The Peta Principle

Over the past week the structural shortcomings of the Coalition have been highlighted as starkly as they were once skated over. The Coalition has time to deal with those shortcomings, but it does not have the perspective or the will to do so. It will not get these qualities until after they lose the next election.

(Note for those who are new to this site: I'm not interested in polls going up or down, I'm interested in who has the capacity and the wit to use power effectively. I think that the Coalition lack the capacity and the wit to govern. I think Labor have both, but are only starting to realise that and are only just starting to use them. Commenters who want to go on about how Gillard is "embattled" or Abbott is "riding high in the polls" can post on one of the MSM sites, they needn't bother posting here.)

The profile of Peta Credlin in The Weekend Australian shows the basic problem with a policy-averse Opposition. It can only go so far, but not into government, in the sort of environment that makes her such a key operator. Already the limitations of that model are starting to show and rob the Coalition of momentum: the fact that the Coalition had no story regarding Qantas (see previous post) and had nothing to say about the carbon price other than to rack off to London.

Credlin describes herself to colleagues as "the Queen of No" and her sole mission, for now, is to get Abbott into the Lodge ... She's a control freak.

When you focus on day-to-day images, as Credlin does, you might get to drive past The Lodge but you'll never get anyone elected to live in the joint. For a start you need a clue about what it is you should and shouldn't say no to, and there is no proof Credlin has such judgment. The vetting of Abbott's diary and other petty actions described by Legge tell you all you need to know about Credlin - namely that she's not ready for Prime tiMe and that she can't take Abbott there either.

All PR dollies who claim they have all the information anyone could want are bullshitters. At best they are like those people Oscar Wilde described as knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. At worst they are just bullies floundering out of their depth: nobody can or does know everything about economic policy and health policy and defence policy and all the other policies that go to make up modern government, and the idea that someone like Credlin sits in judgment on it all saying no, no, no is just too silly. She knows nothing about the country or the Liberal Party or what limits there should be on government; she'd just like a low-profile but high-impact job at the centre of it, is all. People like Kate Legge might take that on face value but I bloody won't.

"No one person should have that much influence," despairs an Abbott supporter who believes the leader needs exposure to alternative sources of advice. "She's on the road with him all the time, making herself indispensable. She does everything for him; whether he needs a cup of tea or an important policy paper, she's there. He shrieks, 'Peta, Peta, Peta'. It's too close."

Credlin is Echo to her employer's Narcissus, with her focus on the "media cycle" and her lack of understanding, let alone respect, for the longer game of the country. She should realise that Abbott is a sharply limited character and that he needs people around him that complement him, rather than just those who compliment him. This is why Abbott has no switch to flick in order to become Prime Minister; like Howard in the '80s he'd rather conviviality than challenge in his office, which leaves him free to waddle about with such utter certainty. Had he been challenged a bit and been aware of the safety net prepared for him by others, he'd be a more complete man and a better candidate for Prime Minister, and aware that the job was bigger than just him. John Howard came to realise this by the '90s, with people like Grahame Morris and Sinodinos complementing him and giving the appearance of breadth and humility that a Jesuit education clearly can't do by itself.

The fact that the Coalition went to the last election with less of an economic policy than would be necessary for a small business to get a small loan is Credlin's fault. The fact that Abbott waved through a supposedly toxic Gillard tax on 28 June that he had vowed to oppose is her fault, because she was so focused on the stunts and the correspondence or whatever that actual policy affecting thousands of Australians simply slipped by. These are far bigger blunders than the one Legge describes when she let Turnbull down. Yet, if someone like Morris or Sinodinos (but without the reputations those guys have since established) presented themselves to Abbott offering their services, you can be sure that Credlin would look the gift horse in the mouth and declare it wanting.

Poll numbers appear to support Credlin's modus operandi.

The way Credlin and Abbott work is to create a constant sense of crisis in the government, which means that any Liberals who think about alternative ways of governing the nation are splitters and not people with the wider interests of party and nation in mind. Alternative approaches are not considered because they have no capacity to do so - the Credlins of this world would look feeble arguing for one position over another, so simply insisting that the position has already been decided and forcing all Liberals to echo it might look like strength, but it doesn't last when journos and the ALP stop playing along and asking questions about what an Abbott government would do. Polls can't last in the face of structural weakness.

How would Peta Credlin know what an Abbott government would do? She gets given a brief and told to push it through. Now that she's in a top job she can't not know what an Abbott government would do but the fact is she doesn't care about much beyond the "media cycle". People who care about policy are suckers to be manipulated. Do whatever it takes, say whatever it takes, screech at people who disagree and bag them to the point where their opinions don't get a hearing. That sort of thing only works for a while, and someone with Legge's experience should know that.

Talented individuals often alienate peers.

So do talentless bullies, particularly if you can't tell the difference and share their perspective that the context (in this case, the policy direction of the putative next government) is all about them. Just because you can wheedle something through a Coalition-controlled Senate doesn't mean you are in any position to assess the workings of government policy beyond the outer rim of State Circle.

"She shouldn't tell people what to do and what not to do," complains one Liberal backbencher who has tested Abbott's patience. "It's perfectly understandable that Tony Abbott wants to stay on message. But MPs are MPs. As long as you're not a member of the executive you're entitled to talk about issues." ...

... that's where the negativity comes from, especially when you have junior shadows and MPs thinking, 'Who are you to tell me what to do? You're only a staffer'."

Legge is so starstruck with her subject that she's missed a very important principle of the way we are governed: here 'negativity' (i.e. Princess Peta not getting everything her own way) and feminism are beside the point. The fact is that a backbencher has been elected by their party and thousands of Australians outside it to represent them in the Parliament. Staffers should be very careful in abrogating the representative rights and obligations those people have, and (we are talking conservatives here) the Burkean notion that a representative owes electors free exercise of judgment (mind you, any Liberal MP or staffer who has to do a Google search as to what the hell a Burkean notion is should be sacked). Legge just skates by that, and its implication for what sort of government we might have if this person and her employer end up running it. Blithely ignoring an issue of such importance is what turns a dispassionate journalistic profile into a puff piece.

How does Credlin measure up? Reviews of her policy skills are mixed ...

They're non-existent. She is like a dog with a bone once a bill is introduced, she doesn't get to choose which bone or even the beast it's cut from, or why the hell we're butchering animals and chucking their bones around at all. That sort of perspective is essential from senior officials in a good government, and that's the standard against which you judge people like Credlin (not whether you can get idlers like Greg Hunt or Brendan Nelson to make a phone call). Look at the shambles of Coalition policy, look at Credlin's power and control-freakery, and do some journalism.

"Who is going to shirtfront Loughnane with complaints about his wife and vice versa?" worries one Liberal upset by losing the safety valve for letting off steam ... Younger conservatives defend the status quo: "In a perfect world you wouldn't want a couple in these two positions. However, they are both talented individuals. It would be to the party's detriment if one was forced out." Some argue it's a plus, with twice the networking, leak-proof communication between the leader's office and the party wing and double the investment in success.

That's fine so long as both are doing an absolutely excellent job in all respects. Those "younger conservatives" quoted really have no idea, do they: no sense of history, no sense of how a long-festering sore covered up can cripple rather than heal, and both Credlin and Loughnane are in the cover-up business. "Letting off steam"? Loughnane's only win was against Mark Latham, come on Kate.

Earlier this year former Howard cabinet minister Peter Reith failed in his bid to topple party president Alan Stockdale, who was treasurer in the Kennett government. Reith's backers traced the fingerprints of Loughnane and Credlin locking in the "old guard". Abbott had encouraged Reith to run and then made a surprise last-minute switch. "Peta got to him," one insider insists of a result that suited Loughnane's preference for the status quo.

The couple has everything riding on Abbott's success. "Peta and Brian have got stars in their eyes," snipes one insider. "They've got 'soon to be PM' fever. They think they are going to be in the Lodge in the next 10 minutes." Discontent is kept in check while Abbott prospers.

Well they would, wouldn't they. They need to think that - and inculcate that belief across the Coalition - otherwise the prospect of hard slog and weighing up competing policies for the good of the nation in challenging times is just too damn hard. A reflective Liberal Party is an environment in which neither CredLoughnane would thrive let alone succeed. No-one minds them building castles in the air but when they shriek at people as though they were serfs whose role in life was to maintain that castle - that's where the problems start. The best backroom operators are realists first, and realism means cutting people some slack incase they may one day be right about something important. That's the real reason why the Liberal Party used to think the 'broad church' was important, and the secret of its success until the 1980s. Hawke Labor had the same success until the Faustian bargain with Richo became too expensive. Credlin can't understand that: diversity is death for robots like her.

Leaving Andrew Robb out of a phone conference about superannuation is not strong, it's pathetic. If you're going to do that, do the whole Lucrezia Borgia thing and sack him for disloyalty: Robb won't come back from a sacking. A real powerbroker would have lined up Robb's replacement in Goldstein by now - or if not run for it herself, pushed one of the hapless Senators into it. That's what a real powerbroker would do, Kate Legge, not act like some nasty schoolgirl because Robb makes Bri-Bri feel insecure.

She once sought the counsel of senior Liberals on a Senate spot. They think she'd be stunning.

Well, yes - but who wouldn't? Look at the Victorian Liberal Senate team. You'd never guess that Victoria was once the jewel in the Liberal crown: someone's snippy ex, a pensioner from Ballarat who is more arse than man, and two staffers way, way out of their depth. Almost every local council boasts a more impressive line-up than the Victorian Liberal Senate team. Credlin is entitled to think that she'd be able to mix it with those clowns. Neither Legge nor Credlin nor anyone else is entitled to think that the Victorian people would be better off for such a deal, or that our heroine would take well to the medicine she dishes out: do what you're told and shut up.

For every hater there's an advocate who loves her to bits.

I'd be very surprised if it was a 1:1 ratio, but I would absolutely bet it blows out something shocking once polling day draws nigh and people still would happily get rid of Gillard only if it didn't mean Abbott getting in. The prevalence of such a perception, after two years and a lost election, is an indictment on Credlin's so-called political skills.

It is so lame doing a profile on someone who is so widely known as a bastard/bitch to trot out some sillyhead who insists they're really all rainbows and ponies. The trick is to find some evidence of that in the way policy is actually made. If the Liberals come out against the disability and injury insurance schemes, this will count for absolutely nothing at all.

"It was hard to get good people, many were exhausted, people went AWOL, they buried themselves in grief," Nelson recalls of his scramble to staff the leader's office. "I rang her to see if there was any chance she'd come back to politics. I couldn't believe my luck when she said, 'Yes, I'd love to.'"

Getting on with your life after the work is done is going "AWOL"? What an arrogant little turd.

The whole notion that Credlin is such top quality is undone by that quote - talk about damning with faint praise.

Tony Abbott is in London seeing what a post-Murdoch Anglosphere government looks like. It has more liberals in it than he'd be comfortable with. He may come away from the experience with a new perspective, realising that Credlin isn't the wind beneath his wings; if he does, he'd have to be a stronger man than he is to let her go and reshape his office and party with a breadth and reach that it doesn't currently have. He'll come back to Credlin and Credlin will lead him to stumble after stumble, week after week, snarling and spitting as her dream evaporates. Someone like Abbott might yearn for a great showdown but he'll get pecked to death by gaffes and slip-ups, and the policy equivalents of bringing a butter-knife to a knife-fight with a government growing in confidence.

At a nearby table Prime Minister Julia Gillard looks surprisingly calm given she's got the most to fear from the giraffe in the room.

Given what Legge tried to say but couldn't, Gillard is right to be calm. She has nothing to fear from Credlin, and if this government's record is any guide then after it is re-elected in 2013 they will probably offer Credlin a job, and she will probably take it; the whole Howard fabric, tattered and unsustainable, will be irreparable by those who could not tailor and trim where needed. A blood pledge here, a new tax there, low unemployment or carers' relief or - who knows, something for Aborigines - and the very things Credlin should have prevented from happening will happen because she's there and won't go away, because and not despite the vision and the competence that are as sharply limited as those of her current boss.

Peta Credlin will always come up smelling of roses, and maybe that's why Legge admires her. Only when that ceases to be the point of the exercise for the Liberal Party will it realise how much it has truly been had. Until then, accept that the situation that makes Peta Credlin possible is that party's problem. Those invertebrates who wanted to give Kate Legge the real dope on Credlin but couldn't will not be part of the next Liberal government either.

Soon after 2013 Bonnie Credlin and Clyde Loughnane will be gone, but they'll be back when the next Liberal government takes office, and the press will make a big fuss about their much-vaunted political skills for old time's sake (like they are doing with Richo now). That's a long way off though, and we'll see what happens.

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Lessons from the Qantas shutdown

Turn off all life support systems, I'm finished for the day
I'm on the midnight flyer and I've really got to get away
Shut down all your main engines, I'm going on reserve
There are things still undiscovered, oh I hope I've got the nerve

Shut down, turn off until the morning light
Slow down, splash down time to end the flight
Make way dream time, here comes another night
I wish I could remember where I've been

- Little River Band Shut Down, Turn Off

Qantas gave advance notice of their shutdown last week to the Coalition. Let the journos quibble about who knew what, when. The fact is when you get information like that you are meant to have an advantage: 'forewarned is forearmed' and all that.

What's also a fact is that the Coalition was no better off for having that information. Abbott just looked like a gibberer when he went on about how he expected the government to act under Section X of the Fair Work Act when he wanted them to have acted under Section Y. His whole modus operandi relies on him setting traps for the government who then falling into them, and when the government won't act to his initiative he's pretty much bereft.

The government seemed on top of the whole issue by mid-week. The person who should have alerted them to the Qantas shutdown was not only Qantas management but also the head of the Transport Workers Union, Tony Sheldon. Sheldon has been playing brinkmanship with Qantas management for weeks, warning of strikes then cancelling them at the last minute, causing uncertainty for Qantas passengers and management without looking like the bloody-minded union leader.

Old-school Qantas management would have kept the planes flying at all costs. The reason why Qantas employees have great job security and other perks can be credited to hardball unionists, but also to a management ethos that had the cash and would shovel it around to keep the business going. Sheldon thought he was dealing with old-school Qantas management, which is why he looked so rattled when management shut down the airline themselves.

Sheldon was dealing with Alan Joyce, a veteran of the shakeup of European airlines in the 1990s, and Leigh Clifford, who showed the mining unions that once management lift their game on pay and OHS the unions have little to offer prospective members. Old-school Qantas management took government protection for granted in a way that Joyce and Clifford clearly can't. He should have known that the game had changed. Sheldon was playing 1970s-style bash-and-barge rugby league in a game of Aussie Rules, where his opponent had sailed above him, taken the ball, booted a goal, and elbowed Sheldon in the eye for good measure; all without the ref seeing.

Sheldon did not look like a union leader who was outraged on behalf of his members. He wasn't doing the sort of confected bluster combined with lovin'-the-attention smugness you'd expect from Paul Howes in that position. He wasn't doing the quiet more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger determination thing that you might expect from the people currently running the ACTU. Sheldon had the sheepish look of a man who had been fucked and burned in a high-stakes game, and who then had to front the media and describe in detail just how badly he had been both, ah, fucked and, ahem, burnt, again and again.

Tony Sheldon is a big wheel in NSW Labor and is running for Federal President of the ALP. He may be the only union leader with a Chief Of Staff; a union leader needs a Chief Of Staff like your local mayor needs a goldie-lookin chain that makes them look like something from Gilbert & Sullivan. While Sheldon isn't entirely responsible for the predicament NSW Labor is currently in, it is there because he and a couple of others not only failed to stop the rot but even to identify it as such. This dispute with Qantas is not a case of teething problems, it is core business for a long-serving union leader.

The fact that he has failed to intervene effectively in his members' interests and warn a Labor government of a significant issue of policy and perception casts serious doubt over Sheldon's suitability for positions he holds now, never mind those to which he might aspire. Gillard and Albanese should refuse to have anything to do with him. What distinguished Labor powerbrokers of old from those of today is that they would have gently nudged Sheldon out of the running for the Labor Presidency, my members are priority number one, etc.

You can demonise Joyce all you like but he's given nothing away to Sheldon and the other unions involved, who are not reacting at all well to the situation Joyce and Clifford have put in front of them. Yes, Joyce and Clifford have played the game masterfully, but there's no grounds for CEO-worship there: if you are in a game and yours is the only team playing the game, how can you lose? Your opponent can shadow-box as much as they want but you only have to land a blow they're not expecting, and down they'll go. Joyce knew that, Clifford knew it - and now Sheldon's learnt the lesson good and hard, one he has no excuse for not knowing beforehand.

I wanna talk to the pilot, he's in charge of my dreams
But he insists on vanishing just as soon as he thinks he's been seen
I wanna recharge my batteries, leave me alone for awhile
We'll set off again in the morning on a wing and a prayer and a smile

But back to the Coalition (oh yes). They had the advance warning, and as usual they had a few snappy lines. What wasn't usual that it wasn't enough. The Qantas shutdown was a serious issue and in venturing comments on it, the Coalition invited serious comments. In the face of serious comments about a really important issue, the Coalition wilted.

The fact that CHOGM delegates were inconvenienced was a matter of significance for Australia, one they let slip by (showing that the Shadow Foreign Minister has little idea of the significance of such an event held in her home town, and/or little clout in Coalition strategy sessions).

They were wise to skate around the whole inconvenience to the Melbourne Cup - yes, racing is a multi-billion-dollar industry, but to most Australians it's a trifle and combined with the focus on pokies at the moment it would be a bad look for the Coalition to remind people how much they are in bed with the gambling industry.

This leaves them relying on policies on transport and industrial relations, which they don't have. It isn't good enough just to say that the details of those policies haven't been finalised, wait until the election etc. In the 1980s and '90s Liberal policies were constantly under review and when journo put John Howard on the spot he could come up with a coherent statement on most key issues, even if he was winging it, in general accordance with previously stated policy principles of the Liberal Party.

The difference now is that Tony Abbott has no principles to speak of, save the tattered DLP ones of his most callow youth. These included job security and perks for those in protected industries - the unions up against Qantas are fighting on much the same basis. They are fighting for qualities that retreated from much of the unionised workforce in the 1980s, and which the recession of the late '80s/early '90s pretty much finished off. By the late 1990s the only one gibbering about Aussie jobs for Aussies was Pauline Hanson.

Abbott could have gone for populism. I half expected to see him in an airport terminal egging on livid passengers stuck in Adelaide for four days, or strapping on the fluro to tell locked-out workers that he's the one who can guarantee cradle-to-grave job security. It is to his credit he did neither. What he needed to do was flick the switch to Prime Ministerial and show the nation what might have been, and what might be yet. He couldn't do that because he has no sense of what is in the nation's best interests, no reservoir of principle to contrast the present situation with the way it should be. This is where policy laziness bites you. Had this dispute taken place next November Abbott's position would be in question, if not in play.

There are still two years to go before an election (oh yes there are) which is plenty of time to develop some policies. If it's true that business is starting to take more of an interest in donating to the Liberal Party, then there's no reason why business can't donate time and resources to help develop some policies that go beyond dot-points. That's what a broad-based movement would do: a small, tightly-controlled outfit focused on the "news cycle" today and tomorrow won't, however. They see the Qantas dispute as an issue to be put behind them for the sake of unity and tomorrow's news cycle.

Shut down, turn off, until the morning light
Slow down, splash down, time to end the flight
Make way dream time here comes another night
I wish I could remember where I've been

Where have I been?

On a Qantas plane recently full of white-collar workers who are well and truly accustomed to contracting and outsourcing, it was at times quaint, funny and pathetic listening to pilots bleat about the perils of such an arrangement befalling them. You'll survive, guys.

The Qantas shutdown last week is the very sort of incident where people's perceptions become fixed in place: the very sorts of perceptions that are so hard to shift in election campaigns. Big industrial disputes usually go on for weeks, but this one was off the boil (if not fully resolved) within days. The whole idea that the incumbent government is incompetent is starting to look a little thin, while far from being comprehensively rebutted. The whole idea that the Coalition are no better, and may even be worse, is starting to take hold and the proof coming from this incident counts against the Coalition.

Qantas management knows what it is about and the unions up against them do not; the odd engine malfunction in some far-off place is having no impact on questions of safety, job security and engineering utility. The whole Aussie Jobs For Aussies thing is hard to distinguish from a toxic brew of self-interest and xenophobia. The only thing that will give that argument any currency at all will be the worst outcome possible, something that won't be dealt with by Fair Work Australia: a Qantas aircraft crashing to earth, with the sorts of people who were inconvenienced last week wedged among the wreckage.

Yes, Virginia, there are bigger issues at stake here than who might have phoned whom when.

Shutdown turn off until the morning light
Slow down, splash down time to end the flight
Make way dream time, here comes another night
Oh, I wish I could remember where I've been

Shutdown turn off until the morning light
Make way dream time, here comes another night

(Lyrics: Glenn Barrie Shorrock)

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Exclusive*: News Limited plot exposed

Simon Benson is not denying reports that he will become editor of The Daily Telegraph as early as this month.

News Ltd sources behind the push for the wannabe editor to take the job that was cruelly snatched away from him and given to some luckless ponce from The Australian not good enough to be pinched by Fairfax have confirmed he was now being advised by his closest confidants not to wait until next year but to launch a challenge as early as the second last week of November.

Senior sources within Holt Street claim the leakage of support away from Mr Whittaker, who flew out last night for some sort of Murdoch hajj, was snowballing.

"There are three things that are certain: there is a editorship challenge under way, Benson doesn't have a majority yet but has enough numbers to be a contender, and they are strategising about how to get it done," said a senior News Ltd source.

But there was mixed support for the idea of an early move, with some Murdoch minions claiming they would "deliver the editorship" to Mr Benson in February - if he waited.

In a sign Mr Whittaker is now taking seriously the threat of a challenge, an internal counter-offensive has been launched to shore up his editorship.

Mr Whittaker is reported over the past week to have lobbied key Holt Street figures with influence over executive members as to how Mr Hartigan takes his coffee and what his recreational pursuits are. Steve Lewis is also believed to have privately warned several NSW News colleagues that he would resign if they supported a move to impose Mr Benson as editor, having had his reputation shackled to Mr Benson over one of the silliest examples of journalism in Australian history.

Politically Homeless has spent the last two weeks sitting on reports that News Ltd executives were softening in their support for Mr Whittaker following the bungled anti-terrorism raid and their deepening concerns that News Ltd can't just make stuff up and sell it as though it were real.

Should Whittaker be replaced with Benson? Tell us below

"It sent Whittaker's office into a panic. Lewis has told people that he would quit if we went to Benson but I doubt he was serious. He wouldn't want to be remembered as the bloke that brought down a News Ltd masthead," a senior member of the News Ltd executive said.

"That's our job."

"I mean, can you imagine if Fairfax or the ABC spiked an anti-terrorism investigation? We'd be all over them like ants at a picnic. Now, all the Ala Akba or whatever they're called have to do is gissa call, and we'll bugger up the AFP investigation for them."

"We're handy like that."

Mr Lewis would not comment last night.

News Ltd has only one working week left after this week, after which employees will run over to Pyrmont and beg to be hired by Fairfax, or at the Fish Markets, or by anyone really, to avoid the next visit from the Great Helmsman with pink slips in both of his scaly, spotted fists.

Sources close to Mr Whittaker said he was well advanced on a policy pitch to address News Ltd's desperate credibility problems over issues including public transport in Sydney, the carbon tax and problem gambling.

One senior News Ltd, a Benson supporter, claimed advertisers were starting to "get edgy" over the government's unresolved editorship crisis.

"Advertisers know it's a question of when and want it sorted," they said.

Despite Mr Benson's self-professed popularity, a boost in support for the Tele if Mr Whittaker was rolled was not assured. Secret Politically Homeless research conducted recently in secret (in contrast to, say, a Federal Police raid on a terrorist cell) concluded voters believed the paper was drifting.

Other editorial candidates such as Miranda Devine and Annette Sharp refused to return calls by deadline. Even Joe Hildebrand, the Chris Pyne of journalism, refused to rule out a tilt at the top job "down the track".

Why buy the paper in the morning when you can check it for free on your phone, and then get a copy handed to you titled as "MX" in the afternoon?

Voters believe News Ltd's policies are out of synch with mainstream values, targeting key policy areas including the carbon tax and asylum seeker policy. They also expressed concern at the influence of the so-called Murdoch Family (diddly-dum, click click ... read the lyrics and change the family name).

Then again they're only punters, so fuck 'em.

* The reason why this is Exclusive to Politically Homeless is because I've made this up.

Update 5 Nov: Not content with a shot at the editorship "down the track"*, Joe Hildebrand lunges for martyrdom. Each of those amounts look pretty hefty until you realise that his employer charges that for each ad about the size of a coffee cup that appears in a newspaper. If he can get one or two of those weepy ads that Andrew Bolt's pals put together he needn't worry.

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Assange and Bolt, false and unsound

Julian Assange wrote an article about free speech which was wrong on a few key assumptions, particularly this:

Opinions must be shared in "a free and open encounter" because it is the competition between ideas that produces the truth. As Fredrick Siebert explained: "The true and sound will survive. The false and unsound will be vanquished. Government should keep out of the battle and not weigh the odds in favor of one side or the other."

The idea that Aborigines are an inferior people, unfit for or incapable of participating fully in Australian society, puts the lie to Siebert's wish. This is one of the most prevalent ideas in Australia. It is also false and unsound. No amount of patient engagement and disproving, nor frequent and exuberant demonstration of excellence by Aborigines, can eradicate this lantana-like idea.

I'm a liberal too, but confrontation with this reality made me change my mind. First you've got to go with the fact and work the principle around it. I might have to lose the 'liberal' tag, but that's OK, it isn't all about me. Doing the reverse, like Assange does, simply does not work.

Hate speech laws in Australia are a form of censorship, backed by sanction and justified by the perceived need to protect historically persecuted minorities and maintain racial harmony.

Persecuted minorities don't need to be protected, they need to participate in Australian society. For that to happen you need to stop excluding them from it. Lazy bullshit that implies racial classifications trump common humanity excludes Aborigines from Australian society. A few paragraphs later Assange tries to assert that free speech is more of a unifying force than measures such as these, but the proof exists only in theory.

In the US, the First Amendment guarantees the right of the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis to march through the streets. The law sanctions speech only if it incites violence. Rather than flourishing, the Klan and neo-Nazis have been withered by the robust criticism that such protections afford their critics.

For the first hundred years or so, the Klan and the Nazis had a pretty clear run, and the First Amendment was in effect the whole time. Giving effect to their core beliefs involve excluding people from society and killing them. They underwent robust criticism to be sure, but a lot of people died in order that they might speak freely, and only when legal sanctions and force were applied against them did their positions become unsustainable.

People get squeamish when arguing against censorship laws that protect historically persecuted groups.

People get squeamish all the time. The question is, why do they get squeamish, what are the consequences of that squeamishness and do people have a right to go around making other people squeamish in order to boost their media profile?

The basis of the whole Bolt case is that some people from a historically and systematically persecuted minority have been able to embrace their identity, now that the legal aspects of social inclusion have been uninstalled, and that some jobs have been created which are only open to people of that minority. Along comes Andrew Bolt, claiming that the historically persecuted minority are actually privileged (and that the disadvantages that come from historic persecution are over, hooray and forget it ever happened). Bolt believed that his classification as to who was Aboriginal and who wasn't, based on a bit of Googling, was superior to the classification applied to and by Aborigines themselves.

The law which Bolt transgressed acknowledges both the prevalence and the falsehood of racial profiling in Australia. From my understanding it says that if you're going to comment on people's race you have to be careful. The judge found that Bolt hadn't been careful, and I note that no appeal has been lodged. Assange, and Bolt, believe that Bolt's right to toss off a comment trumps the slow but considerable efforts the historically persecuted minority are making to overcome historical persecution and participate freely and fully in Australian society.

Censorship is fine, they think, as long as it is designed to protect gays and indigenous people.

The law under which Andrew Bolt was convicted protects us all. It enables Siebert's wish that sloppy ideas go down to become reality.

In much of Europe and Australia, it is unlawful to deny that the Holocaust took place - this is "acceptable" censorship.

Quite so. It makes it easier to stop that sort of thing having the catastrophic effect it did on individuals and society. It forces people to face up to reality, which is no bad thing.

But in Turkey it is a crime to assert that the Armenians were subjected to genocide. Imagine if Australia introduced a law prohibiting use of the word "genocide" in respect of the treatment of indigenous Australians?

Can't see it happening myself, no point in protecting anyone against non-threats. A bit like Andrew Bolt complaining that he's barred from applying for some $25k part-time short-term dead-end job which is only open to Aborigines.

There are threats to the balance between our liberties and our social cohesion all the time. What won't and can't help protect us from imbalance and injustice are lazy postulations, including that hidey-hole of the intellectual poser who hasn't thought carefully about whatever they claim to be particularly concerned about: the "slippery slope". Assange loves a slippery slope.

Many debate whether the term should be used or not but it would cause outrage if our government stymied that debate by making it unlawful.

It isn't just a bit of chat, it's a debate of real significance. Have the debate, but face up to the facts and do your research like Bolt didn't. The idea that the Australian government would follow Turkey in that regard is just sloppy, straw man work.

So what subjects are off limits? What societal "goods" are worthy of protection through censorship?

Science says climate change is happening ... United Nations Security Council ... Why don't we just introduce a climate change-denial law prohibiting Barnaby Joyce from rubbishing climate change ... may sound ridiculous ... parliamentary privilege ... but therein lies the danger of allowing the state to regulate what political speech is acceptable.

More "slippery slope" work, showing how an extreme example obscures rather than illustrates the point at hand. Barnaby Joyce isn't a threat to anything and you can participate fully in Australian society - including the shaping of climate change policy - regardless of your attitude toward climate change.

The law, whether civil or criminal, is a serious business. At its end is the deployment of armed police to imprison people or seize their assets by force. It should never be used to regulate disfavoured views.

It is always used to regulate disfavoured views. People who assert a right to commit armed robbery are not only expressing a disfavoured view, they are limiting the abilities of others to participate fully in society.

Free speech must protect all speech, however offensive. Debates that offend the "ordinary" or "typical" Australian are precisely the debates we need. It is precisely when the majority shares a view that it needs to be challenged, because if it is wrong, then we are all imperiled.

If you're going to have a debate on issues that entrench disadvantage against those who are historically and systematically persecuted, you'd better be careful to have your facts together. This improves debate all round, rather than just being some sort of lotus-eating talkshop which makes no difference other than selling newspapers. Racist conjecture is not a debate and nor is it a challenge. It's oral spam and makes it harder rather than easier to take ideas of free speech seriously.

I'm appalled at the idea that Andrew Bolt might redefine who my father was or arbitrarily make my job more difficult (if not impossible) based on his lack of skill at using a search engine. Mind you, I'm appalled at the idea that Josh Frydenberg didn't cop the sort of treatment currently being meted out to Bradley Manning for passing information to Andrew Bolt that was accurate and important, but which Bolt toyed with rather than expose as Assange did. Bolt vilified a truth-teller and made his job impossible, and he had no right to do so. I keep waiting for the Great Boomerang to whack him and his mate Frydenberg on their silly scones for that one.

Now Assange wants to stand up for Bolt's right to misrepresent people and keep them at a disadvantage. If the bastard hasn't got his facts right then he can shut his cakehole. That is both ridgey as well as didge, dinky and di at the same time; not only that but it elevates the debate to a level where historical and systematic (dis)advantages play a less of a role than they otherwise might. Rather than being imperiled, it's a challenge to lift your contribution to debate to a level where racism and other dead ideas can't compete.

Bolt is an experienced communicator and has participated in public debate for decades. His claims about being 'silenced' buzzed around the Australian media like so many blowflies in a public toilet, until they lost all meaning and credibility. To agree with Bolt that he is being silenced - and to agree with his fatuous extension that others are being silenced too, and denied some asserted right to tag and bag Aborigines - is not to be a truth-teller but a willing accomplice in a deception.

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Barking at nothing, part 2

Why is there a parliamentary press gallery? What is it for? It is an institution that has outlived its usefulness, and it is a symptom of mainstream media failure that they continue to focus on it as much as they do.

We need to know how we are governed. We need to know what services the government is giving us, what laws the government is imposing upon us, what it is doing with all that tax. We turned to the mainstream media to act as the trusted (well, only) intermediary between the government and the governed.

For most of this country's history, the only way to find that out was through the media, and specifically from press gallery reporters. Government took place behind closed doors and was largely impenetrable. It only broke into clear sight when it was debated in Parliament, or in Cabinet, or came from a minister's office: journalists there had the ability to explain what it was that came from these bills and other instruments, and the interplay between personalities that we call politics, and how said personalities and interplay shaped the outcomes of government. When the first colonial parliament commenced in Sydney in 1856, it had a press gallery from day one. All subsequent parliaments in Australia were also set up with one.

Today, it is no longer true that the press gallery is the only place you can find out how we are governed. You can get that information in government reports, press releases and other information to a device wherever you are. You can get information directly from government departments, opposition parties, interest groups and some of your better blogs. Politicians hold media stunts using different parts of the country as a backdrop. You don't need to be in the press gallery in order to find out what's going on in government and politics.

In the US, media outlets don't just have a "Washington correspondent". They have a correspondent at the White House, a few at the Congress, one at the Pentagon and another at the State Department, and still others at different agencies of government (such as the Supreme Court).

Australian media organisations are lazy and stupid taking up space in a press gallery and assuming they've got politics covered.

It would be great if there was a High Court correspondent with legal knowledge, who could explain goings-on there in plain language, rather than journo cliches. It would be great if there were more defence policy specialists, following not only the ADF and the Minister and Shadow, but also the contractors and lobbyists. There should be foreign policy specialists.

Hell, all politics/government reporters should focus on policy first, and then assess politicians on how relevant they are to the debate. We might never hear of Christopher Pyne or Mark Arbib ever again.

If you want to know what's going on in government and politics, we are getting to a stage where it's actually better for journalists not to rely on politicians to tell them what's going on. Just because a politician says something, it doesn't mean that will happen.

People who are shocked by the extent to which the people of NSW abandoned Labor should consider the announcement of the Parramatta-Epping railway. Parramatta and Epping are two Sydney suburbs which each have a railway station, but those stations are not connected directly. In the late 1990s the Minister for Transport announced (actually re-announced a commitment from the previous Liberal government) that a line would be built to connect the two, and the press gallery trooped out to record the minister announcing that it would be completed by 2010. Then, after a while, it was re-announced again, and again, and again and again and again. A third of the track has been completed at twice the budgeted cost.

It became a joke, but that didn't stop journalists reporting it with a straight face. It didn't stop editors and news directors sending journalists out to cover those announcements, as though they were really news. The fact that a minister makes an announcement isn't news. The sun rose in the east this morning too, bears do poo in the woods, the Pope really is a Mass-going Catholic, and politicians make announcements: none of these things are news.

If mining activity is going gangbusters then surely this must cast some sort of light upon political rhetoric that taxes targeted at that industry will ruin it. A journalist cooped up in Parliament House, subject to phone calls from idle people and the appalling dramaturgy of "parliamentary theatre" cannot be said to know anything at all, regardless of how well or badly they report politics as a horse race or as Hollywood.

The fact that Tony Abbott contradicts himself and says things which simply aren't true is starting to be seen by journalists as an anomaly, rather than as fascinating or some sort of post-modern oddity which journalists observe but over which they have no control. It took a bunch of comics to give him the grilling that professional journalists couldn't bring themselves to do. It simply isn't worth drawing any sort of link between what he says and what might actually happen to our taxes, our society. After two years and an election he still has no policy consisting of more than dot points. He is a gibberer and even if he does get in he's just going to shrug his shoulders and say I lied, and a disconcertingly large number of press gallery will just accept it.

Politics and politicians have an impact upon government services as delivered, but a journalist need not be in the press gallery to report that. Being in the press gallery or having spent time there has an absurd amount of cachet among journalists, and when you consider how badly they fail at conveying any sort of meaning from the experience it should be something that falls off the resume.

If a bunch of journalists go into a location where they're outnumbered by PR people, they are probably in the wrong location. That's what happens in Parliament. Journalists are beset by gibberers. However much the journalists love it there is increasingly little link between what they write/say and what really happens, or even matters, which is why journalists can spend their entire careers on stuff like the imaginary challenge from Kevin Rudd/Stephen Smith against the Prime Minister.

The idea that the media can be managed is a lie. There are increasing resources devoted to preserving and extending this lie. The idea that it is worth managing the media at a time of media decline is also a lie, and silly. No politician should expect to have their words reported verbatim and everyone, everyone promising such is a charlatan. Journalists should have nothing to do with people who pretend to manage them.

Politicians tailor their output to catch the eye of journalists, who are looking for cliches. Parliament is designed to be the venue of great national debates, but great national debates occur far from the Parliament. Apart from each year's budget, the last truly unmissable parliamentary speech of national importance was Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generation on 13 February 2008. When the ALP rolled Rudd, everyone at the US Embassy or the AWU knew before even the better-connected members of the Press Gallery. All that connection-building, all that skulking in corridors and drinking in Kingston bars was wasted in the face of such a big story going begging. If the press gallery didn't pick up on that story, what did they know about anything? The press gallery is a waste of time.

Part of the reason why the press gallery is a waste of time is because politicians increasingly are. Party leaders notice that journalists don't interview colourless public servants, even though they know what's going on better than politicians, so they preselected party hacks who can't deliver a speech and who read the speeches written badly for them. The idea that these banal people might do something innovative and interesting is about as likely that they will do anything catastrophic, but neither are of sufficient consequence or interest to warrant the investment that goes into the press gallery.

Part of the reason why press gallery journalists report non-stories is the disconnect between journalists and their audience. Journalists disdain education, which means they're looking for cliches to dish up to "punters". People who are interested in politics and government are asking questions that simply don't occur to any but a handful of journalists, such as:

• Is there anything else that can be done about intractable problems, other than the feeble and self-defeating pantomime before us?
• How might money, time and resources be better spent? (a good Opposition will suggest alternatives, but I can't remember the last good Opposition we had);
• How do the policies of political parties affect people who work in, or are otherwise affected by, those policies? The odd colour piece at election time isn't good enough;
• What is it that parties do, anyway?

Bloggers answer those questions, not journalists. When confronted with economic policy most journalists do things like "beer, cigs up", or televise that groaning from the floor of parliament that has viewers lunging for the channel-changer. A few bloggers will paint the sort of complete picture that newspapers aim to achieve with special supplements, or that ABC Radio aims to achieve with AM and PM. Journalists can't handle policy and they can't get it across well, regardless of the medium, and they never will so long as they are confined to the parliamentary press gallery.

Smart journalists should fan out away from the press gallery because if you want to tell us what's going on you need to know what's going on, and you're unlikely to ever find that out in Parliament. We need to know how we are governed, and politicians can't tell us that because they just don't know, they've lost the words to describe it and bring people along with them. For journalists, it's time to strike out to the territories, find out what's going on and present it well. We will be grateful, but there are less grounds for gratitude for the sorts of journalism that comes out of the press galleries than you might imagine. The press galleries are broken and cannot be fixed. Abolishing the press gallery need not mean some sort of catastrophe for democracy, and maybe we might have to wait until Laurie Oakes or Michelle Grattan have died - it could be the very thing that breaks the politico-media complex and makes both politics and journalism better off.

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Barking at nothing, part 1

It started with a bit of typical journo blindness to their own profession, and then moved through some slightly more insightful pieces, before I started wondering what it was all about.

Amanda Meade told readers of The Australian all about the Twitters:

But my pet peeve on Twitter is the way people congratulate each other in a very public way -- a kind of air kissing via tweet.

This made me laugh until I realised that Meade probably doesn't read her own paper. The worst offenders at blowing smoke up one another on Twitter are News Ltd employees. The following exchange ensued:

She's under no obligation to work with jerks, either. I started pitying journalists, and read the recent pieces by Laurie Oakes and, yes, Annabel Crabb and even Bernard Keane.

The Andrew Olle Lecture always starts out being mawkish and climaxes with a circle-jerk about how great journalism is and how great journalists are. Good on Laurie Oakes for resisting the urge to intone "I think journalists do a great job" (based on what, I hear you cry). Oakes misrepresented Tanner's argument with a bit of journo self-pity, which I bet went down a treat among his half-cut audience.

We like to think of ourselves as watchdogs

Watchdogs bark to scare off intruders and to warn their masters of danger. Dogs that yap, yap, yap all the time, particularly at things which aren't there at all are just bloody annoying. It ought to surprise nobody that you switch off constant yapping about nothing at all; what's surprising is the, er, dogged insistence on being called a "watchdog"when you're just needy and insecure.

Many of those bemoaning the media's performance seem to think the nation is crying out for more high quality news and analysis and heavier current affairs programs.

They're dreaming. If that was the case, Four Corners would outrate Masterchef. And I'd still be doing interviews on the Sunday program and writing for The Bulletin magazine.

And George Negus might still be on air.

That's right: there was only ever one definition of quality journalism, it's never ever coming back in any form, so just jump into the sewer and surf the swill. Don't bother with any rethinking about ways of presenting information, just admit it's all too hard and can we get Stephen Smith for next week?

Ask any of the political party back room operators why Labor and coalition election campaign commercials rarely feature detailed explanations of policy, and-if they're honest-they'll answer: "Because no-one would watch."

That's the whole idea: they are trying to bore people into disengagement so that they can do whatever the hell they like. They've done it to their own members, why wouldn't they do it to the public at large?

The main theme of Oakes' talk is that journalists churn through stories and are vulnerable to spin. Poor journalists. The question is, though, where is the value in that?

Who is it that's determining a faster and faster cycle of news, and a focus on trivia? I'm not. It's timid news directors who think that treading water at great speed is how they keep their jobs.

Whether it does or doesn't save the news directors' jobs isn't the point. Journalists will only lose credibility by churning out scatty, shallow and pointless stories. The output has no value, and over time those who produce no-value products themselves become devalued. Oakes foresees clearly the demise of his profession, and has no answer for it.

What Meade and Oakes fail to realise is that social media provide streams of links to information that make journos redundant. If I've clicked on a link in my tweetstream about recent events in Libya, why the hell would I want to read what Amanda Meade thinks about it? Why would I pay to do that? Why would I get up from Twitter and watch Laurie Oakes seek the views of the Shadow Foreign Minister, who won't have read the article or much else on events in that country?

Crabb does get the idea of the journalist-as-intermediary is now dead. She lets her cover slip by nominating Grog's Gamut as a good example of an up-to-the-minute blog, when its esteemed writer has been co-opted by the same outfit for which she works.

More importantly, Crabb lets herself down by underestimating how good writing makes a difference.

If you are a foreign policy wonk, you might well complain that your area of interest doesn't warrant enough serious column space in various of the daily newspapers in Australia. But can you really argue that you have less to read now than you did 10 years ago?

I've got a whole separate article in the works about foreign policy, but here we can answer Crabb by saying that quality writing and presentation will attract readers and better inform debates.

It isn't sufficient to say that one bit of journalism is as good as another, or that if one journo has deigned to wade into some difficult area of policy then that should be good enough for you, dear reader, and one less article Crabb doesn't have to research and write. A stressed and ill-informed journo will be trounced by a subject-matter expert who can write a bit and/or talk fluently every time.

By focusing on niche areas and regarding them, as fragmentations of the fewer and bigger media outlets most of us have known, Crabb misses the point about the fluidity of new media. Niche markets have always been lucrative for the mainstream media. The magazine Wheels is infinitely more profitable than the section of the newspaper which deals with cars. So too with Rugby League Week versus the couple of pieces on that game in the nightly news.

klieg light swung at him (yes, him), whereupon he would churn out some gravitas as befitted a dedicated, veteran journalist. Neither of these tried-and-died solutions are superior to what happens now, and the nostalgia acts can boil their heads.

The same applies to a lot of issues. The big news organisations just aren't that nimble. By the time the journo from Big Media has wheezed into place, the story is already out without the need to maintain a huge infrastructure or claim back money from expenses. It means that news is no longer best covered by journos, and that they're not trusted intermediaries any more.

That said, I don't want to end up like some techno-hippy like Bernard Keane:

The community-generating power of the internet is in direct contrast to the atomising power of television. The internet connects where television isolates.

What got me thinking about political reporting in particular were two quotes, one from Crabb and one from Keane:

Crabb:

... I think we should be very careful indeed about assuming that there is only one correct way to learn about politics, and that is to sit down with a cup of coffee, a madeleine and the Australian Financial Review.

Ah yes, madeleines, prompters of reveries in Proust ... but then I thought, Annabel Crabb could learn a lot from politics coverage in the AFR.

Then, this from Keane:

But neither [Oakes nor Crabb], for mine, really got to grips with the central problems confronting the media and politicians.

Neither does Bernard, by the way, but more tomorrow.

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Still doubting that Gillard can win?

Read this:

As recently as two years ago, Mrs. Kirchner had seemed a long shot to win a second four-year term. Her combative style, highlighted by a heated dispute over [commodity] export taxes, sent her approval ratings below 30 percent.

Now, take out the rampant inflation and cronyism, as well as the lack of foreign investment. For goodness sake, leave aside her personal arrangements. Substitute mining for agriculture in commodity terms (and look at the special tax on an insanely profitable industry that facilitates tax cuts across the board). Most importantly look at an opposition that doesn't really know what it believes in - and tell me if there aren't recognisable patterns here:

The economy emerged as the central issue on voters’ minds. By many measures [the country] is booming: the economy is expected to grow ... employment has reached record levels; and the poverty rate has been cut by more than half since 2007, the government said. The country continues to benefit from heavy government spending, high commodity prices and strong demand from China for its ... products.

Can't happen here?

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