Kevin Rudd, first of all to the news out of Brisbane this afternoon, the planning for joint military training for interdiction of — potentially, of course — North Korean vessels. Does the Labor Party support this?

OK, but if both those matters can be dealt with, do you agree with this? Would you agree that we can’t afford to do nothing when it comes to North Korea, particularly in the wake of the news that’s come out of South Korea in the last 24 hours?

But hang on, where is the truth in doubt here? The PM said correctly today that the Government’s case for being part of the coalition did not rest on the uranium question exclusively?

Hang on, Kevin Rudd. At the time when the PM made the statement to Parliament in early February, he was acting on the known information at the time. It wasn’t a month later, it wasn’t until March, rather, this year, that the IAEA went to the UN and said, “These documents are forged,” and equally, the PM today cited the fact that there was separate British intelligence about this.

Again, John Howard said not a key piece of information, he says, that in fact, what ONA had in January was one sentence in an 86-page document.

By the way, you didn’t disagree with that. Alexander Downer said on this program last night there was an international consensus about Saddam’s arsenal and you were part of that?

But can I say that’s a very loose allegation. What is it you are really claiming?

The number of journalists, for instance, who regularly switch from reporting politics to being politicians or their flunkeys is extraordinary. I speak, of course, as someone who twice worked for Labor himself.

But add to them the other members of this cultural elite - the teachers, preachers, ad men, lawyers, broadcasters, political flacks and other species of word-wranglers - and it’s clear politics is increasingly run by a same-same class of chatterers.

Take Victoria: Our last three premiers have been, in order, a teacher, an ad man, and another teacher. Our last five Opposition leaders include three former teachers and a real estate agent.

It’s the same story around the country. Of our eight state and territory leaders, three once were journalists, two lawyers, one a teacher and two union officials and political advisers. Words are their business.

Too much of this can be suffocating. We have now a collective of politicians whose colleagues and advisers sound just like them, and whose doings are reported by people who sound just like them, too.

Here is the Information Class talking to itself, while outsiders must shout to get in a word.

However, if Andrew Bolt has his way, apparently the PM’s son’s new girlfriend is a secret electoral weapon for daddy’s campaign.

"Just the news to revamp the image of John Howard when he’s under such assault from a younger, fresher rival"

Wtf? How does this make any sense at all?

Kicking The Bucket [or: I clumsily poured water over myself and it's Steve Bracks' fault for not building a dam!]

There went the phone inside, and me still stumbling out in the dark with another two buckets of the kids’ bath water for parched plants I can barely see.

Back inside for yet another load, my pants drenched and feet trailing slush from back door to bath...

I’ll be only too glad to put them down for an hour so I can tell you exactly what I think.

Just call.

This strikes me as fundamentally dishonest. It is not a nine-year-old boy that is awaiting trial on charges of carrying unlicenced freckles, but an adult who has openly acknowledged he trained with al Qaeda.

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."

Let me make a few things instantly clear. I am NOT suggesting David Hicks is like a Hitler, despite his avowed dislike of the Jews he’s claimed run the world. Hicks has not, to my knowledge so far, killed a single person, and may well have served long enough already in jail, even if much of what is alleged against him is true.

No, I am not trying to compare Hicks to Hitler...

Tim Lambert writes to me on October 6: [The new IPCC report] does not predict sea level rises of 14-43cm. You seem to be relying on an inaccurate story in the Australian.

The IPCC report has since been released, and gives six possible scenarios of sea level rises, the highest of which predicts a maximum rise of 59cm, not 43.

We'd rather die than build a dam

Well, I’m really speaking for the green-obsessed Labor Government, of course, which is fiddling while Melbourne’s gardens burn:

[Terrible statistic about how little water we have because of the drought]

For four years or more this Government has been warned to dam well do something. Now it’s close to too late, if no good rains come.

WHY is it, asks British journalist Nick Cohen, that apologies for a militant Islam, which stands for everything the liberal Left is against, come from the liberal Left?

Why are you as likely to read about the alleged conspiracy of Jews controlling American foreign policy in a literary journal as in a neo-Nazi hate sheet?

Why, after the bomb attacks in the London underground, did left-leaning British newspapers run pieces excusing the suicide bombers, these same young men who were motivated by “a psychopathic theology from the ultra-Right”?

Why, in short, have Left and Right changed places?