When tough times come, Saint Anna stands tall but Senator Bob blunders on

BOB the Brave justifies calling on the coal industry to foot the bill for Queensland's floods.

Greens leader Bob Brown on Sky News yesterday:

[IT] takes some guts to be able to speak directly about the causal factors in great tragedies like this. There's very little doubt that the burning of fossil fuels is responsible for the hottest oceans we've ever seen off Australia, which in turn the scientists are saying very clearly is responsible for the quite extraordinary and harrowing floods that we've seen.

Queensland's Natural Resources Minister Stephen Robertson on ABC radio yesterday:

TO go out there at this point in time and point the finger in particular directions is not good science and I don't think the debate about climate change is particularly well served by those more emotional outbursts that we have been seeing from some individuals.

Coalition regional development spokesman Barnaby Joyce gives Bob Brown a history lesson on ABC radio yesterday:

IN 1893, the flood gauge on the Brisbane River reached 8.35m, so was the coal industry responsible for that as well?

Saint Anna? Sue Lappeman in Saturday's Gold Coast Bulletin:

AS I sat about a metre away from Premier Anna Bligh this week during one of her regular press conferences, broadcast live over the internet and television, I was monitoring Twitter. The instant commentary on her performance was astonishing.

Besides the truly extraordinary ability to now get immediate feedback via social networking sites, the personal response to Ms Bligh's addresses was amazing.

At one point, on the verge of tears, she apologised for getting emotional. Instantly dozens tweeted to tell her not to apologise for being human and offering to give her a hug. When a journalist who deals with the Premier on a daily basis jokingly called for her to hurry up before another presser, Facebook lit up as outraged viewers railed against the "rude" man who had dared to challenge Saint Anna.

Mungo MacCallum goes one better on Crikey.com yesterday:

FROM being a political pariah, whipped by the media and scorned by the voters, [Bligh] had surpassed St Mary MacKillop as a model of virtue and rectitude. The transformation has been one of those rare political miracles that is just too good to be true. Much too good, and it probably isn't.

Political sins aside, there is still much to deify. ABC Radio 4BC's Greg Cary blogging on The Courier-Mail last Friday:

PRIOR to the devastating events in Qld in recent weeks Anna Bligh was perceived (rightly) as a bad premier leading a dreadful government.

She has since emerged as a woman and leader of strength, eloquence, clear-sightedness and empathy with a great love for her state and her people. This has been Anna Bligh absent the party that has become such a millstone around her neck. It has been an extraordinary transformation.

This is not the first time we have seen such things. Without World War II, Churchill would have disappeared without trace, [US president] Harry Truman would have been thrown out in 1948. Each rose above their past and public expectations. As did [Labor prime minister] John Curtin. Anna Bligh has done the same.

Last Wednesday's editorial in The Daily Telegraph:

AUSTRALIA'S latest heroes wear reflective vests and never sleep. They are our inheritors of Churchill's fearless tradition. To paraphrase from his speech, possibly the most famous of World War II:

They shall fight to the end, they shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength, and they shall defend their treasured Queensland.

Whatever happened to the "great moral challenge of our generation?" Kevin Rudd in the weekend's National Times:

CHALLENGE number seven embraces food security, energy security and climate change.

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