A couple of days ago, Amanda Vanstone wrote this:

I am sickened by politicians who are prepared to jump on any tragedy, any person with a sad story, and use them politically. It is the politics of convenience at its worst. I am not sure why we do not see their activities as clearly and blatantly as we would if, for example, they conducted media interviews after the funerals of children stricken by disease.

But I don’t remember her saying much when this column appeared a couple of years ago:

“ONLY now are we finally meant to care that Labor’s slack border policies have killed more than 400 boat people.

Only this week does the Gillard Government finally admit that 4 per cent of the people lured into the boats do indeed drown at sea.

So who will resign over this lethal scandal?

Who will take responsibility? And why are the Greens so blind to all these corpses, bobbing in the sea?

True, the Government admitted this death toll very quietly, only in the privacy of its emergency caucus meeting on Monday, and only to scare Labor MPs into backing Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s troubled Malaysian solution.”

Andrew Bolt 14th September, 2011

Ok, so Bolt isn’t a politician. He’s a professional comedian. But I don’t remember her criticising Abbott for making this an issue:

“Abbott has been pursuing the “pink batts” issue for more than three years and made the pledge during a visit to an insulation factory in the prime minister’s Brisbane seat of Griffith on Friday.

“It’s important to get to the bottom of this for the families of the young men who died … and for all the people whose businesses have been damaged or destroyed, whose lives have been put on hold and who have lost their homes as a result of this,” Mr Abbott said.

“We’ve got to ensure that this kind of disaster never happens again.”

Four insulation workers died during the scheme’s rollout in Queensland and NSW.

It was put in place during Mr Rudd’s first term as prime minister, as a part of a national stimulus package to keep the economy ticking over.

But Mr Abbott argues the scheme is an indictment of Mr Rudd’s poor policy making and leadership.”

SBS 26th August, 2013

Ah, but I guess that’s different. Not sure why exactly, but I’m sure we’ll hear something like it’s ok, because Labor were DIRECTLY TO BLAME for those deaths, whereas the asylum seeker deaths were NOTHING TO DO with us. Mm, I seem to remember someone saying something about politician’s jumping on any tragedy..

By the way, anyone else notice both Abbott and Vanstone used the phrase, “sugar on the table” when refering to asylum seeker policy? Coincidence? It’s possible. I mean, today I read in a column by economist, Paul Kruger a reference to the Dunning Kruger effect, which by a strange coincidence, I’d considered using at the start of a blog yesterday, so I actual knew what it was before he explained it. Simply:

Dunning–Kruger effect

Dunning and Kruger proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:

1. tend to overestimate their own level of skill;
2. fail to recognize genuine skill in others;
3. fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy;
4. recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they are exposed to training for that skill.

Of course, my reference to the Dunning-Kruger Effect has nothing to with Amanda Vanstone’s column. If you see any relationship, it’s just another one of those coincidences. Like travel claims that take in marginal seats, or the stopover in Malaysia after Joyce’s India trip – lucky that the place he needed to go for a study tour was on the way back!

Perhaps, I should leave the last word to Sinead O’Connor

“Everyone can see what’s going on
They laugh `cause they know they’re untouchable
Not because what I said was wrong
Whatever it may bring
I will live by my own policies
I will sleep with a clear conscience
I will sleep in peace

Maybe it sounds mean
But I really don’t think so
You asked for the truth and I told you

Through their own words
They will be exposed
They’ve got a severe case of
The emperor’s new clothes”

The Emperor’s New Clothes Sinead O’Connor