Sometimes right-wingers really are too smart for their own good.

If The Australian had accepted that its previous Newspoll was a rogue number — as was immediately obvious to all experienced observers — instead of deploying it in its ceaseless campaign against the ALP, it would by now have a neat tale of how Kevin Rudd’s handling of boat arrivals has finally taken some skin off both himself and his Government. The outlier poll could even have been portrayed as the first sign that something had gone wrong in Rudd’s protracted honeymoon in the electorate.

But they just couldn’t help themselves. “Primary vote support for the Rudd government has collapsed,” we were told two weeks ago. “The dramatic turnaround ends Labor’s long-term primary vote supremacy over the Coalition.”

On the same logic, the ALP’s support has now surged and it is the primary support of the Coalition that has collapsed.

Oddly enough, we didn’t see any headlines of that sort from The Oz. You had to read deep into its coverage before even sighting the two-party-preferred numbers.

It’s too much to ask The Oz to try to cover the news from a balanced rather than right-wing perspective, as a newspaper they take a position. Fair enough. But they’d do themselves a favour if they let reality intrude occasionally on the constant flow of their commentary.