Alan Kohler (Image: ABC)

And another one gone We noted earlier in the week that there are many reasons The Australian would amplify Coalition attacks on The New Daily and, by extension, industry super funds, however off they may be. It would appear Crikey‘s favourite bibliophile and the Oz‘s erstwhile business editor-at-large Alan Kohler has definitively set out which side of the debate he prefers — announcing this morning that he’s ditching the Oz for none other than The New Daily.

After the announcement Kohler clarified that he was “all in favour of not-for-profit super funds”.

ABC watch In the recent flurry of coverage about just how white the ABC line-up still is, it was interesting to note the creators of Stateless, a now AACTA-award winning ABC series about refugees whose headliners are almost exclusively white, confess: “We wouldn’t have been able to get it financed, unfortunately, unless we had white stars.”

This show was not pitched, by the way, to some ruthlessly commercial producer. Stateless got money from Screen Australia, the ABC and the South Australian Film Corporation.

Ready, aim, shoot yourself in the foot Crikey has long been completely flummoxed by the Labor Party’s insistence on attacking the Liberal Party on debt and deficit.

Even the government’s most strident opponents would concede stimulus spending was a rational response to the circumstances of 2020. But Labor just keeps on doing it. Last week Senator Katy Gallagher and now Queensland Treasurer Cameron Dick have taken bizarre cheap shots at federal and NSW (Liberal) governments respectively over their debt levels.

We’re sure all the people who relied on JobSeeker to keep them above the poverty line before it was cut are delighted Labor is choosing to attack the government for spending too much.

That was then Today The Australian’s bloviator-at-large Paul Kelly turned his beady gaze to the government’s difficulties with China.

“The once lauded China-Australia free trade agreement and the strategic partnership are deeply compromised,” he intoned, as ever like he’s just come down from a mountain with some graven tablets. “Anyone who thought a few years ago that Australia might distance itself from the US alliance to better manage China was profoundly mistaken.”

Who might have done precisely that?

Let us turn to Kelly’s column of November 10, 2014, the day after Chinese President Xi Jinping degraded our parliament with his autocratic presence. “THIS is a moment of transformation in Australia-China ties,” Kelly enthused. “There was a deeply shared Australia-China vision on display.”

Kelly couldn’t restrain himself: “Xi focused exclusively on the glorious future. He predicted the China-Australia partnership would span ‘mountains and oceans’ in an everlasting capacity … This mutual self-interest is going to pull Australia far closer into China’s orbit in coming years. And this process is being authorised by a pro-US conservative, Tony Abbott.”

On and on he went: The trade deal was a “masterstroke”. “China is playing a long and clever game with Australia … The weight of mutual self-interest will reap its own reward for China.” Still, The Australian, like the Coalition, is never wrong.

The voters of Edison County Lawyer for Michael Flynn and entire plantation of bananas Sidney Powell is continuing her struggle for justice on behalf of US President Donald Trump, who wants nothing to do with her.

In her lawsuit alleging voter fraud in Michigan, she cites a witness concerned about the returns in Edison County.

Of course, we’re concerned about the number of votes Joe Biden got in Edison County too, given there is no Edison County. Not just in Michigan, you understand. There is no such place as Edison County.

Of course, while we all have a good laugh, Trump’s people have raised up to US$170 million thanks to these baseless fraud claims — the last act of possibly the most successful small-time grifter in history.

The Streisand effect We’ve noted before that for a story it is clearly utterly furious about, the government has done essentially everything in its power to call attention to Four Corners’ “The Canberra Bubble” episode.

On the day of broadcast Coalition senators grilled representatives of the ABC about the content of the episode which, while we’re here, painted Attorney-General Christian Porter as a security-risk party boy with a long history of vile behaviour towards women, and acting Immigration Minister Alan Tudge as actively trying to cover up Porter’s indiscretions.

Now with the story buried under coverage of our tweeting war with China, the government makes sure we don’t forget by sending a bullying letter of complaint to the ABC, putting the grubby saga back on The Australian‘s front page.