What the f*#k is "Manna from Heaven", and what was it doing on the front page of the Aus?

With last night's big spending budget riding on the back of yesterday's Beaconsfield escape, today was probably the biggest single news day the Aussie press has seen for at least a year - especially for print media, who didn't get a real bite at the miners' 6am escape.

So, as you can imagine, The Verbose Ghost was eagerly anticipating this morning's papers, if only to compare how each editor dealt with the two stories - which story would command precedence and how each paper would spin the budget. Most of the smaller, single paper states were a given: the NT News, The Advertiser, The Courier-Mail and The Mercury all ran with a huge front-page pictorial splash of the miners finally walking to freedom; but the bigger papers were never going to be so clean cut.


The Age and The Herald Sun in Melbourne all ran with the miners on the front and a detailed budget pull-out inside each papers' Beaconsfield wrap-around. But it was the Australian, under editor Michael Stutchbury, who provided the most obfuscating lead headline of all the papers, when they led with "Manna from Heaven". Not only had the Aus gone with Costello's vote-grabbing budget, but it had muddled the message as well as the meaning of its lead by using such grandiose, pseudo-religious language. "Manna from Heaven" actually referred to the green Costello was peddling as he gloated about how big his surplus was last night in the House of Reps, but you wouldn't know it unless you read the fine print. It could have as easily referred to the miracle-like escape of Brant Webb and Todd Russell after two weeks trapped under ground. But no - on the most important news morning of the year, the Aus decided to chance its arm and try an intuitive, attention grabbing headline. It failed miserably. No wonder its readership is embarrassingly low.