Dick Smith’s amusing News rant. Small Australia advocate Dick Smith’s call for a Frank Bainimarama-style ejection of News Limited from Australia is worth re-hashing in full. Yesterday on Helen Dalley’s Sky News show, the gadgets millionaire went on the warpath, claiming that The Australian had become so wedded to the big end of town’s cheap labour addiction that it had become an “evil empire”.

“We should follow Fiji and tell them to rack off from this country,” boomed Smith, in an apparent endorsement of the Fijian military’s muffling of News’ Fiji Times. Amid attempts from Dalley to move the debate along, Smith said Rupert’s local enforcers were stifling debate:

“About six months when I asked why doesn’t anyone talk about population I was told, ‘oh, the Murdoch media, they’ll attack you if you mention population’. Well since then we’ve got a lot of people talking about population, that’s at least a start but I’m really disappointed with what’s been happening … I’ve since been told that if you say that the Murdoch press and all the big capitalists will go absolutely berserk.”

At this point, Dalley intervened: “Let’s take it away from the Murdoch press”. Unperturbed, the retail king went on to sledge The Oz‘s national affairs correspondent Jennifer Hewett for her apparent ‘growth or die’ stance during an interview with Richard Glover on ABC radio. Smith also drew attention to News’ joint-ownership of Sky (through its UK parent BSkyB),  a fact bizarrely denied by Dalley when she retorted the station wasn’t “owned by Murdoch”.

Ironically, it has been the News tabloids’ conflation of the unrelated immigration and boat people debates that probably constitutes much of the popular mandate for Smith’s agenda. — Andrew Crook

Leaflet Watch. Here’s one from the Citizens Electoral Council of Australia snapped by a Crikey reader on Lygon Street in East Brunswick, in the seat of Wills:

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According to the Moreland Leader, Kelvin Thomson lodged a complaint with the AEC last week on the grounds that the posters were unauthorised and had been illegally posted in public places. Thomson told the Leader that the CEC had “no credibility whatsoever” and a “long history of making bizarre and fanciful statements.”

Craig Isherwood, the CEC’s candidate for Wills and the man behind the poster, was unapologetic: “Thomson is the flag-bearer for the macabre movement to cut down on the number of people living in Australia, but he’s squealing because the CEC is challenging him on it.” Labor currently holds Wills by a 22.4% margin.  — Tom Cowie

Liberals can’t make David Barker disappear. The Liberal Party has well and truly washed its hands of dis-endorsed Liberal candidate David Barker, after he made anti-Muslim statements last week.

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Barker’s pages on the Liberal Party website and Facebook have both been removed, as the party tries to limit the fallout from the damaging claims. Unfortunately, the whiteout doesn’t quite extend to Google’s cache where Crikey happily took a screenshot of some of Barker’s best moments for posterity. Below is Barker after a particularly strong rush of blood on Cory Bernardi’s official Facebook page in April. — Tom Cowie

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