And while we’re talking about the ABC consider this …

Final figures show last year’s budget deficit $543m lower than expected

I heard the ABC take on this in the car. In their determination to find a silver lining in every Labor cloud they were selling the notion that after years of promising a surplus a budget deficit of $18.8 billion was cool because the forecast of five months ago was half a billion larger. (Another way to think of it is as a train of thirty eight carriages costing half a billion dollars each, isn’t it great that only thirty seven were destroyed in the train wreck.) They thought a net debt of $153 billion was fine too because it was predicted to be 5.6% bigger five months ago.

On the other hand, thunder clouds were in evidence when Mr Hockey declined to say when he would deliver a surplus … after all he’s been in the job for two whole weeks now.

I can think of one place he could save $1.18 billion.

The bias that the ABC tells us it doesn’t have can now be tested by its very own impartial fact checking unit.

It has appointed former Fairfax journalist, Russell Skelton to head it. As the ad said …

The editor will lead and manage the unit, to deliver engaging content that builds a reputation for accuracy, impartiality and clarity.

Roger Franklin at Quadrant suggests that Mr Franklin might have  “a rather passionate distaste for conservatives,” in light of this piece from his portfolio …

The 2020 Summit has been just such an exercise. For one weekend a national conversation took place about the future of the country without a bunch of once-influential marsupials shouting down discussion of significant policy issues.

These are the possums of the conservative commentariat. They are an invasive, boisterous species. They make their nests within the pages of Quadrant magazine (an obscure journal with a circulation that is a fraction of the Kmart catalogue), and invade the columns of News Limited papers and the hollowed-out walls of right-wing think tanks.

Mr Skelton joins his wife Virginia Trioli at the ABC and should fit in quite nicely.

Leaner can have a couple of meanings

• to be inclined (… to the left perhaps)
• to have less fat

Hopefully the ABC will be much leaner after the next election.