Wait for the rest of your life

In this article, Amanda Vanstone is pretending to a wisdom she clearly lacks. She has somehow become less knowledgeable about how government works for the country and the economy than she did in Opposition.

Schools, research and health will have to wait till we pay off our debt.

We've been here before. When the debt gets paid off, people like Amanda Vanstone regard education and health as fripperies and call for tax cuts, which means that schools, research and health get cut no matter what.

In 1996, Amanda Vanstone became Education Minister in the newly elected Federal government. She came and spoke to a NSW Young Liberal thing which I attended. Moderate liberals of my generation regarded her as Good Old Mandy, whose Heart was in the Right Place and whose abrasiveness when riled was entertaining; she was one of the few moderates who'd get up on her hind legs and give as good as she got rather than smirk her way to irrelevance. Young Libs five, ten years younger than me who were at uni saw her as the psycho bitch who shredded the education budget and made it impossible for Liberal students to get elected to student organisations. The tension in that room was palpable and something of an ambush for the organisers, who started off sanguine and moved to alarm through the course of the night. It was like those eastern European leaders a few years earlier who had addressed crowds of sullen workers for years only to be suddenly confronted with boos and abuse.

Education and healthcare are major generators of internal demand and of our economic future, you dingbat! They are not optional extras.

When the global financial crisis hit, governments stepped into action to keep their economies turning over. That was a good thing.

It sure was. Strange that the Liberals opposed it though.

But the money did not come out of thin air. Governments went into more debt.

As opposed to what, higher taxes? If you don't support economic stimulus, have the guts to do what Turnbull and Abbott did and say that you oppose it no matter how it comes. The idea that economic stimulus should be "a good thing" but any measure to bring it about is 'bad' is a sorry attempt to box clever.

Many believe that our government spent far more than it needed to and spent it unwisely. We now pay $5 billion a year, or $20 billion in a four-year budget cycle, in interest alone. If we start to climb out of the problem and pay back the same each year in principal, it becomes $10 billion a year and $40 billion over the budget cycle. That's billions our economy is generating that we can't spend on medical research, schools and other things.

I doubt that every cent the Howard government spent could be accused of being carefully targeted, Amanda. The economy wouldn't have the ability to generate debt repayments if it had hit the wall, which it would have if it hadn't been fiscally stimulated in 2008.

But some governments still seem addicted to spending beyond their means ... In Europe, the problem with the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) debt has been understood for some time.

Actually, that acronym is PIIGS - the other "I" stands for Italy, to which Vanstone was Australian Ambassador for some years. If she's going to give us some insight into the European financial crisis you'd think she'd be in a position to do so. Alternatively, if she's going to pull her punches - well, that would be a first for Amanda Vanstone, but basically the idea that she should be so strident about Greece or Portugal being "addicted to spending beyond their means" while skating around Italy - a much bigger economy and a much bigger problem, in both financial and regulatory terms.

The PIIGS countries had levied relatively low taxes. Each of those countries had established tax-avoidance mechanisms for people who had both great capacity to pay and much to be grateful to government for, gratitude for which was expressed not as tax but as political donations or bribes. To say that lower taxes are an answer to our current predicament is less valid than it was four years ago. When Vanstone does turn her attention to Italy, she fails to note that it has a populist conservative government with little in the way of core economic policy. Cheer up Australia, it could be worse.

Note a recurring theme of this article:

The problems facing the world economy are not new. They have just been getting more attention of late ... In Europe, the problem with the ... debt has been understood for some time ... I know firsthand how little Australians care for being told they are no longer getting something for nothing, or as cheaply as they did in the past.

This is designed to create the impression that Vanstone knows what she's talking about, which she doesn't. If they're so well understood, you'd hope that the responses would be smarter than they are. Vanstone might have copped some disappointment from those who'd done well, but what made people really angry was that she cut things that were important and productive. If you're going to make this narrative All About Amanda, however, then one angry person is the same as any other and they could all rack off.

Cuts are easier to take if there's a unifying narrative: from the PIIGS, and the Howard government, we learn that if there are just swingeing cuts then it just builds resentments which play out in all sorts of unexpected and unmanageable ways.

I was part of a government that did the hard yards of finding savings to put our budget back into the black after Labor last had its hand in the till. And then we paid off debt, and set up the Future Fund.

But you didn't restore funding to health or education, did you?

This is an idle exercise. It assumes that nobody who has never been a government minister is allowed to criticise the actions of government, or that any and all such examination of public issues must necessarily be vacuous (a wish list? Really?). I left out the "barbie and a good red" because it reinforces the idleness and indulgence Vanstone is trying to convey, and definitely not because Vanstone herself can pack away the red when she chose to do so.

... in the last budget, Treasurer Wayne Swan was asking to borrow another $50 billion. With that spending record, what will we do if GFC2 breaks out? What if Asia stumbles and we have a few years of lower commodity prices?

Luckily we had the stimulus in 2008 otherwise we'd be stuffed, eh Amanda?

We could all help by avoiding the indulgence shown by Europeans who keep demanding more.

In particular, billion-dollar bludges like this have to be knocked on the head. Education and health aren't bludges or indulgences, they're central to the present and future of the nation - in a way that, say, The Situation isn't.

The government should have the strength to restrict spending and the capacity to stop wasting money ... Swan recognises the need for tweaking.

To that end, the government must not be run by Tony Abbott, Andrew Robb, Barnaby Joyce and Joe Hockey, and must include Swan.

Also, it could get on with helping to boost productivity by recognising its industrial relations overkill.

Part of boosting productivity involves having the clowns who ran Foster's and Bluescope into the ground sent to Christmas Island, or somewhere other than in positions of power over Australian workplaces. If there are industrial relations changes to be made (see my article coming soon elsewhere on this), chances are Swan and his people will make a better fist of it than the clueless and risk-averse Liberals.

Vanstone started the article attempting to create a fug of certainty, and ends it with a shriek of a question. In between she wants to create a narrative of her own wisdom, and that of the Howard government, versus the stumblebum incumbents. It doesn't work and shows the government in a more favourable light than she might have intended. When you consider that there have been more developments in health and education in the past year (despite the budgetary position and the hung parliament) than there was in eleven years with Amanda looking on - it seems that Good Old Mandy's bark and bite are not what they were.

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Tattered washing on the line

It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up to the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.

- H L Mencken

Now that the Coalition are riding so high in the polls, they and their media shills are calling for Rudd to replace Gillard, or claiming some special insight into the Labor mind that means Rudd will replace Gillard any day now ... any day now ... any day ...

I could go on about journalists, how stupid they are to run a story that so obviously has no substance and how easily they can be stampeded. Many of them are the self-same people who believed that Peter Costello would challenge John Howard any day now ... any day ... and who chewed up hours and hectares of media space with non-stories to that effect. How's this for a vacuous piece, by the same journalist who insisted throughout 2007 that bad polls were good news for John Howard: any day now, any day ... Shame on you if you fool me once, etc.

I'm more concerned about the Liberal Party, and why they are jonesing (pardon the pun) for a change of leadership. Why not adopt an attitude of quiet confidence that they can beat whomever Labor puts up? This is what winners do:

• When it became clear in 2009 that NSW Labor Premier Nathan Rees started to reek of stale piss and Joe Tripodi's cigars, Barry O'Farrell was pretty sanguine about whether Rees should stay or be replaced; the NSW Coalition was rightly confident they could beat any figurehead atop NSW Labor;
• In 2007, Kevin Rudd teased Costello about not having the ticker to run and expressed confidence (well-founded as it turned out) at being able to beat Howard, Costello or whomever else the Liberals put up;
• In 1995, John Howard was not calling on Labor to roll Keating or predicting that Kim Beazley would challenge him any day now ... any day ...

Given that Gillard is so on the nose, why bother invoking Rudd? Rudd put Abbott squarely in his place in the National Press Club debate on health and would probably have done so again in the context of an election campaign. On what basis would Rudd be even more of a patsy for the Libs than Gillard? On what basis would Labor vote so as to maximise the Coalition's chances? There are two facets to the answer, neither flattering to the Libs.

First, their central (and seemingly only) criticism of the government is that it is a do-nothing government. On the table between now and Christmas is what Tim Fischer would call "bucketloads of extinguishment" of that notion: carbon price, the disability scheme, broadband, and other issues besides. If Labor change leaders and Rudd reinstates his old way of doing things, the prospect of actual achievements disappear. Instead of a mass bloodletting within Rudd Labor II there would be the slow spread of fear and loathing, like that of East Germany in the 1950s when the populace realised they were trapped and could only sullenly welcome their totalitarian overlords.

Second, there is this notion that Abbott can't handle being beaten by a woman. However overblown it may or may not be in Mitchell's book, there is a kernel of truth to it. Gillard vaulted to being a leadership contender by being Shadow Minister for Health to Abbott as Minister, taking him apart forensically until her good work was undone by having to sell Latham's Medicare Gold.

If Abbott were confident in himself and his masculinity in taking on a woman - as O'Farrell was in taking on Keneally, as Kennett was with Kirner - he'd not bother yearning to have Rudd back. Those men would have been more gracious about their opposite number's birthdays, knowing there was no mileage in being otherwise. He, and proxies like Shanahan and Savva or even dills like Katharine Murphy, protest too much about Gillard. Why?

INCREASINGLY, Julia Gillard's days feel numbered. That's an objective call.

It's subjective because it isn't manifested in any testable reality. Murphy's colleagues have undergone mass hypnosis to this effect and are trying to project a reality so hat they can justify the time they've spent on chasing a story that simply isn't there.

... Gillard has floated past the point of no return, and has washed up in the worst possible leadership zone - the "destabilisation" phase, where every half-baked piece of garbage takes on a resonance it doesn't actually deserve.

And half-baked garbage is a specialty of Murphy and at least 90% of her colleagues, which is why I repeat my call for them to be boiled in their own piss. The Finkelstein Royal Commission should be thus empowered.

Fundamentally, Abbott believes he has Rudd's measure, and the quicker the Labor Party can tear down Gillard and replace her with Rudd, the quicker Abbott can see him off for a second time. Such is Abbott's self-belief (which, in fairness to him, does reflect an objective fact - he did help see Rudd off once before).

It is an objective fact that Rudd was rolled as PM. It is an objective fact that Abbott was Opposition Leader at the time. It is not an objective fact that Abbott inflicted the wound on Labor, or that he has some mesmeric power to force them to switch leaders to suit him.

Julia Gillard is getting on with it, in her own stumbly way, and nothing Abbott does is working. The Coalition pulled out the big guns on Craig Thomson, and all that happened was that they looked mean for threatening to prevent him attending the birth of his child - and their shadow Attorney-General was cruelly exposed, a man at the topmost pinnacle of posh if ever there was one. They are running out of expedient options, which will mean that they will have to re-examine the way they do things - and that won't be pretty, as we saw in the 1980s and '90s.

The Liberals want to beat Rudd because he beat them in 2007, and had he beaten them again they may have learned some lessons about why they lost and adjusted their position accordingly. Instead, the Howard restoration fantasy is left undisturbed within the Libs, and they remain stuck in their abysm of pish. The need to carefully rethink their position can be fended off with the creation of an atmosphere of crisis, buttressed by the fantasy that they are this close to winning back power, that the supposedly flaky independents will succumb to the inevitability of the Howard restoration any day now ... any day now ...

This rhetorical flourish was described by one Labor person ...

Media coverage doesn't get much weaker than that": "one Labor person" indeed. Murphy should have had this flung back in her face and threatened with the sack if she ever turned in crap like this again. Imagine being a journalism graduate who can't get work, reading that and wondering why Murphy and Shanahan can't be cleaned out (or made to report on actual substantial stories). Imagine having a Parliament chock-full of the issues of the day and being able to see nothing more than the monkey-house of Question Time. The real problem with journalism is the editors who not only allow this stuff to get through, but who commission it.

Old-school media management says that once you've convinced journalists to run the story you want them to run, you've got it made because everyone just consumes media unthinkingly. The sheer apathy with which people greet the careful misguided framing of issues requires a rethink of this approach.

I promised that I wouldn't go after the journalistic equivalents of stale bean soup that you get from people like Murphy and Shanahan, but I can't help it. We need better media than they can provide. Bloggers are trying to fill the gap but there's only so much you can do; it's first aid for a deeper problem that the professionals can't and won't address. Tony Abbott presents the sort of brash, utterly baseless confidence that you get from media executives like John Hartigan or David Leckie, and journos are drawn to that like flies to shit. They can't see that Abbott is a fraud because they can't afford to, which weakens their ability to tell us what is going on in Federal politics.

Abbott's stunt-based politics as a means for deflecting attention from real and big issues works for journalists, not for the public at large. Policy-nerd Rudd had sky-high ratings and lost them when he dropped important policies for the sake of expediency. Policy-nerd Gillard was also well regarded and lost them when she too became just another expedient pol. Abbott fans like Paul Kelly can only maintain their position by confusing the Coalition's high poll ratings (which are anti-Labor rather than pro-Coalition) and glossing over the rusted-on dislike of Abbott, who is a prophylactic on the chances of a Coalition government.

Abbott has thrown everything his reptilian, short-term brain can think of at the Gillard government, nothing has worked. The government is still standing and the independents have gone from being disinclined to actively hating the guy. The idea that he's all bark and no bite is cemented in place pretty much everywhere outside State Circle, ACT; his response is to bark louder, which is annoying but impresses the hell out of nongs in the press gallery, they will keep on doing his laundry for him. Even so, Abbott is getting increasingly frantic; if he can't knock over Gillard soon he's going to be left exposed.

The press gallery will then be faced with a choice: report that he's exposed, or continue covering up for his utter absence of policy substance and wilful refusal to address the big issues facing our country. They could turn their backs on his pathetically limited display and report some of the bigger and more immediate issues, but that would require courage and reflective ability on the part of the journosphere which they - like the Coalition - lack. The wider public doesn't lack these qualities, which is why we are so badly served by both the Coalition and the press gallery.

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Bet against Mark Arbib

Mark Arbib could have made sure that the revolt by leading sports administrators over pokies never happened. A politician of his supposed calibre should have foreseen the political danger with Andrew Wilkie's demand, and should have been working on it every day for the past year.

Someone like Arbib would have heard Wilkie's high-minded position on pokies during last year's negotiations on government and known immediately that it was a dagger at the heart of two of Labor's major sources of funding: pubs and clubs. Aside from unions and property developers, NSW Labor's major funding sources are the alcohol industry and the outlets that sell it. NSW Labor have been extraordinarily generous in handing out pokie licenses to pubs and clubs, which have in turn donated millions of dollars to NSW Labor, and so on. The overlap between members of licensed clubs and those who vote Labor is significant, to say the least.

In the absence of a Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Imposing Limits on Poker Machine Gambling, someone like Arbib should have done the groundwork with pubs and clubs and the gambling treatment lobby, proving himself to be the sort of deft politician that he and others imagine him to be. He couldabeen someone who solves problems rather than someone who runs away from them shrieking "it wasn't me!". He couldabeen indispensable, the sort of power-behind-the-throne that Graham Richardson was after the 1990 election. All gone, and too late now.

Who else could have seen this policy through? All the other factional wide boys were busy with actual policy, in communications or financial planning or whatever. Arbib is the Minister for Sport, for goodness sake: what else does he have to do? The Minister for Sport doesn't re-engineer the economy or comfort the stricken. The Minister for Sport doles out cash to popular sports in the hope that the popularity of that sport might rub off onto the Minister and his party. It isn't like he was organising some nationwide effort to curb obesity or get people engaged in mutual community activities or something.

Arbib's political antennae should have been twitching overtime at an issue like this - if he had any.

Because Arbib has botched it - and he has - the government is bogged down yet again, in an issue that shouldn't be such a big deal. Yet again Arbib can project his political failure onto the leader silly enough to accept his backing. Just as he advised Rudd to drop the ETS, then blamed him for dropping the ETS. Now he can blame Gillard for botching the relationship with sporting clubs and take action against her because clubs are so important to NSW Labor, and mate you can't have a leader who goes against NSW Labor, come on.

It is an understatement to say that AFL identities like Eddie McGuire and Jeff Kennett are highly political. It is also true, both in the fact itself and the understatement, to say that of their counterparts in the NRL. Arbib is the first Federal Sports Minister these guys have openly and blatantly shirtfronted. He must be the first minister in that role to be so blatantly disrespected in living memory. He's finished.

Those sports take millions of dollars from the Federal government, and what does the government get for it? Gillard and Swan, as if they don't have enough to do, are going to have to sweet-talk and bribe a bunch of overstuffed sports administrators because Mark bloody Arbib couldn't execute the little responsibility with which he was entrusted.

Nobody blames the clubs administrators for trying it on, but club members know that's what they're doing: trying it on. Club culture, if you can call it that, is strongest in NSW and Queensland, where Eddie McGuire is just that guy on telly who hypes up an otherwise dull quiz show. In Victoria he has a far more all-pervasive presence, but north of the Murray he is seen as a grifter and if the government stands up to him then respect for the government can only increase.

And the man who helped install Julia Gillard as Prime Minister, former national ALP secretary Karl Bitar is now helping to coordinate the campaign in his new job as a Crown Casino lobbyist.

Up to 25 Labor MPs are also threatening to vote against the plan in Caucus.

Every last one of those 25 are morons. The clubs pump their propaganda into people's homes but only the truly gullible members really believe it. You have nothing to lose, you people: if ever you were ever a bit frustrated with Karl and Mark, this is your chance to grow some spine and save both yourselves and a Labor government (with nothing to lose but, well, Karl and Mark).

Club members tend to be older people, claiming a public space in their club after being slowly squeezed out of workplaces (through retirement, forced or otherwise) and shops (low income earners don't have much to spend, retail is geared toward younger people). The club nearest my place is dominated by Anglo-Saxon people in a way that the surrounding suburb was but is no longer. They look the other way when confronted with the idea that their club, and all its works, is subsidised by those with serious problems. If Mr Wilkie and the government step in with their loss-limit devices, these people will respect them for doing so.

While Kennett displayed rare gutlessness in allowing tobacco advertising for the Grand Prix, the politicians who banned tobacco sponsorship of sport ran rings around a lazy arseclown like Mark Arbib.

The fruits of Mark Arbib's career can be seen in Macquarie Street. State Labor Opposition Leader John Robertson has a smaller caucus than William Holman before World War I, and Holman left that. It's doubtful that anyone in State Parliament who was also a member of the ALP would buy Arbib a cup of coffee. Those who would stoop and build up NSW Labor with worn-out tools have nothing to thank Mark Arbib for, nothing. A bit like the thousands of members of the Green Jobs Corps, really.

People complain about NSW Labor, but if the Keating-Richardson era NSW Right were still running things Arbib would already be on his way to some remote embassy, a cold-eyed killer would be slotted into the Sport portfolio to rearrange things and warn anyone that one stray word about a policy not directly related to sport might be very, very costly in all sorts of ways, and a chastened non-entity would humbly assume the role of NSW Senator.

So-called savvy Canberra watchers didn't blame Gillard for inviting so few new names into the ministry after the last election, and there is an assumption that all Labor backbenchers are dills like John Murphy. Here are seven Labor federal backbenchers for whom I have no particular brief, but of whom each would be a better than Mark Arbib:

• Laurie Ferguson (in this list from sheer pity, admittedly, but still a superior candidate)
• Ed Husic
• Kirsten Livermore
• Senator Gavin Marshall
• Deb O'Neill
• Julie Owens
• Senator Glenn Sterle

Each one of those people would be a perfectly capable Minister for Sport (and as for Aboriginal Employment, and the grab-bag of other areas Arbib is mismanaging, don't get me started).

Journalists fail to realise that there is less likely to be a story in a politician who is shooting his mouth off than there is in one who's being very, very quiet. Mark Arbib is being very, very quiet. Journalists are leaving him alone because they are stupid, and they think that when a politician says 'no comment' then all possible avenues for a story are utterly closed, and oh look is that Chris Pyne turning cartwheels in order to draw attention to, um, himself? There was a time when one could simply say 'that's journalism'; but now the sheer slackness of the press gallery is nothing so much as an argument why at least 90% of them should be boiled in their own piss.

Mark Arbib has failed as a minister. He's had four years, longer than Morris Iemma got as Premier. His powers of quiet suasion no longer exist, if they ever did. He is a power vacuum and should be removed before others are sucked in and wedged fast. He should be removed and replaced with ... well, anyone really. The fact that he can't recognise that his own time is up is all the testament you need to the sheer political failure of Mark Arbib.

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Blogger does journalist's work (or, why Paul Daley is a wanker)

Paul Daley is a wanker because he allowed this article to go out under his name.

A STRANGE thing happened last week. A federal shadow minister actually came up with something that seemed kind of almost a bit like a policy.

Remember policies? Oppositions used to have to come up with them if they wanted to become governments. It was all about creating a genuine point of intellectual and ideological contrast between the incumbent government and the administration-in-waiting so voters might actually weigh up differences on an issue-by-issue basis, thereby enabling them to make a reasoned decision about who they wanted to govern this place. It involved an element of creativity and risk taking. Novel, I know.

It isn't novel because it actually happened. Daley here is implying that he has some respect for policy, policymaking and intellectual points of difference. Firstly, if he did then the case he cites, Senator David Johnston's interview, isn't worth the fuss. Secondly, Daley doesn't assess what Johnston says in policy terms.

Daley doesn't appreciate the policy, he wants to play the same game that created the zero-sum politics that we all despise, and that he wants to pretend he too shares our opinion. That's why he's a wanker.

The shadow defence minister, senator David Johnston, cogently outlined in an interview with The Australian critical elements of the Coalition's supposed plans in a portfolio that is as notorious for wasting billions of taxpayer dollars as it is for ending the careers of ministers who oversee it.

Defence policy, strategy and funding is a minefield for both ministers and their opposites. Oppositions usually approach it with cautious bipartisanship; they like to own the successes but quickly deny any responsibility for the failures.

Spending overruns in defence often go into the billions, rather than millions, of dollars.

You can really only judge waste when you have a clear idea of what your priorities are, and it isn't clear what Johnston's priorities are. He proposes a grab-bag of cost savings. Johnston does not offer a cogent view of what it means to defend Australia in a meaningful and practical sense in the world we live in, and the world that is foreseeable.

What Johnston is proposing isn't a policy, it's a shopping list. It's an indictment of Daley that he can't pick the difference. It's an insult to the rest of us that he, and his editor, thinks his ignorance is good enough for us.

First, let's look at what Johnston said in the Brendan Nicholson article, and assess that against the country's defence needs. Second, let's look at Daley's respect for and treatment of policy and see whether he's right to wonder why there isn't more of it.

The changes outlined by Johnston include considering cutting by half the planned purchase of 100 Joint Strike Fighters for the RAAF ...

Why half? Is this purely a cost-saving measure? Given that the JSF is such a crock, why not cut it by 100% and buy the best fighter plane on the market: the Sukhoi S-37. For Australia to buy that aircraft would nullify the threat posed by other air forces buying it.

Mind you, all that assumes some consideration of the role of fighter aircraft in the 21st century. It is significant that no Australian fighter aircraft are deployed in the operational theatres in which we have been involved over the past ten years: Solomon Islands, Afghanistan and Iraq. The aircraft used in East Timor were transport aircraft, helicopters - and the old faithful "pigs" (F111), which date from the 1960s. No evidence such thought is in evidence from Johnston's own site, which offers a shallow critique of the current government's actions rather than real in-depth thought into how you defend Australia.

It isn't necessary to spell out detailed alternative policies, pace Ross Cameron - but it is necessary to show some breadth and depth of thought that shows evidence of capacity. The Defence Ministers who've foundered in that role have lacked that breadth and depth. Any fool can quibble over receipts, and that is all that Johnston is doing. We can have no confidence that this guy will make a blind bit of difference in Defence.

... and urgently reassessing plans to build 12 big conventional submarines in Australia. A Coalition government would consider buying smaller and cheaper models off the shelf overseas instead.

They'd consider it. Imagine if Gillard announced that she was considering but not committing to something costing billions of dollars and with massive potential impact to the nation, and how The Australian would jump all over it.

This is a reference to the half-dozen or so German submarines often raised by people who think one submarine is as good as another.

Submarines are important to Australia's ability to protect shipping going through southeast Asian waters; Australian trade stops or becomes vastly more uneconomical with restrictions on that shipping. Submarines are hard to staff, being labour-intensive and more demanding of time and effort than most Australian workplaces.

This is not to say that one submarine is as good as another. The German submarines are designed for the cold, deep waters of the North Sea. They would be ideal if the main threat for which submarines were the most effective response came from Antarctica. They are far from ideal for moving through the warmer, more shallow waters to our country's north.

No evidence that Johnston has considered our country's need for submarines, or that "professional journalists" like Nicholson and Daley judge Johnston against what's right for the country.

Johnston promises a comprehensive review of progress of the plan to re-equip the ADF if the Coalition wins government.

Complete with shock-horror stories of budget blowouts, and no elucidation of what the country needs from Johnston, Nicholson or Daley.

Johnston says the multi-role and stealthy JSFJSF. Because of concerns that the JSF would arrive late, the Howard government ordered 24 Super Hornets, which are in the final stages of delivery.

Early this year The Australian revealed that because of further delays with the JSF it was likely the Gillard government would have to buy an additional 18 Super Hornets on top of the initial 24 to plug a looming capability gap.

That was vehemently denied the next day by the RAAF, which badly wants the JSF, but then confirmed weeks later by Defence Minister Stephen Smith, who said he was concerned about delays and that buying more Super Hornets was an option.

And Johnston's position on Super Hornets is ...?

Someone like Paul Daley might be fascinated by Johnston going back on what the Howard government did, but the broader question is what the country needs, followed by an assessment of how effectively Labor and the Coalition are meeting those needs. Nothing: Nicholson takes Johnston on faith and Daley is concerned only with clichés of COST BLOWOUT SHOCK.

Johnston quotes from a number of papers by experts in the field, and some cranky responses from incumbent minister Smith, but it's hard to tell what sides of the debates Johnston and the Liberals are taking. Finally, Nicholson admits:

Johnston has not so far suggested that the changes he wants are based on a different view of Australia's strategic future than that reached under Labor.

Well, what a waste of time that was. Johnston's going to quibble a bit with the accounting at the project level.

Daley says:

It was gratifying, then, to see Senator Johnston seemingly take such a strong stand. He was quoted as saying a Coalition government would: quickly "redo" the government's 2009 defence strategic and spending plan (or white paper)

The last white paper was delivered in 2009, with a revision due in five years (i.e. the next one is due in 2014). The next election is due in 2013. Whoever wins that election will have to "quickly redo" the white paper. This isn't newsworthy if you've been paying attention. Johnston is trying to present normal service as some big new development.

All are reasonable positions to argue ... So bring it on. Let's have the debate now.

Yes, let's. Let's have some information on defence priorities and spending to conduct that debate, Paul. We might need some journalism. Where might we get that, Paul?

... there are serious economic and diplomatic costs associated with undoing or dramatically altering defence programs and purchases.

Scrap or radically alter the local program and you create unemployment, not least in South Australia, where at least 2000 jobs could hang on the submarine project. Ditto with such a massive US-based program as the Joint Strike Fighter.

What unemployment would be created in South Australia if the JSF were canned? Is unemployment the biggest consideration with a defence program? Might employment be taken up by other projects, and if so what might they be? Nope, me neither.

Johnston has been shadow minister for three years now. He has seen off two Labor defence ministers in Joel Fitzgibbon and John Faulkner and he has effectively niggled a third, Stephen Smith, who is now experiencing the same frustration with his department on paralysing cost overruns and delays as his two immediate predecessors.

What a silly piece of writing that is. Johnston's contribution to the downfall of Fitzgibbon is zero. Faulkner announced that he was a placeholder on day one, despite and not because of the eagle-eye of David Johnston bearing down on him. Smith has been entirely self-motivated in reviewing Defence programs, and has been so transparent that Johnston has followed rather than led ministerial scrutiny of those programs.

Johnston has nothing to say in this article on asymmetrical warfare, or the sexism in the armed forces that leads to regular eruptions of sordid behaviour that puts the lie to regular assurances that the matter is a) a one-off and b) always the fault of junior parties, usually females. Also nothing about asylum-seekers as a Defence issue gets the shortest of shrift, rightly so and praise be.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott publicly reassured us he would "never make savings at the expense of the operational capabilities of our defence force … No one has said that we would tear up the defence white paper".

Not surprisingly, Defence Minister Smith highlighted these apparent differences.

"We've seen the shadow minister for defence tearing up the white paper, the Leader of the Opposition saying that won't happen and the manager of opposition business [Christopher Pyne] saying these were all musings," he said.

Having skated over substantive issues (Daley's summary might be summarised as: ooh, it's all so controversial, isn't it), he then goes to the stunning discovery that different politicians have different views. The Situation has refused to be pinned down on policy but insisted on his credibility as Prime Minister nonetheless (and not challenged by the media), and who gives a damn was Chris Pyne says? Fancy doing any sort of work - certainly not three years' worth, let alone the giant-killer reputation Daley falsely ascribes to him - only to have Pyne sprinkle it with piss.

Is this not further proof that the Liberals are unfit for government? The wannabe PM interprets questioning of cost overruns as cutting operational capacity. Three years in a position and you get slapped down by Pyne and Abbott. If Johnston had any dignity he'd quit; if Abbott had any sense he'd put someone else in the role.

Daley would confuse movement with progress in terms of policy development, but that's Paul Daley for you: starting off with the impression of policy but really focused on the very kind of Canberra insider goings-on that makes policy development impossible. Wake up to yourself Daley, and your own role in the impoverishment of our political debate, and stop being the sort of wanker who alienates us from our politics.

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Shanahan counter-spun

Let's take this article by Dennis Shanahan, keep the facts the same but spin them a little differently.

Tony Abbott desperate to crush Julia Gillard

TONY Abbott is so desperate for a Labor leadership change he can taste it.

The Opposition Leader and his colleagues are doing everything they can to turn the longest, worst period of polling for any modern federal government into the end of Julia Gillard.

There are two reasons for Abbott's intensity: first, he wants to focus people's frustrations onto Gillard rather than himself; and, second, he fears Kevin Rudd.

As a result of the latest Newspoll - Labor's primary vote was a record low 26 per cent and has been under 30 per cent for three months, the same period that Abbott has been preferred prime minister - Liberals and some Labor MPs believe Gillard's leadership is terminal.

Abbott's attitude is to knock over an opponent whenever possible, but the fact that Gillard is still standing is an indictment of his supposedly ferocious political skills, and makes her look strong. His main aim is to spark an election he would be certain to win on the current polling, but none of the independents can bear the man.

There is an added reason for Abbott's wish to act as soon as possible against Gillard, which includes the short-term opportunism of assisting the snuffing-out of offshore processing of asylum-seekers.

Abbott, like many Liberal MPs and more than the handful of Labor MPs who are die-hard Rudd supporters, believes Rudd is the only logical choice to replace Gillard, and the only one who can save once-safe Labor seats.

Logic would suggest that Abbott would want to keep Gillard in the Prime Ministership for as long as possible. Yet, the longer Julia Gillard stays where she is, the worse it is for Abbott. Questions must be asked about Abbott's inability in blocking any Labor legislation, in knocking off any ministers (or even Craig Thomson), or persuading Labor to cauterise a supposedly unpopular Prime Minister.

Legendary rugby league commentator Rex Mossop once complained that a player was so ineffective that he "couldn't knock a sick girl off a toilet": a description so harsh it becomes weird, but one which Abbott's late constituent might apply to the current Liberal leader.

Rudd's continuing popularity, his previous preference as prime minister over Abbott, his Queensland connections and a sympathy vote all worry the Liberal leader. Rudd had it all over Abbott 18 months ago, and for all his flaws Rudd is considerably more assiduous in policy development than the supposedly tough Abbott.

But Abbott's biggest fear about Rudd is that the former prime minister will be held back as a last-minute change and go to an election before a second honeymoon wears off.

If Abbott has to face Rudd, he wants time to remind voters why they were turning off the former prime minister before he was dumped by his colleagues. In turn, Rudd would have little trouble pointing out to voters why they have never really warmed to Abbott.

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Tough but necessary

Ross Cameron has returned to the only role in which he was ever truly successful: Tony Abbott's piss-boy. He set out to write a defence of Abbott's unrelenting negativity but has only proved that no such defence exists.

[Abbott's] signature policy at the last election was a generous paid maternity leave scheme.

Yes it was: and nobody believed him. Nobody believed that Tony Abbott wouldn't yank that promise away while shedding crocodile tears about the budget. Nobody believed that he wouldn't make work so insecure that a maternity leave scheme would be a bitter joke.

Besides: in my day, Liberals were suspicious about politicians who were "generous" with taxpayers' money.

Let's give Abbott his due. He did well to lead the Liberal Party from defeat in 2007 to a single-digit deficit in 2010. Mind you, the same can be said for H V Evatt in 1951, Billy Snedden in 1974 and Kim Beazley in 1998. There was a time to slap Abbott on the back and say well done for this achievement, but if you are going to lift your game you need to do much better. Athletes know that you have to put in 50% more effort to get a 1% lift, but Abbott is searching vainly for a payoff where input and outputs are reversed.

Australians have curiously found Abbott to the left of Labor in his unwillingness to cast off asylum seekers, including children, to Malaysia.

Then he spoils it by going on about Nauru and the iniquity of TPVs.

Abbott has resisted admonitions to reopen the industrial relations debate from the right of his party.

He's frightened. Business is not speaking with one voice in terms of what's wrong with the Fair Work Act and how it might be fixed. The Coalition lost the last two elections on that issue, and the President of the ACTU announced publicly that they're going to whack them again. Only Liberals think Abbott looks strong in refusing to talk about this issue. It's an obvious weak point, made all the more vulnerable by the fact that no work is being done to address that weakness (distraction from it is not the same as, or better than, addressing the weakness).

His views on climate change turn out to be much closer to those of middle Australia - willing to give it the benefit of the doubt but no interest in splendid global isolation.

'Splendid isolation' is exactly the description of Liberal environment policy. At a time when Europe and China are ramping up renewables, Abbott is gibbering on about soil sequestration and huge tax-funded boondoggles that cost twice as much as Labor's market-based plans. Australians supported climate change remediation with a 70% majority, and they shall again when they can be sure real policies won't just be tinkered with and then abandoned by dilettantes like Abbott. I wish he'd just say that it's crap and wear the consequences.

When Labor adopted John Della Bosca's solid plan for national disability insurance, Abbott embraced it immediately, arguing only that it should start sooner.

That's stupid. Rushed policies like pink batts and school halls show what happens without careful forethought. I'd bet that Abbott pikes when it comes to standing on the same side of the House to vote on this legislation, just as he has with offshore refugee processing.

... the one card Labor has left is "negative".

While I wish I could wave a magic wand and command the lion to lay down with the lamb, I regret to inform my dear readers (both of you) that the swords of Australian politics are not about to be melted into ploughshares. I understand the impulse of those who wish for a more "constructive, collaborative and inspiring" debate, but they are not about to get it ...

This is a standard thing of Ross', as well as that of his brother-from-another-mother The Situation. When you criticise something for being dumb, Ross hears that as 'soft'. There's a lot of faux sympathy for your softness ("magic wand ... dear readers ... lion/lamb ... swords/ploughshares" etc) which is dispelled by what he regards as the hard crunch of reality. He thinks you have to be a tough-guy to make it in this world, and that tough-guy behaviour doesn't involve careful thought and determination but lots of big talk and that funny kind of waddle Tony Abbott has.

It's true that people are uninspired, if not repulsed and revolted, by Australian politics today. It's true that the incumbents cop the blame for that. It's not true, however, that anyone looks to the Liberals to set a more lofty tone from which clear and measured solutions might arise. If the Liberal Party were about clear and measured solutions, it would have no place for Ross and Tony Abbott. This is the central logical flaw in the argument where someone like John Forrest will insist on Respect For The Prime Minister in a sitcom but then screech like a chimpanzee at the real PM on the floor of Our Nation's Parliament. I expected Joe Hockey to lift the tone a bit; but sadly, no.

So, is Abbott the person to lift us from the miasma? Hell no, he's in it up to his eyeballs like a pig in shit. And it's not even his fault, apparently:

... frankly, Abbott is not to blame. Look instead to the relentless, unyielding laws of Westminster democracy.

Under our system of government, it's a winner-take-all arrangement. The opposition does not get to test and prove its arguments in a parallel universe - it gets one shot at the title every three years.

Oh yes, Westminster democracy. Abbott and Cameron wouldn't last five minutes in Westminster's Question Time, with its to-the-point efficiency and ruthless realisation that parliamentary theatre is utterly repellent to voters. The comparison was and the comparison is invidious. He talks a lot about Tradition and Our British Inheritance, but if you don't understand the gulf between what they say and what they do you'll never understand worms like Ross and Tony. If you want to scuttle Abbott utterly, nail him to the cross of Westminster traditions.

There's also the assumption that Abbott's interests are paramount, and that those of us who think he does a disservice to the nation are missing the main game set by Abbott. Well, fuck that.

Unlike the US, we have no term limits. A government could, conceivably, continue forever.

Only if it keeps being re-elected, Ross.

My father spent 17 years of his life in the NSW Parliament - 14 of them in soul-destroying opposition. The titles, ministerial salaries, uplift in retirement benefits, views, white cars, staff and the status - all the butter is on one side of the bread. Much more importantly, so is the power to do the good things that motivated every MP to join a political party and run for office in the first place.

By the time I met Jim Cameron his soul was a ragged thing indeed, held together by sheer pomposity, rage and baubles. He had spent 16 years in the NSW Legislative Assembly (1968-84) of which half that time - 1976-84, eight years not 14 - saw the Liberals in Opposition. He then spent almost a year in the Legislative Council as part of Fred Nile's Christian Jihad. He was a nasty old man and Ross is trying to make up in smarm what the old man had in bombast. Jim wouldn't have been close to Ross; he took up politics so that the old man would talk to him occasionally. This explains why the boy is so smitten with Abbott. Young Cameron is only writing for the SMH because John B. Fairfax felt sorry for him, and because Miranda Devine took her audience back to News Ltd (or as it's known now, Niche Australia) where it belongs.

Read Cameron's paragraph above again and smell the overweening entitlement coming off it. There is none of that butter/bread thing when Ross gets his chance at government, oh no, because when Libs are in government they get it all to themselves while Labor has to share, apparently.

Having proven himself mawkish in his lust for the trappings of office, Ross proves himself foolish as a tactician:

... in the movie Zulu ... Sergeant Frank Bourne gives a repeated command - "Hold ... hold ... hold ..." - to ensure the limited available shot, in laborious single-load rifles, is not wasted by firing too early.

An opposition leader faces a similar challenge. If he releases good, detailed policy too early, a government will copy it and assume credit for it. If it has defects or can be misrepresented, it will be subject to a sustained campaign of smear with all the resources of the state. 

One may say: "Surely it's in the national interest if a bad government adopts your good policy." The opposition leader will reply: "Yes, but even better if I can use my good policy a year from now to help replace the bad government with a better one."

Nobody outside the Canberra press gallery or the Liberal Party believes Tony Abbott to be capable of good policy. He is more likely to have a lovely singing voice or a keen eye for ikebana than any ability to discern good policy from rubbish. If he came out with good policy it would change the game so completely that no other player could hope to compete. Imagine some old homeless guy picking his nose and pulling out lumps of solid gold: that's how shocking, how utterly discombobulating, an Abbott policy would be. All he has is a policy for what isn't, not one for what is and what might be.

That lack of trust comes from trashing Westminster traditions. You can't deny people the right to attend funerals or the birth of their children, and then claim that your core beliefs include family, fair working conditions, and Westminster traditions. Gillard doesn't have to beat the better angels of her nature, she just has to beat Tony Abbott: and, all too slowly, she is doing just that.

I don't fully understand how or why this government lost the Hawke/Keating legacy of competent program execution, but Abbott is right not to deflect attention from that underlying reality.

Once Gillard came up with a carbon tax price thing that was likely to pass, once the BER was shown to be 97% effective, once Defence programs were wrestled under control like they hadn't been since Sir Arthur Tange was running the Department - then Abbott started to panic. The screechy behaviour by the Coalition in Parliament is the opposite of the sort of quiet confidence that Howard radiated in 1995 and Rudd in 2007. While the Austrians and Russians were embarrassing themselves at Austerlitz, you can be sure that Napoleon was not running around gibbering in a pair of sluggos.

It's the sense of frustrated entitlement that usually comes from within government: NSW Labor had the same hysterical edge in its last term in state government, flicking all the old switches that were no longer connected to anything and waiting for the next IED to go off. It is seen most clearly, not only in Abbott himself and Cameron, but in Joe Hockey's churlish response to Wayne Swan's Euromoney award. Ross would be one of the few people who could act as go-between if Tony and Joe really fell out (but Ross would always side with Tony in the end).

Hockey faces Swan in public but his job is where it is most important to have some sort of coherent policy. A party can say what it likes on immigration or health or saving some spotted frog, but a party that lacks a coherent economic policy is a rabble. Hockey's attempts at developing policy are undone by Abbott's insistence on loosey-goosey flexibility and disdain for detail. If Swan's award had any sort of corporeal form it is hard to imagine Hockey could have resisted the temptation to vault the table and wrest it from Swan's grasp, in order to have something to show for the sheer invidiousness of his position.

This is not an excuse for mindless contrariness or boorish behaviour and does not justify cat-calling or juvenile stunts, but it does mean conflict and scorching critique is an essential element of our system.

Oh but it is. Ross loves the stink. Mindless contrariness and boorish behaviour got him where he is today. "Scorching critique" does not mean any sort of extensive research or drawing deep from centuries of accumulated knowledge, but a quick shiv in the ribs and I-bet-your-mother-does when the mic is out of range. He admires Abbott for getting away with this.

In order to deserve to govern, the Abbott-led Coalition will need to produce a detailed suite of credible policy prescriptions for Australia's circumstances in August 2013. They will.

Ah yes, the old flick-the-switch-to-PM thing. Ross doesn't have such a switch but he only assumes Abbott has one because that's the received wisdom. Waiting for Abbott to become Prime Ministerial increasingly reminds me of that footage of September 11 in New York: you keep willing the plane to bank away from the building but there comes that sickening moment when you realise it won't and can't. Cameron does a good line in utter groundless certainty, but a quick tap of his assertions shows them to be hollow.

If you want to understand Abbott's policy direction now, read his book, Battlelines

It won't help.

There is no coincidence at all between what's in that book and what Liberal policy is now, or at any time since Abbott became leader. Environment, tax, education - you name it, the Coalition is offering nothing at all like what is in that book. You may as well cite On Liberty by John Stuart Mill or The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon as prescriptions for 21st century Australia ahead of that book. Abbott has left it all behind in the name of maximum flexibility, and press gallery stenographers who call themselves reporters love him for it.

Tony Abbott's only real job is to get his team a credible shot at the Treasury benches.

Credibility: that would be a great idea.

Successful Opposition Leaders - i.e. those that become Prime Ministers - bring the country with them. The idea is to make people feel that voting for them makes the country better off, so that in all that cheering on election night their victory is somehow, in small part, our victory. Howard did that, and Rudd did too. It's why election-winning leaders promise to govern for all. Keating killed his chances of re-election in 1993 when he basically insisted that anyone but rusted-on Labor voters could piss off. Abbott's boorishness is likewise ensuring that only rusted-on Liberals can truly appreciate what he's trying to do, and that if any good thing comes from gainsaying Labor it will be the most unintended of coincidences.

The reason why playing dirty in sport is frowned upon is because when you lose, you lose utterly and when you win, you haven't gained much. Cameron is asking us to judge Abbott solely on whether or not he wins - and if he wins, to forgive him everything. Fuck that: Abbott's political eye-gouges and squirrel-grips aren't impressing anyone except bored press gallery stenos and stink-lovin' Ross Cameron.

Ross Cameron should be read as fanboy fiction for Tony Abbott, the big brother he never had. This is why all the pollsters can go boil their heads: the Liberals under Abbott are a shambles, a-quiver with frustration at being so close to office and yet so far. The frustration will eat them up and increase the number and rate of unforced errors. They cannot and will not beat the slow grind of Gillard and Swan. Cameron thinks it's his job to make light of objections to Abbott and highlight virtues real and imagined: those who disdain this aim are wrong to regard his gibberings as worthless. The value in Ross Cameron's pieces on contemporary politics are to show the mechanisms of thought that are otherwise utterly opaque to those outside the Liberal Party. They show how they have come to stand atop the rickety tower of hubris and proclaim the scope and range of their view, and where good people might go to bring him and his mate undone.

People are demeaned not when someone like Tony Abbott plays us for suckers, but when someone like Ross Cameron convinces you that this is the only way you deserve to be treated. Cameron can deal with not being pretty, but he insists you recognise him as pragmatic. Refuse to do so on the basis that his assertions have no real basis and the braggart becomes what he fears most: being lost in the crowd, a nobody. He cannot demand of others "Don't you know who I am?", and cannot answer the question when alone with himself. This emptiness lies at the heart of Abbott also; Abbott is a more complete man than Cameron but still the void is there, beckoning some and repelling others. A bit of tap-tap-tapping from the journosphere will make this clearer than it is, once journos realise that the best way to keep their jobs is to do their jobs.

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Big and soft

The polling lead that the Coalition has over Labor is big, but it's soft. Amanda Vanstone is right when she points out that Abbott needs help in getting the Coalition into government. She is, however, so wrong in the assumptions she makes that it pretty much invalidates her message.

Let's look at some of the people she names. They all work hard but have achieved very little, which means that each of them needs a long hard look at the way they do (and the Coalition does) things:

Arthur Sinodinos was the guy who made sure that Howard's policy pronouncements made sense. He entered Howard's office in 1995 and played an important role - more important than Howard's press secretary at the time - in ensuring that what Howard said was a coherent criticism of the then Labor government and offered an equally coherent and appealing alternative.

Tony Abbott didn't get where he is today by being coherent. He doesn't respect policy costings and cost-benefit analyses, or even the long and painstaking work that others must do in order to make thought bubbles real. Peter Costello's book details numerous occasions where Abbott would come up with expensive policy proposals that weren't well thought out, which he would take responsibility for preventing; no doubt Sinodinos has done similar work to that end. Have the NSW Libs put Sinodinos in to reinforce what they know to be a structural weakness in Abbott?

The Liberal Party loves Arthur Sinodinos, but he doesn't necessarily love it back. This is the guy who spent his time dampening the enthusiasm of those who felt they'd been elected to do stuff. He spent very little time as a party member and his first run for elected office was unopposed elevation to State President. Even people who loathed John Howard couldn't deny that he'd paid his dues in politics; a lesser case can be made for Abbott but no such case can be made for Sinodinos. This isn't to say that his real and extensive policy experience isn't important - it is very much so - but Abbott will be tempted to discount it against the practical business of winning elections. In recent public appearances (and how can we judge The Situation except by public appearances?) that temptation has become overwhelming for Abbott.

Sinodinos will have to play a naysaying role with Abbott, without the authority of Howard to back him up. Sinodinos put up with a great deal of bullshit in Howard's office, and when the sheer weight of bullshit ceased to be the ballast of the Howard government and started causing it to sink in 2007, Sinodinos bailed out. It will be fascinating to see how (or if) Sinodinos gets Abbott to take policy seriously.

Joe Hockey will appreciate Sinodinos' help in getting some policy work done, but Abbott didn't get where he is by listening to Joe Hockey.

Barnaby Joyce is a gibberer like Abbott. He attacks Labor good and hard but because his attacks have no substance, or are misguided, it doesn't have the impact his fans might hope and makes a struggling government look authoritative. Joyce reinforces the idea that the Coalition aren't ready for government. Abbott didn't get where he is by listening to Barnaby Joyce.

Scott Morrison proves that the Coalition aren't ready for government. Their 'solution' was voted out of office four years ago and was kyboshed by the High Court. No amount of insistence to the contrary will or can change that, and simply insisting that any departure from the policy developed in haste in 2001 is "bad" only patronises people doing real work (and looking for real leadership) in that area. Morrison isn't doing what is necessary to think about immigration policy, all of the votes that are going to be attracted with his stance are there already, now he has to act like a minister. That's asking too much.

Christopher Pyne is annoying except to Canberra insiders and says exactly nothing on his shadow ministry, education, a policy area ripe for re-examination across a number of fronts. Always be wary of a man who constantly has to prove how tough he is; that goes for Pyne too.

Malcolm Turnbull is selling a silly policy (a hotch-potch of technologies that will deliver less than what the NBN promises) and hasn't really thought about what this country needs from its telecommunications systems; an extraordinary position for someone who should be without peer in both breadth of conception and depth of understanding of communications issues, given his work with Packer, UK intelligence interceptions and Ozemail. Abbott didn't get where he is by listening to Malcolm Turnbull.

About George Brandis, the less said the better, Neither a champion of our jealously-won rights and freedoms under the Anglo-Australian legal tradition, nor a skilful prosecutor. Abbott didn't get where he is by listening to George Brandis, and nobody else did either.

Nobody knows more about environmental policy than Greg Hunt, but so what? He's been given a silly policy to sell and until he rethinks it Greg Combet and Tony Burke will continue writing him off.

To be fair to Hunt, he probably can't change Coalition policy in this area. Being equally fair, he should resign and work to show what sensible policy looks like from the backbench, until the Liberal Party wakes up to itself. Because the whole direction of Liberal thinking on the environment needs fundamental re-examination any work Hunt does in flogging the impossible is wasted. Vanstone's implication that Hunt isn't working hard enough is misplaced, and besides Tony Abbott, etc., etc., Greg Hunt.

Let's include Andrew Robb, even though Vanstone doesn't. Robb's inland irrigation policy might have been considered visionary if only it had been announced in, say, 1946. The idea of spending billions on a dam to service a handful of already prosperous landholdings over infrastructure badly needed by millions is stupid. It makes nonsense of notions of fiscal responsibility.

If Labor changes leader, things will change. Frankly, voters seem to be over the Tony and Julia show, so who can say where their relief at her departure would go in the polling?

By 1995 the Howard and Keating Show had gotten very bloody tedious.

Of the two major-party leaders today, Gillard is the only one with the capacity to change. The Situation is not a politician of great subtlety and both his strengths and his weaknesses are locked in by sky-high polls. If Gillard outflanks Abbott with onshore processing he is pretty much stuffed, and the hard rain of electoral defeat will fall equally upon those in the Coalition who have "worked hard" and those who have not.

For Coalition MPs to have the best chance of winning, they need to ... have confidence that the opposition will do better than the incumbents. Right now, voters see a lot of Abbott and a few key players. How can they judge the rest of the team if they never hear from or about them?

This argument is sheer bullshit. Since I started following politics in the 1980s I can't remember a single change of government, anywhere on state or federal level in Australia, where the opposition was better known across all or even most portfolios than the incumbents. This includes the change of government with which Vanstone will be most familiar, the Coalition's federal election victory in 1996.

Part of the work that the Coalition need to do is work out:

• Why the people rejected them in 2007;
• Why the people didn't elect them in 2010 (yeah, they did well - but the last thing Coalition supporters would want is another "did well" next time); and
• Whether a win in 2013 simply means turning the clock back to 2007 and continuing on as before.

Hard work that, and necessary. Nobody in the Coalition - not Abbott, not Sinodinos or Hockey or anyone else - is doing it.

From the outside it is not obvious that everyone on the Coalition team is working anywhere near as hard as Abbott and a few others. That's why the arrival of Sinodinis [sic] is an absolute gift for Abbott. It creates the need for a reshuffle. Perhaps over the Christmas break.

Reshuffle talk is always unsettling.

And demotivating, Amanda. You can't insist that somebody pours their heart and soul into a job that will be taken from them in three months. You experienced this in Howard's first period as Opposition Leader, where he regularly reshuffled his frontbench out of sheer boredom and ended up getting reshuffled out of the job himself.

Reshuffling isn't the answer to what the Liberal Party needs right now. It needs to rethink how it goes about the day-to-day business of politics and drop those things that piss people off - including the much-derided independents. You cannot claim that Abbott is the depth of Craig Thomson's credit card away from becoming PM when Windsor and Oakeshott can't abide the guy. If you really think the current government is inadequate you need to think about how it might be better, not just revert back to 2006 and start again.

Julia Gillard's problems go beyond all the policy disasters. Abbott faces a Labor leader, the parliamentary leader of the union movement, who apparently cannot stand up and tell the workers of Australia that she will defend their right to have their union dues spent on union business. She apparently has no great interest in union dues from low-paid workers being used to fund prostitutes and heaven-knows-what-else for union bosses.

Fair point. I would be surprised if the SDA, for all its failings, would have similar patterns of expenditure. Doesn't really explain why Abbott pleads with Liberals to stop speaking about workplace relations issues though. If this issue was such a winner issue Abbott would be calling for all unions to be audited within an inch of their increasingly feeble lives. Perhaps he's just being lazy. Perhaps he just isn't as smart as Amanda Vanstone.

More of the heavy lifting on attack work will need to be done by his team. Again he will need capable fighters. Frankly, not enough of them have shown they have the capacity or energy to lay a glove on Labor.

But how can that be? They're all so tough: just ask them. Just ask any member of the press gallery.

Look at the final term of governments that have lost office and you'll see a steady departure of ministers. Some of them rush the exits, some are carried out feet first; but there's enough of a pattern there to show evidence of decay. The reason why the Coalition hasn't laid a glove on Labor is less the frontbench than the leadership. They really think that going on and on about how incompetent Swan is will take the focus off low unemployment. They really think that berating Glenn Stevens with inanities matters more than reconsidering what it means to manage the Australian economy today and into the foreseeable future (and testing Stevens' effectiveness in dealing with that).

You can work as hard as you like on finding out some detailed, hard-to-understand aspect of policy that will bring down a minister - but if there's an orchestrated campaign in getting kicked out of Question Time in order to get early flights home, why bother?

Anyone in the Coalition who thinks they can just work hard when government arrives is dreaming. It's a bit like refusing to start serious training until you're sure you're in the grand final.

That's absolutely true.

What's equally true is: that's hubris for ya. The Coalition so believe that they have the coming election in the bag that anything looking like hard work just smacks of desperation.

It's a political cliche that both government and opposition will claim to be underdogs in order to attract public sympathy. When you look at the Coalition today, however, you can see why they do it. Howard always claimed to be the underdog because his comfort in office was tempered by years of experience of bitter defeat. It would be a joke for Abbott to claim to be the underdog. Gillard has been beaten so hard and so often it is a wonder that she gets out of bed every morning. Everything Abbott says and does conveys the idea that he is in no way an underdog. It also conveys the idea of pride going before a fall.

Abbott leers at the world which, on the pollsters' paper at least, lets him get away with anything. He has been confirmed for so long in the idea that whatever he dishes up is good enough for the likes of you. No amount of lecturing from Vanstone, or anyone else really, can turn that around. Abbott's leadership is not a given and Vanstone should stop pretending that it is.

When the leader is such a clown (and this is not compensated for by the leadership group, including people like Pyne, Abetz and Julie Bishop) then no amount of busywork by the troops can compensate, let alone add to the attack. The idea that the Coalition might make a case for governing us better than Labor does would be nice, but either Vanstone doesn't care about that or she thinks it's too much to ask of today's Coalition.

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