Robyn Dixon and Peter Hartcher swap quotes to prove the world agrees Australia is stupid Here's how this game works: the media Left in one country quotes the media Left in another to persuade its readers that the whole world thinks Left. But has anyone played this game as comically as Robyn Dixon of the Los Angeles Times and Peter Hartcher of the Sydney Morning Herald? To LA Times readers, Dixon quotes Fairfax's Hatcher, a Leftist long known as Kevin Rudd's postbox: Hartcher believes that Australian politicians have lately squandered opportunities to strengthen the country's global position at the time of a major global power shift. To Fairfax readers, Hartcher in turn quotes Dixon, portraying this Australian and former Fairfax journalist as in fact the voice of the US: But [Abbott's G20] achievement was almost buried under a towering international indignation at Abbott's suspected climate change denialism. "He throws in a boast that his government repealed the country's carbon tax, standing out among Western nations as the one willing to reverse progress on climate change," commented a Los Angeles Times journalist, Robyn Dixon, "just days after the United States and China reached a landmark climate change deal." Australia, she wrote before the summit's end, looked like an "adolescent country." Robyn Dixon, a Leftist from Melbourne, is the measure of "towering international indignation" against Abbott? Seriously, Peter? Former Fairfax writer Robyn Dixon, now with the equally Leftist Los Angeles Times, sprays her American readers with her contempt for Australia, hatred of Tony Abbott and zeal for global warmism. Naturally The Age is delighted to publish her rant as the view from the US: The adolescent country. The lifestyle makes up for it. Like when 19 of the world's most important leaders visit for a global summit and Prime Minister Tony Abbott opens their retreat on Saturday with a whinge about his doomed efforts to get his fellow Australians to pay $7 to see a doctor. And then he throws in a boast that his government repealed the country's carbon tax, standing out among Western nations as the one willing to reverse progress on climate change - just days after the United States and China reached a landmark climate change deal. The Group of 20 summit could have been Australia's moment, signalling its arrival as a global player, some here argued. But in all, the summit had Australians cringing more than cheering. If the LA Times readers were stupid enough to believe Dixon they'd think Australians were aching to spend more on global warming policies, and that our relations with Indonesia were broken - rather than better than they ever were under Rudd or Gillard: [Abbott] offended the world's most populous Muslim country and one of Australia's closest and most important neighbours, Indonesia, over his handling of his policy to turn back boats... They'd think Abbott was turning his back on the world, rather than helping to lead it in confronting Russia, signing three free trade deals with major partners, chairing a successful G20 meeting to promote economic development: They'd think Abbott was at war with China, rather than so engaged that he will today announce an historic free trade deal with China and give the Chinese president the honor of addressing the Australian parliament: Since his election last year, Abbott has also taken a tough line with China, his country's biggest trading partner. They'd think that Abbott's G20 meeting had been dominated by Obama's global warming evangelism, when - as another Fairfax writer sadly concedes - Obama's agenda was confined to a passing and perfunctory mention in the communique: In the lead-up to the G20 summit, the conservative Abbott insisted climate change would not be on the agenda, only to be wrong-footed by the US-China climate change deal and President Barack Obama's pledge to contribute $3 billion to a fund to help developing countries deal with the effects of global warming. And Dixon's LA Times readers would think Australians regarded Gough Whitlam as the great leader, rather than as one of our worst: For some, the G20 moment stung all the more after a memorial service this month for a reformist Australian, former Labor Party prime minister Gough Whitlam, who died in October at 98. It was a day of stirring speeches, with nostalgia for a time when leaders had sweeping ideas of the country's identity, vision and place in the world and weren't afraid to spell them out in grand, compelling speeches. Ah, yes, the Left's obsession with grand speeches and contempt for gritty achievements. And, of course, for facts.