Miranda Devine Embraces "The New Niceness" After Rallying For Greenies To Be Hung In Public

By Darry Mason

Yes, Miranda Devine is going to be Nice now.

Big viewerships for mostly fictional reality TV shows tell her that Australians, those who watch MasterChef anyway, don't want Nasty anymore. They want Nice.

This change for Miranda Devine comes only a couple of months after she decided, while the charred corpses and ash-only remains of more than 170 Australians still lay amongst the devastation of the Victoria Fires, that "It is not arsonists who should be hanging from lamp-posts but greenies."

Miranda "Nice Now" Devine :

Television programmers have discovered the public flicked the switch to "nice" about six months ago, favouring shows which are full of sweetness and light - such as MasterChef, Random Acts Of Kindness and Packed To The Rafters - and rejecting mean, vicious shows, such as Gordon Ramsay's surprise flop Hell's Kitchen or the Chaser's "Make A Realistic Wish" shtick.

The Chaser pulled more than one million viewers last week, up against the State of Origin, for fuck's sake.

And if you think there is any way in the world to link Gordon fucking Ramsay and The Chaser, well, you may as well be wearing a t-shirt declaring "I Am Full Of Shit".

Miranda Devine thinks Kevin Rudd is Nice. So is Wayne Swann. Julia Gillard, too, is Nice.

Malcolm Turnbull isn't Nice, she says, and she'd know, having said the following about Australian survivors of the appalling Cyclone Larry in Far North Queensland, in 2006 :

"...much as we will miss their avocados and bananas on our supermarket shelves, we can live without their whingeing."

The "whingers" who she was referring to were mostly young mothers who had been standing in the wind and rain for three days trying to get food and nappies for their babies. They dared to yell at a few journalists and complained that John Howard wasn't doing enough to help them. John Howard understood. Miranda Devine did not :

Five minutes after the cyclone hit, locals were whingeing that "they" haven't come and fixed it for them. Do they not have their own arms and legs?

Now here's some more Miranda "Nice Now" Devine :

Parliamentarians would be wise to follow the next political trend just launched by the US President, Barack Obama - a low-key Prince of Nice - not to follow the 24-hour news cycle. It is a revolutionary concept, and only Obama, with his authority and iconic status, could dare try.

Interrogated by reporters this week about why he waited several days to condemn the violence in Iran he replied: "I know everybody here is on a 24-hour news cycle. I'm not, OK?"

Wow! What a liberating idea for a political leader, not to be enslaved by an endless circus of TV and radio appearances, punctuated by jabbering doorstops. No more treadmill of Radio National Breakfast, Sunrise, 2GB, 3AW, AM, Sky News, The World Today, PM, network evening news programs, The 7.30 Report, Lateline, with and media-monitoring services and the internet's perpetual deadline breathing down your neck all day and night.

She has also started to quote politicians in Alan Ramsay-sized chunks, to pad out the space between the meaningless guff in her column.

This from Miranda "Nice Now" Devine to finish :

How liberating to have time free, instead, to actually think about the important business of running a country, rather than delegating it to unelected public servants. Why didn't someone think of that before?

That's not an ender for a newspaper column, that's not even a bad Letter To Editor. Hell, it's not even shitty blog post quality. It's the kind of pap someone mutters to you late at night at a party that causes you to wander away, if only to stare at a fish tank.

The problem is if people really do want Nice now, and there sure are plenty of Baby Boomer-focused stories trying to be reassuring that Generation Y are actually quite nice, Miranda "Nice Now" Devine has trouble doing Nice.

But maybe she has no choice but to try.

On Friday, she had to suffer the indignity of having the following published in the Sydney Morning Herald, despite the Press Council deciding that her advice to hang greenies from lamposts in revenge for the Victoria Fires was not any kind of hate speech they'd ever heard of :

The article presented, in strong terms, Ms Devine's view that poor forest management practices resulting from "the power of green ideology" were a key driver in the scale and ferocity of the Victorian bushfires that devastated a number of communities and caused large-scale loss of life.

The complainants asserted that the article breached a number of Press Council principles. They described the piece, which was headlined "Green ideas must take blame for deaths", as a highly derogatory polemic capable of inciting some people "to threaten, or even commit, acts of hatred or violence". They took particular exception to the hyperbolic suggestion that politicians seeking to divert attention from themselves could offer a new target for a lynch mob: "It is not arsonists who should be hanging from lamp-posts but greenies."

The Herald acknowledged concerns about some of the language in Ms Devine's column and expressed regret at any offence taken.

In its defence the newspaper claimed that the hyperbole employed by Ms Devine was part of her "robust, lively and sometimes provocative" writing style.

"Lively and sometimes provocative."

And yet, and so, Miranda "Nice Now" Devine was born.

Probably.

Flashbackery : Miranda Devine's column where she raged against the people of the cyclone-shattered people of Innisfail for daring to tell John Howard to Fuck Off when he came to pay a visit, stirred up the local papers of Far North Queensland, and she was poignantly corrected, along with being relentlessly lampooned as a rich Sydney sider, sitting around sippiing Moet while immigrant gardeners worked on the hedges, who had no idea of what they lived through, and what they were trying to rebuild from.

Miranda Devine became, and remains, to the readers of the Townsville Bulletin 'Moet' Miranda.

Townsville Bulletin editor, John Andersen :

But, if they wanted to complain, so what? They'd just been through hell. They were despairing. They were in varying degrees of shock, but not one of them played the blame game. They were just glad to be alive. Maybe if Miranda had gone to Innisfail and spoken to some of the people who had been 'Larried' she might have taken a different view.

But, gee, why would you leave Cremorne (Miranda's hometown) where you can sip on Moet and watch it on the telly?"

Moet Miranda. This nickname absolutely irritated her enough to write the following classic screed in just one of the comments section filled with hilarious mockery at the Townsville Bulletin, back then :

"Your poor excuse for a journalist, John Andersen, has invented facts and verballed me in his column, `Low blow from Sydney'. I do not live in Cremorne. Nor do I have a maid. I did not use the word `hillbilly' to refer to North Queenslanders. And Laotians in Sydney are not consigned to`trimming the hedges and washing the socks of the rich'.

"He has concocted a bizarre fantasy that Sydney is peopled exclusively by wealthy people and their immigrant servants, and that I sit around drinking Moet for a living. This fiction appears to have been accepted as truth by some of your more gullible readers. I don't think inventing facts is any more acceptable for journalists in Townsville than it is in Sydney so I expect a correction."

The Townsville Bulletin never published a correction, and editor John Andersen was still laughing about the whole thing months later.

Cyclone Larry : One Year Later


The Queensland town of Innisfail before Category 5 Cyclone Larry struck on March, 2006



And after....

Twelve months ago today, a Category 5 cyclone ploughed into into townships in North Queensland.

Cyclone Larry was one of the most powerful cyclones to make landfall in Australia's recorded history. In just over seven hours, the cyclone exploded from a Category 2 storm to a Category 5, with a storm frontage more than 400kms wide.

The small north Queensland community of Innisfail was the hardest hit, with more than 50% of the town's houses, schools and businesses being all but destroyed. The cyclone absolutely devastated Australia's banana growing industry, robbing the newly homeless of jobs and livelihoods.

One year later, rebuilding in Innisfail goes on, while most of the banana plantations have been restored and farmers find themselves in the ironic position of having too many bananas and not enough people to harvest them.

There's a lot of good news in Innisfail today, but the cyclone has taken a heavy toll on locals, and for some, the rebuilding of their lives and homes still has a long way to go.

Here's a couple of stories detailing Innisfail today, and the one-year-later aftermath :

Cyclone Legacy Haunts Survivors

Queensland Residents Mark Cyclone Larry Anniversary

Farmers Still Feeling The Effects Of Cyclone Larry

Innisfail Looks To The Future After Larry

In the immediate aftermath of Cyclone Larry, on March 20, 2006, numerous incredible stories of survival came to light. There were also countless examples of Australia's enormous generosity to those who need the most help, as well as some prime examples of Queenslanders notorious black humour : international television audiences were stunned to hear locals cracking jokes as they picked through the wreckage of their lives.

Within hours of the devastation being aired on morning television, hundreds of electricians, plumbers and builders from across the country were driving, trucking and flying to Innisfail to volunteer their skills, materials and energy towards the recovery and rebuilding.

While the generosity, empathy and kindness shown was a perfect example of what means to be an Australian, there was also the appalling spectacle of Sydney columnist Miranda Devine and her sickening assessment of how the locals were coping in the week after the cyclone hit.

Devine called the young mothers who'd lost their homes, and then queued in the rain for days to get nappies and food for their kids, a pack of "whingers", because they had dared to complain about their terrible situation.

Devine, a professional writer, claimed they were afraid of "hard work".

The Innisfail locals dubbed Devine "Moet Miranda" and she was eventually pressured into apologising (sort of) by a torrent of mail and complaints.

The story of Cyclone Larry is the story of how a small Australian community survived just about the worst that nature could throw at it.

It is the story of how a small town in desperate need was embraced by the rest of the nation (with some exceptions), and how they coped with the shocking aftermath.

Below you will find a selection of stories from the blog we began twelve hours before Cyclone Larry made landfall. The 'Cyclone Larry : The Aftermath' blog covers the night and next day of the storm in detail, with regular updates during the following month as Innisfail began to recover and rebuild.

Cyclone Larry is an Australian story that should not be forgotten.

(You'll need to excuse some of the hideous formatting on some stories. This was our first major blog project, and a lot of it was done superfast)

Seven Hours To Landfall

US Warships Fled Cyclone Larry Path Three Days Before It Hit

Cyclone Larry Sweeps Into Innisfail

95% Of Australia's Banana Crop Destroyed, Claims Queensland MP

Innisfail Destroyed By Cyclone - Hundreds Of Homes Laid To Waste

Innisfail's Anger And Black Humour - International Television Audiences Stunned By Locals Cracking Jokes As They Pick Through The Wreckage

Australian Army Deploys 400 Into Disaster Zone For What Is Expected To Be Biggest Disaster Recovery Operation In Australian History

Thousands Left Homeless - Families Live In Tents, Collect Rainwater In Buckets As Supplies Slow To Arrive - Water Supplies Dry Up

Hero Butcher Empties Entire Supply Of Meat Onto Barbecues In Town Centre As Families Queue For Ten Hours In Rain For Emergency Cash And Water

Military Nature Of Recovery Becomes Clear As Former Defence Chief Put In Charge Of All Operations - Rain Falls For Fifth Day As Emergency Supplies Queues Grow Longer

Banana Crisis : Australia's Most Popular Fruit Becomes Its Most Rare And Expensive

Cyclone Aftermath Crisis Exposes Terrible Plight Of Australia's Working Poor - Homes Destroyed, Families Sleeping In Cars, Leaving Destroyed Town With Only $300

The Staggering Loss Of Dignity, The Toll Of Destruction

Unhinged Sydney Right Wing Columnist Miranda Devine Shocks Queenslanders By Calling Mothers Who Queued For Five Days In The Rain, And Then Dared To Complain, A Pack Of "Whingers"

"Moet Miranda" Devine Cops A Full Serve From The People Of North Queensland

Neighbours Pull Together To Get Started On The Hard Work Of Rebuilding

The Stunning Scope Of Cyclone Larry's Reach And The Tide Of Destruction

"Moet Miranda" Devine Apologises (Sort Of) For Abusing Cyclone Victims, Complains She Was "Verballed"

Recovery : The Good News Starts To Flow, More Money For New Jobs And Training