Greens hubris a tour de force

It was all about Green hubris and another pre-announcement of an announcement amongst commentators this week, with a host of opinionators lining up to tell Bob Brown to pull his head in and laughing at him for trying to get a President elected.

The media continues to forget that Bob Brown is talking to his own electorate, not everyone — and the President stunt was well timed to show them that the Greens by no means “control” the Senate, just days before he has to sign on to a huge amount of concessions far short of what his constituents want on the carbon price.

And while I’m on it, all the comparisons to the Democrats are awfully silly as well — the Democrats had no ideological purpose other than to be an effective umpire, whereas the Greens are probably the only party these days that does have an ideological purpose. At least half of the Greens vote is probably unshakeable, and possibly more, so talkback comperes can feel safe in the knowledge they will have the Greens to kick around for a long time yet.

The carbon price predictably dominated the first week of the new political reality, with the media focus once again largely being on the tactics rather than the issues, as the Government pre-announced it would be announcing the detail on Sunday, allowing the Opposition to claim running away from Parliament and confusion on the handling of transport fuel bringing back talk of the infamous GST birthday cake.

We add online social media to broadcast social media starting this week, and there’s a clear theme of familiarity breeding contempt, with Julia Gillard leading the volume on radio while Tony Abbott is clearly most mentioned online.

Contador and his team have had a shocker of a start to the Tour and Cadel added the psychological boost of the stage victory last night to his team’s perfect start. Over 2,500 kms and a couple of dozen alpine peaks still to go…easy.