Belatedly, the sound of crickets

Thursday, June 12, has been what used to be known in newsrooms as “a great list” — lots of good stories to fill tomorrow’s newspaper or today’s home page. All day the SMH and The Age have been beating the Abbott drum, insisting he is friendless on the international stage for his climate denialism. And friendless amongst Australia’s youth as well. Oh, and teachers loathe him too, the rotten big-eared bastard.

All in all, by Fairfax standards the sort of lovely day when an editor can turn his bicycle toward home, genuflect before the portrait of Bob Brown in the hallway and tuck into dinner — organic, of course — satisfied that no worthwhile stories have gone unreported.

And as of 4.21 pm that would have been correct, for it was then, and only then, that Fairfax finally posted its first report on the appearance of Julia Gillard’s light-fingered former consort, Bruce Wilson, before the Royal Commission into union corruption. That’s pretty late in the day for a ‘news’ organisation to be informing its readers of a hearing that brimmed from the start with accusations, long silence and denials as the evidence was tendered, lots and lots of denials in the face of lots and lots of evidence. Even the ABC was quicker off the mark, posting its report at 1.28pm, with successive updates as Wilson’s candour was called into question.

But Fairfax knows what its readers want — apart from no-cost uni degrees, gay marriage and a jubilant Gaia, that is — so while the belated report read as a manifest of Wilson’s many denials, the questions put to him about renovations to his ex-squeeze’s home, who paid for them and where the money came from went largely unmentioned.

Those who want to know what went on at the Commission will learn more, and learn of it much sooner, by checking Michael Smith’s blog.

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