THE DISTILLERY: Baked debate

Oh no, what are we to do now? MasterChef is over, but the election campaign goes on. There's no escaping either this morning. The result of MasterChef occupies just about as much space as the election debate from last night, which had to move to an earlier time slot to accommodate the cooking show's finale. So far, thankfully, no columnist has tried the ultimate verbal trick of finding a metaphor in MasterChef for the debate or the campaign, although both sides are guilty of a bit of over-egging of their recipes.

But there were no Mixmaster moments among our columnists this morning.
 
With economics editor Ross Gittins on leave, it was down to the support players in The Sydney Morning Herald's economics team. Jacob Saulwick made a pretty good fist of it with this piece this morning under the headline of "Dishonesty is the best policy in this dire race". He wrote: "Gillard is attempting to placate the suburbs by blaming angst about urban planning and transport on population and, more quietly, the growth of migration. And now the Abbott Opposition is acting increasingly affronted that the government has joined it in a race to the right on the issue. But here's a prediction: whoever wins government will do nothing, longer-term, to curb Australia's rate of population growth. They might promise to, but it will ultimately be an empty promise."
 
And population was the focus of a short piece by The Australian's economics editor, Michael Stutchbury: "Amid his shameless populism, Tony Abbott has half an idea with his promise to rename the Productivity Commission by adding 'sustainability'. Yes, 'sustainability' is one of those concepts that means whatever politicians want it to. The Opposition Leader said yesterday sustainability was about ensuring population growth 'must not rob future generations of the quality of life and opportunities we currently enjoy'. But if Abbott wants sustainability, at least the Productivity Commission could knock some rigour into this vague concept by assessing both the costs and benefits of whatever it is we're talking about."
 
John Durie in The Weekend Australian has already reached a very obvious conclusion after week one of the campaign and a scattering of early profits: "The election holds no great promise and the profit season has few surprises. Any upside for the stockmarket will come from offshore, with the Australian election campaign proving a disappointment and the upcoming profit season largely factored into the market already." And downside. Don't forget downside from offshore.
 
And Michael Stutchbury, this time in The Weekend Australian, reminded us, again, of the importance of the CPI on Wednesday and the signals it will send: "Next week's inflation release will stamp an undeniable number on the pressing election issue Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott are cynically dissembling. The June quarter Consumer Price Index will be a statistical indicator of the urban infrastructure policy failures threatening to choke the economy's growth."

And, oh dear, Twiggy Forrest's attempts to disinter the Dracula Tax looks like it has stalled before the first shovel is used. The Australian's Matthew Stevens, who is well-connected to the big miners, wrote on Saturday: "Andrew Forrest's renewed national call to arms over the proposed minerals resources rent tax is likely to fall on heavily muffled ears of miners outside his home state of Western Australia." It's a pity that wasn't pointed out by Stevens in his Friday column, which had Twiggy refreshed after a holiday, girding his loins for another campaign against Canberra.
 
But The Australian's Jennifer Hewitt is more of an optimist so far as Mr Forrest's campaign is concerned: "It's no wonder Fortescue Metals is leading the drive against the revamped mining tax. Fortescue remains potentially very badly affected in the two areas most crucial to its expansion – the ability to borrow at all and the ability to deduct the very expensive cost of building new infrastructure such as rail lines and ports."
 
And finally, of all that has been written so far about the poll, and will be written in coming weeks, nothing will top this effort from the weekend of Laurie Oakes in the News Ltd tabloids. It's the best thing written so far; a sample: "The sad truth is we have a couple of political pygmies heading the two major parties in this election. Both have small ambitions for the country. Both are afraid to lead. Both think they can con their way into The Lodge."
 
Nothing happened in last night's debate to change this judgment.
 
The best business read at the weekend was from Michael Evans and Danny Johns in the Sydney Morning Herald on B&B. While the AFR's Angus Grigg looked at the fall of Phil Green and some of the testimony in last week's hearing in Saturday's edition, Evans and Johns gave the week's events a much broader context in terms of the B&B collapse. And we should all be very frightened because, despite the various inquiries, reports etc from ASIC and various other groups in the past 30 years, nothing has changed. Just as Alan Bond and John Spalvins were allowed to create corporate houses of cards that fell over at the first serious crunch in markets, so Phil Green, Michael Sharpe, Jim Babcock and their advisers created a 52 decker called Babcock & Brown that disappeared when the going got tough. At $5.13 billion, the losses are large, but HIH ($5.3 billion) a decade ago was bigger and rougher on the community. The SMH reports this morning that so far there's no move to call Jim Babcock as a witness, despite his increasingly central role.