Things must be desperate at the Fin when Tingle is auditioning for a job at The Australian

Political editor Laura Tingle in The Australian Financial Review on September 10:

AN unrelenting attack on the government by News [Limited] flagship The Australian was seen more as some sort of quirky breakdown in the personal relationship between Kevin Rudd and The Australian's editor-in-chief, Chris Mitchell. The anti-government position, it seems, has spread company-wide. The aggression of the News Ltd tabloids stepped up during the campaign. Papers such as Sydney's Daily Telegraph urged its readers to get rid of Labor after "the South American-style coup that ended Kevin Rudd's prime ministership".

That night on ABC1's Lateline, Tingle again stands up for justice:

WE'RE not quite sure why this is happening, but we've got to decide whether we actually confront this or whether we just let it go through to the keeper. And it's also not just Labor; it's the Greens and the independents. We've got Bob Brown now talking about how he's had enough of the way News Limited has been behaving.

Desperation to escape Fairfax leads Tingle to abandon principle yesterday:

THE Rudd government became renowned for its chaotic nature. As the parliamentary year draws to a close and Labor today celebrates the third anniversary of its return to government in 2007, the same story seems to be repeating itself. Government is often chaotic and the cabinet is facing the same strategic quagmires that saw off Kevin Rudd and emissions trading.

Wait your turn, chaps. The Fin's editorial writers also seek an escape route with yesterday's leader:

LIKE a latter-day Rex Connor, Senator Conroy, in his unshakeable conviction that he knows best, risks saddling the government with a policy that it can neither justify nor afford. We may need a national broadband network, but not this one.

Et tu, Kevin? Rudd beats up on himself on behalf of The Australian in his last address to caucus as prime minister:

THE second reason we are here is because of policy failures for which I am responsible. The first of these relates to climate change. The second policy matter I wanted to address is tax reform. The third, of course, goes to government waste and mismanagement.

The lady's not for turning. Julia Gillard in response to a question from Dennis Shanahan yesterday:

THEY breed them cynical at The Australian, don't they?

More media manoeuvrings. The Australian on Tuesday:

AUSTRALIA'S richest woman, Gina Rinehart, has shocked the media industry by taking a 10 per cent stake in Ten Network Holdings.

Revealed: actor Toni Collette's role in the deal. The ABC's Enough Rope, September 22, 2003:

ANDREW Denton: Where you shot this film was up in the Pilbara. That's Mt Newman, is it?

Collette: That's a disgusting mine where they shot a huge explosion while we were there and I just felt sick about it. Let's all rape the earth.

Denton: It felt like desecration?

The Australian, March 9, 2007, on Rinehart's father, Lang Hancock:

IT was Hancock who was always credited with discovering mountains of iron ore, at sites now famous for mines such as Mt Newman.

Andrew Bolt in Melbourne newspaper the Herald Sun yesterday:

RINEHART is on a mission. Channel 10 is just the vehicle. In fact, I believe this deal may be the start of an attempted shake-up of one of the three big free-to-air TV stations by a woman rightly alarmed that people in the eastern states have got complacent, living fatly off industries they despise and in their ignorance now threaten. This smug and deadly mindset is best symbolised by actor Toni Collette. Meanwhile, the builders are moving in on one of Collette's houses for a $2.5 million revamp that I'll bet will involve iron or steel made from Pilbara ore.

[e-mail]