Barnaby does a Gough. The last politician I remember to regularly find himself seriously misunderstood from the use of irony was Gough Whitlam. The big fella just couldn’t help himself and invariably there was some journalist or other wh0 decided to take his tongue-in-cheek comments seriously, which put the Labor Prime Minister in a bad light.

These days it is Barnaby Joyce who makes a dead-pan joke or two only to find some eager ABC journalist — normally one of those earnest female ones, dare I say, that current affairs programs turn out like clones — who can not see the humour in anything. The Senator’s comments on houses burning down and the appropriate use for reports of the Productivity Commission were given the full “we will take you seriously, so why did you say those things” treatment on television last night and on AM this morning.

For goodness sake, a story about this was actually still leading the news on the ABC website late this morning.

For once I find myself well and truly on Barnaby’s side. Keep going, Senator. Don’t let them turn you into that white bread politician of which you speak. We need your continued provocation. Listening to the pontificating of dour ABC women is the funniest thing in the media.

Stephen Conroy finds an ally. He might seem friendless in the face of continued attacks on his plans to restrict access to some internet sites, but broadband minister Stephen Conroy is not alone in his battle against p-rnography. Cecilia Malmström, the European Union’s Commissioner for Home Affairs, this week has  called for stronger sanctions against child s-xual abuse, s-xual exploitation and child p-rnography. That includes member states being obliged to ensure that access to websites containing child p-rnography can be blocked, “as they are very difficult to take down at the source, especially if the site is outside the EU”.

A decline in readership.  I noted recently that the London Times expects its readership to decline when it starts changing a couple of quid a week for people to read it. My guess is that they will be surprised by just how big that decline is for when you look at the list of most-read stories on the site while it is still free you will not find any of the learned commentary that Rupert Murdoch hopes people will pay for. Today’s offerings:

The ethics of capitalism. As authorities in Australia, the United Kingdom and the US ponder what action to take against Rio Tinto, the self-admitted employer of bribers and corrupters, they should consider a current case in Germany when evaluating any company denials of impropriety. In the case in question,  German engineering group Ferrostaal is under suspicion of paying bribes to secure contracts and of organising bribery payments on behalf of other firms for a fee. Capitalism is a wonderful system only in the absence of anything better.

My economist mates do it again. The economic astrologers have done it again. Retail sales in February were down an “unexpected” 1.4% in February. Unexpected? Only if you were stupid enough to put any credence in the opinion of the  business economics surveyed by Bloomberg who predicted an increase of 0.3%.

It is economists such as that lot who are advocating a further immediate increase in interest rates. I wonder what they thought of the other figures out from the Australian Bureau of Statistics this morning showing that the number of dwelling units approved fell 3.3% in February?