There are some statements that are so starkly improbable, especially in retrospect, that you have to shake yourself. No! Surely not! They didn't really say that, did they?

November 11, 2013. Bronwyn Bishop had just been "dragged", with the traditional display of reluctance, to the Speaker's chair. She had also just declared that, unlike some previous speakers, she would continue to attend Liberal party-room meetings.

For blatant partisanship, no Speaker, surely, has matched Bronwyn Bishop. When she promised to act impartially in 2013, could she have meant it? What was she thinking? 

"I mean to be impartial," she told the Parliament. "The comments that I have made about attending party meetings is simply that I am a Liberal … But in this chair I will act impartially. That is the responsibility that goes back to 1377."

Now, of course, Bishop's expertise on matters parliamentary is legendary. Indeed, she considers it entirely proper that the taxpayer should cough up for her to fly hither and yon, just so she can dispense to Liberal Party faithful a sliver of her prodigious understanding of the history and workings of the Westminster system.

So she would know that, over the centuries, the Speaker at Westminster evolved from an enforcer of the King's will to a champion of the House of Commons' role as a check on royal power.

She can no doubt recite by heart the famous riposte by Speaker William Lenthall​ to King Charles I, who in 1642 stalked into the House in search of five recalcitrant members. "Are they here?" demanded the King of the Speaker. "Have you seen them?"

"May it please your Majesty," Lenthall replied, "I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am."

And Bishop would know that the Speaker evolved further, from a quasi-minister of the government in the 18th century to, by the 20th, a member of parliament who, on being elected Speaker, is expected to resign his or her party affiliation entirely. Indeed, at a general election in Britain, the Speaker does not label himself Conservative or Labour, but simply as "the Speaker seeking re-election".

As a student of English history, I was brought up on this stuff. So I was surprised, on arriving in Australia in 1982, to find that the Speaker of the House of Representatives frequently displayed open party bias. The antics of Paul Keating's mate Leo McLeay​ in the Speaker's chair in the early 1990s astonished me.

But for blatant partisanship, no Speaker, surely, has matched Bishop. When she promised to act impartially in 2013, could she have meant it? What was she thinking? 

She would have been far more truthful if she had stated plainly: "I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the Liberal Party is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am."

Of course, Bishop is in good company when it comes to demonstrating a gulf between promise and performance. Just days ago, editors at Rupert Murdoch's Herald Sun and Daily Telegraph would have giggled maniacally, I presume, as their graphics artists came up with front pages showing zombie Bill Shorten climbing from the grave of the carbon tax. Only the living dead, after all, would propose something as mummified as an emissions trading scheme to combat climate change.

And when Shorten had the further effrontery to propose that 50 per cent of Australia's electricity should be derived from renewables by 2030, The Australian couldn't find enough pundits to condemn him. The Labor Party has "a death wish", thundered its editorial, and Shorten had demonstrated "a spectacular error of judgment" that will commit it "to higher electricity prices and a mass clean-out of energy-sector jobs".

Never mind that no one has a clue what the comparative cost of coal-fired and renewable energy will be by 2030 – but modelling done for the government's expert panel on the Renewable Energy Target (chaired by the impeccably sceptical Dick Warburton) showed that maintaining the current target to 2030 is likely to reduce electricity bills rather than increase them, and that in any scenario "the impact on retail electricity prices is small".

As for jobs, renewables create at least as many – arguably far more – than coal-fired electricity.

But it's no surprise. At least since Tony Abbott won the leadership of the Liberal Party, News Corporation Australia has joined him in demonising a carbon price and championing the interests of the fossil fuel producers, and has outdone him in casting whatever doubt can be found or invented on climate change science.

And yet, in 2007, Murdoch announced his conversion to the climate change cause. "I am no scientist," he told the staff of News Corporation worldwide in a famous video. "But I do know how to assess a risk – and this one is clear. Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats."

He promised that by 2010 News Corporation would be climate-change neutral – a goal which it claims to have achieved. And he urged his film and television makers, editors and journalists to help the world to combat climate change: "to weave this issue into our content – make it dramatic, make it vivid, even sometimes make it fun. We want to inspire people to change their behaviour."

Did he mean it? What was he thinking? Before and since, News Corporation has spared no effort to weave the issue of climate change into its content – and to dissuade people from thinking it necessary to change their behaviour.

Though Murdoch may tolerate the odd minor rebellion among his troops, it is inconceivable that this global assault on climate-change action doesn't have the great man's approval.

Ah, well. News Corporation Australia is well used to saying one thing and doing another. After all, its Professional Conduct Policy states that "publications should take reasonable steps to ensure reports are accurate, fair and balanced". 

When it comes to its coverage of Australian politics, never mind climate change, that's as weird as Bishop promising to be impartial.