One of the teachers at my school is the Assistant Chief Assessor at VCAA, and he said that as a part of the article they were meant to be commented on. I believe that it was meant to be implied that the comments that were there were placed there by Day and then there could be a link for the rest of those comments, but that was made so unclear by the exam it's not funny.
To make you feel comfortable, a lot of people wrote contrasting essays from the comments to Day's article, and I also didn't mention the comments as I don't think that the audience would really take that much of the comments into consideration; they're on that website to read the article, not necessarily the comments and it can't be assumed that they will be read in real life. A lot of my friends tend to agree that out of the 20 odd practice LA's we did, this was by far the hardest, as the only persuasive things were in the nuances of the text, disadvantaging the weaker students. I think this was harder than the 2009 one, and my English teacher gave this to us last because "I want to break your spirit a little, but also prepare you for the hardest exam possible". Guess she got proved wrong though
