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I’d think even a few Spencer St Pravda readers will reply to this letter to The Age today, pointing out a glaring omission:

What cover-up?
I AM trying to determine just what it is that the Opposition claims the Government is trying to cover up. I have seen no damning statements by any minister that require cleaning up, such as “children overboard”.
In fact, it seems the Government is being accused of a cover-up because it is saying little and letting the relevant authorities give out details. We know a boat was intercepted, there was a fire, the boat sank and the survivors were rescued. Unless there is something of some magnitude that deserves more scrutiny, I see nothing that merits trashing normal procedure in reporting these events.
Geoff McQuinn, Morwell

Unless there is something of some magnitude that deserves more scrutiny, I see nothing that merits trashing normal procedure in reporting these events.

Um, five deaths are not of sufficient magnitude to deserve more scrutiny. Nice one, Geoff.

Chivalry is not dead. It’s just had a few too many, reports the Geelong Advertiser.

At least one driver may have considered himself unlucky after he decided to get behind the wheel to save his wife from a drink-drive charge. He blew 0.09, while she recorded a blood alcohol reading of 0.04 after requesting a test.

A phenomenon is sweeping the US and I suspect it will surface here in the next few months. It’s called manmade global warming scepticism.

Just one-out-of-three voters (34%) now believe global warming is caused by human activity, the lowest finding yet in Rasmussen Reports national surveying. However, a plurality (48%) of the Political Class believes humans are to blame.

Well, the politicians and their followers would say that, wouldn’t they? They’re the fools who hitched their colours to a flimsy mast when the winds of evidence were hardly blowing.
It’s going to be fun watching Rudd, Wong and Garrett try and Houdini their way out of their stupid, unworkable commitments.
Coming to a theatre near you: The Wriggles.

Now that the Rudd government has an awkward issue that even lapdog sections of the media can’t bury, it is playing the old shut the eyes and make it go away game.
Four days now and still they won’t tell us what happened. Weren’t there RAN personnel on board? Haven’t they got interpreters to question the victims? Doesn’t the government share the people’s need to know what happened?
Or could it be the government knows full well what occurred and is still working on a method of spinning it away?
Won’t work Rudd, no matter how much you abuse your staff.

UPDATE:
Well, this is what sources are saying and boy does it make Rudd look a goose.

Defence sources have also told The Sunday Age it was likely the men never paid people smugglers for their voyage to Ashmore Reef but arranged Indonesian fishermen to take them in the wooden boat that exploded, killing five men and injuring 31 others, a dozen of them critically.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Friday launched a vicious attack on people smugglers, describing them as the “vilest form of human life”.
Defence sources say it is believed the asylum seekers spilled diesel and petrol on the boat and planned to threaten to ignite it if the two navy ships at Ashmore Reef towed them back out of Australian waters rather than take them to the immigration detention centre on Christmas Island.
“I think that the investigation that is under way will show the fuel was ignited unintentionally … probably by one of the men smoking,” a well-placed defence source told The Sunday Age.

The ABC had a peculiar slant on the queue-jumpers boat fire when the story first broke.
On Thursday around mid-day, the Herald Sun reported WA Premier Colin Barnett’s claim at a press conference of the asylum seekers’ boat being doused with petrol.
At the same time the ABC site was reporting that Barnett said the fire was due to an oil spill.
A Google for the ABC report later revealed they’d covered their tracks and there was no mention of the oil spill.
However, this extract from the original report (with ABC accreditation at the bottom) on another news site contains the original “oil spill” claim.

Mr Barnett said the fire around the boat was caused by an oil spill.

How the heck anyone could interpret “an oil spill” from Barnett’s statement is beyond me. But then I once thought the ABC stood for the highest standards in journalism

The nation’s highest quality broadsheet, The Australian, has emphatically thrown down the gauntlet for more debate on the manmade global warming theory with a hard-hitting editorial on the hypothesis.

But to assume we know how much the planet will warm this century and what effect this will have is a matter of faith, not reason. And faith-based research is less science than secular religion.

Elsewhere The Oz reports that alarm over Antarctic ice cap shrinkage is unwarranted and gives Professor Ian Plimer’s sceptical book on manmade global warming an even-handed review.

The pressure is now on other media to at least accept that the debate is not over and the “consensus” is more likely an agreement among the self-interested.
On cue, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Miranda Devine also gives Plimer a fair hearing.
Prediction: By the end of 2010 there will be significant pockets of manmade warming caused by blushing faces in government, academia and media.

Anna Bligh’s government and extremist Greens would no-doubt have you believe they are progressives in every sense of the word, particularly toward the indigenous population.
That is, of course, as long as the noble savages know their place and don’t aspire to awful materialistic things like jobs and wages.
Courageous Noel Pearson has exposed the urban left’s latent racism in his customary florid style:

ABORIGINAL leader Noel Pearson yesterday accused Queensland Premier Anna Bligh of “urinating on the rights” of Aboriginal people and treating them “much worse than even (Joh) Bjelke-Petersen would have done”.

The socialists have declared three far north Queensland rivers to be “wild”, effectively banning Aboriginal communities from using the resources to create jobs and training.

Mr Pearson said the rivers were pristine because Aboriginal people had kept them that way for the past 100 years.
“This legislation means there is no way future generations can establish enterprises such as aquaculture or fishing and tourism lodges,” he said. “It … runs counter to the welfare reform we are trying to introduce in Cape York communities where locals will be encouraged to become part of the real economy.”

Mr Pearson has to understand the whole nation is now under illustrious Queensland leadership and Rudd’s real economy consists of hand-outs until you run out of other people’s money to give away.

An exasperated sporting club official suspects council meatheads who find problems instead of solutions at every turn are the price we pay for recent prosperity.
“All the smarties have been picked up by private industry,” he opined recently. “And local government gets the dopes.”
Regrettably, advancement of mediocrity goes beyond local government. All the way to national advisory bodies.
Consider this rolled gold piece of idiotic advocacy:

TODDLERS in daycare should be given early career counselling, Principals Australia has told the committee drawing up the nation’s first childcare curriculum.

The biggest worry is that someone at senior government level is taking this seriously. If I’d read it on Wednesday morning, it would have been copied and pasted into the April Fool’s Day file.

Rudd’s notorious volatility gets an airing in the Herald Sun today:

KEVIN Rudd has apologised for reducing a young female RAAF cabin attendant to tears in a dispute over a meal.

Mind you, he apologised only after the two month-old incident was reported and only “for any offence he might have caused”.
He certainly didn’t apologise for being an ill-mannered, bullying bore with little respect for the nation’s defence forces staff.

Comments to the Herald Sun have ranged from furious to unconvincing attempts to write off the report as an inconsequential beat-up.
Loved this couple:

On the one side you have supporters of the party of these out of touch, multi-millionaire, stupid, "born to rule", arrogant, silvertail toffs beating up on the workers all the time and then telling lie after lie, and on the other side you have the coalition.

Here’s how it really went:
”DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?!!”
“Er, I’ll try to help you sir”.
Steward picks up intercom:
“Could the captain please come to the business class cabin. We have an arrogant, bad-tempered, earwax-munching twerp here who doesn’t know who he is.”

And this one from Bolta’s triggered a chuckle:

On further reflection, too bad he wasn’t on a herc:
Prime Minister: “Cabin thing, yes you!, why is the cargo ramp going down?, why are we starting to climb?, I demand an explanation, I’m the PRIME MINISTER !!”
Shortly followed by the sound of an unclipped seat sliding out the rear of the aircraft. Ramp back up, flight levelled off. Hi Fives all round. The ADF saves Australia !