BRONWYN Bishop promised to be impartial as Speaker. Rupert Murdoch promised to be a climate change evangelist. They didn't really say that, did they?
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November 11, 2013. Bronwyn Bishop had just been "dragged", with the traditional display of reluctance, to the Speaker's chair. She had also just declared that, unlike some previous speakers, she would continue to attend Liberal party-room meetings.
For blatant partisanship, no Speaker, surely, has matched Bronwyn Bishop. When she promised to act impartially in 2013, could she have meant it? What was she thinking?
Now, of course, Bishop's expertise on matters parliamentary is legendary. Indeed, she considers it entirely proper that the taxpayer should cough up for her to fly hither and yon, just so she can dispense to Liberal Party faithful a sliver of her prodigious understanding of the history and workings of the Westminster system.
Of course, Bishop is in good company when it comes to demonstrating a gulf between promise and performance.
Just days ago, editors at Rupert Murdoch's Herald Sun and Daily Telegraph would have giggled maniacally, I presume, as their graphics artists came up with front pages showing zombie Bill Shorten climbing from the grave of the carbon tax. And when Shorten had the further effrontery to propose that 50 per cent of Australia's electricity should be derived from renewables by 2030, The Australian couldn't find enough pundits to condemn him.
Never mind that no one has a clue what the comparative cost of coal-fired and renewable energy will be by 2030 – but modelling done for the government's expert panel on the Renewable Energy Target (chaired by the impeccably sceptical Dick Warburton) showed that maintaining the current target to 2030 is likely to reduce electricity bills rather than increase them, and that in any scenario "the impact on retail electricity prices is small".
But it's no surprise. At least since Tony Abbott won the leadership of the Liberal Party, News Corporation Australia has joined him in demonising a carbon price and championing the interests of the fossil fuel producers, and has outdone him in casting whatever doubt can be found or invented on climate change science.
And yet, in 2007, Murdoch announced his conversion to the climate change cause. "I am no scientist," he told the staff of News Corporation worldwide in a famous video.
"But I do know how to assess a risk – and this one is clear. Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats."
Ah, well. News Corporation Australia is well used to saying one thing and doing another. After all, its Professional Conduct Policy states that "publications should take reasonable steps to ensure reports are accurate, fair and balanced".
When it comes to its coverage of Australian politics, never mind climate change, that's as weird as Bishop promising to be impartial.