Where shallow politics gets you

I have worked for a number of NSW government departments on contract in recent years. In the policy areas of those departments, almost all of them had Victorian Government manuals on their desks: a tribute to that state's policy leadership and its valuing of smart, hardworking people. The ability of its Premiers to stand up to Canberra knowing that they had solid research and rolled-gold facts behind them has set Victoria apart from other governments, and gives pause to even the most enthusiastic disparager of states' rights.

The one exception: Police. NSW Police had been through the wars in the 1980s and '90s, where a culture of making excuses for dodgy policing or even slackness was slowly and painfully scourged. Victoria acknowledged this by importing a senior NSW police officer who had been closely involved with reform, Christine Nixon, as their Commissioner; but one person can only do so much, and she should have gone long before she became so blithe as to underestimate the response required on Black Saturday.

During their most recent spell in State Opposition, the Victorian Liberals made great sport of the then-Labor governments' difficulties with law-and-order. It was one area where a normally socially liberal party would get all high-dudgeon conservative. They would never blame the police themselves for any shortcomings - hardworking, difficult job and all that, as long as they didn't ask for more money - apart from the odd crack at the (Labor-appointed) Commissioner from time to time.

Yet, some police were the problem. In some cases stupid people held high office within the Victorian Police, particularly those responsible for twentyfirst century skills like media manipulation or IT portfolio management. The spate of shootings whereby the inconvenient were erased by trigger-happy detectives, memorably portrayed in Animal Kingdom. There were too many to ignore, too many to pretend that the whole Victoria Police was shamed and limited in their effectiveness by a critical mass that was, apparently, too small to be identified easily and excised cleanly from the Force.

Every generation, the Victorian Police hits a new low when some gang becomes legendary by making the Victoria Police look like monkeys - Ned Kelly, Squizzy Taylor and John Wren, Kath Pettingill, the Painters & Dockers, and now the Morans and Carl Williams of our time. Every time, the Police eventually plod forward, arrest and/or kill the main protagonist(s) and consider the problem solved. Every time, politicians are so grateful that the bad headlines disappear when the offender is off the streets that their calls for reform fade, and with any momentum for it within the Police.

The Liberals ran a simple, dumb law-and-order campaign: more police (from where? In an age of full employment, who wants to plod around as a Victoria Police officer?), a crackdown on boganry in all its forms. It sounds great and looks snappy in advertisements. It was a no-brainer for the Victorian Libs, and look how well it did for them. Labor can do the Laura Norder thing too, but the conservatives will usually sound more convincing (except in NSW, where the Libs tried bringing out Laura at every election bar the last one - i.e. every election they lost - because it was their only real policy of any substance).

You can't run a law-and-order campaign with a police force that has been led badly, where sloppy and dodgy policing works side-by-side in identical uniforms to careful, shrewd and decisive policing. It was never going to work, and Victorian Liberals who sneer at smart-alecs being wise after the event or piling on to a difficult predicament are missing the point, again. The Liberals should have thought long and hard about what you can and should expect from a police force these days, given a community like Victoria, and worked out ways to get the Victoria Police from where it is to where it needs to go.

Australia doesn't have the abysmal police forces of other countries, where police abuse their arrest and entry powers to solicit bribes, sexually harass women, or pursue political ends on behalf of government. Any criticism of police cannot but affect the majority of police who are dedicated to doing the right thing and who do their jobs as best they can under often difficult circumstances. Victoria Police are right to bristle at sweeping accusations, but - even considering its source - the idea that the Victoria Police is a world unto itself governed by its own standards and rules is silly and unsustainable.

It is always difficult to comprehend and fix a system while it is still operating. Mechanics can put vehicles up on hoists and surgeons can anaesthetise their patients, but those who conduct far-reaching inquiries into key agencies of government have to deal with events that are changing while the inquiry is underway. Findings may be inapplicable as soon as they are written, let alone announced.

The task of those who would reform a police force face both those problems: hurt feelings, and the difficulty of investigating a complex, continually operating system - and in the case of police, one that is necessarily not open or transparent. No wonder the Liberals shirked it, and as you can see it has worked an absolute beauty in sheer political terms.

The problem is that policing has the capacity to suck the oxygen out of everything else they were hoping to do. Neville Wran was a vigorous leader elected in a landslide in 1981 (again, in NSW - yes, yes, but bear with me) but two terms later he was gone because that old whore Laura Norder wore him down. Who cares what policies he brought in for education or whatever: you may as well praise Richard Nixon for his environmental and OHS laws. Policing, judicial sentencing and associated issues wore out a government that not merely mastered but pioneered modern media-intensive political techniques.

The Baillieu government has come to rely heavily on the credibility of its Police Minister, Peter Ryan, in establishing its political momentum. By the standards of Victorian state politics, Ryan is certainly knowledgeable and tough, but it won't be enough for the government to rely on him to the degree that it does:

• Firstly, there isn't a depth of knowledge in the Victorian Coalition on these issues - talking points simply aren't convincing. You need a debate, different points of view with the minister and the leader having to master and decide on differing and well-informed points of view; and
• Secondly, a police minister needs to build a case for reform that goes above and beyond the usual politics. Any Police Minister who decides to take on villains and sluggards within the Force single-handed becomes overwhelmed and isolated by a coalition of those who are not only his targets, but Greg Davies types who won't hear a word of criticism against our fine, hardworking police (difficult job, circumstances etc, here have a cops-are-tops T-shirt), and of course the Opposition. I am still amazed that Victorian Labor hasn't started banging the drum about Liberals-dumping-on-public-servants; this is what Bob Carr did to the NSW Liberals in the 1990s (all right, enough with the NSW comparisons).

The media are showing their limitations, but they are doing their best. John Silvester and Andrew Rule are not only two of the best police roundsmen, they are easily in the top dozen journalists in Australia. They're thorough and well-connected, and they write well. They too can only do so much. Other journalists focusing on policing and justice describing this incident or that do not necessarily come to grips with the big policy questions, or if they do they lack the ability (alchemy?) to turn anecdotes into information. Rarely, you get exceptions like this. Of course, politics journalists know only about polling, parliamentary theatre and parliamentary gossip, which is to say they know nothing at all.

By playing to the media Victorian Liberals aren't advancing the debate, or taking the chance that they can lift the debate to a level where the Opposition, such as it is, simply cannot follow them. Ryan, Baillieu and the government are facing former ministers knowledgeable about policing generally and the Victoria Police in particular. They need not be so spooked as they seem to be, nor can they rely on old-school political tactics like bluff and a sense that they are still growing into the job.

Because there are no answers to the complex issues of policing Victoria within the Liberal Party, there has to be an open commission of inquiry outside both the government and the police. The Victorian Liberals should have gone to the last election promising just that: admitting the problems were too big and hard for them, and promising not to play the same cack-handed political games that brought Labor down, and which proved too hard for them to pull off successfully.

Yes, there is the old Sir Humphrey rule that you never call an inquiry unless you know the outcome already. Governments are at their best when responding to big issues that are way beyond their control: look at Hawke's responses to the Campbell-Martin inquiry and the Costigan commission, or Howard's responses to the Port Arthur shootings and East Timor. Ryan might think he's being clever by acting as a steady presence amid the turmoil going on around him, but a tumultuous police force papered over with PR can't implement effective policing, whether over basic keeping-the-peace or sophisticated policing strategies that outwit clandestine networks. He needs to be the bigger man and call that inquiry, and go with it where it will.

The alternative is that the government keeps on playing games about who met with whom, who said what in which context, and other ridiculous bullshit that helps nobody. If the Baillieu government gets overwhelmed on policing people will stop listening to it on transport (what is it doing on those issues?) or health (ditto) or whatever. The nightmare scenario is that Laura Norder runs the Baillieu government ragged, with the Liberals able to identify issues only after they have them by the throat.

In contrast to the more subtly-minded moderates the hard right came to office with a clear idea about what they wanted to do, which is why a basically sensible bunch of Liberals end up tarred with the right-wing brush because fines-for-swearing and other trivial right-whinge nonsense is all there is to show for half a year of Liberal government, really.

And that's where you get with a shallow approach to politics: you get overwhelmed by issues which are foreseeable, and through which clever and dedicated people will help you so long as you don't actively repel them. The Liberals' dilemma is that they have driven many such people from their ranks and replaced them with careerist suckholes. That dilemma will become a problem if they can't start showing themselves capable of intellectual heft and nuance pretty damn soon on issues that have gotten away from greater minds than theirs. A culture change is necessary within the Victoria Police but also within the Victorian Coalition - profound, far-reaching and the sooner it begins, the sooner it can be settled.

The Liberals risk creating the impression that they can get into government but can't do much whilst there but issue press releases and hold talks. Even Labor can do that.

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Black is white in the red room

The press gallery are usually rubbish at reporting events in the Senate.

Legislation can and does come out of the Senate changed utterly, with far-reaching changes when measures are enacted and it takes months for the journosphere to catch up. This happens parliament after parliament, so let's not have more nonsense about the current configuration. They place too much focus on briefings from the major parties and so-called "parliamentary theatre" in the House, ignoring minor parties or consigning them to the fringes. Then, when the issue (a piece of legislation, or a subject facing committee scrutiny) goes to the Senate, the entire journosphere just throws up its hands as though anything could happen, as though it hadn't actually listened and done its job in studying the tectonics of the Senate. Asking journos to provide some understanding how the Senate might react given a particular set of circumstances is real your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine stuff, a cop-out for so-called insiders. The idea that legislation and the issues that attend them disappear behind some black screen and reappear in changed form is one of the absurd pantomimes that people just have to love put up with, apparently.

The idea that the 2010 election was tantalisingly close for the Liberals is about to be put to the test starkly exposed. During 2005-08 the Coalition had a majority in the Senate. They lost it in 2008-11, having to rely on former Liberal Nick Xenophon and nincompoop Stephen Fielding - but oh wait, they were in opposition by then and they didn't set the legislative agenda any more, nor did they slow down anything that the supposedly vulnerable Gillard government wanted to do.

In less than three weeks, the Coalition will go backwards again. The numbers will stack up as follows:

34 Coalition
31 ALP
9 Green
1 Xenophon
1 DLP

76 TOTAL (minimum number needed for a majority: 39)

Given that Abetz has been utterly useless at tipping a knife-edge parliament to the favour of his party, where is he going to get five votes from?

Only Niki Savva can see this as a positive for a party that had its head handed to it at two elections now. The arguments she puts forward require you to be the most giddy Coalition booster with no sense of history (indispensible for a conservative in normal times), and no sense about Australian politics generally.

[DLP Senator-elect] Madigan is acutely conscious of his party's place in Australian political history. He is equally conscious of the part he could play in shaping events in the future.

It's a pity that Savva isn't. Her article assumes that Madigan is some sort of in-the-bag vote for the Coalition. Madigan beat an actual member of the Coalition, Julian McGauran, to take his seat in the Senate - yes, McGauran was a waste of skin, but if you like that sort of thing he was an actual Coalition vote rather than a maybe.

The Green-Labor alliance - what brings them together, what drives them apart - is the fascinating story of the coming two years. It is the Senate which will determine the configuration of government in the House, and not the other way around. Press gallery journos waiting for independent MHRs to align with Abbott are the same lazy lumps who predicted breathlessly that Costello would definitely challenge Howard, definitely, later this week or early next week, definitely ...

Just because the DLP kept the Liberals in office during the 1950s does not mean they are some sort of lucky charm for the prospects of conservative government today. When Stephen Fielding was elected, it was interpreted by the less cogent members of the press gallery as some sort of vindication of Howard's picket-fences-and-family image imported from the US Republicans. Madigan is replacing Fielding, and rather than being the titan of Savva's dreams he is likely to be every bit the chucklehead Fielding has been and is. On what is arguably the greatest challenge of our time, the Senator-elect upon whom Savva places so much faith is just as wishy-washy as Fielding:

Madigan says he believes in climate change, but does not necessarily believe it is man-made, and is not convinced a tax will fix it.

That sounds very much like he would vote against it, and when I put that to him in a phone interview a few days ago, his reply was: "At this point I am a no."

On that basis, Savva thinks Madigan is some sort of loyal footsoldier of the right. It's almost like she doesn't care what else he thinks. Unlike his co-religionist Tony Abbott, Madigan is more likely to push traditional Catholic preoccupations of abortion, euthanasia etc. His views on drug treatment would be shunned by both major parties.

According to party strategists, if Abbott wins government, and replicates the 2004 Senate result for the Coalition ...

This time - and any "strategist" worth their salt should know this - the boofhead is leading the Liberals. All Labor has to do is remind voters what happened last time the Liberals got control of the Senate: a giddy ride to the peak of hubris, followed by a death-plunge at the hands of the ALP.

I'd love to say that Savva was being silly in pursuit of her rosy scenario, but there is a real prospect that the carbon tax and MRRT won't go through. In that case, Gillard and Labor are finished.

With that number, plus the support of Madigan and Xenophon it could, if it sticks to its pledge, repeal the Gillard tax.

If if if if if if if if.

Xenophon, a climate change believer, is not swept up by the government's carbon pricing proposals, preferring a different model ...

Another case of Xenophon backing himself into a corner - neither major party supports that idea, so he can trade it away in return for - um, what? So that he can vote for an expensive re-realignment of the country's fiscal mechanisms? Over to you, journalists.

As well as touring the farms, [Madigan] talks to old people who while away hours on bitterly cold days in shopping malls because they can't afford to keep the heating on at home, so he is anxious not to sign up to anything that would make life even harder for them.

"I very much deal in facts and tangible things," he says.

"If there is no benefit firstly for people and secondly for the environment ... there has to be a tangible benefit. I want to enhance people's lives."

Madigan could make the DLP relevant again for the first time since Gough Whitlam wiped the party out at the 1974 double-dissolution election, and he knows it.

This is a man who would not know where to start with facts and tangible things. He seriously thinks a carbon tax is "a tax on life", and the practicalities of terminating pregnancies conceived in rape and incest simply pass him by. It's one thing to help the poor and elderly in this country, but that does not mean the country is run for their benefit. Relevance be damned.

Like Bob Katter, Madigan is a candidate for an Australia that has passed but which the poor and old can't and won't accept has gone forever. Savva may think it's smart politics trying to rope such people into the Coalition, heightening the case for the Coalition to turn its back on the future and campaign for a redux of 2006, but it won't serve the interests of the Coalition at all. Madigan will be as much help as hindrance to the Coalition, and they are in for a spell where their impotence gives them the excuse for ineffectiveness they have so far lacked.

... the passing of the balance of power in the Senate to the Greens.

The reason the Liberals look forward to it is because it will, even more than previously, cement the view in the minds of voters that Labor is beholden to the Greens.

The manager of opposition business in the Senate, the ever-alert Mitch Fifield, promises to press home that point at every opportunity.

Mitch Fifield is responsible for nobbling Jason Wood in LaTrobe in what is already the Liberals' worst state on the mainland. Please understand this: there would be a Liberal government were it not for Mitch bloody Fifield.

Keep in mind also that Labor used to "press home" that Menzies was beholden to the DLP. This didn't do either of the latter any harm at all, and many Labor MPs went home rather than to the House as a result. For all the unpopularity of Gillard at the moment, nobody is going to believe Senator Fifield over her.

Yet, even so, press gallery drones will continue quoting Abetz and Fifield as "senior strategists" and treating each new failure as an aberration. The House will be treated as a hotbed of intrigue while the pictures reveal it as a lame set-piece rebounding to the Coalition's discredit. Meanwhile, in the Senate, where the real action is, the press gallery will write it off as wacky and unknowable. We have been poorly served by the press gallery in this parliament and this will not improve any time soon. In 2010 voters voted despite the press gallery and there is every indication that they/we will do so again. If the people vote against the press gallery, sooner or later the press gallery will be out of a job.

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Dirt poor

So Julie Bishop has been to India: that's nice. Who paid for her to go, who went with her, and what does this trip - we have only her report of it to go on - mean for Australia's trade, and our economic future? If I were a journalist I'd ask these questions.

Australia has depended on India more than is often realised. The fledgling colony of Sydney was saved from starvation by what modern tabloids would call "mercy dashes" from British outposts in India. The revolt by sepoys in the 1850s forced the British to rescind religious discrimination, a massive change for Britain given its hundreds of years of the practice: in the Australian colonies, it encouraged ecumenism and discouraged the entrenched clerical arrogance that comes from being coupled with/shackled to/inebriated by state power and enforcement. When we relied more on Britain than we do, ports then known as Calcutta, Madras and Bombay were crucial stopping-off points to and from that country. Indians as members of the Empire helped confound the White Australia Policy. Indians fought alongside Australians at Gallipoli. All this comes before Australian hippies and Christian missionaries started going to India since the 1960s: baby-boomers can't claim credit for that either. To say that Australia's relationship with India is all about cricket and curry, as many do, is more than a little sad.

The question must be asked: is Julie Bishop the right person to be building the future of this relationship?

It is not hard to be overwhelmed by the scale of the development challenge confronting the government of India.

The third and fourth words in that article should have been swapped. That isn't just pedantry: the whole article starts with a swoon, which makes it hard to trust some of the more difficult contentions that it raises: nuclear exports for a start, poverty, greenhouse gas emissions, and the one Bishop skated over with a single word.

Australia has massive reserves of uranium, and India has a massive need for energy. Given the fact that the ALP has been split for a generation over nuclear energy, I am still surprised that the Howard government didn't move on uranium mining once the GST was bedded down and Beazley Labor vanquished after 2001.

[India] is a nation struggling to provide adequate services in response to the economic growth necessary to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty ... 25 per cent of the population currently does not have access to electricity.

Economic growth is necessary to lift people out of poverty. However, too much can be made of Australia's role in alleviating that:

• Will Australian-supplied power be targeted toward the homes and job-creating enterprises of poor people in India?


• Will that power be used in a way that doesn't make these people worse off than they already are (in terms of pollution and industrial accidents)?


• Is Julie Bishop really the person to make either of the above points stick?

Then, there's the word that Bishop skates over. She describes India as a "growing economic, political and strategic mega-democracy". The growing economy is pretty well understood, and because autocracy was always limited across such vast populations and distances the place has always been political. The key word here is "strategic".

India shares borders with Pakistan, Afghanistan, Burma and China. It is building a blue-water naval fleet (i.e. one that can sustain operations away from home ports for long periods), and has one of the largest armies on earth. Its air weaponry needs would be similar to ours in nature, but on a much larger scale. It has nuclear weapons. The growing economy isn't all about lifting people out of poverty: it will also be about arming, protecting and projecting itself and its interests. There is a massive amount of adjustment to be done to the mindset of Australia's foreign and defence policy outlook to deal with this - again, is Julie Bishop the right person to be doing this? Really?

Then, there is the question of economic power. It is unlikely that Indian companies will be content for Australian and other non-Indian companies to dig up and ship resources to them. Indian companies already play a large and growing role in the coal industry as well as in IT, and will take the same sort of stake that Japanese, Chinese, Korean and US companies take in our resources sector. This isn't an argument for xenophobia, far from it; what it does mean is that the relationship with India will require a depth of understanding that simply isn't evident right now. I doubt Julie Bishop is across, or feels the need to get across, these kinds of issues.

Given that we are talking about massive economic power over Australian resources, let's try and address issues of downstream processing without getting all radio-talkback shouty and racist about it. Again, we've had this debate regarding the Japanese and getting all upset gets us nowhere - but be prepared to go through it all again, and the same amount of nothing to be gained from such. We should have sufficient leadership to lift us above this, but we don't.

Given how many asylum-seekers come to Australia from the Middle East and Afghanistan, India could help Australia in its regional initiatives to deal with this problem - but it doesn't, because successive Australian governments are too stupid to ask them and too lazy to build the sort of substantive relationship that might be of assistance to all concerned.

The World Nuclear Association reports that India plans to expand nuclear power capacity to at least 25 per cent of its total requirements by 2050.

This will allow the government to rapidly increase electricity generation while reducing its relative reliance on coal, with obvious benefits in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Since when are we in the business of increasing the capabilities of foreign governments? Aren't we about lifting people out of poverty and reducing greenhouse gases, while making a bit of dough along the way? I'm so confused Julie.

When you consider that the World Nuclear Association is a lobbying outfit for companies in the nuclear industry business - well, they would say that, wouldn't they. Julie's just passing it on incase you are all feeling a bit credulous today. It's the next decade or so that's crucial with regard to greenhouse gas emissions. Even if Julie Bishop becomes Minister for Foreign Affairs in 2013 (oh stop it), there will be no discernible impact of Australian uranium exports and usage on greenhouse gas emissions. It's silly even to introduce this into the debate.

The Howard government agreed in principle in 2007 to supply India with uranium, subject to appropriate international safeguards to ensure Australian uranium was only used for peaceful purposes.

It was the judgment of the Coalition at that time that while India was not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it has an exemplary record of non-proliferation and that adequate safeguards could be built into any supply agreement.

Other nations, including the United States, Canada, France and Argentina have come to the same conclusion and have signed agreements to supply nuclear fuel and technology to India.

Canada seems to have forgiven India for playing them for mugs and acquiring nuclear technology in the 1970s. The question remains, though, about the "appropriate international safeguards" - if not the NNP Treaty, what might they be? Did you really go all the way to India just to be told that all you need to do is wind the clock back to 2007?

Given that this is the Liberals' main value proposition - winding the clock back to 2007 - how important would the jaunt to Hyderabad and the ensuing article be in convincing Australians that JB should be managing that relationship? Rudd went in hard over AWB but I still don't know what role Australian officials played in oil-for-food.

The OECD survey said, "Wide-ranging reforms and increased investment have lifted potential growth to almost 9%, the highest in Indian history, helped by improvements in infrastructure. Inclusive growth of 10% per year is feasible given that demographic developments are set to push up saving, but will only be achieved if the administrative and regulatory barriers facing companies are reduced."

Which OECD survey was that? The OECD, like, produces so many surveys.

It seems we should, then, hold off sending uranium to India until the IPA/CIS have taken their cutlasses to "administrative and regulatory barriers". Imagine John Roskam and Terje Petersen sweeping through that country like latter-day Robert Clives. Anyone can read The Road to Serfdom but it's quite another to go to where that road ends, and to convince people that to go the other way along that road they must first abandon where they are, or that Australian uranium exports really are being proposed with them in mind.

India is currently Australia's fifth largest two-way trading partner and accounts for over 7 per cent of Australia's total exports, currently dominated by coal and gold.

And education, Julie, remember how you used to be the Minister for Education? We've all moved on, but not to the extent where we blithely undersell one of our country's major assets as far as India is concerned.

It is important that Australia develop and maintain strong relations with India.

Yes, it is. Apart from the red herrings about Indian poverty and greenhouse gas emissions, and setting aside vulgar greed about the money to be made from selling minerals - what, from Bishop's perspective, is there to this relationship?

To be fair to Bishop, however, much of the responsibility for Australia's poor relationship with India comes from the incumbent minister and his two predecessors, Smith and Downer. Australian Foreign Ministers should have been going to New Dehli much more often than they have. There's time like the present, though, and the incumbent shows no sign of correcting his earlier mistakes by smoothing the way for Australian exporters. It is a dereliction of duty for Rudd not to have helped ameliorate Indian anger over the deaths of students in Melbourne, and it is a dereliction for Downer too that Rudd - and Bishop - had so little relationship for the incumbents and the next government to rely and build upon.

I knew Rudd wasn't much chop as Australia's Foreign Minister (a longer-form post on this is under development), and have long been concerned about Bishop too. It's hard that this area of policy is so bereft of any real understanding, of Australia's interests or of those of other countries. The journosphere can't really examine the strengths or weaknesses of individual politicians or parties against the national interest:

• For all its foreign correspondent resources nobody from the ABC has comprehensive foreign policy clout, nor does anyone from commercial TV/radio;


• Fairfax has Peter Hartcher - and Daniel Flitton (thanks kjob85);


• News Ltd has Rowan Callick (no, Greg Sheridan does not count. There are backpackers reviewing flophouses across southeast Asia who have greater foreign policy acumen and insight than that man); and


• er, that's about it really. There are some things you just can't outsource to the Lowy Institute.

India and Australia [sucks air through teeth]: big issues there. In the absence of leadership from politicians and guidance from the media, that's all I have to say about that.

Hope the debates on other areas of policy get better than this.

Seriously, the Australia-India relationship is a case study of politico-media failure because their failure lets this country down and leaves us unprepared for our future, and less able to take the advantages of that future than we might be.

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The herd mentality

As you'd expect from a veteran journalist, Barrie Cassidy has looked into the eye of a media storm and found the journalists have acted impeccably, particularly when it comes to reinforcing preconceived ideas that might otherwise be challenged by facts.

It's hard to identify a more popular decision taken by the Gillard Government than the suspension of live cattle exports to Indonesia.

Yet even that has been awash in an ocean of negativity.

The overwhelming sentiment of most of the graziers in the far north has fallen somewhere between philosophical and supportive. One quoted his son saying that he would rather go broke than put his animals through such cruelty. Another - Paul Holmes a Court - one of the biggest exporters of live cattle to Indonesia - says the government had no choice and the ban should only be lifted when proper surveillance is guaranteed.

The first and third paragraphs read as though there's some sort of coincidence - if not alignment - between government policy, stakeholders and the community at large. So far, so good: but that middle paragraph is puzzling. What could it mean?

Yet barely anywhere in the media, not in print, on radio or television, on the ABC or the commercial outlets, or online is there any real reflection of how the community would have wanted the government to respond to the horror of the Four Corners program.

Right, so the journalists are trying to create a story where there isn't one. The poor buggers probably think this is what is meant by "adding value". Time for some leadership from this press gallery veteran (not yet a doyen in his own right for pandering to Paul Kelly). The answer here is simple: get the media reporting the story rather than making stuff up - right Barrie?

It's easy to blame the media, as many will.

Well, yes. The question is not how many will, or how easy it is, but whether it is right or fair to do so.

The media treatment was compounded early on when the introduction to many of the reports - even on the ABC - spoke of fury and anger in the north over the decision, while the reports themselves contained nothing of the sort.

The media are responsible for making up non-existent fury. The media are responsible for elevating ideas that did not previously trouble them to centre-stage ("Why wasn't this done months ago?", "What about the graziers whose businesses could go to the wall?", "This is going to dramatically increase the price of meat for Indonesia's poor" - oh, please). Yet, according to Cassidy the media can't be held responsible for its own actions.

It was almost as if the media couldn't comprehend that maybe the industry itself would take the view a problem existed that needed fixing.

In other words: the media failed to do some basic journalism and find out what the industry's views were, and reporting that.

If it is true that Meat & Livestock Australia were aware that animals exported from Australia were mistreated in Indonesia, what we have here is a cover-up and a lax attitude to risk management. Just as wheat farmers were badly let down by AWB's shenanigans in Iraq, so too graziers can rightly feel aggrieved at MLA. There is a wider question to be asked about rural industry bodies and those they purport to represent, and I wish we had some journalists looking into that.

Instead, journalists whinge about issues that don't really relate to the topic at hand.

The circumstances of a hung parliament and minority government has created unfamiliarity and uncertainty around the issues, whatever they are.

Rubbish.

This is an issue that could easily have arisen ten years ago, when the Coalition was securely in government, or a decade before that, when Labor was. The maltreatment of cattle in Indonesia has many causes - the composition of the House of Representatives in Canberra at any given point is not one of them.

The Government's history, on insulation, school halls, and the East Timor solution invites instant scepticism on everything. A government decision controversy crisis. They can't even give away set top boxes to pensioners without a furore.

When you've been involved in politics and journalism as long as I have, Barrie, you understand that every time the government does anything there will be someone out there who criticises it. Sometimes the critics have a point, sometimes they don't; but criticism itself is a given. Part of the job of journalists is to help people assess whether or not particular policies and criticisms thereof are valid.

The media has its faults, but a lot of the blame rests with the Government itself. In this case, there was nobody other than the Government to sell the positives; not the animal welfare people because they wanted tougher action; not the graziers because they had to have one eye to compensation; and not the cows because of their obvious limitations.

This is pretty standard, Barrie. Grifting farmers out for a handout, cranky animal activists, and the government developing a policy in the national interest. Cows have never had much of a voice. The government has done its job - it has banned live cattle exports to Indonesia, and made announcements to that effect. If only the media had reported what was announced and looked into how the announcement was received and applied, it might have been different.

It was up to the Government, and they blew it.

The Minister for Agriculture (yes Australia has one) Joe Ludwig had been warned about the problem for months but handed it back to the industry to fix.

As opposed to what - having the RAAF strafe Indonesian abattoirs? You can imagine some oily lobbyist from the livestock industry assuring the minister: no worries mate, it's fiiiiiine. Every other industry is self-regulated (look at the stick Bill Shorten is copping over financial planners), why not livestock exporters?

Then when the Four Corners report went to air he astounded many of his caucus colleagues by taking a half way measure and calling for an inquiry.

It's standard practice, really. Nobody expects government ministers to be paralysed with horror when things happen. It would not have done for Ludwig to leap into action with a pre-defined course of action: it would have been rash, or if carefully planned then surely it could have been done before the ABC chose to broadcast that report.

It's also interesting that journalists played a minimal facilitator role in bringing about the Four Corners report on the brutal treatment of animals in Indonesian abattoirs. Lyn White from Animals Australia won't be eligible for a Walkley award, but the person who sat in a studio and did the voiceover work is. The non-journalist got the story straight, but the journalists reviewing the fallout (Cassidy included) stuffed it up.

And finally when the sensible decision was taken, the minister talked about "appropriate animal welfare outcomes" and "supply chain assurances".

To the prospect of resuming the trade in six months, he said "We need to put in place that supply chain assurance so as soon as we can move to a supply chain assurance then we can transition for the longer term."

In other words, when we're satisfied the Indonesians have stopped brutalising the cattle, we'll resume the trade.

But these days gobbledygook is not the only problem. It goes way beyond that to a failure to tell the public the truth about anything.

It is unclear why Ludwig has been singled out here: I've see worse examples of ministerial gobbledygook. Ludwig's wording is fairly typical PR-speak (is this a departure from normal practice? Does Joe Ludwig usually speak in the hard clear prose one would expect from, say, David Mamet? Only an insider could answer such a question), but the meaning of Ludwig's statement is intelligible by people who are used to hearing and analysing government announcements. Barrie Cassidy was a press secretary to then Prime Minister Hawke, it is a pity that he can only recognise "gobbledygook" when practiced by others.

Cassidy hasn't really made a case against Ludwig or the government, but he does attempt to clamber up to the high moral ground (a bit like some self-serving politician):

Ross Gittins hit the nail on the head in the SMH when he wrote: "One thing I despise about life in Australia today is the way power chasing politicians and self promoting media personalities seek to advance themselves by encouraging people living in the most prosperous period in our history to feel sorry for themselves.

Indeed he did, Barrie, but this doesn't really fit a narrative of people feeling sorry not for themselves but for cattle, for whom economic prosperity or otherwise does not spare them from inhumanity at the hands of humanity.

Neither does what follows:

The Government folds itself into the Opposition's narrative that cost of living pressures are weighing down the nation.

Announcing that Australia is banning live cattle exports to Indonesia has nothing to do with cost of living pressures. If Ludwig and the government were concerned only with turning a dollar, they would have defended fulfilment of the contracts and said that humane treatment in the abattoirs was for Indonesia to deal with. Instead, they took a decision that was popular without being populist, and announced it.

Oppositions always go on about cost of living. The accusation that this government is rubbish at promoting its policies is more than fair, but you have to go into issues other than banning live cattle exports to Indonesia to make that case. Cassidy is not giving the government credit for making a good decision, in a case where it clearly has done so.

The Gillard government is taking the risk that if it introduces sound policy this will be self-evident, and either the media will come around or their opposition won't count for much. This is a sensible approach. It can come unstuck where you have a populist opposition who actively courts the media, and who makes the most credulous and foolish among the feel like major players in the public affairs of our nation. We'll see about that at the next election. This government faced a challenge, it did not squib it but rose instead to meet it. It deserved better media coverage than it got.

The Shadow Minister for Agriculture (yes Australia has one) is John Cobb. He's been very quiet at a time when there's been a lot of interest in the portfolio. Shadow ministers usually complain that they don't get equal coverage, ad if the hung parliament is so important you'd expect journalists to be all over Cobb, asking what he, in an Abbott government, would have done in Ludwig's place.

Grizzled old journos can complain about youngsters with their Masters degrees and their Twitter, or even about bloggers; but if this is what veterans come out with then it's time for a change of journalistic guard (and who guards the guardians when the guardians ... oh, never mind). It's a poor piece, and the editor of The Drum should have asked Cassidy to rewrite or pull it altogether: an old-school editor would have flung the copy in his face and threatened to sack him for writing such utter shit. If Adam, Myf and Alan can decide that it's time to walk away from Spicks and Specks, surely Barrie and the gang should do the same to their piece of ABC light-entertainment on Sunday mornings.

What Cassidy is doing here is exactly what shock-jocks do: taking an announcement and disregarding what was said, and loading onto it a farrago of hopes, fears and other irrelevancies.

The government is the victim of poor media coverage, not the perpetrator of it - and according to the Insiders' insider, the perpetrators get off scot-free. If you can't blame journalists when they get it wrong, then they can't expect any credit when (if?) they get it right.

Update 11 June: This is the article Cassidy tried to write. It still skates over the culpability of the media:

It's just that, well, that's the way it swings for the Labor Party in 2011. Even when [the government is] taking action that's popular, somehow it still fails to attract expressions of support or endorsement from the media and the wider community.

Why is this happening? Some of it is due to the unforgiving and impatient nature of contemporary political discussion.

Spare us this self-serving bullshit. The view(s?) of the media is not synonymous with those of "the wider community".

Carney does, however, do a better job at explaining the role of the risk-averse ALP in hobbling its own future. Yes, Ludwig is probably a dull man, and not your standard attention-seeker pollie - but there has always been a place in every government for the grey technocrat in amongst the show-ponies. Still, "contemporary political discussion" covers a multitude of sins, and it isn't the job of a journalist to be covering up.

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It could go either way

We are at a point with Federal politics where, if the carbon tax and the Malaysia deal both end up working, then the Gillard government will deserve and get the benefit of the doubt and probably be re-elected in 2013. If both of these fail, there won't be much point to the Gillard government and it will be pretty much shot.

As you can imagine, Niki Savva is seething. She concedes:

Political parties should argue over policy. It is acceptable, excusable and often necessary, so long as it's really about issues, not ego or ambition.

Then, she seems to indicate that only the ALP are capable of sensible policy debate: members can have impassioned positions on asylum seekers, live cattle exports or whatever, so long as they give the government a boot on the way through; but any Liberal who disagrees with their leader is a stirrer, a splitter an egotist.

I'm glad that Niki Savva approves of democratic debate, however grudgingly. What she may not realise is that the debates and issues are pretty much given, as is the idea that different people have different opinions about those issues. If political parties can't handle policy debate, or if their only way of debating is nasty and destructive, then that only limits the party's ability to participate in democratic government rather than limiting the debate itself.

Also stupid is the failure to produce alternative strategies.

As you know Niki, anyone other than the leader of the Liberal Party who comes up with a coherent strategy is just an egomaniac. Because the current leader is strategically disabled, it is better to cruise toward defeat than propose a alternative which might get screeched at by the sort of people who leak to Niki Savva.

Continuing to pledge to repeal the tax is sustainable, but more problematic is the question of compensation.

Oh come now: surely a scare campaign at the prospect of a new tax, won't be completely deflated by the equally illusory prospect of compensation?

When has any opposition anywhere ever repealed a tax on coming to government? Tinkered with it perhaps, called it a new name with slightly different provisions, but complete root-and-branch removal? Nah, can't happen, and anyone who promises it is a bullshitter - particularly if said promiser a) proposed such a tax as recently as 2009 and b) is one of the few politicians in Australia who is less popular than Julia Gillard.

Nothing during the past two weeks implies the government has steadied, nor that its policies and approach are working, only that there is the potential for it to be saved from itself by the opposition ...

Only journalists think in terms of two weeks. The budget was a month ago, and so was the incompetent self-indulgent response of Tony Abbott (it was a written response, so you know he wasn't making it up as he went along, and the Shadow Minister for Communications wasn't heckling or otherwise rattling him).

The conclusion from watching the government struggle with two issues alone, border protection and the carbon tax, is that its [sic] presentation, formulation and intent are flawed and-or incapable of clear explanation by people fundamentally ill-equipped to deal with them.

Put into context, it illustrates the limits of transactional politics: it's all very well to cut a deal on the fly like lawyer-politicians do; but it's hard to really claim that you believe in that hasty and ill-considered deal with all your heart, and that it really is the solution for every member of every community from Byron to Exmouth.

Savva is still appalled at the idea that those she advised were beaten by lesser people, and even more appalled that there's nothing she can do about it. There's not a lot to be done about, or for, that attitude. From it you can see her inherent nastiness:

... a broken promise at its core, which has infected the debate from the beginning and will carry through to the end ... the PM at her absolute worst, mulish, cruel and bungling.

Just five years ago, the Murdoch press were busy labelling people as HowardHaters™. Pretty much everyone who had ever disagreed with the then Prime Minister, however gently and however careful to focus on facts and principle rather than personality, was labelled a HowardHater™. Could there be such a thing as a GillardHater™, perhaps? I know it's not alliterative, but such creatures may well walk among us and it would be foolish to discount the possibility that they might exist.

For the sake of those 800 people, or 801 if you include Chris Bowen, one of the more talented frontbenchers who is being slowly destroyed in that portfolio, it is long past time for Gillard to abandon her pride, reopen Nauru and reintroduce temporary protection visas, and if she doesn't then her party should tell her to do it.

If they can rise up over the fate of cattle, they can do it for men, women and children who also cannot speak for themselves.

The pain of any backdown will pass if the boats stop, otherwise, the stain on her prime ministership will stay forever.

Niki Savva was born on a war-ravaged island with fewer opportunities than those available here, and came to Australia by boat. Niki Savva is a boat person - yes she is, c'mon Niki phone your lawyer and get a writ, because I'll say it again: Niki Savva is a boat person. This is the first time she has ever evinced any sympathy for her fellow human beings who have done the same as she and her parents did, only more recently, and even then she's qualified it pretty heavily.

This rare act of humanity is immediately eclipsed when she seriously equates difficulties faced by a politician she claims to admire (again, first bout of sympathy for Bowen) with the tribulations faced by people deported to a country unsympathetic to asylum-seekers. She equates people with voiceless cattle - those men, women and children do have voices Niki, however many can't speak English and even where they do, government-funded goons keep them from being heard.

From a policy point of view, however, the Malaysian deal appears to be an attempt to build a regional solution to deal with those forced to travel not just outside their own country's borders to seek asylum, but to travel far beyond it. Such a deal will, almost inevitably, involve a higher scrutiny of human rights than is present now. This policy differs from Nauru detention not because of location, but because of the intent to obviate the clear need to take a risky journey to this country by boat. Abbott's call to "pick up the phone" shows how idle his proposals truly are: there's a lot more to policy like this than picking up a phone, and we need to vote for people who appreciate that.

People who spend their lives pretending to be other people do not change votes unless they are serious political players.

Michael Caton appeared in the same series of ads that Cate Blanchett did. Caton has chosen his roles so well that any politician stupid enough to bag him would suffer more derision than today's delicate poppets could bear - or worse, they'd be ignored.

As to "serious political players", every living ex-PM bar one supports a carbon price - and the exception went to his last election promising one.

For months now the government's case has been both poor and poorly put. It has not answered satisfactorily the fundamental questions of why we need a carbon tax ...

It's easy to say that you can only have missed this if you've been asleep, or listening only to gruntback radio. This is something that modern governments are better at, repeating the same old lines on the same old thing over and over until people cry out for the thing to be passed so that we don't have t listen to it any more.

... why now, especially as we were told less than a year ago it would not happen ...

See, that's just a dig.

When you've been in and around politics as long as I have, Niki, you understand that politicians sometimes say one thing before an election and do another afterwards. Oppositions and journalists that whinge for too long about that look like they don't really understand what's going on.

... why no comparable economy has introduced one, why our main trading partners refuse to have one, or how it will affect climate or behaviour.

See, those are just lies. When you lie, you pollute the pool of information on which public debate depends. When you do that you can't complain that others aren't giving you information or are selling it badly. To use an old American expression, don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.

Compare that with the previous government's mantra when it argued the case for a GST: if you broaden the base of taxation, you can lower the rates, abolish inefficient taxes, cut personal taxes and secure the revenue base to fund schools, hospitals, roads, police.

Yes, let's compare: every word in that paragraph after "taxation" subsequently proved false.

On the other hand, Glenn Milne is blithely ignoring the possibility that the narrative of decline might be derailed by facts.

There is no campaign on foot here, nor any organisation, not even a candidate ...

And yet, there are hundreds of words that follow like a shower of drivel. Milney assumes the carbon tax will fail and that Abbott will stand firm despite having nothing on which to stand, nothing of substance to apply as pressure, and no firm grasp of anything with which he can offer as an alternative. That's a key point missing from the debate here: Gillard doesn't have to beat Pericles or Robert Menzies or even John Howard; as in a sporting contest, she only needs to beat the opposition in front of her.

Focus group research conducted by John Scales of emerging research powerhouse, JWS, reinforces the perception that Gillard is suicidally trying to sell a carbon tax into the headwind of a national obsession about rising costs of living. Scales, who previously worked with Liberal pollster Mark Textor, suggests the headwinds are likely to prevail.

He's a cheap date, isn't he? Ply him with his own weight in shiraz, tell him he's a doyen of the press gallery and tickle his tummy, and you get national media coverage before breakfast.

So, a government that apparently pays too much attention to focus groups is going to be done over by the sort of eighth-rate outfit that would stoop so low as to walk Milney through their confections. Let me guess: they were conducted in the electorate of Lindsay. And, let me guess further: the Liberals are close to preselecting a candidate for that electorate who, as with all elections over the past decade and a half, is a rolled-gold pissant.

I can understand why the ABC let Milney go but I never understood why they picked him up in the first place, or why News Ltd have him back. After the Costello Prime Ministership ran its course, surely his credibility has got to the point where anyone who leaks to Milney has no idea. Milney is genuinely funny when he does that smoke-and-mirrors stuff ("but more on that in a moment ... one senior member confided to me ...", etc), but anyone quoted by name in a Glenn Milne article is a fool shrugging off their credibility: a powerhouse with unsustainable emissions.

It is interesting to see the reaction from the anti-Gillard media, and how appalled they are that recent polls mean so very little. The reality of a hung parliament, with a long-term strategy where media are fed and present issues in a way that actively disengages people, means that sometimes things go your way and sometimes they don't. Recent polls and a consistent strategy from the Opposition have not resulted in the sort of historic inevitability that we saw in 2007 (well, all of us except Dennis Shanahan). It's anyone's game at the moment.

What if the carbon tax, with its associated compensation, is accepted as blithely as the GST was (and which showed all that hue and cry surrounding it to be so much hollow nonsense)? What if the countries of southeast Asia stopped treating asylum-seekers as aberrations and criminals, and work together to build a constructive, longterm method of dealing with such people? The wheels of government grind slowly, too slowly for adrenaline junkies - and on cold Canberra mornings you can wonder what you're doing there, whether something that looks dormant really is, and whether you are really missing much if you decamp from there to the sorts of climes that will support your permanent tan.

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Drop kick and punt

Souvent pour s'amuser les hommes d'equipage
And it's like talking to a stranger
Remember the panic in its delectable face, when I touched it
It was like talking to a stranger

- Hunters & Collectors Talking to a stranger

Arthur Sinodinos should know better than to refer to his fellow Australians as "punters". Political insiders use stock expressions to refer to people whom they notionally serve, but on whom they perform experiments in both policy and message terms: "Mums & Dads", "working families", "middle Australia" (not to be confused with "central Australia"), "battlers", etc. "Punters", however, are gamblers who voluntarily give their hard-earned to gambling operators and who have no right to expect anything but disappointment most of the time. Everyone who refers to their fellow-citizens as "punters" in a public policy sense (as opposed to their fellow-gamblers in a gaming/racing environment in a literally accurate sense) is being patronising.

So it is with Arthur Sinodinos. In surveying the political scene he underestimates the government, and doesn't overestimate the Opposition so much as blatantly misrepresent them. Either way, he is attempting to mollify conservative The Australian readers but he's lost the deft touch that made him such an effective adviser to John Howard: he's started to patronise readers on what they're about and what their politicians are up to, which is fatal for anyone operating at the upper reaches of politics.

First, I'm going to deal with the one telling point in a long article full of fluff and garbage. It's this:

Ross Garnaut's solution to the climate impasse is to give independent bodies a greater role in setting emission reduction targets and industry compensation: in other words, to take the politics out of politics. That raises the question of how to get the public to take ownership of the necessary changes.

That, seriously, is a good point. When this blog becomes refin'd I shall engage in lengthy disquisitions on mighty issues such as these. It can only be done in an environment of heightened social discourse, however, and as we are dealing with the crap dished up to us by the Australian politico-media complex we at the Politically Homeless Institute will have to deal with that.

JULIA Gillard's long game is turning into death by a thousand cuts.

I don't know what the "thousand cuts" are. Looks to me like the full arsenal has been trained on her and she's still standing, and there's even been a bit of an uptick in support. If the budget had been a directionless shambles the "thousand cuts" would be more apt than it appears here. The "death" thing isn't borne out by the rest of the article. This opening sentence is a rallying cry pure and simple one that rings increasingly hollow as you go down the article.

It would have been interesting if Sinodinos had compared the current travails of the Gillard government to the final year of the Howard government, where no tax cut, no Murray-Darling thing, no international conference made a blind bit of difference to the inevitable defeat (or to Dennis Shanahan's insistence that Howard would be re-elected regardless). What's it like being in the boiler room of the Titanic? That would have been real value-add in political insider terms, but sadly no comparison was forthcoming.

The carbon debate is not about the environment any more.

Translation: it better not be, all the scientists who know their stuff argue against the Liberal skeptic (not now) or denialist (not ever) position, and to keep to such a position is a losing proposition. Move away from the carbon-dioxide-is-the-fizz-in-your-drink silliness, it's a bit too Marie Antoinette - but not so fast or so dramatically that Alan Jones gets his nose out of joint.

It has become a proxy for public angst over broken promises, cost of living pressures and even the divide between Canberra insiders and the rest of the nation.

Ever since some journalists started asking pointed questions about what the Liberals might propose, rather than simply what they oppose, questions about promises and what the Liberals might do to address those issues have made Abbott and others uncomfortable. Such a turnaround should have been expected by seasoned professionals such as Abbott and those around him, and they should have serious, sensible and appealling policies ready. They didn't, and still don't.

Besides, if "public angst over broken promises" was truly palpable, why isn't John Howard's severed head dangling from a Canberra streetlamp? If Tony Abbott isn't a "Canberra insider", who is?

Gillard has locked herself into delivering a compensation package soon.

Is this not another way of saying: the Prime Minister has promised this, and looks like delivering on that promise?

It will not solve her problems but she will be hoping it staunches the bleeding of her primary vote and lets her move on.

Again, the opportunity to get an insight from a political insider has been lost: is this not the same as Howard delivering on the GST? He won no votes for the tax or the legislation, but got grudging espect for having done what he set out to do.

As with boatpeople, it is a debate that she has probably already lost. In government you limit your losses and get on with the next agenda. It is Tony Abbott who has every incentive to mire the government in endless debate on the carbon tax.

The Opposition had a stick to beat the Government with on refugees, and now they don't. Nobody is a winner from that debate, least of all the nation - but if Gillard takes that issue of the table then what will Abbott whinge about? He'll have to propose an alternative.

If the government comes up with practical proposals about compensation and a carbon price, and gets them through parliament - Eric Abetz has been useless at stopping anything get through the Senate - then isn't that "get[ting] on with the next agenda"? Once a carbon tax is in place with compensation, won't Abbott be left without a "next agenda" to get on with?

Gillard needs to rebuild her authority quickly and convince the public that her government is not a one-trick pony but is governing according to some overarching and coherent plan.

Gillard's last agenda-setting speech was to the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia in February outlining her skills proposals. The budget was a down payment on that agenda.

In other words: action will count more than words for this government. Yes, I think we're all across that idea - even people who attack Gillard from the left say the same thing. Speeches only really impress journalists, but the fact that there was follow-through in the budget looks like the start of the very kind of "overarching and coherent plan" you're talking about, Arthur.

Not much time was given to selling the government's own agenda.

Almost immediately Gillard and Wayne Swan went on the offensive, demanding that Abbott reply in detail to their budget.

Just like Howard and Costello did back in the day, Arthur.

Abbott did not rise to the bait, ignoring the budget in favour of outlining his own policies ...

And what were they, again? I follow politics pretty closely and I can't remember a single one. I live in a Liberal electorate, earning above-average wages, have a family and have voted Liberal in the past - if the Liberals aren't appealling to me, etc.

... and his mantra on stopping the boats ...

Hmm yes, edifying. Not a word on that since Malaysia and Manus Island got into gear, though.

... and the great big new carbon tax.

He forgot to mention his great big vote against the great big new compensation package.

Gillard and Swan did not leave themselves much time for their attack on Abbott's economic credentials. Under pressure from a self-imposed timetable they had to flick the switch to climate change last week.

What credentials? You can only wrestle with smoke for so long before you look like you're doing some sort of interpretative dance.

These days, there isn't much of a gap between the various taxation measures in the budget and the additional tax measure of the price on carbon, which will have far-reaching effects on the economy. The idea that you have serious budgetary and macroeconomic policy over here and stuff about plants and rivers and wombats over there is a conception of government that doesn't apply any more.

Handily for the Coalition, the nasty little row between Swan and West Australian Premier Colin Barnett over mining royalties served to deflect the government's attack on Abbott's economic credentials.

It's also true that Tony Abbott could not and did not establish any sort of "economic credentials", which Arthur seems (in spite of all evidence) to assume he has.

At least the Liberal Party is allowed to have Premiers these days, Arthur. In your day Howard went around nobbling Liberal governments, but they couldn't say anything lest the be accused of "disloyalty".

Abbott does not seem fazed by the looming compensation package. In the right hands, such a package of pension increases and tax cuts could be a winner with the public. Abbott is banking that punters are not impressed by having their own money recycled in this way.

The whole history of the Howard government was exactly that: taxes churned from the middle class to the middle class. The incumbents might not have as much front as Howard-and-Costello but the principle that Abbott is the man to rail against this fiscal shell game is ludicrous - particularly if he refers to people as "punters".

He will also seize on Green comments that the carbon price will have to go up through time, leading to ever rising power prices and job losses if industry is not sufficiently compensated.

I can still remember Simon Crean shrieking that the GST wouldn't stay fixed at 10%. The first journalist/talkback host who asks Abbott to sign a pledge to say that the carbon tax will "never ever" be increased while he's in government will burst that bubble. We punters have seen this before, Arthur.

Abbott will cast doubt on the permanence of the compensation. He will keep calling on Labor to go to the people to get a mandate for the new tax.

Once the cheques hit people's accounts once the 2PP starts to tilt in favour of a government with runs on the board, these calls will drop off. He'll need to come up with policies other than "no no no". What will they be?

He must also play more of a long game. He has an election-winning lead but the Australian people are not rusted on to the Coalition or any party. They are grumpy and disillusioned with flashy promises. They want things fixed and do not have time for day-to-day political games beloved of journalists and political tragics inside the Canberra beltway.

Abbott has a window of opportunity to trumpet a more positive agenda, building on his budget reply. He must become in the voters' minds the default choice for national leader. This will strengthen and not detract from his attack on the government.

I am sick to death of this assumption that "young Tony" will somehow come up with the goods, and display qualities of vision and leadership that his nowhere evident in his junkyard-dog persona. You may as well leave the front light on for Harold Holt as wait for Tony Abbott to become some forward-looking statesman. He is one of the few politicians less popular than Julia Gillard.

Nobody likes a complacent government, as Arthur found out in 2007, and Abbott certainly keeps the government on its toes. Abbott is the default choice for Opposition Leader. It is wishful thinking at best, outright bullshit at worst, to assume that Tony Abbott can or will flick the switch to statesmanship.

In parliament this week, Abbott had two choices to wrest control of "parliamentary theatre" from the government: he could turn Question Time into a shambles, or he could demonstrate the steely discipline that the government lacks to put himself in control rather than the government. He's don the former, and be it on his own head. People who know Abbott well, like Sinodinos, would have a right to project their hopes onto him only if they had seen some evidence that he could have done the latter - as Malcolm Fraser did in 1975. To know Tony Abbott, and still project your hopes for a positive agenda onto him, is simply dishonest.

The public wants something done about climate change, although its priority has fallen since 2007. Forget the nuances about the contribution of humans as opposed to other causes. The rubber hits the road when people are asked how much they are willing to contribute. The answer at the moment is not very much and, by the way, can you do something about my existing electricity bill?

This is what you get when there's no background of commitment over the long term. Abbott has less commitment to a low-emissions future than Gillard does, and no wonder you want to forget about quibbling over the science. To get a real perspective on this, I'm afraid you have to go back to the late 1960s, with hippies and what have you:

You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plans
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We're all doing what we can
But when you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you'll have to wait

- John Lennon and Paul McCartney Revolution

Don't you know it's gonna be all right? Well I hope so, but from this angle it's hard to be sure. I'm still convinced that Sinodinos is wrong when he says:

The Labor-Coalition tiff about whether carbon pricing is superior to direct action is a storm in a teacup. Labor is trying to take the economic high ground by pushing the efficiency advantages of a carbon price-trading mechanism.

... and the Coalition aren't. The Coalition aren't about efficiency, apparently, and insofar as they listen to business at all nobody is telling them to get the carbon price in place and stop mucking about.

It now appears that the political process has worked out a handling strategy for the basin.

So let's be clear: it's not the government that has done this, heavens no; it's "the political process". I don't think it is quite the done deal that Arthur would have you believe somehow.

No wonder politicians have embraced second and third best options in dealing with carbon.

Sorry? Some academic proposes that the big decisions be taken away from politicians, so they go scrambling for the low-hanging fruit? What sort of pikers are we electing here? I am still waiting for the senior Liberal who will start a new page for the Liberal Party, and part of that involves telling people like Arthur Sinodinos, Mark Textor and Niki Savva to get stuffed. From what Arthur says I'll be waiting a while.

That is Abbott's point. He is trying to do something while seeking to assuage public anger at rising energy prices. He is buying time for a global agreement that will galvanise local action.

Sinodinos shouldn't have said that.

Never mind that Tony Abbott doesn't have a point - show me where Battlelines has manifested in any sort of political reality, go on - the idea that Abbott is "trying to do something" about carbon emissions, global warming or environmental issues generally is absolutely false. It is just not true and Sinodinos is wrong to misrepresent Abbott and Liberal policy in this manner. His credibility is shot.

Voters are waking up to the link between measures to promote renewables and household electricity bills. They only have to look at what state governments such as NSW are being forced to do to rein in the ballooning cost of subsidies to alternative technologies such as solar rooftop panels.

No, the NSW government is reining in the costs associated with having predecessors who were such absolute deadshits who couldn't comb their own hair properly, let alone implement sensible energy policy. Federal Labor aren't trying to follow NSW Labor.

Gillard should also be ramping up measures to promote more efficient energy use that will substantially reduce power costs.

Then, Arthur Sinodinos can run an article about the nanny state not letting him run his aircon on hot days.

Punters are not looking to be educated by the Climate Commission, Cate Blanchett or anybody else.

Punters want to know who's running in the 3rd at Moonee Valley on a sluggish track, Arthur.

They want evidence that someone is listening.

So Tony Abbott can go on telly and say "I'm listening", when all he does is stand there like Howard and let people talk at him without really engaging with them. People are over that. Maybe punters aren't though - Arthur knows all about the punters.

Maybe Gillard should have kept her promise to convene a citizens assembly.

Then, Arthur Sinodinos can run an article about the 2020 Summit and how rubbish it was, apparently. Cate Blanchett went to that, too.

The punters understand that and are willing to do their bit as long as other countries do not get a free ride on our efforts. They instinctively understand that it is complicated for an energy exporter such as Australia and that the burden of adjustment will fall on them rather than the authors of these reports.

I despair of such garbage sometimes.

Australians did not sign up to several wars worrying about free rides, they fought for what was right. So it is with climate change: do the right thing, work with others who do the right thing, and eventually the recalcitrants will come around. The idea that we should sit around until the last possible moment isn't just unsustainable, it goes against the very grain of our national character and out history. It's unAustralian, Arthur.

Forget glossy ads; there is no substitute for a government going out there and directly engaging the voters.

From a guy who spent a billion dollars selling government policy on television.

How would you know about engaging with people, Arthur? The Liberal Party offered you a safe seat in Parliament, and you knocked it back. When MPs who had years of experience in leading their communities came to you, voicing their hopes and fears about government policy - you yelled at them to do as they were bloody well told.

Arthur Sinodinos has lost the plot. He's become complacent and is part of the crust of Howardism that a new generation of Liberals have to scrape off in order to make their party a credible force. Howardism is not the way forward for the Liberal Party, it's a dead end.

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In the red room

(This column comes to you after reading too much of The Australian and Paul Sheehan, and listening to more Angry Twerps on Radio than is wise.)

Here at the Politically Homeless Institute, we name the fifth column that is infesting the Liberal Party, a bunch of saboteurs whose every word and deed seems to entrench Labor and the Greens forever!

You know who I'm talking about. That bunch of recalcitrants just seem to drain every skerrick of credibility from the Liberals and Nationals as a potential government.

The Senators.

You may think Senators are harmless enough, beavering away at their committees and so on, but oh no - they clearly have it in for Tony Abbott and are doing all they can to stop him from becoming Prime Minister. Some may say they are doing more than Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan put together to this end.

Consider the evidence:

• Barnaby Joyce. Enough said? Perhaps. You may as well do vox-pops in the street as ask Senator Joyce about matters of high public expenditure. Those smart-alec journalists posing questions about seasonally-adjusted percentages, Barnaby charges through like a bull in a china-shop, and the china-shop owner is made to look stupid for hosting the bull in the first place. The very idea that this man is a byelection from becoming a minister must fill public servants in Canberra with utter dread.


• David Bushby. His catty remark to Penny Wong was flung straight back into his face.


• Mary Jo Fisher. All I can say is, it's astounding ...


• Cory Bernardi. Democracy disgusts him.


• Mitch Fifield. Euthanased a Liberal MP in a marginal seat in a state where Liberals are few and getting fewer, at an election which might have been one for the Liberals had that MP kept his seat. Top effort, Mitch!


• Russell Trood. The only Liberal who knows anything about foreign policy, and they're getting rid of him. By contrast, Ron Boswell has been there since Labor split and he's learnt bugger-all about anything.


• Michael Ronaldson. Failed in the House of Reps.


• No Liberal seats at all in the Reps, not even in a tight election - but my goodness, don't the Tasmanian Libs stack the Senate with some talent!


• Same with the Vics - Costello is gone, so the Senate has become a retirement home for his former staff who couldn't cut it in the House or not nasty enough for The Australian.


• Gary Humphries. Only has to win one of two seats, and barely manages to do that (too early to put him on deathwatch?).


• George Brandis. As smug as Turnbull or Costello but without a single achievement to sustain him in the stratosphere in which his ego cruises.


• Bill Heffernan, Eric Abetz, Matthias Cormann - take your pick.

The Senate is meant to be the House of Review, but these clowns make it a House of Revue. One of them is even called Wacka.

In a tight parliament they have not stopped, or even slowed down, one single piece of legislation. Not one. All they do is look "mean and tricky" at committees where they are rude to public servants (who increasingly give their own back). Eric Abetz must be the most useless Senate Leader of any party since Federation. He has nothing, nothing to show for his efforts but Godwin bloody Grech.

You almost feel sorry for Tony Abbott in dealing with such people, but he has a lucky break: we are into the final month for six of them, and next month they get two newbies! Fresh blood ... well, they are both from South Australia: one of them is from the most famous families in Dusttown or wherever, and the other one is another retread from the Reps who's been unable to get a job since 2007 in a boom economy.

Coalition Senators. Listen to them bleat about Labor spending $11.79 on whatever, and wonder whether any one of them would be worth the price of their food.

Not one of them came to this country on a boat.

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