Pity the poor Parrot. He’s being left behind while his rival Mike Carlton over at 2UE is getting the big yarns.

Yesterday, Gloria gasped through the pre-election editorials from Friday’s paper – not exactly cutting edge stuff. The best he’s been able to do this morning and yesterday is squawk about the Lane Cove Tunnel and exhaust stacks.

In contrast, this morning Carlton spoke to the most – the only? – accomplished politician the NSW Liberals have produced in a generation, Nick Greiner – and hosted a spectacular dummy spit by dumped Liberal MLC John Ryan.

Ryan ripped into David Clarke, Charlie Lynn and various other members of the ratbag right who have do so much for the NSW parliamentary party over recent years.

He talked of Clarke “buggering” around in his Parliamentary office doing factional work while the rest of the parliamentary party were out campaigning in marginal seats. Lynn, he claimed, spent more time in transit lounges or working on Papua New Guinea than in marginals.

Ryan also directly accused Clarke and the right of sabotaging Liberal chances of winning Wollondilly by preventing the pre-selection of a good candidate.

His accusation was that because the right could not get their candidate in the seat, Helen Coonan staffer Jai Rowell, the party missed out on several candidates it could have anointed, including Wollondilly Mayor Phil Costa, who was eventually chosen by Labor.

Is the Parrot plucked? Are politicians just not prepared to step into his cage to get crapped on? We’ll have to wait until the federal poll.

That nice Mr Rudd’s needs are much greater than Morris Iemma’s.