Meet the megaphones: Piers Akerman at #7. You can accuse Piers Akerman of many things, but hubris isn’t one of them. News Limited’s rotund reactionary has no tickets on himself as a powerful player in Australia.

“I don’t think journalists shift opinions,” Akerman tells The Power Index. “Maybe in their own minds.”

Seventeen years after he began penning columns for The Daily Telegraph, Akerman remains one of the loudest voices in a conservative chorus that dominates the airwaves and opinion pages in this country. Although he regards blogging as a “joke”, his posts attract 400 comments on average and more than 700 on a good day. His devotees go wild when he lays into the Gillard government (a “stinking ruin”), multiculturalism (a “failure”), the ABC (the “audio-visual arm of the extreme Green left”) and gay marriage (as absurd as letting a man marry his goat).

Labor MP Anthony Albanese and conservative historian Gerard Henderson singled him out for inflaming hostility towards Australian Muslims in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. He played a key role in hyping up the 2009 Climategate emails as proof that man-made climate change is a hoax. And last year he and Alan Jones led the charge against the prosecution of Australian soldiers for manslaughter in Afghanistan.

In his maiden speech to parliament, David Clarke, the NSW Liberal right-wing powerbroker, said Akerman “articulates what the majority of the New South Wales electorate thinks. Rare is the occasion when I find myself in disagreement with him”.

But his influence is waning. — Matthew Knott (read the full profile here)

Dyson Heydon: the new great dissenter? He’s not in Michael Kirby’s league yet, but Justice Dyson Heydon’s reputation as the High Court’s new great dissenter is growing.

Heydon has tripled his dissent rate this year to 48% per cent, according to legal affairs website Time Base. He was the only High Court judge to rule yesterday that the Gillard government’s proposed asylum seeker swap deal with Malaysia was lawful. All six other judges declared the policy invalid on the grounds that it did not comply with Australia’s obligations under the Refugees Convention and the Migration Act.

The Howard-appointed judge has also been on the losing side of the argument in several important recent cases including the court’s dramatic decision to allow 100,000 people who had been excluded from the electoral role to vote at the last federal election. He also dissented in the South Australian bikie law case and the Pape fiscal stimulus case. “He’s on a lunar trajectory all of his own,” legal affairs commentator Richard Ackland tells The Power Index. — Matthew Knott (read the full report here)

Justin Hemmes faces more trouble over the Ivy. Sydney hotel baron Justin Hemmes may be hit with tough new licensing restrictions and an unfair dismissal suit. Hemmes’ trouble comes on the back of allegations that security staff at his Ivy nightclub bashed a teenage patron last weekend.

Nineteen-year-old customer Nicholas Barsoum alleges that bouncers at the Ivy took him to the basement, held him down and punched, kicked and gagged him. The club has disputed Barsoum’s version of events. — The Power Index (read the full report here)