Fairfax follies: two days, two stuff-ups and a Facebook ‘false’

Fairfax follies plus blowhard Simon Chapman goes tilting at windmills — metaphorically, natch.

To get one major story political story wrong may be regarded as misfortune. Mark Kenny and Peter Martin, Fairfax Media, Tuesday:

Malcolm Turnbull is facing a perfect storm in coming weeks with … a difficult mini-budget pencilled in for October to facilitate tough policy changes … Fairfax Media understands Mr Turnbull and new Treasurer Scott Morrison are planning to bring forward the mid-year fiscal and economic outlook from its usual December release to reset key policy directions, with education and taxation among the areas set for change.

Mathias Cormann, Sky News Australia, Tuesday evening:

I don’t know where that speculation comes from … That speculation is wrong and it must be coming from people who don’t really appreciate what is involved in putting together a budget update in an orderly fashion.

Two in two days looks like carelessness. Mark Hawthorne, Fairfax Media, yesterday:

In one of his first acts after becoming Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull last week secretly suspended all work on the Abbott government’s white paper on taxation, just weeks before it was due to deliver its first preliminary report. Stunned bureaucrats at the federal Treasury, the Tax White Paper Taskforce and the Board of Taxation, were last week told work on the white paper — instigated by former treasurer Joe Hockey in 2014 — would come to a complete halt.

Turnbull, Facebook, also yesterday:

This story … is not true. We have not stopped work on the tax white paper — quite the contrary, as I said earlier in the week tax reform is at the centre of our efforts to make Australia a more innovative, productive and prosperous economy.

Semiotician vs science. University of Sydney professor of public health Simon Chapman in evidence to the Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines, June 29:

How is it that in non-Anglophone nations with large-scale wind farms like Germany, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, The Netherlands and Sweden there is little to no history of complaints?

Chapman in The Sydney Morning Herald, December 21, 2011:

I have lived and holidayed in France where turbines can be seen in many parts of the country. Public health colleagues and neighbours there looked blank when I asked about negative public opinion or health problems. Three friends who recently walked northern Spain’s pilgrims trail reported the same mystified conversations.

Feature in France’s Le Figaro magazine, September 2, Industrial wind turbines — the scandal:

On one side the heavily subsidised electricity generated by wind turbines has a good public image being considered “ecologically correct”. On the other, its … power conceals nuisances that have a multitude of conse­quences: changes to the countryside, noise, hidden illnesses, financial jealousy, devaluation of property, risk of corruption … Result: the wind turbines that on average operate at only 23 per cent of their capacity due to the intermittent nature of wind cause controversy everywhere.

Or you might be Kevin Rudd. Peta Credlin, Women of the Future awards function, Tuesday night:

If I was a guy I wouldn’t be bossy, I’d be strong. If I was a guy I wouldn’t be a micromanager, I’d be across my brief, or across the detail.

Not even a Mr? 7am news, ABC Radio National, yesterday:

Under the former prime minister Abbott …