Prime Minister Julia Gillard has taken aim at what she says is the "Americanisation" of Australia's rancorous political debate.

Recent anti-carbon tax rallies in Canberra and Sydney have featured coffins, "Ditch the Witch" signs, and "JuLiar" chants, in an echo of similar angry scenes at right-wing Tea Party rallies in the US.

Ms Gillard was asked at a community forum in Sydney last night whether those kinds of attacks demeaned her office and Australia's democracy.

The Prime Minister at first was a little hesitant to respond, saying her critics would target her for being thin-skinned.

"I don't like it when I get a sense of a kind of - with all apologies to our American friends - a kind of Americanisation of our debate," she said.

"It's not in us generally, I don't think, to talk about 'people's revolt' and very, very harsh words of the nature that we've seen in the public debate.

"It is in us to have a robust public debate.

"We have politicians come from overseas and look at our Question Time and go 'it's a robust go', and that is an Australian way of doing it," she said.

"I don't think it helps us as a nation deal with some complicated questions.

"I think there's a temper and tone question which, you know, we want to be uniquely our own and uniquely Australian, and I'm not sure we're seeing that on display now."

Last night on 7.30, former prime minister John Howard rejected the notion that politics was more brutal now than it has ever been.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-31/gillard-decries-americanisation-of-debate/2863460

I could agree with Rattus on this one.... The only difference is that, in the past, protests were about better justice on all front and against illegal wars issues... Now the protests are about the sensitive hip-pockets which are not plundered while being claimed to be, as if the sky was falling down... The sad part is that a political leader such as Tony Abbott is joining such groups of ignoramus ratbags who DON'T WANT TO KNOW anything but the value of their own arse...

From Tim Dunlop

...

While The Australian acknowledged no attempt was made to contact the Prime Minister's office, comment is rarely if ever sought in relation to opinion pieces," he said.

"This is a widely understood and accepted practice in journalism."

His comments almost beggar belief. Milne's "opinion piece" was based on certain claims of fact about the PM and the idea that he shouldn't seek confirmation from the subject of his article is nonsense on a stick. First-year journalism students know that they are obliged to contact their subjects under such circumstances and Milne's failure to do so is horribly compounded by Mr Hartigan's attempt to justify it.

To understand how stupid Hartigan's claim is, you only have to look to how key people at News Ltd reacted in regard to another matter of defamation.

That case involved the editor of The Australian, Chris Mitchell, and journalism academic, Julie Posetti. Posetti had tweeted a conference speech by journalist Asa Wahlquist who used to work for The Australian. Mitchell claimed the tweeted information was wrong and announced that he would sue Posetti.

Mitchell's lawyers sent Posetti a letter seeking redress. It included the following comments:

"It is apparent that Ms Wahlquist did make some of the statements whilst at the conference.

In any event, your election to publish the material in the form of Tweets without seeking to verify the material with our client has led to you being liable for those publications."

Yes, that's right. One of the things that concerned the editor of The Australian was that Posetti didn't contact him for verification. And that was in regard to the live tweeting of a conference speech!

And yet we now have John Hartigan claiming that one of News Ltd's most senior journalists wasn't really obliged to contact the PM about his now-discredited claims because it is "a widely understood and accepted practice in journalism" that "comment is rarely if ever sought in relation to opinion pieces".

Talk about double standards.

Journalism in its purest, fourth-estate manifestation may be impossible, but when leading figures at major media organisations seek to mitigate their bad behaviour by pretending that certain standards don't apply - or at least, don't apply to them - then we have reached a whole new level of failure.

If there is an inquiry into Australian media, the media will have nobody to blame but themselves.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2864816.html

Apparently Rattus-the-First — who has done a revisionist job on "Lazarus" with an extra chapter of bile — is to appear on the Screwed Report hosted by Andrew Bolt on Channel Ten this coming Sunday.

Be sure to miss it.

At last, the ABC has broadcast a program that accurately reflects the debate over climate science.

That is, a program in which a large body of eminent scientists with an overwhelming case built and tested carefully over many years using the best procedures of science meets a politically-motivated coterie of ratbags who manipulate the truth, endlessly repeat falsehoods, harass their opponents and grandstand at every opportunity.

The program in question is the episode of Crownies aired last Thursday night. In it, DPP solicitor Richard Stirling (played by Hamish Michael and one of Crownies' real stars) reluctantly has to prosecute an eminent climate scientist who allegedly punched a climate denier in the face. The denier James Watt (played with disconcerting accuracy by Richard Healy) had been harassing Professor Tim Coghburn for years, turning up at every public event to demand answers to his inane questions lifted uncritically from some denialist website.

When Watt, after disrupting a public lecture, followed Coghburn out of the venue haranguing, insulting and poking him in the chest, the scientist finally lost his rag and lashed out. Who hasn't wanted to do that?

Crownies scriptwriter Chris Hawkshaw must have attended a few public meetings to take notes on the boorish tactics of the deniers - bombastic old white blokes who stand to declaim their crazy views, insensitive to how foolish they appear and deaf to all counterarguments. Healy captures perfectly the ignorant self-certainty and Aspergerish insensitivity so typical of the breed.

I have to take my hat off to Hawkshaw. In 15 minutes of sharp dialogue and brilliant characterisation he has done more to skewer the arguments and expose the true character of climate deniers than my three books and 15 years worth of newspaper articles and public lectures.

More power to ABC TV drama. Meanwhile, over in its news and current affairs programs, the ABC continues to present the fiction that the there is a genuine debate about the science of climate change, repeatedly giving unqualified climate deniers equal time with serious scientists.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3207072.html

There are many books and articles demonstrating with precision the science of global warming, in part or in whole... but no-one has the time to read them... For many people global warming is a hoax because it does not fit our carbon economy model or is too "complicated" thus it's can't be right... Idiots.

A bit like the young team of would-be shock jocks during drive time today on Radio Rabid Liberal (conservative) North Shore FM... There, the hot topic of the afternoon's discussion was whether one should tie one's shoe-laces before going into a public toilet... Obviously the pimply teens, had not hear of global warming, have been told not to talk about global warming unless it satisfies the denialists' side or never heard of Shakespeare.

The future is bleak... and now getting damp like loose shoe laces on the wet smelly concrete floor of a public ammenity...

see toon at top....