press or you do not.” 
And I still believe that. 

The point that needs making for people like Jones however, who are more than willing to play the idiot if they think it will portray conservatives in a poor light, is that even a free press must be responsible. 
While the US Constitution goes further than any other to enshrine the notion of free speech, US law (and commonsense, a trait obviously absent from the halls of the ABC) make it a crime to recklessly falsely shout “fire” in a crowded venue.

Jones, of course, was only trying to justify the decision taken by the ABC to promote The Guardian’s publication of intelligence material stolen from the United States by the defector Edward Snowden, now living in Russia where he enjoys the hospitality of that nation’s security services. 

No doubt the Russians will keep him a long way from their computers but whether Snowden, The Guardian and the ABC would ever dream of publishing documents that would damage the national interests of Russia, is as Jones’ might muse “a very interesting question we probably won’t know the answer to”. 

I would hazard a guess though that The Guardian would not release such material because it is not interested in exposing Russian secrets, only those which would damage the web of Western nations which share democratic values. 

As an Australian, I have no qualms considering the national interest. 
The Guardian was always going to publish the material stolen by the defector, but I question the need for “our” ABC to assist that media group in promoting the damaging allegations in our region. 

If the ABC was truly interested in freedom of the press, I would never have had to challenge Insider host Barrie Cassidy last March, or later in the year when I asked why the ABC had so consistently failed to broadcast any news about the ongoing Victorian police investigation into former Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s involvement as a lawyer in helping to set up the AWU Workplace Reform Association (which she later described as a “slush fund") and providing legal advice to her former boyfriend Bruce Wilson and AWU member Ralph Blewitt. Ms Gillard has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

The case will be given yet another airing in the Victorian courts tomorrow, though whether the ABC breaks with its habit and reports this is “a very interesting question we probably won’t know the answer to”. 
Meanwhile, the ABC continues its attempts to smear the Abbott government over the spying allegations. 

On Wednesday, the AM program began its report of the Indonesian response to Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s letter to Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono thus: “Mr Abbott’s initial refusal to explain documents showing Australia spied on the President, his wife, and senior ministers, angered Indonesia, causing the President to suspend cooperation.” 

Get it? Most reasonable people would think the Indonesians were angered by the spying but the ABC wants its audience to see Abbott as the villain. 

The ABC sucks more than $1 billion from the taxpayers. 
What’s more, Labor rewarded it for its support with more money and was prepared to twice ignore a tender process and award it with the Australia Network to pursue “soft diplomacy” on Australia’s behalf in our region. 
The ABC is a bloated failure in the hands of ideologues. It should be stripped back to its charter, at the very least, or broken up and sold, if possible to commercial interests. 

In a world of expanding media, the notion of a taxpayer-funded national broadcaster is anachronistic. 
Those who want to keep “our” ABC, should fund it. Those who don’t should not have to pay for it.


Biased ABC leads a howling media mob

Miranda Devine
The Daily Telegraph
December 4,2013 

THE government has been in office 77 days but the Canberra press gallery has already written it off. Where fault can be found it will be furiously exaggerated. Where success occurs it will be ignored.

It began with the so-called expenses "scandal", when Tony Abbott's electioneering at sports events was recast as some sinister attempt to rort the public purse.

Then he was blamed for the Indonesia spying scandal which occurred under Rudd.

BLOG WITH MIRANDA DEVINE

On border protection, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has been hammered for not divulging operational detail about exactly how asylum boats are being stopped. He revealed this week that November had seen the lowest boat arrivals in five years, but all anyone wants to talk about is his "hostile" attitude to the media. Well, hello. He's only human.

Education Minister Christopher Pyne is the latest punching bag for refusing to implement the Gonski education funding model, as prescribed by Julia Gillard. Why was that a surprise to anyone, least of all Barry O'Farrell?

Treasurer Joe Hockey is being lambasted over the non-sale of GrainCorp, over which, hilariously, lefties are siding with the free market - anything to beat up on Abbott.

The contrast to the honeymoon period of the Rudd government is staggering. Kevin Rudd was feted as a messiah for more than a year.

At the end of his first three months, he was preferred prime minister over Brendan Nelson by 68 per cent to 10 per cent, according to ABC-TV's Insiders' "poll of polls", which relishes Abbott's less impressive lead of 44-29 over Bill Shorten.

Rudd's popularity soared to record highs thanks in large part to all the positive coverage lavished on him and his lame-brained ideas, like the 2020 summit, FuelWatch, GroceryWatch, an ETS, green loans, free pink batts, the end of homelessness, and dismantling border protection.

The media was dazzled, especially the ABC-Fairfax Media axis of love. But even conservatives gave Rudd the benefit of the doubt for too long.

To its eternal shame, The Australian newspaper even named him Australian of the year in 2010. Uh oh.

Rudd's media honeymoon was so prolonged that it seemed few people were more surprised when his party ditched him for non-performance later that same year than the press gallery.

More than any other news organisation, the ABC gave Labor a free pass over the past six years of calamitous government.

Remarkably, it has run dead on serious crime allegations against senior Labor figures which are currently being investigated by police, while
ferociously hunting down every verbal misstep or stumble by the new government.

Labor bodies are piling up and stinking behind the doors the ABC refuses to open.

Instead it fires all its barrels at the poor saps who barely have their feet under their desks.

So when Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi launched a scathing attack on the ABC in the Coalition party room yesterday, he was reflecting the opinion not only of his party's conservative base but of the bulk of his parliamentary colleagues.

The applause he received was a pointed rebuke to his old foe, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who continues to defend the national broadcaster.

"I'm concerned because it's not our ABC, it's not my ABC, it's 'their' ABC," Bernardi said.

"It's a taxpayer-funded behemoth that is cannibalising commercial media while spreading a message that ignores the majority views of Australians."

Bernardi told colleagues he does not advocate privatising the ABC since it has a role to play in regional communities.

But the national broadcaster "no longer complies with its charter of fairness and balance.

"It is politically biased, regularly unfair and has priorities completely at odds with its raison d'être,'' he said.

"Gone are the days when it simply operated TV and radio services. It has a massive online presence providing at taxpayers expense what commercial media operations need to charge for, four television channels and who knows how many radio licences.

"It is out of control and needs to be reined in. It needs to be broken up and returned to its primary purpose rather than the engorged propaganda unit it has become."

Bernardi is on the backbench because he was marginalised by many in his own party before the election for refusing to maintain a safe, politically correct line. Turnbull particularly targeted him because Bernardi led the revolt against the ETS which ended his leadership and launched Abbott.

Now Bernardi is leading the conservative revolt against the ABC, and again he is on the right side of history 


The ABC's evil plan to get tentacles into kids

Miranda Devine 
The Daily Telegraph
December 4,2013

http://www.abc.net.au/btn/

THE ABC is an enormous beast, with tentacles stretching across the internet and digital TV at a time when other media organisations are struggling to survive.

Its success at enforcing the narrow groupthink of the Left cannot be over-estimated, and not just on obvious flagship programs such as Q&A.

Take its controversial education show Behind The News, watched by more than one million unsuspecting children each week.

With a cheery youth-friendly style, it promotes the soft-left line on everything from asylum seekers to gender equality to big government spending.

Yesterday's episode of BTN began with a story about Education Minister Christopher Pyne's "broken promise" on Gonski funding.

Next was "Why sorry seems to be the hardest word over the Indonesian spy scandal", complete with footage of Kevin Rudd making his Stolen Generations apology. Praise for Rudd was cleverly delivered using Tony Abbott's words.

"So it seems Tony is a fan of people who say sorry too. Well, he was."

That is, until the Indonesia spying scandal erupted. No mention that the spying occurred during Rudd's sainted reign.

At the end of the package the young BTN host, sitting in a school he identifies as Norwood Primary, asks the children around him if they think "Tony" should have said sorry.

It's no surprise that the majority, about 30 children, put up their hands to say yes the Prime Minister should have apologised.

A scan of other BTN stories this year finds similar examples of loaded commentary: "The new PM Tony Abbott hasn't repaid some money that he claimed for going to a few running and cycling events. The fitness freak says they were genuine community events, so it's OK for the taxpayer to help foot the bill."

Subtle propaganda to children is all part of the ABC's long march.

Miranda Devine: "THE sneering foulness of the Left is bubbling up like overflow from an unblocked sewer at the realisation the Abbott government is here to stay."

Sneering Lefties love to hate Abbott

Miranda Devine 
The Daily Telegraph
November 6, 2013

THE sneering foulness of the Left is bubbling up like overflow from an unblocked sewer at the realisation the Abbott government is here to stay.

From Jonathan Biggins' agonised cri de coeur playing at the Wharf Theatre, to the Festival of Dangerous Ideas at the Opera House, to the live audience of the ABC's Q&A, lefties are suffering an existential crisis.

The letters page of the SMH is exploding with rage.

Refugee advocate Julian Burnside has found his vicious tongue.

Student protesters - suddenly enraged about cuts brought in by Labor - burn effigies of Tony Abbott.

Welcome back to the Howard years, those glory days when the Left laid claim to the moral high ground.

Much of the baggage Labor brought with it into office, and which eventually brought it down, was filled with progressive fancies.

The last six years was an uncomfortable time for lefties as their wishes were granted by government (hello open borders, hello carbon tax).

None of it turned out well, but they now pretend it wasn't the ideas that were the problem. Not that they want to think too hard because they're too busy revelling in victimhood, post-election.

A selection from the Fairfax letters pages shows their fighting spirit: "Abbott's neo-idiocrasy"; "Climate change deniers and coalminers will be dancing in the streets with Abbott"; "This is what happens when you send a boy to do a woman's work"; "Please, Tony Abbott, couldn't I just say an 'Our Father' and 10 'Hail Marys'?"; "Can we be sure it was The Lodge and not Rome he has been aiming for?" Oh, yes, Abbott is worse even than Howard. He's Catholic! Herewith, some tales from the frontline.

At the Wharf Theatre on Monday night the chattering classes wallowed in the rueful melancholy of Whoops - The Wharf Revue. The mystery is that: "Abbott (deficient of faculty) delights not many … And yet he rules."

In one skit "the last surviving Q&A panel", including Bob Ellis and Marieke Hardy, cower as the Abbott forces storm the citadels of culture.

Amid the sound of exploding ordnance, a football falls at their feet: "Oh no! Eddie McGuire is closer than we think." Yuk yuk. The barbarians are through the gate.

In another skit, Abbott is played as a lip-smacking Neanderthal: "a smug Catholic knob … a blokey bloke not worth two bob" whose only skill is producing "soundbites of unrelenting negativity".

The same theme was taken up by the real Q&A on ABC TV later that night.

"For me the biggest mystery is that Tony Abbott is a Rhodes Scholar," sneered Germaine Greer to howls of laughter from the audience.

The program was a classic in the genre of conservative-bashing.

The cleverest person on the panel was British conservative columnist Peter Hitchens, eloquently arguing against same-sex marriage, and other totemic issues of progressives. Or trying to.

He could barely complete a sentence without being interrupted by Greer, American homosexual activist Dan Savage (whose "dangerous idea" is making abortion mandatory for 30 years), and Hanna Rosin, author of The End Of Men.

Tony Jones gave all free rein - except to Hitchens.

"I'm stopping you," Jones told Hitchens.

"Don't stop me … I haven't finished my answer," protested Hitchens. "You haven't stopped anyone else."

It's always the way.

The audience is as bad. "It's a rally," Hitchens told them, waiting to speak over applause for a Savage interjection. "While you do this I can't talk, and you know it, and that's to your shame because silencing opponents is a very wicked thing to do."

He even told his fellow panellists they were "fantastically intolerant".

"This is the absolute seedbed of totalitarianism. When you start believing that the opinions of other people are a pathology then you are in the beginning of the stage that leads to the secret police and the gulag."

Yes, it is true that Abbott has won the election. But conservatives have never yet won the culture war.

When Labor is in office, the Left do their work, quietly, inside the corridors of power, to change the nature of the country. The curriculum, the universities, the ABC, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the National Museum of Australia.

They do it for posterity. When conservatives are in power, they keep busy fixing the economy, controlling the borders, maybe switching off a money tap or two at the ABC.

But they are too polite to seize the narrative of history. In the culture wars it's always two steps forward for the Left. The best conservatives have ever managed is to maintain the status quo.

When the conservatives are in power, the Left make merry mischief.

They bully and bluster and fill every cultural space.

Which is why, for all their moaning, they haven't been this excited for years.

Madame Gillard's "John"

No dragons live in PM's perilous fiscal fantasy

Miranda Devine 
The Daily Telegraph 
May 01, 2013 12:00AM

'IMAGINE a wage earner, John, employed in the same job throughout the last 20 years.

"For a period in 2003 to 2007 every year his employer gave him a sizeable bonus. He was grateful but in his bones knew it wouldn't last. The bonuses did stop and John was told his income would rise by around five per cent each year over the years to come. That's the basis for his financial plans.

"Now, very late, John has been told he won't get those promised increases for the next few years but his income will get back up after that to where he was promised it would be. What is John's rational reaction?"

This was Julia Gillard's patronising attempt to explain her government's latest budget crisis. In a speech this week the Prime Minister used "John" to explain why it's the fault of everyone but her feckless spendthrift government that there will be a $12 billion revenue shortfall in the year she promised a surplus.

"John" appears to be the human embodiment of her government, two weeks before Wayne Swan hands down his fifth Budget, complete with its fifth deficit.

In the real world, a man who found his income reduced would tighten his belt. His family would look at the household budget and figure out what luxuries to give up.

Lamb might be off the menu, for instance, as would the Foxtel subscription, and the HCF membership. The holiday overseas might become a trip to the Forster caravan park. Private schools would have to wait until Year 11.

This is the sort of thrift Australian families have practised as a prudent response to global economic uncertainty, job insecurity, and a mercurial government, with household savings tripling in two years.

But the Prime Minister scoffs at such parsimony.

In "John's world" - that arcadia of protected jobs, plenty of cash and government benefits that flow like water, when John's income is cut, he doesn't curb spending.

Eat two-minute noodles for dinner? Take his kids out of private school?Perish the thought, says the PM.

He borrows money to keep his "family and lifestyle intact" because tomorrow is always another day of free money.

You can only understand John's behaviour if, like everyone in government, the public service, academia and a good deal of the media, he has a protected job sheltered from the disciplines of the market.

In the real world, mistakes have consequences, dad loses his job, incomes fall, people can't pay their mortgages, kids are pulled out of private school and belts are tightened by necessity.

The division in Australian society exploited by Gillard and Swan is not between left and right, haves and have-nots or even insiders and outsiders.

It's between those who have protected incomes and those who are exposed to the real economy - the small business owners who create wealth, the PAYE employees who work for the wealth creators.

In John's world, an 18-year-old working as a "glassie" on Anzac Day in a Balmain pub earns $550 for 11-hours work, because his employer is obliged to pay double time and three quarters under the Fair Work Act.

The result is that youth unemployment has skyrocketed to an average of 18 per cent and students can't find casual jobs once taken for granted by their parents. Only pizza delivery and off-the-books labouring is immune from the new harsh economic realities.

In the real world, bustling suburban high streets have become ghost towns on Sundays because shop and restaurant owners can't afford to pay penalty rates.

In John's world this is a "fair go" for workers.

The ABC lives in John's world, which is why it received an extra $10 million this year and reflexively spruiks for the federal government.

Take, for example, Four Corners' belated discovery of more than 1000 asylum seeker children in detention, after five years of see-no-evil journalism.

During the Howard era it couldn't focus enough on detention centres. But apart from once in 2011, it hadn't touched the subject since 2008 when it featured the reminiscences of detention centre guards in the Howard era, starring special guest villain Philip Ruddock, who had not been immigration minister for five years.

Meanwhile, the actual Rudd government was dismantling border protection policies, with the result that a trickle of two boats per month has exploded to more than 2000 people a month - and hundreds of asylum seekers have drowned. The cost to the taxpayer is more than $2.2 billion a year.

In John's world, this is a good policy. In John's world, $6 billion thrown at schools to please militant teacher unions will fix our children's declining performance in reading and maths, when evidence around the world shows little correlation between money and educational outcomes.

In John's world, the financial woes of the federal government are the fault of John Howard and Peter Costello.

In the real world, Howard and Costello inherited a budget in deficit in 1996 and left $22 billion in surplus in 2007, plus a $60 billion future fund.

Spending has blown out by 35 per cent a year since Labor came to office. Eighty cents in every dollar of income tax goes to social welfare and the government keeps promising to spend more.

Only in John's world is this sort of profligacy sustainable.

In the real world it is the road to ruin.

Progressive's Voodoo places Girls at Risk

Miranda Devine: Generation of girls at risk

Miranda Devine 
The Sunday Telegraph
 April 07, 2013 12:00AM

There is one domain in which woman have always reigned supreme, and that is the business of coupling, procreating and child rearing.

Therefore, if you influence women, you influence the fabric of society. Which is why feminism has been such an important weapon in the armament of the left.

But feminism has now gone well beyond redressing genuine inequality to advocating behaviours and attitudes that damage women, and threaten the health of society.

The evidence is there to be seen for anyone who cares to look, in the annals of psychological disorders that afflict so many young women today.

The zipless f ... eulogised by yesterday's feminists has become the norm for Gen Y in the form of a too-often joyless, mechanical and regret-filled hook-up culture.

Sex and human connection, let alone love and compassion, have effectively been decoupled in the hook-up culture, in which dating has given way to no-strings-attached physical encounters.

The term "hook-up" is exactly as dehumanising it sounds, and a fascinating study by the American Psychological Association last month shows how disconnected are the sexual behaviours and private internal desires of young men, and especially young women.

Yet the establishment's concern and outrage is marshalled against the rare piece of advice from elders that might offer an antidote to despair.

For instance, last week, worldwide mockery and condemnation fell upon Susan Patton, a 1977 graduate of America's Ivy League Princeton university, and a mother of two sons.

Her crime was to write a letter to the college newspaper exhorting women to marry young, and preferably a Princeton man, before they graduate.

"For most of you, the cornerstone of your future and happiness will be inextricably linked to the man you marry, and you will never again have this concentration of men who are worthy of you," she wrote.

She is right.

The fact is that no matter how much we change the social script by which we all live our lives, the mathematics of fertility don't change and IVF is no solution for ageing eggs if you want your own genetic offspring.

Rather than angrily denying the existence of this inconvenient fact, young women are better advised, during that extended period of singledom between early puberty and late marriage, to work out what they really want out of life. And older women owe it to them to speak the unfashionable truth.

To her credit, Patton has stood her ground, pointing out that work-life balance is not just about work.

The other piece of rare courageous advice rejected by the establishment comes from Tony Abbott.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott and his daughters.

Three years ago he said that his three daughters should consider virginity a "gift" that should not be given away lightly.

For this he was pilloried by the usual scolding fem set, led enthusiastically by Julia Gillard, who said the Opposition Leader's comments confirmed women's worst fears about him.

"Australian women want to make their own choices and they don't want to be lectured to by Mr Abbott," she said at the time.

Well, last week, in this newspaper, Abbott's daughters Frances, 21, and Bridget, 20, confirmed their father's comment had been "misconstrued," and that it was not about controlling women but respecting them.

Yet in this month's Madison Magazine  panel, in which Abbott took part with Sarah Murdoch, me, and feminist academic Kate Gleeson, Gleeson sneeringly asked what his advice would have been to his sons, if he had them.

"Don't use people," was his reply, the corollary to his earlier advice to his daughters, which was "Don't be used".

This irritated feminists, too, because it implied that men are the users, whereas the theory is that women equally are capable of using people for their own sexual ends.

Somehow this perverse aspiration has become morally desirable.

The Sexualisation of our Children

This is the sensibility that underpins the hook-up culture that is the defining sexual norm of our time.

In a new book, The End of Sex - How Hook-up Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled and Confused About Intimacy, Donna Freitas has compiled eight years of research into a revealing exposition of Gen Y life.

"Amid the seemingly endless partying ... lies a thick layer of melancholy, insecurity and isolation that no one can seem to shake. College students have perfected an air of bravado about hook-up culture though a great many of them wish for a world of romance and dating."

Among her most striking findings from American college campuses is that 41 per cent of students "expressed sadness or even despair" about hooking up.

These students suspected it robbed them of healthy, fulfilling sex lives, positive dating experiences and loving relationships.

At its very worst, hooking up made them feel ''miserable'' and ''abused''.

Another revealing aspect of Freitas' book is the extent to which feminist writers claim hook-up culture is "empowering" for women, despite evidence of the opposite.

She quotes Hanna Rosin's book The End of Men which claimed "the perfunctory nature of sex in a hookup is essential to support a wider landscape of sexual empowerment among today's young women".

Ambivalent sex is useful, according to this theory, because it does not tie a young woman down.

Meantime, the article Sexual Hook-up Culture in The American Psychological Association's review, Monitor,  shows the disturbing psychological consequences, for both men and women.

 They include unwanted sex (mostly alongside alcohol and substance abuse), profound regret and feelings of shame and depression.

Saddest of all is that while most men and women did not expect a romantic relationship as the outcome of a hook-up, fully one third of men and almost half of women "ideally wanted" such an outcome.

Anyone who has much to do with young people will have observed a sadness beneath the polished, perfected surface of Gen Y's smiling girls.

As the mother of boys I have had only glimpses of the existential pain of young women but it is enough to make my female heart ache.