Piers Akerman
Stepping back after a fortnight away in the Kimberley it is easy to see why Labor spends tens of millions to manipulate opinion and why Labors media friends are so important to Julia Gillards political survival

If it werent for the media mates, the public would have seen through this mob with the speed of a startled fowl.

According to the Labor-infused media, Gillard has now satisfactorily answered all the questions about her departure from Labor law firm Slater & Gordon.

No she hasnt, she hasnt even come close.

Just because a reporter confused slush fund with trust fund in a single story doesnt change a thing.

Gillard has still not said why she told her law firm partners why she set up the slush fund for her boyfriend Bruce Wilson and his gang, or why she neglected to open a file on her action in the law firms records so her partners could be kept in the picture.

She hasnt said why she thought such a fund would be legal.

Simply claiming to be young and naïve doesnt cut it. She was a partner in a major law firm, a position not attained without effort and recognition and not one given to youngsters still wet behind the ears, as she might wish her audience to now believe.

The media has a duty to keep pursuing this issue in the public interest, as it goes to her essential character and trustworthiness.

Not that she deserves the trust of the nation after her carbon dioxide tax lie before the 2010 election.

That lie, it would seem is entirely in keeping with her political strategy.

Tell them one thing, do another, like the backflip on border security.

The tragedy is that hundreds more people will continue to die because Gillard cannot understand why the Howard-Ruddock strategy was so successful and why her limp attempt to appropriate portions of it portions she was until recently scathing about will fail.

The most recent policy reversal, to peg the carbon dioxide tax to that of the European Communitys carbon price, is another expensive disaster.

It doesnt deliver certainty markets are never certain, they must fluctuate or there is no market and the Europeans are not likely to be in the market for expensive carbon dioxide any time soon as they struggle to bail out the collapsing euro economies.

Letting a clique of Brussels bureaucrats decide the price of electricity in Australia is just not sound policy.

The whole carbon dioxide scam is looking shakier by the second, with the latest report revealing that wind farms reduce almost zero emissions.

Thats part of the price of getting into bed with the Greens who still have their hands firmly on the Labor minority government reins.

The rest will take years to add up and decades to pay for. The billions to go to the useless and historically corrupt UNs coffers, the eco-slush fund it doesnt stop.

Gillards predecessor Kevvie from Brizzie was delusional but the condition appears viral within the Labor-Green-Independent minority government.

During my break, I saw plenty of crocodiles, but none as nasty as those that infest the leadership of the ALP