We have principles, but we don't believe in acting on them

Now Abbott is becoming a caricature of himself:

We don't like whaling. We would like the Japanese to stop. On the other hand, we don't want to needlessly antagonise our most important trading partner, a fellow democracy, an ally.

No policy that is overwhelmingly supported by the Australian people will be supported by an Australian government led by Tony Abbott, incase somewhere there is a popularly-elected government somewhere that takes a contrary view. I told you he was gutless but even I'm stunned by this.

Abbott would never have stood up to Indonesia over East Timor. He would never have elped other countries with the tsunami ("I am full of compassion for victims of natural disasters, but ..."). If he got the chance, you could expect him to cancel next summer's Ashes tour - we don't want to stir up anti-English feeling do we? Besides, even if the Australian team did win the Ashes would remain in England, so why bother?

The Trade Minister, Simon Crean, said he was not concerned "one bit" that the dispute would affect trade with Japan, and that factor would not determine Australia's decision to take legal action.

Quite right too. This issue is so well established that a volte-face such as Abbott is proposing would have no credibility, in Tokyo or anywhere else.

Once again the Shadow-Foreign-Minister-in-name-only had a big role in this announcement, not to mention the would-be Trade Minister and Deputy PM in a Coalition government. The tin ear for the popular mood, the gutlessness in promoting Australia's interests abroad and the abject dependance on the ALP to define the otherwise shaky self-image of these so-called conservatives is what gets to me.

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Nice South Wales

Kristina Keneally has shown us how she's different to Nathan Rees. Rees wanted to convey a determination to make things happen: Keneally is not someone who makes things happen (well, neither was Rees) but someone that things happen to.

Since taking office, she's gone to see drought-ravaged farmers - not much can be done about the drought and the assistance packages are standard. Her comments made from there were particularly asinine and non-eventful, as were those on the bushfires and kids who did well in the HSC. If she had anything else to say on any other issue late last year, it doesn't matter either.

Her media policy was made clear on Channel Nine news on New Year's Eve. She was announced at the top of the news and stood there waiting for ten or fifteen minutes until the anchor was good enough to throw to her. There is no way that Neville Wran, Barrie Unsworth, Nick Greiner or John Fahey would have copped that. Carr would have negotiated ten minutes of airtime, and even Iemma and Rees would have more self-regard than to hang around like a weather presenter. Anna Bligh, Mike Rann and John Brumby would have banned Channel Nine for even suggesting such a thing. Almost no Liberal leader would have been so desperate for airtime as to do that. Keneally did, however, initially posing as just anyone going to see the fireworks, until she let slip that she was off to an exclusive bash at Mrs Macquarie's Chair.

And there you have it - inanities in the face of major events in the life of NSW. Labor's one idea is that you might think Keneally is nice and therefore deny them the ignominious defeat for which they have worked so hard. If Keneally was going to do anything - even something trivial like canning the Rozelle metro - she would have done so by now. Even Kerry Chikarovski had more substance than Kristina bloody Keneally. The risk with Keneally is that people see her as insipid, which may be worse than just blusteringly incompetent, and subsequent Labor figures will find it hard to assert their own strength without appearing threatening.

All women know already that you can go along by getting along, but that it will only take you so far; this is pretty much all that Keneally's ascent proves. It also proves there are no new tricks left for Labor: this writer seeking "something else" need not waste any time on the idea that Labor might have anything to offer the people of NSW in 2011.

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Dead right

This excellent article on US politics got me thinking about the Liberal Party, which is in a similar state of moral and political bankruptcy but with the following exceptions:

• Not a lot of rage and disappointment to speak of in the community, apart from the usual cranks. The fact is that the full force of the financial crisis has passed by this country and, for better or worse, the incumbent government gets a share of credit for that.


• The country's leading politician is of the same racial group as the majority of the population. He has, and claims, no brief for society-wide social change.


• Healthcare reform is a matter of administrative tinkering rather than the root-and-branch reform we saw twenty years ago.


• Climate change was an important differentiator in 2007 and it remains so. The apathy induced by inaction has been countermanded by the increasing articulation of how high and rising the stakes are in not mitigating the risks of inaction. There hasn't been the kind of sea-change in the vote on climate change policy as happened over the Vietnam War, where the Coalition won in a landslide in 1966 and lost two elections later over the same issue. Labor owns climate change policy, for better or worse, and the Liberals have no credibility at all - not with swinging voters or business.

The Liberals deliberately chose a leader who was less popular than the man he replaced. That leader is a dilettante in the world of ideas, yet the journosphere think of him as an intellectual. That leader has appointed a frontbench who have less of a clue about any area of policy than he does, and much less than many of the very weak ministers they are supposedly shadowing.

Labor's polls are climbing, the very opposite of what should have happened if the supporters of Tony-the-Tough-Guy were to be believed. The same thing happened in NSW in 1998, when the leader was replaced with a "fresh and energetic" new leader who dumped what few policies there were and led the party to a landslide defeat.

Hopefully the journosphere will not subject us to any nonsense about a hung parliament like they did in 2007, or like these British journalists insist on doing with their own moribund government. Indeed, the only indicator of conservative renewal comes from Britain, and it consists of grafting a moderate wing back on - anathema to the Abbott-Minchin-Joyce Coalition.

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The sinking boat

Tony Abbott's claims that he will turn back refugee boats are rubbish.

For a start, it's not a pledge:

"If the circumstances permit it, you've got to be prepared to turn boats around," Mr Abbott told The Australian yesterday. "John Howard was fiercely criticised for this.

If the circumstances permit it. What a weak qualifier that is. If the circumstances supported action against carbon emissions for the sake of the environment, would you support an ETS? What about arts funding? What about abortion? Abbott's statement is now clear as a mealy-mouthed person's way of appearing tough. Pauline Hanson and the knuckleheads in the Coalition parliamentary party who are to blame responsible for Abbott's ascent in the first place would not have been so equivocal.

Mr Abbott acknowledged that turning boats around could provoke asylum-seekers into taking dangerous measures, such as scuttling their vessels.

"But the fact that it was prepared to do it, I think let people in these countries know that trying to come to Australia illegally was a pretty risky business," he said.

This assumes that people with nothing left to lose are risk-averse. No wonder the press gallery regards him as an intellectual.

The ABC, less desperate than The Australian to confuse boofhead rhetoric against the vulnerable with genuine toughness, has Abbott to rights when it had him turning some boats back:

"It can't be a boat that's going to sink ...

No, it can't. Mind you, a snap judgment on seaworthiness will be difficult and you can be sure that if a turned-around boat suddenly does sink, Abbott would not hesitate to blame the junior officer responsible for such a decision. What if a boat is structurally sound, but overloaded? What if its engine has failed but everything else is OK?

... and you've got have the kind of relationship with the source countries that if the boat goes back the people will be accepted," he said.

These would be the same countries which these people are trying to flee.

Besides, what action is taking place on building those relationships? What is the foreign affairs spokesperson, Julie Bishop - who has been in that office since before Abbott became leader - doing in terms of realigning Australian foreign policy to that end? The Attorney General would be ultimately responsible for the Federal Police and the intelligence services - is the shadow AG doing anything toward recalibrating these organisations toward people-smuggling rings? What about the shadow immigration minister?

Opposition spokesman on immigration Scott Morrison says the only thing deterring people smugglers from Australian waters is the weather.

"With the monsoon season approaching that makes it an even more hazardous voyage and as a result we would expect to see some of the boat arrivals dissipate over that period of time," he said.

If policy development is too hard for you Scott, meteorology won't be any easier.

This vacuousness over policy shows Abbott hasn't made the transition from commentator to leader. It should have been a proper announcement, with high-level strategy spelled out and the promise of further details closer to the election. Instead, it's just a brain-fart of the day.

This is how a proper government considers issues. Apartheid Malaysia may want to abandon refugees to monsoons, pirates and other perils, but Australia must not. We still bear responsibility for closing Australian borders to Jews seeking to flee various anti-Semitic regimes during the 1930s, and we cannot be sure that refugees today are not in similar peril. This takes time and fusty bureaucracy, and while that's better than towing people out to sea this does not mean it's the best option available.

Clearly, Rudd has learned the lesson that dealing with refugees is not as simple as declaring that you'll tow people out to sea. That is the story The Australian has missed here in pursuit of junior-minister-shirtfronts-PM-shock.

Mr O'Connor said he was satisfied with the current policy of taking asylum-seekers to Christmas Island for processing.

And the fact that there isn't enough room at Christmas Island is of no concern, to O'Connor or Abbott or anyone else ...? What about the seasonal lesson of "no room at the inn", lost on Abbott and other self-professed Christians too?

A spokesman for Mr O'Connor, when asked if he supported a policy of towing boats back out to sea, said the minister was "confident the existing policy is correct".

"That existing policy is that when boats are intercepted, we take them to Christmas Island where their refugee status is processed."

The remarks amount to an effective rebuff of the Prime Minister, who in the last days of the 2007 election campaign promised tough measures to deal with refugee boats.

"You'd turn them back," Mr Rudd said in November 2007.

The then opposition leader went on to say that such measures formed an effective deterrent.

If his actions since have truly diverged from his words, the question is why. It could be plain old hypocrisy, say anything to get into office and then repudiate it. It could also be that government demands more detailed and nuanced consideration of issues than is possible with the five-second-grab, which is the more interesting story. What's to say that Abbott won't bend to this logic too?

Such complexity and political heavy-lifting may also explain why GetUp! is nowhere to be found here.

Yesterday, former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, whose government in 1979 welcomed thousands of Vietnamese boat people despite fears of public opposition, led a chorus of criticism directed at the two leaders.

Fraser criticised Rudd and Abbott, others criticised them, but this does not mean that Fraser "led" them necessarily, nor that such criticism constitutes a "chorus".

Mr Fraser, whose government accepted more than 200,000 refugees, said refugee policy remained skewed against boatpeople, who were consistently shown to be genuine.

Then and now, boat-borne refugees tend to be genuine refugees. Time to treat "boat people" the same as "plane people". This may require reframing the media debate on this issue, or ignoring the media entirely: so much for all that "fourth estate" crap.

Nobody who voted Liberal in 1996, 1998, 2001 and/or 2004, but who voted Labor in 2007, will vote Liberal in 2010 on account of Abbott's statement. It's silly, it's ill-considered, it's a nostalgia trip through the sorts of policies that appeal only to Liberal nostalgics and which repel swinging voters (which now include moderate liberals, as Howard gave them no reason to remain with the Liberal Party). Hell of a way to start the new year - but they say you should start the year as you intend to go on.

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Is Arthur Sinodinos full of shit?

Probably not in general terms, he was a figure of substance within the Howard government and remains influential in business, government and Liberal Party circles. That, however, doesn't explain this. Nobody else is going to shirtfront Arthur but in this case he's making a lot of assertions that don't make sense, so it falls to me to make a citizen's arrest under the Emperor Has No Clothes Act.

So far the polls have not moved but that gives Abbott plenty of runway. It is unlikely that people have made up their minds about him.

If the polls were ever going to move in response to the new leader, they would have done so by now. In NSW, there has been no poll movement following the election of Kristina Keneally; this is proof that she's a dud. Federally, there has been no poll movement for the Libs following the election of Tony Abbott; anyone who "dare[s] to dream of winning the next election" is delusional.

It is absolutely the case that people have made up their minds that Tony Abbott must not become Prime Minister. He can have as much "runway" as Marwoto Komar but he's not going to make it.

The phrase loyal opposition is to him [Abbott] an oxymoron.

The phrase "loyal opposition" refers to the idea that one can oppose the current government of the country without being disloyal to the country itself, its institutions, its head and its people. If he's going to be disloyal to the country as a whole in a quest for power over it, then stuff him.

No quarter will be given and none is expected.

This would be fine if the ALP really was as soft as the Liberals would like to think they are. Again, in NSW the Liberals long assumed that Bob Carr was a cream-puff long after he'd left a trail of blood and devastation behind him through the ranks of the NSW ALP. He beat them four times, five if you count 1991. Abbott has positioned the Liberals within range of Labor's guns; Turnbull's support for the ETS was only ever a gambit and Labor was not prepared for where he'd take the game from there. Abbott has little room to move tactically and strategically. He couldn't even knock Jenny Macklin off her perch when she was practically begging to be relieved of an office for which she has no talent, aptitude or sense.

Next minute he will flick the switch to serious thinker, including on thorny topics such as indigenous disadvantage.

Abbott has no credibility on indigenous disadvantage. As Health Minister he cut $1.5b from indigenous health programs. Like his old boss John Hewson, Abbott can point out the weak points but can't convince people he has the strength to make things better.

He is sustained by strong beliefs and is comfortable in his own skin. He is offering the electorate a contest based on character and not polling or research. Like all guerillas, he has the luxury of picking and choosing when and where to attack. Governments prefer to get their opponents in the open and blast them away. In Abbott's hands, incumbency is a negative as government decisions create new targets for the opposition to attack.

All of that could also have been said for Mark Latham in early 2004. Liberals looked on in amazement when Labor chose Latham to lead them, and couldn't believe their luck; nobody should know this better than Arthur Sinodinos. Fans of Abbott's rootin', tootin', no-quarter approach are starting to understand why Labor turned to Latham, even if they don't see they are bound for the same fate. The trick is to convince people that the Liberals would do a better job, and Abbott can't do that.

Abbott is about avoiding cost increases and reducing costs for families.

No, Arthur, he isn't. He only says that in the hope that it wins votes, but nobody will believe him and the Liberal vote will collapse.

New taxes on wealth or the family home will be dead on arrival.

Rudd will run further faster away from any such proposals, leaving Abbott to mutter about socialism and wish that Labor was in fact out to tax everything that moves. Another example of the Libs hammering the wrong target - like the way they go on about law-and-order and state level with Labor governments happy to see and raise them on that issue, and ignore the whining of civil rights advocates.

Rudd cannot typecast [Abbott] as a "free-market fundamentalist".

No, but he can and will typecast Abetz and other senior members of the Opposition in that way, enough to show that the Opposition must not be returned to government.

Abbott's musings on re-regulation of the banks are opportunistic and principled.

Nobody seriously believes he would deliver on this.

Abbott views industrial relations not through the Left-Right divide but the prism of small business. He will protect it along with farmers, independent contractors and the self-employed. This should also play well in outlying states and industries such as mining.

Yeah, small businesses like mining companies. There are fewer than 15,000 coal mining jobs in Australia, Arthur, and you'd be surprised how many of them vote Labor and are members of the CFMEU. Likewise, playing to disgruntled farmers won't win back many any seats lost in 2007.

It also covers his flanks in the debate on micro-economic reform.

What flanks, and frankly what debate?

What about the manicured grassroots in safe urban Liberal seats? Abbott probably calculates that they will vote for him anyway if he looks competitive, whatever their reservations on specific issues such as climate change.

To "look competitive" he actually has to build an alternative government, which would assume a greater sense of responsibility than which Abbott is capable. If you're going to take power within the Liberal Party on the basis that the grassroots were ignored, you can't then ignore them - especially if you're bent on sacrificing your marginal seat members. Where exactly is the Abbott Constituency, those people who will only vote Liberal with Abbott out front? There was a definite Howard Constituency, as you know Arthur; but there is no more one for the incument as there was, say, a Crean Constituency.

Your job, Arthur, is not to describe the Abbott phenomenon: that's for Abbott himself and for the Grattans, Annabel Crabbs and Malcolm Collesses of this world. Your job is to describe how realistic their positions and assumptions are, which was the value you added to Howard's office.

The same goes for business. The ever-shrinking pool of corporate donations will follow the opinion polls and Abbott will be careful to mend fences.

If money follows the polls then the Liberals are buggered. If you were on a corporate board you'd have Mr Abbott to lunch as a matter of courtesy, and listen to him describe cutlery as namby-pamby and elitist. Then, you'd send a donation to the ALP to keep in sweet with Senator Arbib.

Abbott's best chance to staunch any voter leakage to the Greens is to polarise the electorate by providing a clear alternative to Labor.

No, that will make it worse. The Green vote will increase in Liberal areas, which may not matter in the House but in the Senate it will be the difference between a state electing one or two Green Senators, and the failure of the third candidate on the Liberal Senate ticket.

... early response to the global financial crisis ... kitchen table concerns ... higher living costs ... education ... Hospitals ...

Yep, all Labor shortcomings, all examples where Abbott can't make the case that the Libs would be better and stronger.

In government, Abbott wanted to take over the state public hospitals.

Would that have made them better, or worse? Given the result of the 2007 election we'd have to conclude it's less than the gamebreaker you might hope for, Arthur.

Abbott is not a great proponent of states' rights ... He supported the takeover of Launceston hospital by the feds in 2007

It was the Mersey Hospital in Latrobe, Arthur, and the people who live and worked there chucked out the Liberal MP.

genuinely believes in devolving decision-making to the community on health matters.

There are two issues here. Firstly, a Commonwealth takeover from the States makes this less likely, not more so. Secondly, as Health Minister Abbott listened to the community and made RU486 available, was in no way responsible for the Pan Pharmaceuticals debacle, and did a great job on educating Australian healthcare professionals to meet the skills shortage in health was high-handed and non-consultative with the full backing of the then PM. Where is the evidence of Abbott's acceptance of community consultation on healthcare, except for narrow and compliant stooges like Rosanna Capolingua?

Interestingly, a substantial proportion of women in a recent Newspoll survey indicated they have yet to make up their minds about Abbott. Here lies an opportunity for him. He should do a series of considered speeches through next year.

By "considered" do you mean "a complete departure from the kind of stuff he's been coming out with throughout his career"? Do you take the chance that he'll drop some sexist clanger that causes that suspension of disbelief to fall like a sword of Damocles?

Do not expect an early election; the voters would be cynical and Rudd needs to do Abbott slowly, jump on any evidence of policy flakiness to seed doubts about Abbott's fitness for office.

At last, a piece of sensible commentary! I knew you could do it Arthur.

Abbott has been in parliament for 15 years and served as a minister and leader of the house.

Kim Beazley had done all that and more, so what?

Nor will Joyce be an easy a mark. He is a higher primate who learns from experience. He is already moderating his utterances.

Until next time. He can't "moderate" his position on climate change and other key issues without backing down. A great description of Joyce being rattled and prone to gaffes is described here:

Barnaby Joyce is a fascinating interview subject. He is invariably affable and cheery but as the interviews wear on, he tends to become exasperated. His befuddlement renders the pinkish hue of his complexion into a scarlet, almost vermillion tone, little specks of spit collect around the corners of his mouth and his nose turns cherry red.

These physiological changes are signs that the interview is about to leap into the realms of entertainment and that soon will follow what we political pundits like to refer to as the “money shot”.

Besides, is it too much to expect more from a government minister than to be a "higher primate"?

Rudd has to be the steady hand on the tiller. He must make a virtue of his alleged nerdiness to paint Abbott as lacking substance. He should emphasise his command of issues but engage the public in a way he did not do with the emissions trading scheme.

And Rudd is in Copenhagen gathering tips and tricks from the leading politicians of the world to do just that. Abbott, meanwhile, is lolling around Sydney talking about his chest-hair.

The ascension of Abbott has tilted the odds in favour of more pre-election sweeteners.

It follows the whole narrative of reaping the rewards of saving the country from the GFC, and would have worked had Turnbull stayed in.

Abbott has targeted the economic stimulus package for savings. Expect Labor to pressure him to go further. Rudd needs to take the high ground on the budget and craft a narrative around future challenges, including the ageing population, the looming commodities bonanza and the conservation of resources.

Expect Abbott to be unable to match this combination of fiscal prudence and expenditure on the needful and necessary. That will be the telling difference, Arthur.

... expect to see more of those budgie smugglers.

A triumph of self-indulgence over political prudence. As I said earlier it didn't work for Debnam or Baillieu.

TONY Abbott is the Spartacus of Australian politics.

Yep: caused the Romans a bit of bother for a little while but they killed him eventually, routing his supporters and using their very corpses as proof of the power of the incumbents. Abbott's preference for martyrdom over victory should worry Liberals more than it does: it's another example of his callow lack of responsibility.

Why would Arthur Sinodinos write a piece he must surely know to be false? To keep his hand in and show that he's not a part of some bygone age, and to show that his loyalty is greater than his current capacity for cool judgment. When a party is hell-bent on self-destruction there are no prizes for being smart before the event, at least not publicly. His responsibility is not to churn out twaddle like this but prepare the triage team for the inevitable disaster.

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Madness in any direction not an attractive proposition

The Abbott-Minchin-Joyce Coalition are sending mixed signals, which is why they can't and won't win. What follows here is inspired by this post and this quote:

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.

- Hunter S. Thompson Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

That quote seems to sum up the feeling being projected by the Abbott-Minchin-Joyce Coalition at the moment. The road ahead is clear, and those who can tell them what (not) to do are few. The problem is that in framing the political debate, it's in the Opposition's interests to not carry on like they are.

The idea of a loyal Opposition in Australian politics is to say with credibility that the incumbent government is taking Australia in the wrong direction; it's going too fast on issues that are toxic or trivial, and not far enough on issues that are important. Having done that, it has to make the case that it would take Australia in the right direction, going fast and far on the good stuff and putting an end to all that rot.

I think the Rudd government is moving too slowly on a lot of issues I think are important: infrastructure; healthcare; the redevelopment of Aboriginal social systems; better and more extensive relations with Asian, African and Latin American countries; a proper broadband network; education; and yes carbon reduction strategies that will boost the economy - lots of things really. In none of those areas can you be confident that the Coalition would do a better job than Labor, however well they might highlight this or that example of inadequacy.

More to the point, a boisterous and bumptious Opposition is appropriate for a time when opportunities are going begging and a tired government has no real idea what to do. Queensland needs an Opposition like that, so do South Australia and Tasmania; but Australia doesn't. Australia is going through significant challenges economically and environmentally, and the Rudd government's policies are hit-and-miss in meeting these challenges.

The Opposition should represent more hits than misses; articulating new and better ways forward through a thicket of challenges that must, without a clear narrative, seem overwhelming. God help it if they adopt the wrong narrative: maybe this will be the get-out clause for those who believe Howard's policies didn't get a fair run.

A boisterous and bumptious Opposition is not appropriate for the complex argument that the CPRS is not an adequate response to the threat carbon pollution poses to our environment, but that something has to be done and that thing is yet to be determined. The difference between the 1999 republic and the 2009 CPRS is that simply negating the positive case does not leave a stable status quo. The idea that no action on carbon emissions (other than open-ended no-obligation grants to carbon producers, and vague musings on nuclear power) is a stable status quo is rubbish. The fact that business groups are not united in calling for any and all carbon abatement measures to be kyboshed, nor calling for "removing business uncertainty associated with the climate change debate" should worry the Liberals more than it apparently does.

Turnbull could have represented the Liberals as a safe pair of hands: economic responsibility with less debt, environmental change that doesn't derail the economy for some oblique culture-war purpose. Hockey might have too, had be become leader (his challenge is to come out of the Abbott Experiment unscathed, without looking like either a ratbag or a doormat). Oh well. It is Rudd who now looks like the safe pair of hands, doing his best under difficult circumstances.

Nobody is going to represent Tony Abbott as a safe pair of hands: he's the boy who hasn't/ won't/ can't grow up. Besides:

• He's not going to promote economic responsibility, because having squibbed the great economic debates of the past three decades he doesn't know where to start (let alone on issues like house prices, mortgages and families). You'd think he would, with an Economics degree from Sydney Uni and having worked at close quarters with Hewson, Howard and Costello - but no.


• He can't promote low debt because the Nationals will want (and get) too much pork for economic responsibility.


• He can't just outsource foreign policy to the Americans and the Poms because they seem tentative about Afghanistan, and other issues like Israel-Palestine are less clear-cut than they were.


• On top of all that, Abbott won't do anything that changes the environment because he genuinely thinks things are fine as they are, or that it's all too hard.

In 2007, the Liberals could not get used to the idea that Howard was leading them into perdition. In 2009, the Abbott Experiment is all about the idea that Howard-style conservatism is an idea that has not been properly tried, let alone exhausted. It's an idea held by nobody who doesn't vote Liberal/National/CEC already.

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Another weak Liberal

The Nationals own Tony Abbott, not that it will do either of them any good.

Barnaby Joyce's brain-farts about state debt, Chinese investments and the US economy was a gambit to show Nats voters just how much he had the Liberal leader in his pocket. Yes, what he said wasn't sensible - but after Joh and Tim Fischer we should be grateful that it was in grammatical English at all. The focus of the journosphere on our great and powerful allies or on the states is beside the point, and shows that political reporters don't really understand what they're reporting on.

There have been three times in Federal Coalition history when the Liberals stood up to the National/Country Party. Each time the country was better off for calling their bluff sheer bloody effrontery. This week wasn't one of them; the Nats have got themselves another patsy in the Liberal leadership, which is how they like it. On a regular basis the Nats will now get all huffy about threats (real and imagined) to their exalted position, and Abbott will cave. The problem is that some people are more important than the Nationals, and that sometimes you have to disagree with the Nats in order to produce positive policy and political outcomes.

The first Liberal to put the Country Party, as they were called then, back in their place was Menzies. After the 1955 election the Primary Industry portfolio was not allocated to a CP minister, as they considered their right; but to that slickest of city-slickers, Billy McMahon. McMahon applied himself to the role and impressed farmers groups and other stakeholders, to the dismay of the Country Party. In this, McMahon was ably assisted by a Liberal grazier in his first term in Parliament, Malcolm Fraser.

The second time this happened was during the 1980s, when John Howard attempted to both placate and distinguish himself from the Queensland Nationals, led by Joh Bjelke-Petersen and Bob Sparkes. The Joh for Canberra thing fell over in the late 1980s, as did the then Queensland government, with two unelected Premiers proving that you can't heal a party of perceived corruption while it is still in office. When John Howard eventually became Prime Minister the Nats did not say boo to him, they didn't dare.

The third Liberal leader not to put up with any crap from the Nats was Malcolm Turnbull. He even sacked the only member of that organisation currently in Parliament with any brains at all, Fiona Nash. The Nats even gibbered about leaving the Coalition until they realised they'd be voting themselves into oblivion.

The point about Joyce's remarks was the pissweak response from Abbott. If a moderate Liberal had made stupid remarks about the State Government of WA, Washington and Beijing, you can be sure Abbott and several other frontbenchers would have jumped all over them. Joyce got away with it. He'll get away with it again, and again and again, until a Liberal leader makes them realise that sort of carry-on makes largesse to rural communities less likely than more so.

The recent debates on the ETS, where Joyce was shown red-faced and spitting like some loser at chucking-out time, shows that he's a liability to everyone bar a few politically insignificant and self-marginalising yokels. Abbott has indulged Joyce, and you do start as you intend to go on. Bagging the Chinese does work against the notion of a prospective Liberal government as welcoming foreign investment or Australian prosperity generally. It goes right against the principle of seeking to build the kind of productive relationship that successive governments have built with Japanese interests since 1957 (while McMahon was Minister for Primary Industries - but by then the relationship with the Country Party had healed to the point where McEwen could take credit for it, but I digress), which is what Howard was trying to do, and what Mandarin-speaking Rudd was promising to do.

Christian Kerr's article on the removal of Turnbull in The Australian Spectator is one of the few sensible things written recently by anyone on that side of politics. That's what makes this so disappointing:

Abbott, Hulk-like, is rampaging around, talking about the government’s “emissions tax on everything”. Combet is responding with reason—and pages of figures.

Bruce Banner hates the creature he becomes.

But there can be no denying. The Hulk gets things done. And the angrier and baser he becomes, the stronger he gets and the more he accomplishes.

Abbott has accomplished nothing, in whatever guise (but all that Hulk/Superman crap does conjure up the image of Kerr as The Comic Book Guy from that other News Corp product, The Simpsons). If the Nationals think they can ride Abbott like the town bike, which they now do, he'll accomplish even less. Less than Greg Combet, who is more likely to be in Cabinet after the next election than Joyce. Slow and steady wins the race. Turnbull would have learned that after Godwin Grech turned out to be less a Clark Kent/Bruce Banner figure than the pathetic little man behind the curtains from The Wizard of Oz. Press gallery thrillseekers should be a little more critical of what gets served up to them.

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