The gunfire in Norway had barely died away before the usual right-wing media pontiffs were rushing to shout that your Islamic terrorists were up to their evil worst again.

When it became quickly apparent that Anders Behring Breivik was a blue-eyed Norseman and, indeed, a professed Christian, the story changed. The killer was now a lone madman. Shocking business, of course, but perhaps understandable. Glenn Beck, the large lump of talking whale blubber who broadcasts on Rupert Murdoch's American Fox News channel, explained to his audience that the gathering on Utoya Island sounded "a little like the Hitler Youth".

"Who does a camp for kids that's all about politics? Disturbing," he babbled.

That apart, there was consensus among the rightists that Breivik had nothing to do with them; a self-serving delusion, if ever there was.

The man might well be insane, as his lawyer claims, but he was not stupid. Nor ignorant. His 1500-page diatribe, grandly titled "A European Declaration of Independence'', written in literate English and emailed to right-wing hate groups around the world, appears to have been a closely argued thesis demanding the extermination of Islam, multiculturalism and Marxism. It was studded with quotations from heroes of the political right including - astoundingly - our very own John Howard, Peter Costello, Cardinal George Pell and the Sydney Marxist-turned-High Tory academic, Keith Windschuttle. Breivik had done his reading.

His words and actions were a seamless, linear progression of right-wing rage and loathing. At one end, you start with the anger and paranoia fomented by rightist politicians, demagogues and commentators for their own cynical political ends, the bigotry and racism that is daily grist to the talkback radio mill.

At the other end is a clear-eyed fanatic with tonnes of fertiliser, automatic weapons and an ubermensch mission to save the world. The dots join up.

The temperature of hatred has been rising in Australia for most of this year. Lately we've reached critical mass, with public calls for the murder of Julia Gillard and senior ministers.

I can hardly believe I have just written such a shocking sentence, but it happens to be true.

Joe Hockey was asked at a carbon tax forum in Queensland a few weeks ago what the Opposition would do to prevent concerned citizens taking up arms against the Gillard government. Alan Jones has suggested the Prime Minister and Bob Brown should be drowned at sea.

The website of Murdoch's Melbourne Herald Sun recently carried a reader post saying that "someone needs to assassinate Julia Gillard NOW before she totally destroys our way of life". Last week the Chris Smith afternoon program on 2GB broadcast a listener call demanding the same thing. Smith murmured that "no, we don't want any of that", but allowed the filth to go to air.

Asked to explain why the call had not been dumped on the seven-second delay system, 2GB's program director, Ian Holland, said the producer had been distracted while preparing for another interview.

Codswallop. Utter rubbish. Sorry, but I know how this works. Both Smith and his panel operator have a kill button, as it's called, right in front of them, within easy reach. Seven seconds allows plenty of time to cut off an offensive call before it gets to air, whether the producer is busy or not. They clearly chose not do to do so, thereby placing the radio station in flagrant breach of both the law and the rules laid down by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

The very first clause of ACMA's commercial radio Code of Practice states: "A licensee must not broadcast a program which, in all of the circumstances, is likely to incite, encourage or present for its own sake violence or brutality."

That clause then says there must be nothing "likely to incite hatred against, or serious contempt for, or severe ridicule of, any person or group of persons because of age, ethnicity, nationality, race, gender, sexual preferences, religion, transgender status or disability."

2GB has form on this, and plenty of it. In January 2007, ACMA found that an evening shock jock, Brian Wilshire, had said that Lebanese people were inbred, with low IQs. He was rapped lightly across the knuckles.

2GB also whipped up hatred during the 2005 Cronulla riots, with ACMA finding - 16 months later - that three broadcasts by Alan Jones had been "likely to encourage violence or brutality and to vilify people of Lebanese and Middle Eastern backgrounds on the basis of ethnicity''.

Those emissions included Jones's call for bikie gangs to be at Cronulla railway station "when these Lebanese thugs arrive," and the notorious "we don't have Anglo-Saxon kids out there raping women in western Sydney''.

ACMA has the power to take an offending shock jock off air, and to fine, suspend or even shut down a radio station that breaks the rules.

If calls for the assassination of the Prime Minister aren't enough to get ACMA to act, you wonder what would be . So far we haven't seen 2GB or its on-air hate mongers cop even the usual feeble slap with a wet lettuce leaf.

Mike Carlton.

meanwhile .....

A complaint about Alan Jones's on-air claims about man-made carbon dioxide has prompted the broadcaster to tell the political group pursuing it to ''get stuffed''.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority has been asked to investigate comments allegedly made by Jones in March on his popular morning program on 2GB. GetUp! said it complained to ACMA because Jones said human beings produce 0.001 per cent of carbon dioxide in the air.

Jones yesterday denied ever having made the comment and said the complaint was politically motivated.

In a recording of the March 15 broadcast obtained by the Herald, Jones said: ''Nature produces nearly all of the carbon dioxide in the air. Human beings produce 0.001 per cent of the carbon dioxide in the air.''

GetUp! called for Jones to issue an on-air correction.

Jones responded: ''Tell them to get stuffed. Who are GetUp!? What credibility do these people have? Nil. Other than they've backed the Labor Party.''

Jones in no mood to issue an on-air correction, telling critics to 'get stuffed'