Railroaded

Yesterday, the Federal government announced that it would fund the construction of a rail line between Parramatta and Epping. This is poor policy and worse politics.

Firstly, whose idea was it for the Prime Minister and other Federal ministers to be photographed with Keneally? Federal-State separation is all very well, but no Labor person would want to make any sort of association in the public mind between Gillard, who has a strong chance of winning, and Keneally, who has none. Keneally should have been sent to Ohio for the length of the campaign. Only if you are in denial about how bad the NSW goverment is would you risk the entire Labor campaign for federal government by giving Gillard a dose of the loser virus, Macquarie Street strain.

Secondly, it won't make any difference to Bennelong.

On a policy level, it is important to link the dormitory suburbs of northwestern Sydney to the jobs being created in and around North Ryde and northern Sydney. A Parramatta-Epping link is the cut-down version of that. The rail line is unnecessary for Bennelong, because we already live here. There is little desire or impetus for people in Bennelong communities like Gladesville, Denistone or Ermington to go to places like Greystaines or Cambridge Park.

This response from the Opposition was poor. It's gotcha politics, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing. It reinforces the Abbott image of no vision. The Federal Libs could do with some of the popularity and low-profile competence that Barry O'Farrell has gradually built up - if Hockey had embraced the NSW Liberal policy of a proper northwestern rail line, it would have built credibility and synergy for the Federa Libs. Instead, Hockey did himself no favours with bombast and sliding around real issues about transport through the nation's biggest city, issues that have far-reaching political, economic and social repercussions.

The Parramatta-Epping rail line was indeed first announced in 1998. And reannounced, and reannounced. An entire generation of journalists were employed in the State Parliamentary press gallery to follow around successive ministers as they reannounced this project, and they would dutifully report on this announcement (ready by 2010, apparently). The clogging up of media space on this non-event is another reason why the mainstream media have declined in circulation and influence, within Bennelong and elsewhere.

Most of the proposed Epping-Parramatta rail line involves duplication of existing rail lines. The major engineering challenge and greatest cost will come from linking the existing stations at Carlingford and Epping via a tunnel of about 4km. People living in West Epping can look forward to rumbling, drilling sounds for months on end, including the possibility of undermining your very home, for no benefit (there should be a station between Carlingford and Epping but I bet there won't be).

That's if it goes ahead at all: NSW Labor have no credibility and can't come up with $500m, even if you believe (against all evidence) that the costs won't blow out and make a nonsense of this announcement.

Now do you see why this won't be a vote-winner in Bennelong? Everyone involved in this has railroaded themselves.

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Out of puff

Sean Carney's piece today highlights what was always going to happen with Abbott. He was always going to run out of puff: he's a sprinter, not a stayer. The cracks that are now starting to show are structural defects that have been there from the start. Here at the Politically Homeless Institute we have long argued that Abbott's weaknesses negated any strengths he may have, and Carney is seeking to warn against the inevitable and foreseeable.

It's about how each side is able to portray itself and its opponent day after day, piece by piece, shifting and pushing against the other side. The progress of the campaign so far shows how it is the cumulative effects of the parties' performances that really count, rather than any single event.

This implies that amid all the hurly-burly, the truth will out. In reality, the Coalition have been lazy in making the case that they should replace the Rudd-Gillard government, and that laziness has made them vulnerable against an incumbent government with both a valid record and a viable future.

The Coalition's campaign has had its moments. They have run a disciplined and united campaign, in comparison to the rabble on the other side. Labor has been slow in getting their act together, but the Coalition have helped them by:

• Refusing to debate (Gillard's Q&A performance was the debate she never had)


• Releasing badly thought-out policies that don't fit together (see previous post)


• Squandering the free-media opportunity that comes with a "launch", and


• Thinking that because the devil is in the detail, you don't have to go there.

The Coalition aren't ready for government. By this weekend, people will have stopped listening to them and tight races will come down to Labor (or if not, particular local issues will help the Coalition prevail as in Gilmore and Bowman). The Coalition will complain about bias but you can't keep an even keel without a countervailing force. Tony Abbott's piss and wind is starting to wane and there is nothing Prime Ministerial to lift the Coalition.

The indolence of Tony Smith, the cowardice of Greg Hunt in pretending to craft a climate change policy as front for a "weathervane" leader and a sneering party, the fact that Christopher Pyne would chirp and gibber his way into the media limelight while producing an education policy scarcely worthy of the name and adrift from wider economic or social policy, shows that the Coalition don't really want to be lifted. Those three are aged under 50 and would be expected, under notions of Buggins' Turn, to be ministers in a Liberal government. It's one thing to jeer at Kevin Andrews or Phillip Ruddock as feeble relics who've had their day, but when the so-called future can't be bothered or can't cut it then Liberals are bound for disappointment, and the country is doomed to the kind of ineffective opposition we've seen in NSW.

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Why the Coalition telecommunications policy has failed

The Coalition policy on broadband is pathetically inadequate. It shows they don't understand the wider issues in this sector and its ramifications for the economy going forward. It shows their political contacts and general savvy is non-existent. It is an indictment of the lazy and stupid Tony Smith.

This policy area is like a prism through which you can view the general stupidity, laziness and lack of readiness for the Liberal-National-LiberalNational-CountryLiberal Coalition.

It also shows why the journosphere are unable to explain complex issues to voters, and hence that their whole fourth-estate function in the political system is one they've pretty much forfeited. The issues in telecommunications in Australia have remained pretty constant for some years now and even the most tech-illiterate journalist should have a checklist against which to judge the Coalition against the issues.

The Coalition have failed on telecommunications policy because:

1. The prime challenge in Australian telecommunications is to stop Telstra charging first-rate prices for third-rate services. Telstra has a chokehold on the entire ICT industry in this country: a bit like the wharfies union had over the import and export of goods but much, much worse in terms of macroeconomic impact and opportunities foregone. To address this, even in a tokenistic way, is to get the prime policy challenge facing this sector. Details of the tech industry could be forgiven if the number one issue was squarely addressed. To fail to address it, to not regard it as an issue - or even to bleat about tall poppies - is to have a firm grasp on the absolutely wrong end of the stick.


2. "... the Coalition will take real action to deliver them over an affordable high-speed broadband network using the best mix of optical fibre, HFC, wireless, DSL and satellite". No, it won't. The "best mix" judged by whom, based on what, for whose interests? DSL, for goodness sake! The first paragraph: starts with bombast and ends with a hodge-podge. This policy is stuffed from the start.


3. There is no support for this policy from participants in the industry. This is because Tony Smith has been too busy knocking off leaders and perfecting his eerie Peter Costello impersonation to consult with the industry of which he would be minister. His policy would have more credibility, and the party coffers might even have more money, if Smith had gotten out and listened rather than talked nonsense at people who know nonsense when they hear it. If you're going to sell your soul, to Telstra or anyone else, at least demand top dollar for it.


4. "The Coalition’s plan will deliver uniform nationwide availability of high speed broadband". No, it won't. It can't. Any market-dependent solution like this one will mean that the CBDs of Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra - possibly also Perth and Brisbane - will have broadband as fast as anywhere in the world, much faster than in [insert remote location in Australia other than a mining site here] or [insert low-to-middle-income suburb/town in a marginal seat here]. The proposed regulator isn't strong enough to even out any disparities nor offer any incentives that have not already been offered for telcos to cover vast distances where customers are few, far between, and have a raging sense of entitlement.


5. "... high-speed networks capable of delivering from 100 Mbps down to a minimum of 12 Mbps peak speed ...". Where did those numbers come from? On what grounds are we limited to this extent?


6. "We will emphasise affordable broadband, with all such premises wherever they are in Australia able to receive services at prices comparable to those for similar services in metropolitan Australia. There will also be improved satellite delivered broadband services for the last three per cent". No there won't. That technology doesn't exist, it won't be developed by a government more keen on cutting debt and taxes than it is on broadband delivery.


7. "The Coalition will cancel Labor’s reckless and expensive National Broadband Network. The NBN would be a $43 billion taxpayer funded white elephant. It would do nothing to deliver lower prices – it just substitutes one monopoly for another". It removes the monopoly provider of wholesale telecommunications infrastructure from the retail market, and means that the former need not be skewed in favour of narrow commercial interests of the latter.


8. "The NBN gives no priority to those who do not get an adequate service today – in fact Labor’s plan leaves them waiting up to eight years before they see a change". True enough. The fact that Telstra and Optus aren't racing ahead of this slow-moving elephant shows the market failure that Coalition policy (such as it is) fails to address.


9. "... the Coalition’s plan will stimulate a vibrant, private sector-based broadband market, with Government involved to encourage competition and ensure services reach all Australians". The only way government can "ensure" this is if it gets into the provision business itself, or throws around cash like - well, like the Rudd government did, really. We have a private-sector based market already, and the service we get is inadequate due to regulatory failure - a failure the Coalition seems keen to perpetuate.


10. "Central to the Coalition’s plan is a $2.75 billion investment (with the expectation of leveraging at least $750 million in additional private sector funding) to create a nation-wide competitive fibre optic ‘backbone’ by 2017". An amount like that will be cut in the name of debt reduction, tax cuts, porkbarrelling or a combination of these. No part of this policy references any sort of broader vision for a Coalition government: it's a turkey waiting for a Coalition Christmas.


11. "Our backhaul plan will ensure lasting competition and stimulate new private sector broadband networks being built to connect with the new competitive backhaul network". Again, it won't be competitive because it will be a publicly-funded, bureaucratically-administered monopoly. Policies are doomed when they double back on themselves like that.


12. "Our plan will serve the priority areas quickly. We will identify the areas where Australians are underserved – particularly outer metropolitan areas and rural and remote areas – and ‘fill those gaps’ as quickly as possible ..." - it's too late for that. You should know where those areas are, and be hammering this policy in those areas long before now. It's too late now. That message has been buried in budgie-smugglers, wandering decimal points, boofhead failed leaders, and all the other chaff and fog one finds in an election campaign.


13. "Based on industry trends and consultation, we expect that wireless networks will play a central part – and we have provided sufficient funding to roll out wireless networks to achieve our stated objectives". Nobody who has the choice between optic fibre and wireless favours the latter. Look at television: cable television is far more efficient, diverse and economical than free-to-air. It's too late for all this waffle about "industry trends and consultation" (shoulda done that already, so you could be more specific and credible when it counts - now).


14. "Our plan will establish a commercial and technical platform for much greater fibre penetration over coming years, particularly by stimulating demand for broadband services and in turn stimulating investment by the private sector (building on government contributions such as new and more competitively priced backhaul.)". Again, no it won't. If "fibre penetration" (!) was so important it wouldn't be just another option alongside wireless, HFC, two tin cans on a string, etc.


15. "The Coalition will establish a National Broadband Commission (NBC) to implement our broadband plan. The NBC will build and publish a detailed National Broadband Database". Great, another government agency with an acronym, whose role is to build a database. Can't wait.


16. "Funding for the Coalition’s broadband plan will commence in our first year in government, and we will invest almost $2 billion in the forward estimates period". $2b on the never-never: because it's not linked to anything, because industry is lukewarm about it and because the temptation to cut big unintegrated wads like that out of the budget will be overwhelming, we may fairly call bullshit on this whole policy.


17. Well done in piling on to Conroy's Filter (mainly for fiscal reasons), but only after Conroy himself had canned it. The sheer vacuity of this policy undoes that good work. Tony Smith is a lightweight, Joe Hockey must surely have his measure by now (as must Andrew Robb, who was only at Smith's announcement because the journosphere would ignore it otherwise).


18. The broadband policy is not integrated with, and in fact largely negated by, this. If you're going to present the WWW as some sort of reverse sewer in a policy written by ninnies and robbed of any real impact (when will you provide these things, to what standard? Did you seriously imagine anyone was going to be impressed by a Ministerial Advisory Committee on Social Networking?), it undermines the idea that broadband has a vital role to play in the future of our economy, our society, our nation.

Admittedly, the idea of the importance of broadband is not one the Coalition has put forward, so I suppose it can't be held responsible for that. Yet, it is the fact that it accords broadband no importance (except as a threat), and does not integrate it with other infrastructure, and won't stand up to Telstra - this is why the Coalition policy has failed, why it must not become government policy, why its spokesperson is unworthy to govern the nation or even be considered a representative of it. Better industry analyses of telecommunications and the Coalition's failure are available from here and here.

You can't fatten the pig on market day - but if the Coalition knows anything it must surely know that. Get some respect for policy or government will slip from your grasp: this is the lesson the Coalition have finally learned in NSW and what the Feds have unlearned, in pursuit of God knows what. Get a basic understanding of the issues and the industry, and good policy and politics will follow.

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A firm grasp of the wrong end of the stick

Katharine Murphy is another one of those journalists on the bus, drinking the Kool-Aid and trying to do the Annabel Crabb thing of being at once up with the gossip and spin while implying (falsely) that she might have better things to do than be up with said gossip and spin. Murphy is of no consequence except that she's trying to defend the indefensible, and assert the relevance of a once-important profession that prefers its own irrelevance to the possibilities of Australia's future.

Before we all embarked on the campaign about a campaign, there was much worthy analysis about 2010 being the "new" media election.

The political parties pondered it. Journalists pondered it.

So that's who's meant by "we all": the politico-journalist complex. Random pensioners at shopping centres, kissed babies, cranky bloggers - all backdrop to the paso doble of The Campaign, which is done for the benefit of the politico-journalists and you can tune in or out as you please. If you must participate, at least be colourful!

At the top of the allegedly unfashionable terminal structural decline heap sits Nine Network journalist Laurie Oakes, who has been as much a player in recent events as Gillard or Abbott; not only by being an influential commentator (although there's been some of that obviously), but by being a news breaker.

Really? Thirty years ago he leaked an entire Budget, and the then Treasurer seemed to have survived the experience. What journo magic has Oakes wrought that so impressed the easily impressed Katharine?

Oakes's argument was: 1. Latham is not a journalist. 2. He is not objective, and makes no attempt to be. 3. His conduct in recent days reflected poorly on the network.

It is hard to argue with any of those points.

Latham is a great polemicist, but his conduct of recent days just underscores the Oakes critique.

What Oakes's employers made of his live-to-air indictment of their judgment is another story, but he makes a point of putting viewers and readers before the bosses who have come and gone over a career spanning many decades.

Oakes is the most powerful journalist in the country.

Laurie Oakes can state the bleeding obvious and he's a hero? The first time he's ever stood up to his employer, only after Kerry Packer was dead? That's not a critique, it's a whinge.

Laurie Oakes cares nothing about viewers and readers and voters and taxpayers. The kid who cleaned his house used to be Prime Minister. He doesn't give a toss whether or not you get sound healthcare, pay a reasonable amount of tax, or what happens in East Timor or Afghanistan. The current Prime Minister hasn't done nearly enough to butter up Laurie Oakes and now this upstart Latham has thrust himself into the Gillard-ambushing business. Oakes is raging against his own irrelevance, but all he's doing is confirming it.

And so are you, Katharine Murphy. His, and yours.

You might not agree with him and you might not love him, but he takes the use of his power seriously. He brings decades of context and experience to his analysis of issues and events.

And what does he do with it, exactly? Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones have more substantial records in shifting public policy than Laurie Oakes. Both have probably broken more news in the last decade than Oakes has (especially since Sunday was canned).

This correspondent is fortunate to work alongside, and have been mentored for many years by, Canberra's other doyen, The Age's political editor Michelle Grattan, who exhibits similar professional values.

And what might those values be, Katharine? Schoolgirl giddiness over a lightweight who has nothing to say, and wasn't that convincing in saying it.

This correspondent though would also urge the critics to engage constructively with the values exhibited by a professional such as Oakes.

What he has done in this campaign is show leadership and aggressive independence.

These are old fashioned journalistic values.

What he has done is bleat about his own irrelevance, and thereby reinforces it. If the ALP had complained about Oakes, nobody should doubt that he would have shirtfronted the Prime Minister exactly as Latham did - perhaps without the physical menace, but it's the thought that counts.

These values are under sustained attack from the spin doctors and from commercial pressures and from politicians who seem to think they no longer need to answer legitimate questions; just punt out their messages to a pliant press pack and a pliant public.

What 'legitimate questions'? Questions about 'media coverage' and a Brisbane backbencher who's had his gallbladder out?

Here are two questions for Katharine Murphy:

1. What are the ten most important issues to readers of The Daily Fairfax?


2. What are the opinions of the major parties about those issues?

If you can't answer those questions, you have no right to be in the press gallery bus. If they're not the questions you're asking - and they're not the questions that Oakes or Grattan are asking - then, stuff them. There's nothing aggressively independent about insisting on your right to drivel, and your insistence that your readers deserve nothing better than what you will dish up to them.

I'm sorry if the process looks messy and combative and deeply flawed.

Oh, piss off. It looks incompetent. It looks like you don't know what your job is. It looks like, when you ask a silly question, you deserve nothing better than a silly answer. You don't know clay from chocolate and when politicians accidentally tell the truth you and Oakes and Grattan call it a 'gaffe'. This is passive-aggressive self-pity at its worst.

But what Oakes has done in this campaign is lead at a time where it is increasingly hard to lead, and to remind his viewers, our critics, the politicians and the public, that a bit of new fashioned, old fashioned journalism can still matter; that it can still be worth the time you invest to read and watch and listen and then debate the merits of what the profession has delivered.

It isn't worth the time because the press have become not a facilitator of political messages, but a prophylactic.

That independence still has value in an age in which the currency of almost everything is eroded.

Value to whom? Value for what? I'm an avid consumer of Australian media and I'm still left guessing about what is going on. The journosphere is on a giant wank and won't come back until well after the things it could be warning us about are already happening. Stuff your self-pity and get off the bus. You might find some information that we can use, and that you might turn into a real story. Don't wait until it's too late, like it is for poor old Laurie and Michelle.

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Cheering for the underdog

Labor have stumbled and bumbled their campaigning, they've been skittish and disconcertingly coy about what they have achieved in office. In NSW and Queensland, the Coalition stand to win eight seats each - bringing them one short of the total they need to secure government (making WA more pivotal than it tends to be in national elections). Labor should be gone for all money: why aren't they? Why is there a real chance that a poor campaign with an appalling political backstory will be rewarded with victory?

The journosphere has been obsessed with Rudd. This is because Rudd played the media game and so does Abbott, whereas Gillard hasn't buttered up the press gallery - and if she wins, will be less inclined to do so. Laurie Oakes in particular has railed against his own irrelevance by going after Gillard, and fat lot of good it's done him or Channel 9 (which used to rival the ABC as a serious news outlet). Just as Latham helped Howard with his crushing handshake, he has equally unwittingly helped Gillard show herself as adept in dealing with bullies. If only Latham would square up to Abbott, it would not only make Michael Duffy (author of Hot for Boofheads: A Joint Hagiography) hyperventilate but show that they are the same sort of person at heart, and that's all Labor needs.

Tony Abbott has led a united party. He's targeted economics both in general and in terms of household budgets. His criticisms of the government have gone without serious challenge for months. Abbott has done everything you need to do from a campaign perspective to set up not just a victory, but a landslide - right now Liberals should be in the same position federally as they are in NSW. And yet ...

Abbott has not done what I suggested he do - go completely rightwing and present himself as true to what he is. Not dance away from Battlelines but fulfilling it, good and hard. What he's done is go all mealy-mouthed to the point where Adele Horin thinks he's a moderate:

"That's what people do when they are mature people," Abbott said last week. "They are capable of growing and changing in response to changing circumstances."

Now we attempt to square the circle and see Abbott trying to present himself as a mature person, rather than a flake who'll say whatever he needs to say and do whatever the hell he likes. Horin presents the difference between what he says and what he does as some sort of conundrum: he hasn't changed, grown or matured since 1979. He hasn't got Labor by the throat because there's something you can't trust about Abbott. That "action contract" stuff looks like a prospectus from a dodgy real estate trust. The boy-who-never-grew-up charm didn't work for Andrew Peacock, why would it work for Tony Abbott?

At the Liberal launch today, I particularly liked the laughter at the idea of Julie Bishop as a loyal deputy.

This is the ad Labor should have run from day one:



It is the ad John Howard and Graeme Morris and Lynton Crosby would have run: the opposition are a risk, stick with the incumbents. It is telling that this ad is not coming from official Labor, but from the ACTU: it is as though the club officials have burst from the private boxes onto the field and started kicking goals, because the players and coaches are so frustratingly incompetent.

Speaking of incompetent, Jenny Macklin wants to have Aborigines in the Constitution but she hasn't followed through on something much more straightforward like the Little Children Are Sacred report, much less sorted the gold from the dross in the Northern Territory Intervention.

Macklin isn't the norm for her party, but if she crossed the fence she'd be a veritable beacon of competence (and right up there with Peter Howson in terms of tangible benefits for Aborigines). I hope we are in the final days of Macklin's tenure in public life, but I'm more certain (and more grateful) that Peak Abbott is also behind us. People are giving Gillard the benefit of the doubt because, for all her shortcomings, she's not as shifty as Abbott.

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No news is bad news

This is great, and there should be more of it. It helps voters realise that the media are simply unable to get over themselves enough to report on and analyse government policy. The politico-media complex can only be broken by the media changing focus away from politicians.

If the media is to survive it should focus on the end results of government policy, with the occasional foray into the various decision-making bodies (of which Parliament is only one part). Journalists cover politics because they like the horse-race aspect of it, and find the company convivial. If there are any hardships in being a press gallery journo they have romanticised it in much the same way as old rockers have:

Hotel, motel
Make you wanna cry
Lady do the hard sell
Know the reason why
Gettin' old
Gettin' grey
Gettin' ripped off
Under-paid ...

If you wanna be a star of stage and screen
Look out! It's rough and mean!

Cue the bagpipes, and piss off. Journalists cover politics because they like it, not because they are providing some fourth-estate role for the community. There is precious little information to be gained by reading or listening to a bunch of idle people waiting for a gaffe like seagulls waiting for chips.

Just as fried potato is not the natural sustenance of birdlife, so too a media scrum bustling local people out of the way so that they can cover a politician walking among local people (including that old stand-by Voters Say They Darndest Things! Voters So Off Message, They Don't Even Know Who David Speers Is!) is not a reliable source for local people to find out what is going on in their community.

Grog's right, the whole Boys On The Bus thing has had its day and the only ones who get screwed are the underinformed public. If that bus was blown up the only tragedy would be if the driver was hurt. They should all be sacked and real journalists hired on a portfolio basis: have a defence journalist covering defence issues, a health journalist covering health issues, etc. Ministerial statements, opposition rebuttals and parliamentary debates are part of that, but not the whole story. Move them around and bring in freelancers to avoid organisational capture.

The media ought not feel obliged to publish/broadcast waffle, much less complain about it. It is not news that a politician makes an announcement, still less that there is no link between that announcement and the effect of the policy upon people's lives. The tradition that there is has died. The judgment by news directors that there is a public interest in reporting what politicians say and the context backdrop against which they say it is mistaken. The idea that the public want to hear more politico-media drivel could not be any more wrong, except to say that Australians should be able to change it without some violent break with our traditions of easygoing reform.

The problem is not, as Bernard Keane complains, that there are lobbyists and a professional political nomenklatura. The problem is that there is no scrutiny of what they do, no belling of those cats other than trawling through an out-of-date register. This is possible only by taking a whole-of-government approach to news gathering, rather than waiting for a press sec to tweet you.

Politics has always been outsourced to representatives. The more you widen the franchise and increase the complexity of issues dealt with, the less representative the representatives become. So long as the means exist to disempower the representatives once they get ahead of themselves, and so long as there remain credible candidates willing to take risks where appropriate, things will be just fine. Maybe refusing to take a phone call from Mark Arbib is one of those risks: maybe declining to belt the little bastard with a shovel is. Who knows; I'm just a blogger and Senator Arbib is one of my representatives, apparently.

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Where's Johnny?

Bob Hawke turned up at a shopping centre here in Bennelong recently, and it got me thinking about Hawke's successor and the former local member: where is John Howard?

John Howard has been involved in political campaigns for the Liberal Party for half a century, including 33 years as an MP and six federal elections as leader of the Liberal Party (lost 2, won 4). He was closely involved with the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party through its three changes of leadership. He's a political animal first and last: he's not infirm like Whitlam, cheesed off like Fraser (or both like Menzies was in the decade after his retirement), or floating above politics in some statesmanlike cloud (with the odd descent into the mud for a rumble) like Hawke and Keating.

Is he really taking the whole cricket business too hard? Can he just no longer be bothered with the whole gladhanding thing? Is he going to do a Fraser, where the Liberal Party goes so far right that Howard becomes derided as a leftie? Is there nobody in the Liberal Party who would appreciate his presence, even if for old time's sake at a fundraiser?

Tony Abbott is basically promising the return of the Howard-Costello government without Howard or Costello. Costello has done his bit: hosted a function at which a few dollars were prised from the tight fists of Melburnians, and upstaged Abbott, for which the latter was pathetically grateful. Imagine how rapt he'd be if Howard did the same: reminded voters of the good old days, when Tony Abbott was kept on a short leash as emissary to Glenn Milne and there was none of this Prime Ministerial 50-50 nonsense.

The absence of John Howard from the campaign trail is inexplicable, except as a stuff-up by Loughnane and the rest of the Liberal campaign team. He was exhausted politically in 2007, but the whole Liberal pitch since then has been that Labor have been so bad it's time to bring back the Libs. Well, come on, let's have him: let's see him in Bennelong and see if the old magic really is gone. Let's see him in Robertson, LaTrobe, Bowman. Tony Abbott has a bunch of piecemeal policies in search of a wider narrative, and that narrative is that only the Libs can bring the happy days back. He can't cut this, cut that, cut everything else while also claiming to be a visionary: it's back home to the Howards or bust.

Howard would bear comparison with his three successors, but also his immediate predecessor as Liberal leader. If this is true, then Downer scored the greatest political own-goal since the German decision in 1917 to allow Lenin to go from Switzerland to St Petersburg. Every Coalition MP who lost office in 2007 should have a crack at Downer over that. Besides, isn't Downer supposed to be some big wheel at the UN where everyone has to be bipartisan?

How can the Liberals win on a neo-Howard platform without Howard himself? How can the Liberals be confronted by the inadequacy of their own position unless Howard is shown to be yesterday's man? Either way, get Howard out there and get Downer out of politics altogether: a dud leader, a dud foreign minister, and a toxic strategist.

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