The Australian has long been telling us that Labor and the Greens represent “progressive inner-city elites” while the Coalition is the party of a purported socially-conservative “middle Australia”. But when Gillard buys into this fortune-cookie, they abruptly switch to the ultra-dry view that politics should exclude values and deal only with economics (“Gillard needs a debate on policies, not values”, April 05). Apparently the opportunity to criticise Gillard takes precedence over consistency.