“I have long held the view that The Age is the most left-wing newspaper in Australia – in a sense, its culture is set by Michael Leunig,” Gerard Henderson told Crikey after getting the flick from The Guardian on the Yarra.

As a Melbourne native, Henderson probably has never noticed The Age’s greatest weakness – its failure to admit that the depression of the 1890s and land crash ever happened, let alone that Marvellous Melbourne ever died.

But the Leunig metaphor is perfect. Mawkish, self-pitying, saccharine-sentimental pseudo-Christian socialist (don’t want to be too Christian though – that’s not PC) nonsense dressed up as touching profundity. Complete bollocks, in other words. Worse, it’s utterly Melbourne-centric nonsense.

Why the Sydney Morning Herald runs Leunig is anyone’s guess. Presumably it’s a cost saving measure – that other great Fairfax tradition.