Classic critique from McCrann:
THE Economist has just published a special report on Australia. The report, in its latest edition, shows all that is inadequate with a publication that once had pretensions to be the world's next best English language paper. It is a unique combination of the libertarian leftism of capital city - read: Sydney and Melbourne - elites that we can read every day in the Fairfax press and the pompous condescension of a fly-in fly-out visitor from 'the old country'. This gives it quite a thick veneer of understanding of our rhythms. But a veneer nevertheless, and which is informed by The Economist's neo-English pan-European sensibility. The Economist, and all who write in her, have well and truly drunk the European climate change Kool-Aid. Thus the most "admirable and capable" federal political figures nominated are Malcolm Turnbull, "the impressive" Penny Wong and Greg Combet.
