Now let's get this straight, is that the one starring Lisa McCune or Scott Morrison?

SO that's how the Greens mix fact with fiction on the high seas.

SO that's how the Greens mix fact with fiction on the high seas.

Senator Sarah Hanson-Young to Mike Pezzullo, CEO, Customs and Border Protection Service, at a Senate committee, January 31:

HANSON-YOUNG: How come the Channel 7 show Border Security can show people arriving (perhaps dodgily) at Australian airports but it's not OK to see asylum-seekers arrive by boat ... We have a TV show publicising techniques you are using for border security at airports. We have another TV show, of course, about coastguards. There does seem to be a bit of a double standard.

Pezzullo: Sorry senator, the TV show about the coastguards? Is that the fictional Sea Patrol program?

Hanson-Young: In relation to fishing boats and so forth.

Pezzullo: We collaborate with the Channel Seven Group of companies on Border Security ...

Hanson-Young: Regardless, you have just admitted to having a deal with one television show where they are allowed to have access.

Pezzullo: Just let me check with my director of media ... We have no arrangement with any other TV show I am unaware of? Good, thank you.

Columnist Joe Hildebrand tweets:

MAN, after seeing Sarah Hanson-Young's reaction to Sea Patrol I hope she hasn't seen The Poseidon Adventure.

Then there are ABC production values. The Australian's columnist Niki Savva with Barrie Cassidy on ABC TV Insiders yesterday:

SAVVA: I think they should have shown a bit more scepticism about the allegations (of torture of asylum-seekers).

Cassidy: It's not for the ABC to be sceptical or make a judgment in this sense.

Talking of judgments. Cassidy with Jon Faine, ABC 774, January 30:

CASSIDY: One of the more interesting articles over the summer months was by (The Australian's) Greg Sheridan. It was essentially a comment piece, an analytical piece that led the newspaper, but the crux of it was that this government is prepared to let the relationship (with Indonesia) disintegrate because the issue is big enough to demand that price.

What Sheridan wrote, January 25:

THE Abbott government is absolutely determined to stop illegal immigrant boats coming to Australia, even if this means enduring significant damage to the relationship with Indonesia ... The Indonesian government and many Australian commentators have failed to grasp Tony Abbott's determination to stop the boats, even if this causes short-term pain with Jakarta. ... If the Abbott government succeeds in stopping the boats, there will not be any significant difficulty in repairing the relationship ... If stopping the boats meant the relationship with Jakarta totally crashed and burned, that would indeed be a serious national interest cost to Australia.

Cassidy takes another stab at it, Insiders yesterday:

I GET the impression that the politics is running very much with the government on this issue: you have a fight with Indonesia, whose side do you think the public will be on? The argument that is being put, on the front pages of The Australian, is that the government's attitude is they don't really care if the relationship with Indonesia deteriorates because this issue is so important.

Tony Abbott, January 30:

THE best thing the government can do for the workers of Australia is not to borrow money to give it to highly profitable businesses like Coca-Cola.

But it's OK to help Cadbury's? Abbott, The Australian, August 29, 2013:

I ACCEPT it's quite unusual for a national government to make direct grants to commercial operations, but Tasmania is a special case. (It) has the lowest wages, lowest GDP per head, lowest life expectancy, lowest educational attainments and ... highest unemployment by far of any state.

Or as Employment Minister Eric Abetz put it on Insiders yesterday:

WHEN you've got an economy shot, as it is in Tasmania ...