Crikey! Irwin has wrestled crocodiles, snakes and spiders, but nothing could compare with the nest of vipers he had just strayed into. Suddenly Irwin the likeable, outback ocker became Irwin the greedy "millionaire" Howard-lover. For some people, this was unforgivable.

The letters pages of newspapers exploded with venom and journalists sharpened their poison quills. "After his public comment to the effect that John Howard is the greatest prime minister this country has ever had, I no longer take him seriously as an apolitical or intelligent wildlife advocate," A. Bass of Sutherland wrote to The Daily Telegraph yesterday. A reporter from The Age in Melbourne questioned why Irwin had turned down an invitation to Bill Clinton's presidential farewell dinner. "Does it tell us more about Steve Irwin than he might want us to know?" he wrote. Irwin had "thick skin", the article went on to say. "There's no getting through to the heart or the soul. And let's not make the mistake of going for the head."

There were snide stories about Irwin's invitation to the Lodge for a fancy "partisan barbecue" Howard hosted for visiting US President George Bush, complete with snaky references to the $25,000 cost. There were stories attacking Irwin's character. "For crocodile hunter Steve Irwin charity really does begin at home, with the millionaire 'donating' $175,000 to himself," began one story in The Courier-Mail in Brisbane. This $364 a minute of taxpayers' money was supposedly for "one day's work" shooting a quarantine awareness TV ad. The Federal Opposition and ABC Radio tried to whip up a crocodile-cash-for-comment scandal, linking the payment to Irwin's praise of the Prime Minister.

Finally, last week, Irwin was forced to defend himself, issuing a statement explaining the money was for a whole year's work on the quarantine campaign, not one day, and that he had given every cent to a new koala hospital at his Queensland zoo. In Los Angeles on Friday, casting his new reality TV show Croc Hunter Challenge, Irwin had gone to bed early, but his long-time manager and friend John Stainton, speaking from a crowded bar on his mobile phone, said he wasn't really surprised by the controversy. "It's what happens in Australia. You stick your head up and you've got 10,000 shotguns pointed at you," Stainton said. Irwin is not a Liberal or Labor supporter. "He's just not political. I don't have a clue how he's going to vote and he probably doesn't either."

When the Prime Minister decided to pay an impromptu visit to his zoo, Irwin was "overwhelmed and proud". He spoke in superlatives because that is the way he always talks. The vilification of Irwin is a textbook lesson in how anti-conservative forces combine to denounce anyone suspected of holding unorthodox (in their eyes) views. And since the majority of Australians hold those "unorthodox" views, most of them have learnt to keep their mouths shut.

An unnamed (for obvious reasons) writer/director of my acquaintance says he and other actors, musicians and dancers he knows have to pose as left-wing Howard haters, or at least keep any conservative views hidden, in order to stay in work. "The truth is we are politically a more eclectic bunch than most realise. But God forbid that we'd 'come out' and support John Howard over anything, for to do so is instant isolation - no, persecution . . . the self-appointed bullies who run the industry preclude from expressing [our] views, for fear of being labelled and ostracised. In many ways it's 1930s Germany, 1950s USA and Soviet Union all over again, minus the violence . . . the arts Stasi are not to be underestimated," he said. Chances are Steve Irwin won't be sipping green tea at Judy Davis's place in Birchgrove any time soon. But then, he probably prefers the crocodile farm.

Never mind the poles, ban trees

There are surely plenty more useful things the NSW Government could do with $6 billion than improve the views of the chichi suburbs. But an influential lobby group, Sydney Cables Down Under, and more than a dozen councils are pushing for all power lines to be buried underground, at a cost estimated by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal to be $3800 per household. Puzzled by the "lack of visible public support", their latest ploy is to erect unsightly placards all over the suburbs, with such hysterical slogans as "Power poles kill", "Bury power cables not people" and "Lop power poles not trees". So hideous are the signs that, in Parramatta, council rangers diligently went around removing them, unaware their own councillors had voted to erect them.

Certain of the sagacity of their scheme, power pole activists are motivated as much by tree worship as by property values. They constantly wail about the cruel lopping of their leafy friends by electricity companies trying to protect the city's energy supply. They cite statistics claiming scores of people each year are killed or injured in collisions with poles, and even have the chutzpah to blame power lines for bushfires. But the same logic would suggest trees are at least as "dangerous" to humans as power poles, causing more road fatalities simply because there are more of them to hit. And residential streets abound with enormous eucalypts, which pose a lethal threat to people and their homes. Just last month a 69-year-old man in the Blue Mountains was killed when a tree fell on him. In August alone, one man was killed in St Ives when a tree fell onto the car in which he was a passenger, a three-year-old boy suffered a fractured skull in Bathurst when a gum tree fell on the garage in which he was playing, a 12-year-old boy was trapped under a fallen tree in Bangor and a woman in Newcastle was hospitalised when a tree fell on her car.

If the anti-power pole brigade really cared about people they would ban trees. devinemiranda@hotmail.com