It is, I suppose, the role of a Government to find someone to blame when it oversees a wreck largely of its own making, but it’s not the public’s role to believe it just because the Government says it. The Australian economy has been kept on course through the highest terms of trade on record and a commodity boom made in China, but with it coming apart at the seams they are down to congratulating themselves on a fine performance in getting interest rates to fall when the reason for the fall is the rapidly softening economy they have so incompetently taken down.

But what has cheered me some has been watching the Alan Jones business unfold because it does appear that this ALP meme has been comprehensively rejected on the right side of the divide in spite of the tremendous media beat up. This is part of what I think is a larger story in which the ancestral media are no longer able to call the shots in the way they once did. It was a private meeting, the comment was universally recognised as beyond the pale, Jones is not a spokesman for the Liberal Party and he apologised as soon as he heard himself saying what he said. No one defended Jones’ comment, least of all Tony Abbott.

There were a couple of letters to the editor in The Australian that I thought captured the difference. These followed an article by Janet Albrechtsen headlined, “Selective moral outrage of the media”, an interesting piece to find within the media itself:

THANK you for Janet Albrechtsen’s counter-balancing piece. I was starting to worry I was the only one who could see through it all. The hypocrisy of the Labor mouthpieces and the ABC’s manufactured outrage has been breathtaking.

I disagreed with what Alan Jones said, too. But in view of the generally nasty level of rhetoric from Labor, I sometimes wish the conservatives would get some gumption and throw a bit back occasionally. After all, it’s only politics, isn’t it?

And then this:

A MAN is publicly crucified for days over one poorly chosen word in an hour-long speech to Liberal university students at a private function. Aren’t universities the places where people speak out?

Yes, the remark was over the top, but it should be considered in context. Did the hurt come from a private comment to a small and contained audience or its public disclosure?

On the premise that any publicity is good publicity, a radio station may well have gained listeners and its advertisers increased customers. And the public attention may just encourage more Australians to give serious thought to our future government.

The power of the press has been a tide on its way out for quite a while, going back to the universal backing of the republican cause having had no obvious effect on the outcome. The Government does, of course, hate to see its failings brought to the attention of the nation, but the reason such reports are so devastating is because almost everywhere you point your torch you find that what the Government has does has almost invariably made matters worse.