Saint Adam of the Slant

Less honoured than once was the case, Saint Simeon Stylites spent 47 years sitting on a pole, whence he delivered sermons and hectored passersby for their godless ways. Today, of course, he would find himself in breach of council bylaws and, were he to lift up his heart and everything else in his native Syria, the Prophet’s more ardent followers would leave only his head atop the pole and discard the rest.

Times have changed, but not perhaps by as much as some might imagine. Take Fairfax Media’s Adam Gartrell,  a sermonizing poll-sitter extraordinaire. Back before the recent election, Gartrell reported with the full force of his journalistic authority that Malcolm Turnbull was in all sorts of trouble in his seat Wentworth, where voters were said to be turning against him. His source for that scoop was a ReachTel poll whose implications he summarised thus:

Mr [Evan] Hughes believes the Wentworth polling says a lot about Mr Turnbull’s leadership. “The people of Wentworth aren’t shifting their votes because they’ve changed,” Mr Hughes told Fairfax Media. “They’re shifting their votes because Malcolm Turnbull’s just not the man he used to be. Old Malcolm used to voice Wentworth’s beliefs but he doesn’t stand for those principles anymore.”

Only well into his reporting did Gartrell explain that the quoted Mr Hughes had a particular interest in the Wentworth contest: He was Turnbull’s Labor opponent.

Today in the Sunday Age and Sun-Herald Saint Adam of the Slant is once again explaining the world from atop his latest poll, this time via a homily that suggests the Turnbull government — apparently Wentworth voters paid no heed to the Fairfax hack’s prognostications — should ally itself with the Greens in order to get trickier pieces of legislation passed into law, allowing that it cannot get Labor’s support.

As seems to be his custom, Gartrell drops the pertinent fact that this particular poll was commissioned by the Australia Institute into his fourth paragraph. That would be the same Australia Institute which Clive Hamilton, Greens candidate and full-blown eco loon, once headed. As to the Institute’s other green luminaries, follow this link to read the backgrounds of staffers and board. Seldom outside a Kensington or Balmain dinner party will you find so much self-righteous incoherence assembled under the one roof.

Gartrell’s story can be read in full via the link below. But why would you bother?

— roger franklin

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