Johnny Panic

The selection of John Robertson as NSW ALP leader shows how committed they are to staying dysfunctional, on a number of levels.

The rise and rise of John Robertson has been happening for the better part of five to ten years. The same five-to-ten that has seen that party go from a credible, even in some respects formidable government, to being a small-scale rabble and a big national joke. You'd think that Robertson could cool his heels in the Legislative Council while they are still pulling survivors from the rubble, until the fabled consultation with the members takes place - but no. If Labor had won, Robertson would have switched to the lower house. Now that Labor has lost, the same solution is applied: Johnny Robertson, the man for all seasons. The accepted wisdom among the journosphere is that Robertson has somehow lucked in to the leadership of his party, just like Steven Bradbury's ice-skating gold medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics, which is rubbish. There's been a lot of work go into getting Robertson up, and journalists who claim otherwise don't understand politics and will believe anything.

You could argue that Robertson is a man who is wildly popular. You'd have to ignore the fact that his vote was 18.7% down on last election (not as bad as some, but a lot worse than most), when Paul Gibson was getting ready to prove himself unsuitable for ministerial office. People flocked to Blacktown to help Robertson during the campaign, but they weren't Blacktown locals. They weren't members wanting Robertson to rank and file them. They were the sorts of careerist who know the value of sucking up to the next leader at a time when he could use a bit of face-saving. Another victory for the Labor careerists: the voters, the ordinary members were right to turn off.

You could argue that Robertson is wildly popular because of his position on electricity privatisation. After thirty years of Labor and Coalition governments selling off public assets, only old-school socialists are against privatisation per se (and they are more likely to vote Green than Labor anyway). What people don't want is sudden price hikes or disruption of service - which are contradictory impulses, and without leadership you can only go the populist route and set yourself as the champion of an unsustainable status quo. Throw down the baton of leadership and you can't be sure that someone else won't pick it up.

Most Labor people who insist that Robertson is wildly popular assume that the voice of the unions are the authentic voice of working people. With fewer than one in ten private-sector workers in unions, this is a poor assumption - but one on which Labor seems to rely heavily. A non-entity made it to number two on Labor's Legislative Council ticket on the basis that all the shop assistants in NSW would vote Labor because he was so well known and loved among that occupation. I'd love to see some proof of that, but it would be like yanking the curtain away to reveal the 'real' Wizard of Oz. If Robertson had to rely on union members in Blacktown, he'd be finished.

Yes, he has enemies, it's part of politics and many other walks of life - but real power isn't having no enemies. Real power is making your enemies shut up. Robertson doesn't have that power, not even if he were Premier today could he hand out trinkets and threats to get a unified team. With Keating and Iemma coming out hard against him, Labor has turned its back on leaders who could actually win elections and chosen someone almost purpose-designed to repel them. People who've known Robertson for many years think he's a jerk, so why would most people who don't know him at all be persuaded differently? Robertson would need to back up the tough-guy persona with some chucking-out of the people who got him his job in the first place - can't see it happening myself.

Robertson's rhetoric indicates that he wants to hold the government "ferociously to account". Watch O'Farrell bat him away like Gillard is increasingly doing to Abbott. Labor lost government because it had lost its sense of big-picture, longterm policy, and little niggly criticisms will only reinforce the idea that O'Farrell is doing his best (for which well-meant slip-ups and newbie errors will be forgiven). Like his federal counterpart, Robertson can't be guaranteed to keep his inner boofhead disciplined, which will add to his troubles getting others to shut up and toe the line. You can see the 2015 election campaign from here: Barry the Gentleman vs Johnny Boofhead.

Of the 19 seats Labor can be sure of in the Legislative Assembly, 11 are held by women - the joke is on so-called "progressive women" that they can't get one of their own elected with a 11/19 majority. At what point do you tell Tebbutt to lead or get out of the way? Do you have to wait until the Greens develop a genuinely focused political killer in that district, someone who won't be distracted from the main game and who'll go door to door in order to represent the electorate?

There's an argument that says you put Robertson in and burn him out so that someone else can have a go. That idea didn't work last term, where Labor just looked stupid and flaky by changing leaders. It won't work given the extent to which the machine is invested in Robertson: if they try to take him down he'll take them all down with him, like the Man from Ironbark in the barber's shop. It's understandable tthat no other leader would want Robertson plotting away behind them, but show me a leader afraid of that and I'll show you no leader: Bob Carr survived ongoing comparison with Peter Anderson, but none of the current crop have Carr's drive and tactical sense. Robertson won't sit quietly after dumping like Rees did, either: when he's gone as leader he'll flame out and go at the worst possible moment, because he has no other job to go to, no "Paris option". We could yet have a Liberal MP for Blacktown.

There have been so many articles and interviews by Labor figures over the past week, all paying lip service to the shellacking but all proposing to carry on as they have been. They could have broken that pattern by choosing an outsider (too bad there aren't any), or even someone harmless but articulate like Daley, and demonstrating that things really are different without being worse.

It's a dilemma of participatory democracy that those who do it fulltime - and develop skills that part-timers or well-meaning novices develop to a lesser extent, if at all - get the rewards for effort, and that this discredits the whole enterprise. What looks like a "poisoned chalice" is like mothers' milk to some, just as there are creatures that live in alkaline or near-freezing environments that can't relate to fresh, temperate air. Nobody regards professional athletes as "hacks" or cries about "jobs for the boys", and nor does it necessarily diminish the same activity performed at the community level by amateurs.

Politicians fund sporting organisations to maintain those grassroots links, and though they also fund political parties their grassroots links to pollies and policies is weak and getting weaker. Preselection candidates disdain local connections and make a big deal of "media skills", which can be acquired quickly and are mostly bullshit. The assumptions behind these dark satanic skills work against genuine community activism anyway, and won't help NSW Labor climb out of its hole.

If John Robertson is your answer then you're asking the wrong question.

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Protesting too much

Labor strategists in NSW only embarrass themselves when they speak of campaigning, and there is nobody any more with any authority in Labor to impose STFU on these people. One would assume that journalists are giving them one last go-around for old times' sake (because they'd never be lazy; lazy journalism is against MEAA guidelines, so therefore it never happens). There is, however, one topic on which NSW Labor might be heard: how they did over the Greens.

In Marrickville, Labor gave Fiona Byrne plenty of rope by letting the anti-Israel motion go through council. They could not have dreamt that Byrne would be caught out trying to distance herself and embrace the idea at the same time. At an election where parish-pump issues and service delivery was at the forefront, nobody wants to hear any self-indulgent claptrap about East Jerusalem and Gaza. Byrne had a good story to tell the people of Marrickville about public transport and environmental issues generally. She faced an opponent who was neither a dutiful local member nor an especially formidable minister (relative to the jerks in the last government, she was a colossus; but in absolute terms, her policy achievements can be described as, um ...). Byrne blew it for the Greens.

In Balmain, Jamie Parker will probably win but will wear the sort of hounded look that Rob Oakeshott has increasingly borne: jeered at by the Liberals and shunned by Labor. Verity Firth seems to have roared back from the political dead, seemingly by denying her party affiliation and somehow convincing people to overlook her craven gutlessness over unflued gas heaters. The broadminded people of the electorate ignored the tut-tutting of the Murdoch rags over Matthew Chesher's adventures in pharmacology. It could have been worse: he could have been attempting to buy Horny Goat Weed.

Preferences are hard to map where preferencing is optional, yet some common sense can be applied. It's conceivable for people to vote [1] Liberal and [2] Green. It's conceivable for people to vote [1] Labor and [2] Green, or vice versa. It's almost inconceivable that anyone would vote [1] Labor [2] Liberal, or vice versa. The postals will favour the Greens.

Speaking of the ridiculous, here is hopefully one of Imre's last pieces on a subject he doesn't understand:

HAVING snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in one, possibly two, NSW lower house seats, the Greens now face the prospect of four years in the political wilderness without real power.

As opposed to all the power they had in the last term of Parliament? Surely the power to make Labor fight on two fronts counts as "real power"? The Greens are to NSW politics what the Sharkies are to rugby league.

Fronting the media to explain what was widely seen as a disappointing result for the Greens, lead upper house candidate David Shoebridge said the Greens could be proud of their effort.

"They focused their resources on those two seats. We stood up, we're still up, and we'll be in the counting for the rest of this week," he said. "There remains the possibility, in the NSW upper house, to get a majority to do things like call for papers."

This is precisely the sort of thing that the journosphere ignores in the hype of election time, but which is powerful in the actual conduct of Parliament. The Greens went into this election with one Legislative Council seat and came out with three. This puts them ahead already, regardless of what may happen in Balmain. A real journalist would explain what a "call for papers" is and why it matters.

Sydney University political scientist Rodney Smith said the Greens' Marrickville candidate, Fiona Byrne, had suffered from her difficulty getting to grips with the truth over her support for a boycott of Israel.

"It began to look like she was being a bit too clever by half by appealing to people for whom the boycott might be appealing, but at the same time saying, 'Oh no ... I don't support it'," Dr Smith said.

And since when do we at the Murdoch press start quoting pointy-headed academics other than Ian Plimer?

Byrne is not the first politician to talk out both sides of her mouth, but the fact that she was caught and went into a dither shows that she's second rate at best. Had the campaign gone on a bit longer she would have found herself beset by anti-Semites, never a good look for anyone.

He said that Mr Parker had struggled after the late entry of a rival independent candidate and former local mayor, Maire Sheehan, who directed her preferences to Labor.

Politics in that area is basically Labor vs Not-Labor. The Liberals never had a look-in until recently and the Democrats were sneered out of town early on. The various flavours of communist gave up the ghost during the '90s, during the gentrification of suburbs like Rozelle and Balmain with increased numbers of yuppies prepared to vote Liberal. The strongest Not-Labor of that time was a bunch of ex-Labor middle-aged women rebelling at the deals stitched up by Labor men. Maire (not a mis-spelling; pronounced "Moira") Sheehan was one of these, and became Mayor. Since then, she must have made her peace with Labor: at every election where Labor is in trouble, Maire Sheehan comes out and wrings her hands and considers running, and then a couple of media cycles later she nominates. Her effect is to siphon votes off this year's Non-Labor (formerly No Aircraft Noise, now NSW Greens) and funnel them back to Labor. Surely somewhere there's a journalist in Sydney who's awake up to Maire Sheehan.

Former NSW premier Bob Carr hailed Ms Tebbutt and Ms Firth as "heroes" of the election.

So?

Carr has learnt the lesson of military history that disasters are celebrated officially. The two battles at which more Victoria Crosses were awarded by the British than any others were Blood River and Lone Pine, two terrible defeats. Carr seems determined to pull something from the rubble of his legacy and here they are, the bedraggled Tebbutt and barely alive Firth. He doth protest too much.

"It's now clear that the internal politics of the Greens are chaotic," Mr Carr said.

As opposed to the well-oiled machine that is Sussex Street in 2011.

From this it would seem that Bob Brown basically is "the internal politics of the Greens":

Labor has seized on the Greens' failure to win seats on Saturday to demand that Tony Abbott follow the lead of the Liberals in Victoria and NSW by refusing to pass the party preferences ahead of Labor in the next federal election.

"It is difficult to envisage a situation whereby the Greens would win a seat in the House of Representatives without Liberal Party preferences," Labor frontbencher Chris Bowen said yesterday.

Easy, tiger: Bowen forgets that Victoria's Liberals kept Labor on tenterhooks last year before deciding against preferencing the Greens at the last minute. The normally unflappable John Brumby was well and truly flapped with his increasingly strident demands of Liberals to preference Labor. The new Senate, where the Greens have nine Senators whose votes are vital to get Gillard Government legislation through, has not yet been convened. Chris Bowen didn't get where he is today by going out too hard too early (unless he's rattled).

In last year's federal election, the Greens claimed the balance of power in the Senate and won their first House of Representatives seat -- Melbourne.

However, their failure to win seats on Saturday or in last year's Victorian election ...

In both states they have increased their representation. They do seem confined to the upper house, like the Democrats; and like the Democrats they are one big sell-out from a downward spiral of recriminations and oblivion. It's sloppy reporting to suggest that the Greens have gone backwards when they're ahead of where they were,

Yesterday, Mr Bowen said the results showed Mr Abbott had the power to determine the Greens' future in the federal House of Representatives.

"Mr Abbott goes on a lot about the Greens," Mr Bowen told the Ten Network's Meet the Press program.

"Well, it is up to him whether he'd preference the Greens or not ...

There are Liberal voters who preference the Greens: they're called moderates, Chris. All Tony Abbott need do is be true to himself and he will drive moderate Liberals away from the Liberal Party and toward the Greens. Neither Abbott nor Bowen are obliged in any way to give the Greens a two-year head start in building on their considerable progress in inner-city Australia.

Next year's election in Queensland will be fascinating as the state has experienced an array of eco-disasters. You'd expect the state's Greens to step up to a whole new level in seats along the Brisbane River, and in farmland resisting the encroachment of mines and gas wells. Bet they don't though: hacks like the ALP and yee-haw boofheads like Jeff Seeney will squeeze the Greens out of any elected office.

You could argue that the Greens are chokers, and that they'll be bereft after Brown goes. However, they've come a long way in a short time, and NSW Labor of all people ought not be jeering at anyone. They played Fiona Byrne off a break but if anyone is going to learn from this experience it will more likely be the Greens, not Labor.

... Heroes often fail
And you won't read that book again
Because the ending's just to hard to take ...
... But for now, love, let's be real.

I never thought I could act this way
And I've got to say that I just don't get it
I don't know where we went wrong
But the feeling's gone and I just can't get it back ...

- from If you could read my mind by Gordon Lighfoot

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Talking to Gladys

As a summary of the election result itself, it's hard to go past this. What follows here is just another spitball lobbed in the general direction of Journalism Most High, and of one pit of particularly poor journalism: the NSW state parliamentary press gallery.

For almost all of the last four years, polls in NSW have shown that there was at least a chance that the Coalition might win State government. For most of that time it was a dead certainty. It was incumbent upon the journosphere to get to know the State Libs and ask them penetrating questions over time rather than just accepting Labor's portrayals of them as punchlines in Labor jokes. We are all poorer for this failure.

Silly articles have appeared over this period claiming that the Coalition frontbench are "anonymous" (they're public figures and they adore attention from the media, so why don't you give them some and see how they go?), or that they have no policies (they released over a hundred - and no, you don't just have to accept lazy journalism as "the way media works"). Just because Labor want to frame them that way doesn't oblige the journosphere to present them that way. The articles that need to be written now - firstly, analyses of what the new government must/can do, and secondly NSW Labor picking through the rubble - should have written themselves. Instead, the journosphere is grappling for words to describe a situation that was crystal-clear to anyone who'd been paying attention.

Last night the only live TV coverage of the State election was on the ABC. Kerry O'Brien chaired the panel with stale State politics reporter Quentin Dempster.

O'Brien was doddery and dithery, unsure of state politics and ill at ease with the off-screen technology. There were a lot of Freudian slips where "Labor" had won seats actually won by the Coalition. This is why O'Farrell cut him and spoke directly to Gladys Berejiklian, getting his message through to her (including confirming her as Transport Minister) in a classy manner unfiltered by O'Brien. If O'Brien was so tired of Keneally's bullshit, why didn't he have her on what was then "The 7.30 Report" and just shred her?

If he had, it would probably have brought on a demarcation dispute with Quentin Dempster, a Queenslander who had crusaded against Bjelke-Petersen in his final days and was brought to NSW in the late '80s to do the job in Greiner. Dempster is a caricature of an-old school journo, but his heart is with Labor and he has been poor at disguising it. He would occasionally display irritation at Labor's media management and backtracking on commitments, but I can still remember him interviewing John Brogden and dimming the studio lights so that Dempster looked like he was talking to someone in a witness protection program.

Dempster interviewed the Liberal candidate for Balmain, who referred to inner-west Liberals. Liberals had won the seats of Drummoyne and Strathfield in Sydney's inner west earlier that night, and Dempster look stupid for asking "what's an inner west Liberal?". For the past twenty years Liberals had worked assiduously to break Labor's lock on inner western Sydney, but Quentin wouldn't know this as the non-members bar in State Parliament faces away from the inner west. Like most journalists he disdained the Liberals, and they are right to return the favour. Matt Wordsworth does the heavy lifting in State Parliament for that network, so as of yesterday Uncle Quentin's value-add on state political issues has plummeted.

Antony Green is a pre-eminent psephologist but he's not much chop as a software programmer. Every election broadcast for the last five years has seen a software glitch that makes a nonsense of his contributions, a disconnect between what one sees on the screen and a hasty verbal explanation of why a candidate who is supposedly getting thrashed is slightly ahead, or vice versa, or something. If he's wrestling with his own software it detracts from his attempts to clarify and electorally tricky situation, and only adds to the discombobulation of old-school presenters like O'Brien.

O'Brien looked rattled by the end of the program, a quill-and-ink man in the age of Twitter. The contrast with his aplomb on previous Federal campaigns, and with that of Virginia Trioli in last year's Victorian election, could not be greater. It's time for Kerry O'Brien and Quentin Dempster to give it away.

The only trouble is that the coming generation of journalists ready to take senior roles reporting state politics cut their teeth dutifully reporting bullshit from the Walt Disney Secord fantasy factory. Some may snap out of that, examining the O'Farrell government more thoroughly than 16 years of Labor ever were. Some will just put their brain in neutral and go along with the under-construction Liberal bullshit machine, while yet others will just end up as rain dogs (Brian Robins from the SMH is probably going to be one of these, unless he can be shunted into reporting on something else).

It would be wonderful if NSW state political reporting was so debased that journos were forced to get into policy and treat politics as a sub-set of that: but why would they bother? When your idea of investigative journalism is refreshing your email inbox, or having the new Opposition point out the political versions of IEDs that the new government will stumble upon, once can hope for better journalism out of Macquarie Street - but not too much.

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How I voted 2011

In the Legislative Assembly I voted [1] Liberal. I would have been justified in doing a donkey vote with compulsory preferential, as the Lib was top of the ticket followed by a former Lib who lost preselection, then Labor (if you're a Labor candidate at this election, what does it say about you etc.), then Green, and lastly Fred Nile Is Bigger Than Jesus Group.

The Legislative Council was hard. I didn't vote above the line, haven't done since the 1980s.

I voted for moderate liberals Catherine Cusack [1] and Greg Pearce [2] to encourage candidates like them.

John Hatton is running again; he doesn't have to and the fact that he is running means the age thing isn't an issue. The ICAC is all very well but the fact is NSW needs an anti-corruption campaigner in Parliament. I voted him [3] to see what he'll do and where he'll go.

Then I saw - the Democrats! I thought they'd been deregistered! I voted [4] Arthur Chesterfield-Evans.

Darren Marton [5] was a guy I had some dealings with years ago on drug/alcohol law issues. He can be a bit unctuous ("What sort of lesson are we teaching our children", etc.) but unlike a lot of candidates his heart is in the right place and he's smart. It will be interesting to see how he deals with backroom negotiations and having to live with compromises.

Jennifer Stefanac [6] has a long background in dealing with Aboriginal issues - far more substantial than Warren Mundine or Jenny Macklin, and she has clearly sacrificed concrete achievements for breadth of coverage. No other candidate came close in terms of bringing these issues to the table.

I did vote [7] for somebody or other but I can't remember who - it wasn't Hanson or anyone like that.

I liked the idea of Building Australia, so I put the guy atop their ticket [8]. If you won't employ engineers to build infrastructure, you may as well put them in Parliament.

After that it all got a bit difficult. I considered voting above the line - John Hatton group, Dems, Builders and Lib/Nats 1-4 in that order - but I got over it.

Duncan Gay [9] would have been a good minister and should have been ahead of some of the duffers who got gigs under Greiner and Fahey. Credit where it's due.

Michael Gallacher was inaugural President and a co-founder with me of Central Coast Young Liberals [10]. By this point I was struggling.

[11-13] went to the second Democrat, Building Aust and John Hatton person.

I looked back to the Lib/Nat column on the far left (don't you start). I couldn't think of a reason to vote for Natasha Maclaren-Jones or Scot MacDonald, nor vote against them, so I left them blank. Mind you, I recorded the same result against Peter Phelps, a man who has embarrassed himself and his party in a series of staffer jobs and will do so as an MLC (the fact that Gladys Berejiklian and Andrew Constance are prospective ministers and he isn't will drive him crazy).

I looked across to all those splitters: Socialist Alliance vs Restore Rights for Workers, Outdoor Recreation vs Shooters & Rooters, Fred Nile Is Bigger Than Jesus Group vs the Stephen Fleming All-Stars, and some carpetbagger from Queensland vs all decent people in this state. I sneered at wankers like Frank Monte, Danny Lim and Hanson, as well as inveterate try-hard Tony Recsei (save what, from whom, with what?). No Carers? I would have voted for them. No Sex Party?

Eventually I found three other candidates to fill [14-16] from the columns to which I've referred approvingly and I was away.

Will do an election wrap-up/predictions for new govt soon.

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Hanson's revenge

Nobody wants to see a future Prime Minister as a rabble-rouser. Prime Ministers pass by rabbles with a quiet dignity buttressed by tight security; they may be allowed a witty quip, but nothing more. They do not engage with rabbles. They certainly do not try any mealy-mouthed accommodation with them, let alone attempt to win them over.

If that rally represents the opposition to the carbon tax, then all of a sudden the carbon tax doesn't look so bad.

Greg Combet has taken up the snarl against Abbott directly, not bothering with the hollowed-out husk of his shadow Greg Hunt. Combet lacks the cruel wit or flamboyance of Keating, but he also seems to have a self-awareness that prevents him spending too long on the high horse. Only Alan Jones gets away with being a judgmental harpy.

Much is made of the plight of Andrew Demetriou and David Gallop, two men running billion-dollar businesses which are randomly plunged into ignominy by individuals behaving irresponsibly, even criminally. The same plight affects those who organise mass rallies to Canberra:

• Ian McLachlan was President of the National Farmers' Federation in the late 1980s. He organised a rally to Canberra to protest something or other that the Hawke government did. 80,000 people turned up and their behaviour was impeccable, while forceful: Bob Hawke had no option but to front them. McLachlan was made as a conservative leader from that point on (even though he was past his best by the time he made it to Howard's cabinet in the late '90s).


• As President of the ACTU, Jenny George tried the same trick. One union organiser smashed up some glass on the Parliamentary precinct and got into a scuffle with police, which became The Story; whatever the rally was meant to be about fell away. George did make it into Parliament but neither Keating, Rudd nor Gillard made her a minister.


• Old stagers like Andrew Peacock and John Howard knew not only how to work a crowd, but how to read one too. By contrast, in 1993 John Hewson got carried away with the rabble-rousing thing and was energised by screeching leftist protesters (without the quiver of droll quips that Menzies used to drop interjectors where they stood). Graham Richardson said that those appearances lost Hewson the election, but he would say that: bugger was right though.


• The Your Rights At Work rallies in 2007 were ferociously disciplined. Unionists did not respond to provocation: provocateurs looked silly in their attempts. The rallies reflected well on Labor in the face of a crumbling government and reinforced them in that year's election.


• The rallies of Aboriginal and pro-Aboriginal groups on the lawns outside Parliament the following year to hear then-PM Kevin Rudd apologise to the Stolen Generations were peaceful and celebratory. The whole public sentiment behind the event would have evaporated had even one participant initiated or responded to provocation.

Abbott might not have organised that rally, but having sown a "people's revolt" this straggly, weedy crop is what you reap. The people who did organise that rally were shock-jocks: the same people who gave us the Cronulla riots of 2005, and the overthrow of Malcolm Turnbull in 2009. With friends like them, etc.

One sign of too many journalists chasing too little news is that they lit upon the presence of Angry Anderson at the rally. They all seemed to miss the irony that if a song like Bad Boy For Love were released today, people like Mirabella, Bishop, Abbott and the shock-jocks would vilify it and him for glorifying violent crime.

In reading this piece by Philip Coorey I came perilously close to feeling sorry for Abbott:

Abbott was walking on eggshells when he arrived. His rock star reception dulled a little when he declared: "I don't think this is about climate change. Climate change happens, mankind does make a contribution," he said.

He then recovered the mob by hooking into Gillard and her broken promise.

Back in the building, watching on TV, some Liberals were mortified while Labor people were delighted. Framed behind Abbott's head were some placards. One conflated a carbon tax with UN global domination and genocide, another said, "JuLIAR, Bob Brown's Bitch" ... What went down well with the crowds may not have looked so good to the broader audience at home.

He can't help it. He just loses control. Put him before a mob like that, or even the Beaufort Crows, and he just loses it. The urge to please the crowd takes over and he's away.

I'm just the pieces of the man I used to be
Too many bitter tears are raining down on me
I'm far away from home
And I've been facing this alone
For much too long
Oh, I feel like no-one ever told the truth to me
About growing up and what a struggle it would be
In my tangled state of mind
I've been looking back to find
Where I went wrong

Too much love will kill you
If you can't make up your mind
Torn between the lover
And the love you leave behind
You're headed for disaster
'Cos you never read the signs
Too much love will kill you - every time

I'm just the shadow of the man I used to be
And it seems like there's no way out of this for me
I used to bring you sunshine
Now all I ever do is bring you down
Ooh, how would it be if you were standing in my shoes
Can't you see that it's impossible to choose
No there's no making sense of it
Every way I go I'm bound to lose
Oh yes,

Too much love will kill you
Just as sure as none at all
It'll drain the power that's in you
Make you plead and scream and crawl
And the pain will make you crazy
You're the victim of your crime
Too much love will kill you - every time

Yes, too much love will kill you
It'll make your life a lie
Yes, too much love will kill you
And you won't understand why
You'd give your life, you'd sell your soul
But here it comes again
Too much love will kill you
In the end
In the end

- Roger Taylor Too much love will kill you

It may seem like a bit of a stretch to compare a promiscuous bisexual rockstar who died from an AIDS-related illness to the Leader of the Liberal Party in Opposition, but there you go.

Pauline Hanson was never able to pose a direct threat to the Liberal Party in the way that Labor does. The chief threat she posed to it was to drag the Liberal Party down to her level, and that's what happened yesterday. The Liberals will try and dissociate their man, getting him to wring out one of his quasi-apologies and call for unity. It's too late for that. It's too late for this conga-line of Liberal MPs who can't tell the difference between ordinary Australians and wackos. Liberals are going to speak out more and more, and any attempt by Tony Abbott to pull them into line will be ignored.

This is how leaderships end, people. He's been Grech'd, and he's done it to himself. Tony Abbott came so close to becoming Prime Minister, but so did Arthur Calwell. Kevin Rudd was cut down within his first term. Better men than he have been thrashed more soundly, and now that we know him better we can see what fate awaits him should he lead his party to the next election. The next Newspoll will be a doozy and the attempts by The Australian to spin it will be fascinating.

Hanson has her revenge: after thirteen years, a fair bit of money gone and even a spell in the jug, her Javert might not go to prison but he won't be going to the Lodge either.

The Australian people are bigger than any mob. Polls don't adequately capture what they'll feel or where they are prepared to be led, so while they can't be ignored outright they can be taken with a grain of salt. The Australian people won't vote for Tony Abbott because he's easily swayed - by the weak and frightened, and by shouty fools in padded rooms.

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The blind leading the naked

Nobody really thinks Tony Abbott would be better off if he embraced beliefs about our future economic growth that he doesn't really support. He's not big on basic economics, so the idea of decoupling economic growth from growth in carbon emissions is clearly too hard.

This piece was originally going to be a tongue-in-cheek rightwing rant about how Tony Abbott should ditch all pretence at moderation, how he should affirm that climate change is crap and that refugee boats should be pushed out to see regardless of the danger to human life involved - mainly because I'd love to see Abbott be honest for a change, and I'd love to see the rightwing bluff well and truly called. Nobody is being fooled by the various evasions, token gestures and outright bullshit that Abbott and other Libs are trailing behind them. This is your big chance, Liberal rightwing - don't let it slide by in a drizzle of well-let-me-say-this.

Instead, there was this. Niki Savva was slightly less nasty this week (not one mention of Julia Gillard's make-up, even though it's probably made from petrochemicals!). She substituted it instead with a less pointed sarcasm against the world generally, but she still brought bucketloads of stupid.

IF Tony Abbott could only embrace the new global religion where belief in climate change is obligatory and in God optional, then he would spare himself the punishment of its spawn, the New Inquisition, and be better off politically if not spiritually.

The whole idea of claiming climate change is a religion rather than a science implies that there is no objective, provable truth about climate change, or that if there is it is obscured by the very institution that would preach it.

I don't know who "the New Inquisition" is and neither does Niki Savva. To rub her nose in her own pseudo-realism: I know that Muammar Gaddafi is killing people who don't support him, but I am not convinced that the Chairman of the IPCC is doing likewise.

The climate change religion purges dissenters.

You can't be purged if you were never really part of the religion.

Listen to the language of these latter-day evangelists: "I believe climate change is real; I have always believed climate change was caused by human activity; I believe Australians agree that climate change is real; the Australian people voted for me knowing I believe climate change is real; the Liberal Party, in the modern age, climate change deniers ..."

That was Julia Gillard, in case you couldn't tell.

Gillard is hardly the only person who recognises both that a) you can have economic growth without emissions growth; and b) if that's what you want for Australia, voting for the Liberal Party will do more harm than good. I still say, drop the pretence and say it loud and proud: vote Liberal if you think climate change is crap.

The Prime Minister does not believe in God, although the muscled-up caucus God Squad, as fellow MPs call the right-wing grouping that staged a mini revolt recently, sustains her.

That's the difference between the Labor God Squad and the Liberal one. Liberals have lost preselection because they're gay, or they are philanderers, or because they don't believe in church intrusion into aspects of social life (such as schools, medical procedures, etc). Plenty of Labor people with the same attributes have slipped through their party's processes unscathed. They then get into Parliament and sneer at the Liberals for being run by religious zealots: SA Labor Senator Linda Kirk is the only exception to that rule I can think of. The men who can make this stick, men like Joe de Bruyn and Senator Don Farrell, are not young men; those who might be expected to take over from them, Tony Burke or Mark Butler, might toe the factional line behind closed doors but they are not going to pole-axe a colleague for personal reasons (e.g. sexual preference), like the Liberals do.

Speaking of Tony Burke and climate change: Burke is the Minister responsible for the Bureau of Meterology. Cardinal George Pell criticised the head of the Bureau, Dr Greg Ayers, calling him "unscientific" and claiming "I spend a lot of time studying this stuff". Burke has a responsibility to stand up for Ayers and repudiate Pell, but I bet he shirks it.

See what happens when you mix climate change and religion? Let's drop that rubbish right now.

Abbott on the other hand, who readily professes his faith in God but was unable to tolerate the strictures of the seminary, finds it hard to be so unswerving in his belief in scientists. They are, after all, only human.

So are voters, Niki. So are you. So are economists, and a good many of those who commission filler for The Australian.

The Coalition was deeply divided on the issue, compared with only mildly divided now. Abbott did not express his unease at that meeting and in fact had been quoted in The Australian the day before effectively urging his colleagues to fall into line. It was only later that day across the border in regional Victoria his inconvenient little truth popped out.

He was guest speaker at a community forum at the home of the Beaufort Crows to help out the newly selected candidate for the seat of Wannon, Liberal up-and-comer Dan Tehan.

An hour late, Abbott walked in while Tehan was addressing the 120-strong crowd.

Most of the questioning was about climate change - not hostile, just your usual laconic country Australians wanting to know why Australia was acting and why it was acting ahead of most of the rest of the world.

Australia isn't acting ahead of the rest of the world, and Abbott had a responsibility to point that out. Which Liberal MP would do anything but laugh when told by Tony Abbott to show some discipline? He also had a responsibility to not get sucked into every rip and downdraft going, to truckle to whatever crowd he is addressing: climate skeptic when talking to Alan Jones, mealy-mouthed climate convert to Tony Jones, and yet he's a conviction politician.

The polls would have to drop a long way before any serious rumblings emerge against Abbott.

Rubbish. The leader should lift the party. Abbott is dragging the Liberal Party down. People want to vote Liberal but under Abbott, they just can't.

There is no threat to his leadership now except the threat Abbott poses to himself.

What about the fact that he is all that stands between Julia Gillard and political oblivion? He is like one of those bad guys in bad movies who ties up the plucky heroine, puts her on the path to certain death (e.g. strapped to a conveyor belt leading to a bandsaw), and then laboriously explains the whole plot, which gives her time to escape, foil the plot and cap it all off with a witty remark. Abbott has to go.

"We should take precautions against risks and threats, potential ones, as well as actual ones, but I don't think we should assume that the highest environmental challenge, let alone the great moral social and political challenge of our time, is to reduce our emissions."

The story here is not that climate change science is not yet settled: the story is that the strutting Hamlet we call our Opposition Leader is a flake. It's time to give up on the guy. What, then, is "the great moral social and political challenge of our time"? The Waratahs' front row?

Liberal MPs were gobsmacked. Two weeks ago Abbott instructed them to stick to the economic arguments against a carbon tax and avoid environmental debates.

There he was doing the exact opposite. "God knows what happened there," a frontbencher said.

Why were they gobsmacked? Do they have no memories at all? Do they not know that nothing is more typical of the man than flaky, don't-do-as-I-do anti-leadership? It might be a breach of "media discipline" but it's not at all untypical of Tony Abbott.

Economic arguments will determine the fate of the carbon tax.

Nah, I reckon it will be politics, quid-pro-quo and a lather of bluster on the side. Only people who spent too long in the eyrie of the Treasurer's office go for this Ökonomie über alles stuff.

Almost 13 years ago, the GST package proposed the abolition of 10 taxes and promised $12bn in tax cuts. In 2007, the Coalition went to the election with $34bn in tax cuts fully paid for, no strings, and still got done.

The former was part of a coherent reform package, the latter was utterly disconnected from any reform at all. Lesson: first reform, then compensation. A government that offers compensation without reform is bribing its executioners. Niki Savva, being a doyenne, missed that lesson and is lecturing people from a position of extraordinary self-delusion.

To quote Amanda Vanstone, $5bn won't even buy families a sandwich and milkshake.

Five billion dollars would do wonders, you idiot - and it's a misquote (the original amount was $5). For a population of 22.3m, it's $224.22 a head - from whence does Madame Savva get her sandwiches and milkshakes?

A halfway decent treasurer could double that without imposing a new tax or raising a sweat.

Are we talking a tax take, or a tax cut? Are Australians overtaxed or undertaxed these days? Is it easier or harder for Treasurers to put taxes through Parliament when they have stonking great Howard-style majorities, as opposed to a minefield of pushme-pullyou arrangements with independents? Can you imagine Peter Costello dealing with Adam Bandt or Tony Windsor without losing his mind, and in such a context would Niki Savva's opinion be worth any damn thing at all?

Abbott has to convince Australians they will be worse off if a carbon tax is enacted, not that climate change is not real ...

But to accept the latter is to be a bit more accommodating about the former. To reject the latter proposition is the only way to get up the head of steam necessary to bury the former. Abbott knows that, surely.

... remember that climate change helped destroy John Howard, Brendan Nelson, Turnbull and Rudd ...

Because they all minced around it, like Abbott is doing now. The story is right there, Niki, slapping you in the face - and if you'd been in journalism as long as I have you'd see that. Abbott is in the departure lounge, all dope and no more rope, and here's you giving him advice on the mot juste.

Maybe both, depending.

See, only doyennes can write shit like that. Anyone else, and it's just empty nonsense.

Any other doubts he should keep to himself.

I doubt Tony Abbott will and should be Prime Minister, and I'd tell anyone. He's a clown and must never govern us again: that's the only political story you need to tell. Nobody who had any genuine respect for religion would compare it to climate change, and the reverse is true too.

Niki Savva has no sense, no nous and no respect. Because she talks nonsense, and her head looks like a fist draped in puff pastry, it is imperative she stays off the telly too.

Update 23 Mar: Tony Abbott is finished.

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Into the pyre

In the lead-up to Labor's victory at the 1972 Federal election a number of journalists produced books about Whitlam, either entirely as biographies of the man or at least partly so. Depending on your regard for press gallery journalists, these works either surfed the wave that swept Labor to power or they were gobbets of jetsam on that wave.

In the past six months, only journalists have been listening to Kristina Keneally. There is no relationship between what she says and what actually happens. When Bob Askin or Neville Wran or Nick Greiner announced something, it bloody well happened. The office of Premier of NSW can be a very powerful one and it shall be again, but it hasn't been under Keneally.

I lost count of the number of times she said she was "determined to see this through", and nothing happened about whatever it was. I lost count of the number of times she demanded "a full and immediate report" on something or other, and just sat on it. Many times she said "I am very angry" that a particular stuff-up occurred - but no consequences flowed from that anger and the same sort of thing happened again and again:

• When Wran or Greiner got angry the structural changes were so substantial the ground almost shook;


• When Bob Carr got angry a journalist would get a phone call laden with sarcasm. The entire state parliamentary press gallery would go to water and immediately drop any investigations they were pursuing into the inertia and/or malfeasance of that government. Then, Carl Scully would make an announcement about the Parramatta-Epping Rail Link to which they would all go and report on like it was real news;


• When Morris Iemma got mildly displeased with something inside the Labor Party, Mark Arbib and Karl Bitar would use it as another excuse to get rid of him. When the issue was outside the Labor Party, he would call a commission of inquiry chaired by Fred Nile;


• When Nathan Rees got angry, for the first month or so things happened - then after that, nothing; but


• When Keneally gets angry, there is a grab on the news where she says how angry she is and that's pretty much it.

Lately, however, there have been all these biographical pieces on Keneally as though she's storming into office like Whitlam in 1972. Andrew Clennell in The Daily Telegraph (I tried linking but the News Ltd search engine is crap) and this piece by Sean Nicholls in the SMH are running the sorts of puff pieces you'd expect at the start of someone's career, not the end.

All that stuff about her fierce determination, from the high school basketball courts of Ohio to the backrooms of the NSW ALP - it seems to have dissipated once she got the top job. There should be more evidence of it, in actual transport and schools and hospitals, than is apparent. That contrast is the real value-add in reporting, and none of these profiles went there.

There is also plenty about her compassion and her work for Catholic social organisations. It's all good, but none of it really explains why she talks at people rather than to them. None of it explains why as Premier she lets her media outfit use kids and others in need of special (labour-intensive, costly and highly-regulated) care as backdrops for picfacs.

Overdoing that determination and community work makes journalists look like they are just taking whatever PR bumf Labor hands them and running it uncritically. John Fahey played rugby league for Canterbury-Bankstown and the Liberals would have looked absurd in 1995 had they over-emphasised that in terms of the Premier's toughness and determination.

It would have been nice if journalists could get over themselves enough to understand how disruptive it can be for an organisation for the Premier to descend on them. The relevant manager is informed and comes under increasing scrutiny, including fielding calls from media flacks making veiled threats and demands but not offering extra resources. Then a bunch of media people turn up, trampling the flowerbeds and running cords everywhere, and they snarl whenever you ask them to do their job in a manner that respects the place they are visiting. Then the Premier arrives, patronises everyone, makes an announcement (which, in Keneally's case, is almost always later retracted) and leaves, then the journalists hang around for a while and they leave, while those who remain try and fail to answer the question: what was all that about?

It would have been nice if journalists could get over themselves enough to understand the sheer poverty of their assumptions:

"It would be foolish of me to sit here and claim that I would never be in a position where I have made a mistake", [Keneally] says. "In hindsight, sure, if I could do it over, I would do it differently. If I was faced with the same decision today, perhaps I would have spoken to a wider group of people about the ramifications."

It's the closest she will come to admitting error. Yet it's not clear if she has grasped quite how much damage it inflicted. Inside Labor there are mounting concerns about her strategic judgment and apparent lack of deep political instincts.

A government backbencher states: "She has a real ability to go and learn a brief and go out and talk about it. But as far as real political nous goes? I believe that she lacks that and so do many of my colleagues."

Keneally was chosen for the Premiership precisely because she can transmit ideas. She was never expected to have political nous, deep roots in the community anywhere within this state.

Political nous involves the interplay between the opinions of the community and the extent to which they can be changed. Democratic policy-making is a two-way process; an increasingly educated populace armed with technology should be more of a two-way affair, but not in an age where communication shapes policy and governments regard themselves as transmit-only mechanisms. Contemporary politics, with its focus on "selling the message" and repetition of "talking points", is a one-way process. This can be seen from restricting the scope of action for backbenchers, to renaming press secs as "media advisors" and having them override policy decisions, to misinterpreting focus group data, to preselecting candidates who have "media savvy" but who lack the depth of experience that might give them political nous.

For journalists, where there is two-way democratic interplay you can report on surface-level goings-on, because the debate is out in the open. You needn't go into dull backroom operations, because that isn't where the action is anyway. Where politics is one-way transmissions, the backroom processes that really make decisions become all-important and the journalist must not be fobbed off by spin or inappropriately old-fashioned journosphere notions that it's all too boring.

One would expect a senior politician to have political nous. Keneally wasn't hired for her nous, she outsourced it to people who overestimated the extent to which they had it: Roozendaal, Tripodi, or the various State Directors of the NSW ALP. She outsourced it to the people who put her where she is, because what further validation of their political judgment could she want? When she talks about consulting "a wider group of people", she doesn't mean a particularly wide group - certainly not so wide and so representative as, say, the State Parliamentary ALP Caucus.

The factional system within political parties can work to manage disputes within that organisation, to distribute rewards and punishments in a manner that is orderly and sustainable for the party. Factions are not responsive to community needs, notions of efficiency, or policy issues. What has happened to NSW Labor over the past 16 years is that they have believed that to manage the party is to manage the state. In the absence of an effective opposition, this has been a fair assumption, but with the emergence of an Opposition that has established not just a threat but pre-eminence, the Labor government just looks like it can't get out of its own way.

Rather than flog the dead horse of NSW Labor again, let's look to Japan. The major parties in Japanese politics operate on factional levels so that the Prime Ministership is turned over regularly: the holder of the office transmits policy but does not receive political signals from the populace, and does not stay in office long enough to get airs that would place any political imperative above the factional. Now that Japan needs real, cut-through leadership - where emergency services must respond in real time to real issues on the ground - the Prime Minister of Japan is unable to give it, reciting the kind of anodyne scripted lines on radiation levels or fresh water supplies that might be more appropriate for slower-moving issues like teachers' pay negotiations or the biodiversity of some gully.

Anna Bligh is the product of the Queensland ALP machine, but she also had the ability to cut through and get information from her bureaucracy in that State's recent travails, and communicate them to the public. She did not get in the way of operational decisions; she did not have to. Keneally is also the product of a Labor machine, and she lets her staffers get in the way of operational decisions. Keneally's character evaporated once she got a job with real power: all she has left is the front for a whole lot of dopey decisions.

There is a difference between smiling as the ship goes down, rallying the troops etc., and the kind of denial verging on mental illness seen from Keneally these days. The complete disregard for what others may think, the scorn for the very idea that the will of an ill-governed people might have consequences, only confirms that chucking this government out is the right way to vote. In times like these, voting Labor is an anti-social practice performed by a small number of people, like spitting. The idea that a bad Labor government is better than the best Liberal one comes from a time when Labor governments were rare, and the current NSW government negates it utterly.

Maybe the reason why the MSM are lavishing attention on someone to whom the public has stopped listening isn't just because they are lazy ("that's what we do every election, it's what the punters want, it's balanced") or because they are tired of having viable businesses and an engaged public. Maybe they expect Keneally to bounce back in some transmit-only capacity (the federal government would be mad to take her on until they get a sizeable majority), in which case they are investing in a longterm relationship. Whatever it is, wherever you have a politico-media co-dependency complex it is clear that over time the pollies do all right, but the media suffers. Given technological and social changes on top of that, the MSM have to wonder how much suffering they are willing to tolerate in the name of "just doing the job".

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