Under the gun

Tony Abbott is niggling at Malcolm Turnbull again, and much of the press gallery have reported this in terms of its impact on the Turnbull government's agenda. There are three things to consider here, and all of them go to the question of the very point of political reporting and a press gallery.

Firstly, the press gallery seems to value process over product. It likes calm, orderly passage of legislation through both houses, with banal and brief set-piece debates and preferably bipartisanship among the majors; if not, a minimum of mystifying horse-trading in the Senate might be tolerable. It would rather describe how legislation passes rather than what might be in it - even when legislation limits journalists in doing their jobs, it will be actual journalists far beyond the gallery who raise the alarums.

When you discuss policy, and potential changes to the law that affect real people's lives and work, you run the risk of engaging readers/ listeners/ viewers and having them engage in political debate, and maybe work with others to make changes to deals that have already been done in Canberra. Far better to just sit by and describe the passage of legislation in purely functional terms, the way you might sit beside the Molonglo and observe the trickling water, the bird calls, the wriggling and wafting of nature taking its inexorable course.

Note how the press gallery covered the Gillard government. There were more journalists in the press gallery than members of parliament, and yet every one of them agreed that the prevalence of horse-trading in both houses and relative absence of Bipartisanship was Chaotic and the very sort of thing that must not happen again. By contrast, the Abbott government passed very little legislation, but so orderly - when that government's budgets were stymied in the Senate, and passed in the barest terms only to avoid a repeat of 1975, the press gallery couldn't cope with the idea that concerns from outside parliament had somehow made their way in to affect votes in parliament. Instead, they cried chaos, disaster and hoped it would all go away.

Government is only either calm or argy-bargy, according to the press gallery, and in the latter state they overestimate their ability to both describe the situation accurately and engage their public. To give one example - when Katharine Murphy gets excited she loses herself in mixed metaphors, as you can see here (a game of chicken in Gethsemane?).

Secondly, no government has ever been good at managing internecine conflict. The chaos narrative of the Gillard government was fed by Rudd scowling at the backs of ministers speaking to legislation and answering Question Time questions, not how well or badly those ministers performed. There was no real equivalent to that in the Howard government, but there was in the latter half of 1991 when Paul Keating was a backbencher in the Hawke government, and apparently the last twelve months of Fraser, Whitlam, and McMahon were less than stellar.

Press gallery journalists should be able to draw on that history: is the government paralysed? Only Laura Tingle (no link, paywalled) appears to be making the case that it isn't, that in administrative terms (see above) it is starting to hit its straps. Can the government build an administrative exoskeleton to compensate for its obvious weaknesses with personnel and interpersonal issues (if Chris Pyne and Marise Payne are treading on each other's toes, this government truly is finished)? Tingle wisely avoids projection this far out from the likely next election, and my forecasting record speaks for itself.

When it comes to Abbott, though, calm and orderly government (or the appearance thereof) leads us to the third issue with recent coverage.

Have we forgotten what Abbott was like as Prime Minister? Look at that negotiation with Leyonhjelm (if you can hack through the tangled thickets of Murphy's mixed metaphors above, it's as good an account as any). For starters, Abbott was being sneaky, holding out a promise he had no intention of honouring. Then there's the issue of him implying a staffer in Michael Keenan's office acted independently of Abbott's office; the sheer degree of control exercised from the PM's Office by Peta Credlin should have made anyone with any recollection of the Abbott government (i.e. pretty much the entire press gallery) laugh that notion off the public record.

Abbott is overestimating how clever he is by dumping on a staffer, showing the gutlessness and dishonesty that made him unfit to ever be Prime Minister in the first place. The Liberal Party failed itself and the nation by electing such a manifestly unsuitable leader. His behaviour here is consistent with his performance as leader, and believe him when he says (however implicitly) that he will do that again if he were to be brought back up like a bad pizza.

Tony Abbott is not some sort of intelligent, reflective person who adapts his ideas of political leadership to prevailing circumstances. Churchill was Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer when the Depression hit in 1929, and saw the age-old economic law of tying the value of currency to gold crumble under him. He spent the 1930s studying Hitler and the Nazis in far more depth than his Daily Mail-reading conservative colleagues, or the pacifist left of the time. Franklin D. Roosevelt had spent the late 1920s in political furlough, considering what government was for and what it might be, before lunging for the Governorship of New York and the Presidency of the United States. Abbott might have some patter about having been humbled, but there is nothing to back it up - and any journalist who merely quotes him is a patsy.

If you're going to cover Abbott's niggles, don't simper like Leigh Sales did while Abbott talks over you Trump-like, lying and fudging without challenge. Sales, and every other journalist covering this, should have called him out on his inability to delegate and his blithe disregard for those trying to do the basic transactional work that makes complex government possible. Setting broad parameters for ministers, their staff, and other underlings is the essence of leadership. Its absence with Abbott as Prime Minister meant the country was misgoverned. If Abbott returns as Prime Minister, we will be misgoverned again.

Turnbull was right to call him out, wrong to imply such a sound and well-supported policy might be watered down. Shorten is right to finger the dissent within the government, wrong to imply Labor might be above making concessions to gunlosers in pursuit of regional votes. Merely quoting both argy and bargy (which is how the press gallery sees its role) is simply not good enough given the important broader issues of community safety far beyond locked-down Parliament House.

The press gallery is obliged to frame its reporting of Abbott in the sickly light of experience - not to lose themselves in slathering at the prospect of argy-bargy, or thinking that his actual record constitutes 'bias'. Start telling the truth, draw upon experience and apply it, and some of your credibility issues might recede. Hopping excitedly from argy to bargy and back again, projecting your own short attention span onto your your audience, can only confirm the decline of journalism from which notions like "24 hour news cycle" never fully detract - let alone fix.

We have a right not to be misgoverned, which is more important than any press gallery wish to return to a time and place where they felt more comfortable.

What went wrong?

We passed upon the stair, we spoke of was and when
Although I wasn't there, he said I was his friend
Which came as some surprise I spoke into his eyes
I thought you died alone, a long long time ago

- David Bowie The man who sold the world

The press gallery should have foreseen that a government led by Tony Abbott, comprised of jetsam from the fag end of the Howard government, would scarcely be better than the government they replaced. Why did they get this so wrong?

On election nights - federal or state, including those for states I don't live in - you can find me watching the vote count coverage pretty closely. I've tried watching it with non-wonks but it just isn't the same.

My favourite point in election night coverage comes after the result is clear, and usually after winners have promised to govern for all and losers conceded gracefully. The representative of the winning party has usually buggered off to the official knees-up, while the loser-party representative sticks around for some home truths.

The need for message discipline has passed, but the individuals have enough self-composure not to lapse into furniture-tossing rage on camera. They lament the death of hopes of the party faithful. They hope that staffers and defeated MPs, people they have known and worked closely with, will find new jobs. They dread the trudge across the often harsh and barren ground of opposition. You see the flickering of ideas about recriminations and other own post-election plans, but they stop short of admitting them to the gently probing journalist. Stephen Smith played this role at the last federal election, and Mary Wooldridge at the Victorian.

It's a human moment in an often vast and impersonal process: good local members lose office defending decisions they had railed against in private, while smug clowns in safe seats stroll on and learn nothing. Statistical blather and played-strong-done-fine quotes fade to the background.

This is the point the press gallery has come to with the (impending) demise of Tony Abbott as Prime Minister. They really believed that Abbott had changed from the crass brawler who spent 20 years buzzing around the press gallery like a blowfly in a toilet. They believed it, and they insisted that every hairnet-wearing, truck-driving stunt was a great statesman itching to get on with the job.

They ignored Labor claims that Abbott would want to cut health and education and the ABC, because hey look here's a quote where he denies it! Take that, partisans! And that's all the analysis you need to do when you've pumped up a politician and his party, where the popular mood matches that of the press gallery - and just for a moment, the public seems to hang off your every word. Just like the old days.

This piece also delves back into the 'good old days', and it's a real pity it hadn't come out before now. I suspect there'll be a few more of these. We could have stopped him, we should have; and all the press gallery had to do was tell us the truth.

The fantasy was never real

Oh no, not me
I never lost control
You're face to face
With The Man Who Sold The World

David Marr said it best: Abbott could only ever be what he was, the crass brawler. The idea that he transcended it somehow was always rubbish. Everyone who believed otherwise was kidding themselves - and implicitly, those who pretended otherwise in the face of years of experience were engaged in a monstrous act of deception, of themselves and of their audience.

Even Marr could no longer pretend this simple political killing-machine was a more complex character than he appeared. In Political Animal Marr asserted that Abbott "abhor[red] racism". On 19 December, when the Lindt Cafe siege was underway in Sydney's Martin Place, Abbott honourably deflected calls to tie the event into wider themes of militant Islam. But hours after the siege had ended, and as recently as last Monday's National Press Club speech, there he was dogwhistling again: as though speaking in nuanced terms about cross-border Islamic politics is tantamount to violence.

Tony Abbott was never PM material. I thought he was so bad the press gallery would find him out, but they pretty much gave him a free pass. They all look like jerks now, Abbott hasn't vindicated them with some stellar statesmanlike performance. Even Liberals, who also knew what he was like, have stopped covering for him.

That's why he's finished. There's no-one left to cover for him: no phalanx of petty crime lawyers, no ranting Father Emmet Costello, no Packer or Howard; even Credlin, even Rupert Murdoch himself couldn't puff him up any more. The limited talents of Hockey, Dutton, or either Bishop just can't carry him.

Tony Abbott will be 58 years old this November: too old for rowdy-adolescent swaddling, but yet not ready for boards or consultancies or other roles occupied by adults. Do you reckon the next PM will make Abbott the last Australian knight? Me neither.

The fantasy is confusing

I laughed and shook his hand, and made my way back home
I searched for form and land, for years and years I roamed

This blog's pet bunny Mark Kenny had pulled over and popped the bonnet to find steam pouring out of it on Friday. "How did it come to this?", he asked, not helping his quest with silly imagery:

There's an oil and water quality to the competing narratives in Canberra at present. On the one side, we see an executive which claims to be sublimely competent, united, purposeful, and uniquely suited to progressing the national interest.

There is no side; no oil, no water. Just because Abbott declared himself competent, the press gallery was not obliged to take him at his word.

No politician is ever entitled to be taken at their word. And yes, it is possible to stick by that principle without being snide or cynical.

Of course, the seeds of that discontent reach much further back than handing royal titles back to the very palace which hands them out.

Indeed, the malaise at the heart of Abbott's now beleaguered prime ministership is a function of the deliberately created culture of conflict and strategic supremacy his office projected from the start. That supremacy is now its most central embarrassment ... Rather than providing co-ordination and leadership, Abbott's office styled itself from day one as a gratuitous conflict machine. Its operation has been characterised by sidelining MPs, lecturing ministers, vetoing trusted adviser selections and the claim that it was uniquely placed to make sound political judgments.

Firstly, the maturity of explaining the position on titles stands in contrast to Julia Baird's wacky effort, which shows no subtlety to Australian politics and thereby patronises her New York audience. Maybe this is what you need to do to get published in the US's atrophying press, but it's no less sad for that. Give Kenny some credit for that, and see more on Baird further down.

Kenny should have explained the Prime Minister's office in greater detail, given that an earlier version of it had already unmade one occupant (Rudd). Someone with Kenny's experience should have seen the same signs emitting from that office and warned us all - but no, only once the show is over do we get this kind of story - the very sort of thing that explains the link between Canberra shenanigans and how you and I are governed.

Instead, Kenny told us how great Abbott was, how he'd really changed, how he was super-duper in every way over that double-act from before. It doesn't make you a partisan to call out bullshit journalism. It makes you a citizen and a consumer, refusing to put up with the kind of sloppy shit that is Mark Kenny's standard fare.

The fantasy is someone else's fault

I gazed a gazely stare at all the millions here
We must have died alone, a long long time ago

When Laura Tingle is focussed on policy and judging politicians against it, there is no better journalist in the press gallery.

When not focused on policy, she comes out with this sort of thing, pretty much what everyone else says or does, hey it's the narrative what can you do.

For voters, it turned out that they really, really didn't know what he stood for – whether that was budget measures that they weren't expecting, or just how out of touch Abbott turned out to be on issues like knighthoods, changes to the Racial Discrimination Act, or funding for marriage counselling.

Voters had heard the slogans repeatedly endlessly: stop the debt, stop the taxes, stop the boats. But whether there was any underlying philosophy in among the slogans was unclear.

What Tingle is describing there is professional failure, on her part and by the rest of the clowns she calls her press gallery colleagues.

"Spin" is just a consistent message with which you disagree. Scientific research into diseases, treatments and preventative measures is "spin" to anti-vaxxers. Labor policy is "spin to Liberal supporters, and vice versa. Abbott was always spinning. It's just that you chose to believe him on the way up, and not believe him now that he's on the way out. Don't think you're being 'unbiased' or 'playing the game' when you're sometimes taken in by spin and sometimes not. Just describe what's going on.

Tony Abbott is entitled to talk his own book, as are the Coalition. It's the press gallery's job to do the analysis, to measure the big talk against other sources of information. Tingle is wrong to blame Abbott for spinning a web in which the press gallery found itself trapped, from which it is trying to extricate itself with varying degrees of success.

We'll decide what's spin and what isn't. When we threw out the Rudd-Gillard governments we threw out both baby and bathwater, because the press gallery talked up Abbott. The press gallery knew him better than anyone, so if he was the answer to the 'chaos' then the people took the gallery's word. Now with the departure of Abbott, there's much less baby and more bathwater than Tingle - and her press gallery colleagues - had led us to believe. People are angry at that, and the anger is partly but not wholly directed at the politicians.

I was awake to the fantasy all along, but neglected to tell you

Who knows? Not me
We never lost control
You're face to face
With the Man who Sold the World

This is Katharine Murphy's line:

Tony Abbott disappeared for me sometime in the middle of 2013. That’s not a hard deadline, but June is the last time I remember glimpsing the person I had watched and dealt with over years of political reporting.

Oh dear.

When you go back to Murphy's reporting around that time, you should see her expressing some puzzlement about The Real Tony versus The Tony I See Before Me - but, no.

Murphy has been known to keen about the imaginary 24-hour news cycle and yearn to get her teeth into some policy analysis - but like most of the press gallery she didn't go after the prospective Abbott government for its policies or lack thereof, and was quite content to pass off his blandishments as a more serious critique of government than anything she could muster.

Team Abbott could fool themselves that they had actually conquered chaos.

They could, but only with the connivance of people like Katharine Murphy. She's wise after the event of the Abbott government. She would deserve the credit that her readers and current employers give her had she been awake to Abbott at or during this time. It's all a bit late to take Abbott at face value and then decide in retrospect there was a facade that someone should have investigated.

The intoxicating power of that illusion cannot be underestimated in modern politics. Politicians crave control and certainty, because the old orthodoxies and rituals are busted. Disruption is now the only certainty. Modern politicians have become obsessed with fixes, with road maps, with gurus – not realising they are being led by false prophets, and sustained by false comforts.

If only there had been journalists to smoke out the false prophets and comforts.

The take-no-prisoners culture imposed inside the government created the bizarre cult of Peta Credlin, which was both vexed reality and collective mythology. The “witch in the office” began to loom larger than ministers, and project as a proxy for the prime minister rather than a conduit. The prime minister was rendered a sock puppet, and consented to his diminution.

Politics has a high tolerance for bastardry as long as the strategy is working. But the edifice began crumbling very slowly right from the start. The whole enterprise felt strangely vacant and unconvincing.

You should have told us so at the time. You were negligent not to. That "witch in the office" was actually the difference between Abbott being some crass brawler and the apparition of a thoughtful, sensitive man who could have made a very good Prime Minister. She was (no domestic connotations intended) the woman behind the curtain.

Abbott has always been a contrary figure, a complex person, and his stock in trade, aggressive simplicity, could only resonate when it was delivered in broad brushstrokes. The devil was always going to be in the detail.

That is nowhere near good enough as a piece of analysis. It isn't only the devil that's in the detail. Thousands of good people live and work in the detail of government policy - they're not devils, and it's stupid to report their lives and work in that manner. That detail is the stuff of journalism, not drifting from press conference to picfac wondering if a person you've known for years isn't morphing into someone else before your eyes.

Tony Abbott is trapped inside his own feedback loop ... his fortress ... his bunker ...

When someone mixes their metaphors like that, they no longer care whether or not what they are saying makes sense. Murphy could have warned us ahead of time what an Abbott government might have been like, an what we might have done to avoid it - but hey, no point killing yourself for a deadline, eh?

The proper use of anonymous sources

We are entitled to be told how we are governed.

Anonymous-source journalism was a big feature of the last government. It crowded out well-researched policy to which people were happy to put their names. It was sneaky and dishonest and made it look as though government was about something else than governing the country in its own best interests. Baird is great at research and explaining complex ideas, as her thesis-cum-book on women in political media shows.

Julia Baird cannot claim that she's protecting her job in the press gallery by keeping anonymous sources anonymous. She's based in Sydney, and comperes a game show where contestants talk past each other, add nothing to public debate, and win no prizes. She's playing the game but has forgotten, if she ever knew, what it's all about. That last tweet is a killer ("One MP is a Turnbull supporter, the other has a name starting with D; one MP cries in sad movies, the other is a passionate Tigers supporter" - you could go on and on like that, couldn't you). No wonder her articles on this country for foreigners are so wacky!

My local member is Liberal MP John Alexander. In all this hoo-ha you can bet a press gallery journo has heard from Alexander, and should be in a position to tell me and my neighbours how he is voting tomorrow. We should be able to lobby him, as we would for any other matter of public importance. The idea that Baird and others are protecting him in some way is silly and wrong. What great journalism ever came from petty confidences such as these?

It would probably be a waste of time. Alexander's media is full of his getting out and about and being consultative, etc. The fact is he turns up late to local events, gets his pic taken, talks briefly to the two or three people who run the event, and high-tails it out of there. He grimaces or winces at people rather than smiles: I just don't think he likes people and resents that great-unwashed aspect of his job. Why Baird feels the need to protect him, or any other incumbent, is unclear. Anonymous sources should only be for the big stories.

That said, I have read Baird's other pieces on anonymity and loss of control by the sorts of people who mentored her career, and how everyone on social media whom she has not already met is some batshit-crazy freak. From that I have reverse-engineered this cut-out-and-keep guide for all of you social media denizens who want to do things to Julia Baird's satisfaction:

Acceptable Use of Anonymity in the Media

Condition	Verdict
Anonymous sources commenting on matters concerning the life and death of governments and policies	Acceptable
Anonymous focus groups and poll responses, and the anonymous figures who leak those findings anonymously	Acceptable
Anonymous social media comment	Unacceptable. The end of civilisation as we know it
Social media comment that isn’t anonymous, by people who don’t mix in politico-media circles	How is that different? I’m confused

The task of the press gallery

The press gallery failed in its role to properly scrutinise Abbott, just as it had with Rudd.

The ALP and Liberal Party respectively also failed, but that's another story; it's too easy to let the media off the hook when it comes to systematic failure. Indeed, letting it off the hook only lets it blame internet or whatever, and excuses its gaping and ongoing failures. The audience, the readership, the citizenry are mostly content to slip away from the failure of political reporting, and too few of the press gallery really miss them/us when they/we have gone, assuming they are vindicated by their employment and those (fools) who maintain them in that employment.

The press gallery can't all be like Niki Savva, who wouldn't hear a word of criticism about Abbott until her employers told her to Make Glorious Propaganda Against Running-Dog Abbott, whereupon she pivoted and the guy can't do anything right. She's not a journalist. Niki Savva can fuck off, and so can everyone who thinks "that's a bit harsh".

The task of the press gallery is to match what politicians say/do against objective, or at least respected, sources of truth. That's the job. The above do that to varying degrees but not nearly enough. They do not work harder than we outside the gallery work. They deserve no more excuses or allowances than the rest of us get in our jobs. If developing an ability to analyse policy, and assess politicians' words against that, will save your job - then why not do that? What else would you do? You can't seriously imagine the same old crap will be good enough ad infinitum.

When you grizzle about how hard you work, and cringe before the phantom that is the "24-hour news cycle", consider that Tony Abbott did his best - and his best wasn't early good enough, not even close. This should have been more obvious to the press gallery long before this.

*Grabs the press gallery by the lapels and shakes* You should have told us. You could have forwarned us. This, our country, did not have to be in this predicament.

Feeling sorry for Tony Abbott

Yes, seriously. I thought he was a dickhead when I met him in the '90s. But then, look at who he has to work with.

Abbott kept Arthur Sinodinos' job open for him for over a year (hell, the Liberal Party only gave Harold Holt a month). Abbott copped a lot of stick for that. To see Sinodinos turn on Abbott was pretty low - had he held his water and stood by the leader, he would have demonstrated the integrity his supporters insist is the essence of the man. I wouldn't give him any job after this.

It can be a tragedy when good, hardworking MPs lose their seats when a duff leader stuffs up the campaign. One of those who sponsored the spill motion tomorrow, Luke Simpkins MP, is a climate denier who wants to ban burqas. A more moderate approach to government will save his job; while a leader in line with Simpkins' values would see him lose his job. Politics is pretty funny, isn't it.

A final thought on Turnbull

Imagine if Turnbull had quit the Coalition front bench on any number of issues - climate change, gay marriage, the NBN or the ABC. Imagine he had spent the last 17 months on the backbenches. How would things be different? He wouldn't have missed the extra ministerial income. He would have shown that sucking up to Rupert doesn't make a lick of difference; when you're gone, you're gone. Someone like Peter Dutton could have achieved everything that Turnbull has done as Communications Minister. Turnbull would still be a contender for the leadership, just as Bishop would have piked it as she always does.

All those compromises, those heartfelt declarations of fealty to Abbott and his agenda, the one that can't be sold. What was it all for?

Victory over the 24 hour news cycle

Journalists complain about a phantom that they call "the 24 hour news cycle" which supposedly makes their jobs tougher. Even press gallery journalists, whose day starts with listening to AM and is all over by mid-afternoon, regard this as something real and try desperately to convince others of it. It was always bullshit but over the past week, the Australian media have shown how to deal with it: pretend it doesn't exist. Plug away with stories that aren't "breaking", or in any way important, and this could be the cure for an affliction that was never real.

Right now, the federal government is putting together its Budget, which will be formally announced and released in May. This happens every year, and you don't need to be a member of the press gallery to know this.

During April, the media is usually full of speculation about what will or won't be in the Budget. Interest groups, bureaucrats fending off incursions from the infidels at Treasury, and even government ministers other than the Treasurer - all background journos and leak documents, and the resulting discussion has an impact on what goes into the Budget and ultimately on what sort of government we have in this country.

This April is different because public servants have not only been told to shut up (this happens every year, no matter which party is in office); but that the government will go through their private lives with a fine-tooth comb and that anyone found to have been leaking, or being disparaging, or even expressing qualms about government policies. However unwittingly, press gallery journalist Samantha Maiden declared closed the traditional multifaceted April debates closed without even realising it.

The institutions of the permanent public service have been commandeered to serve the political interests of the incumbent government. This used to be a big deal and senior journalists, senior public servants and other worthies used to force governments to back down when they did this in the past; no longer.

Maiden has presented this as a problem for the public servants instead of a symptom of a weak government suspicious of those who serve it. Greg Jericho, a former public servant whose career collided with his social media activities to the detriment of the former, can be forgiven for regarding this as a problem for public servants rather than the country more broadly; Maiden can't. Having been diminished as a source of truth by simply quoting Abbott's assurances that he wouldn't be bringing back knighthoods, Maiden has again simply transcribed what she heard with no further consideration about what it means.

Samantha Maiden has done everything a journalist can do to keep on side with this government, and with her employer (but I repeat myself), and all she gets is humiliated. An experienced journalist reduced to a blogger's punchline, I ask you! Give her a Walkley.

There had been a Commission of Audit. The government decided not to release its findings before the WA Senate re-election on 5 April; that election has come and gone and that report has still not been released. No one seems interested. The contents of that report might take the place of the usual April debate around the Budget, but nobody will release it, officially or unofficially. It's one thing for the government to decide that it will not respond to or even court public debate, but it's a pity that the press gallery and even the opposition won't either.

The coming Budget will be the first for a government that likes to talk big, but which can't really deliver. The Treasurer, Joe Hockey, has often been regarded as both a buffoon and a very smart guy; I saw evidence of both when I knew him in the early '90s, and press gallery journalists have also seen proof of both; this coming Budget will see which of those qualities (and the many others he brings to the job, for good and ill) best inform his legacy. One thing is clear: he doesn't want any debate. Whether you're a public servant or not, you'll take what he gives you and you'll shut up.

In the absence of pre-Budget speculation and debate there were some announcements about trade agreements. It was not necessary to go to Tokyo and Seoul to get announcements that were freely available from government websites. In both locations, media footage of Abbott shaking hands with various dignitaries was freely available from local media. When Abbott did a press conference in Seoul and refused to take questions, press gallery journalists expressed surprised, as though walking away from press conferences was not something you'd expect from Tony Abbott.

No agreement was actually signed in either location. No acknowledgement was made (by the government or its press gallery) of the efforts of previous governments, and of potentially critical public servants, in securing those arrangements. The task of reporting those agreements was left to the press gallery rather than to business journalists, surprising when you consider the idea of those deals is to boost trade and economic activity more broadly.

The press gallery focused on agricultural exports, as though Australia's economy hasn't changed in the past century and agriculture is the be-all-and-end-all of our exports. Japan promised to cut its tariff on beef from about 40% to about 20% over 15 years, and no journalist I can find has really explained what difference that would make (not being in the beef industry myself). As Mr Denmore said, coverage seemed more concerned that we think well of the government rather than focus on what might (not) be in it for the country more broadly.

Andrew Robb could well be the only member of this government with any negotiating skill to speak of. If he had been involved with the post-election negotiations in 2010 it is entirely possible that Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott, and Andrew Wilkie would have been more amenable to a Coalition government, and history might have been different.Rather than ramping up their negotiation efforts they went the other way, and seem vindicated by the last general election - until you consider that after six months of Abbott government:

• Labor's carbon tax and mining tax remain in place;
• Supposedly bipartisan policies like reforms to education and disability funding are unclear or in tatters; and
• Coalition commitments like paid parental leave have not yet been introduced to parliament, let alone passed through it.

What is the different between being in that position, and not being in government at all? Believe it or not, there are some members of the press gallery who actually believe Abbott has negotiation skills despite all available evidence. Not being a public servant, or a journalist, it falls to me to point this out.

If I was an experienced press gallery journalist I'd note that Julia Gillard was dead to the press gallery by this point in her term in office, and called a 'liar' to her face. Tony Abbott is still quoted as though his words were achievements in themselves. The way he glides through, achieving little while having journos hang off his every word, reminds me of the way the NSW parliamentary press gallery used to fawn over Bob Carr.

Bob Carr has been a leading politician in NSW and Federal politics for two decades. Everybody knows what he's like: a bit of a wanker, with that Whitlamite combination of self-deprecation and self-aggrandisement where nobody (including Carr) can truly be sure where one ends and the other begins. The idea that press gallery journalists who've seen him go around for a few months can appreciate him on a different level than the rest of us is a ridiculous conceit, insiderism at its worst. It only shows what contempt journalists have for us that they can maintain it in the sheer absence of any proof.

The first sentence in that tweet is flatly untrue; the press gallery reports announcements as facts. And as for the second - if you seriously imagine that Bob Carr is being candid, or capable of being so, I have a bridge (or a rail line from Parramatta to Epping) to sell you.

Carr's career seemed to show the futility of traditional politics. He was a loyal member of his party and held high office within it, but could barely get preselected and nearly got rolled by lightweights like Brian Langton. His big achievements as NSW Premier (e.g. the 2000 Sydney Olympics) were mostly initiated under the previous Coalition government, while initiatives that came from the very bowels of the NSW ALP (e.g. electricity privatisation, Eddie Obeid) were more trouble than they were worth. He was every bit as disdainful of the sort of person who joins the ALP as Joe Bullock. He was a warrior for the Labor Right but his better ministers were Left (Andrew Refshauge, John Watkins) rather than his own people (Obeid, Joe Tripodi, Reba Meagher). He remains Labor's anti-immigration champion, the nearest thing the "fuck off we're full" crowd have to intellectual heft and policy substance.

He was Foreign Minister from March 2012 to October 2013 - a term of 19 months. He went to a lot of conferences in that time but didn't appear to have achieved very much as Foreign Minister. 19 months was two months longer than Percy Spender had in the same job (December 1949 - April 1951). Spender set up the entire post war foreign policy architecture for Australia in his tenure. Thank goodness Carr is so witty because there's nothing comparable to the ANZUS Treaty (positioning Australia on the US side of the Cold War) and the Colombo Plan (positioning Australia as a leading education provider and a major soft-power force in the Asia-Pacific region), which were all conceived - and concluded - in this brief period. Spender became Vice President of the UN General Assembly; Carr, for all his lack of humility, was just another rotating member.

Gillard gave Carr carte blanche in foreign policy - he could've done anything. No press gallery journalist really evaluated Carr while he was in office. They had no petard to hoist him by until Carr provided his own. Those who employ press gallery journalists got someone in from ASPI or Lowy to comment on foreign policy rather than those who actually rubbed shoulders with Carr in Canberra - what would they know? All that other stuff in today's papers/radio/TV - the weird diets, the book-club and trivia-quiz approach to history, the disdain for quotidian politics - we in the nation's most populous state knew that already.

People who are reading Carr's book claim all proceeds are going to charity. People who are reading Carr's book haven't paid for it, and are burnishing it only to make it reflect on them all the brighter.

It was nice of the Murdoch press to finally twig to Carr after plugging him for so long: Carr sold his soul to Col Allan long before Rudd did.

Speaking of the Murdoch press: it was commendable that they joined, late and half-heartedly, in the general mirth surrounding Abbott's announcements on knighthoods and dames. It was pathetic that both kinds of Australian traditional journalism, Murdoch and non-Murdoch, all lined up to be Momentous about Lachlan Murdoch rejoining the family company: all that Dynastic Succession crap. You had to go outside Australian traditional media to read how he move made a mockery of any sense of strategic direction and how undistinguished Lachlan and James Murdoch were and are.

One of the abiding myths of the Australian media is that the Murdoch are geniuses, and that they can run a media company while others can only imitate. The farting bobbleheads atop News Australia are credited with being in touch with Everyday Strains in some mystic way, yet they give the impression that any oaf could do what they do. The financial performance of Murdoch and non-Murdoch media is about the same, but when something big and important happens the last place you go is to a Murdoch outlet. Lachlan Murdoch offers little to remedy that, and James Murdoch offers nothing at all. Why all this stuff about them when there's so much more going on? If they're so wrong about their own industry, about what might they possibly be right?

By focusing on trade agreements, Bob Carr, and Lachlan Murdoch, the Australian media seems to have slipped the surly bonds of a phantom of its own collective imagination, the "24 hour news cycle". None of those stories are particularly urgent. None of them affect our nation in any real way, nor the manner by which it is governed. There is no such thing as a Slow News Day, only Lazy Journo Day or Dumb Editor Day. The only leading story in the Australian media that remotely resembles a rolling, anything-could-happen-anytime story is the disappearance of MH370, but after a month non-journalists are right to be tired of "Breaking News: Still Nothing ... Breaking News: Still Nothing ...", etc.

What now? When will the traditional media realise that its power to focus on some inane thing or person, and foist it on the rest of us as The News You Need, is waning? Perhaps it will stop blaming The Internet and start realising that audience-repellent content does more damage to their prospects of survival than whatever comfort might come from journo cliches. After the last few days, any journalist complaining about the "24 hour news cycle" should have all the credibility of a sailor wittering about mermaids, and about the same career prospects.

When Rudd disappears

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

"I don't much care where -" said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.

"- so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.

"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question.

- Lewis Carroll Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Kevin Rudd will leave politics when the media stop listening to him en masse. He will not go when this or that commentator says he must. He would not go if a clear or even overwhelming majority of the refashioned Labor caucus begs him to go. When the Canberra press gallery stops listening to him, he will have to find other avenues to get his message out, and that will involve him leaving politics.

All any politician wants is to be quoted in the media (except Jaymes Diaz, perhaps, which is why he hasn't been elected as a politician). Over the past three years Rudd and Tony Abbott achieved that without having much to say. There was the Gillard government, churning out detailed policies over, well, everything across the gamut of federal government really; Rudd and Abbott ignored them and insisted that they could do better. They didn't need to offer any proof because the press gallery took them at their word.

Imagine what it must have been like in the press gallery just a few weeks ago: see the poor beleaguered scribes staggering under a weight of detailed policy documents issued by a reforming government. All of a sudden one looks up and squeals: "Look everyone, it's Joel Fitzgibbon!". Nek minnit poor Joel is running away, professing his loyalty to the ALP and its leader, while the press gallery pursues him like the opening scene from A Hard Day's Night. Hysteria and ill-considered blather in the politico-media complex makes Rudd possible. Once that dies away, or changes focus, the environment that nurtures Rudd becomes hostile to him.

What's changed? Today's slow-media assault suggests that anyone from the ALP who wants to go on about their party's leadership for old time's sake will still get a good run. I was astonished at how cliche-stonkered and generally badly written this was, and it was by no means the worst of the commentary on this subject. So long as this continues, the idea that Rudd might simply opt out is the product of people who don't understand politics and have no business commentating on it.

Labor people have no more control over the press gallery now than they did when in office: they can't force them to ignore Rudd. People who follow politics closely can stop reading stories about Rudd, but press gallery journos care nothing for what people actually pick up on (this is poorly measured by clickthrough rates). One day the press gallery will decide that Rudd is no longer a story.

You won't see them run stories like that because they have no capacity for self-reflection: banal campaigns are the parties' fault, or even your fault; never than that of journalists, toward whom campaigning is tailored. Rudd was elected leader last June at the very point when the press gallery had started to 'play down' the prospect that he might challenge at all.

Leaving aside recent history (post-Keating) in the federal ALP, and final years of the Democrats (where, befitting a party of ex-teachers, Everyone Must Have A Turn), most leaders depart when defeated. Malcolm Fraser was the last party leader to have a problem with ex-leaders hanging around. In the late 1970s he gave John Gorton and Billy McMahon GCMG knighthoods. Gorton took the hint and was gone within weeks. McMahon didn't, leaving at the worst possible time (the 1982 by-election for McMahon's seat of Lowe was a harbinger of defeat for Fraser's government).

Rudd won't leave because his party want him to, and nor would his timing be influenced by his party's best interests. Labor have to consider whether a by-election loss would be worse than having Rudd stick around.

When and if the press gallery brush aside Rudd and his minions, and run stories that relate in no way to what they say, do, think, or want, then he will be extinguished politically and, in a way perhaps, personally.

When Rudd leaves politics it will take the press gallery by surprise. Even Peter Hartcher has deserted him and is unconvincingly currying favour with a new government that doesn't need him. The gallery will have no right to be surprised, and they will lose credibility for being caught out on a matter which is eminently forseeable and which 'insiders' exist to get across; there will be the usual excuses about "24 hour news cycle" (which rarely affects the press gallery anyway) or whatever. Basically insider journalism is little more than a make-work scheme for 'insiders' and not nearly as valuable (or even as valid) as they would like to believe.

What have you learned?

This morning on the ABC's Insiders, Malcolm Farr mock-lamented that Tony Abbott had a bad week but nobody reported it.

In the final week of Parliament last year, Farr mock-lamented that there were 11 pieces of legislation under discussion that went unreported because of the focus on the ancient and ultimately insubstantial allegations against Prime Minister Gillard and the AWU.

Farr, a senior reporter for News Ltd in the press gallery, could have covered those neglected issues himself but he chose not to. Farr was guilty of what he claimed to lament: the suspension of a reporter's individual curiosity in favour of The Narrative.

The Narrative is the idea that there can only be one story to be reported at any one time, and that any story that doesn't fit The Narrative doesn't get a run.

The Narrative seems to have become necessary because of the vacuum that the press gallery has created for itself, well articulated by esteemed social media presence Bushfire Bill. The Narrative has written off the Gillard government, and so any announcements, legislation or other action on its part is writ upon the sand. The Narrative holds that an Abbott government is inevitable, but they won't release their policies yet, so in the meantime they will fill their coverage with stunts and wait politely until the Coalition is good and ready.

The fallacy of this Narrative is apparent to those of us who consume a lot of media, less so to content providers. The Gillard government has not slumped into a puddle of defeatism and backbiting like truly failed governments do. Journalists regard it as an insoluble puzzle that the government is managing the best economy in the developed world while also being a failure, rather than a opposition talking-point deserving more investigation. As long as they continue drawing a paycheque, who cares?

The Abbott Opposition are playing The Narrative. Is their northern development plan, with lots of little Monartos and publicly-funded infrastructure for the benefit of large private enterprises and a non-existent mass workforce there currently unemployed, part of Coalition policy or not? For those who like that plan, the Coalition get political benefit; for those who don't it has easy deniability; and for those yet to make up their mind, the journalists can't and don't help understand what's going on.

The Narrative must be a comfort for journalists. Those who are part of setting the narrative must feel really powerful. It must be so disappointing for them to face an audience that is less passive than it was, and which challenges the idea that there is only one way you can report politics.

One example of someone who's been comfortable to the point of indolence within the Narrative is Katharine Murphy. This blog has said plenty about her over the years, almost all of it unflattering to her pretensions at being an effective journalist. This week, however, she has strained against the limits of the Narrative, and this deserves further investigation.

On Wednesday she wrote about how hard journos work to construct the Narrative (or, as she calls it, 'context'), and that we should all be grateful, even though we're not:

But I suppose what I'm saying here is there are benefits to old-fashioned "gate-keeping". Imposing judgment is a much derided custom - but sometimes readers need an over-arching framework as much as they need what the last person said.

Benefits to whom? What benefits the journalist is not necessarily what benefits the reader. Is Katharine Murphy really smart enough and hard-working enough to rise above the "gate-keeping", or "framing", as described here and here?

Seeing as Murphy is talking about the Labor leadership aspect of the Narrative, let's talk about that. Julia Gillard is not the first Prime Minister to be disliked by her backbench. Even leaders who have since passed into history as essential pointers to the present, such as Howard or Whitlam, were heartily disliked by some members of their backbench. If you're going to have gate-keeping and judgment and what have you, let's have the good stuff. Let's have it based upon facts, upon political realities and informed by what has come before.

Audiences have never been more hostile to the journalistic filter. They don't trust us.

There cannot be only one Narrative, the same from Murphy as from every other journalist in the press gallery. If 20 journalists are writing the same story, then 19 of them are redundant. The idea that the economy is both rubbish and great at the same time does not make sense.

When someone in a position of authority is telling you something that doesn't make sense, you have to focus on the people narrating to you and wonder what they're up to. Someone talking nonsense has one of two agendas: they're trying to make you laugh, or they are trying to manipulate you in some other way.

Katharine Murphy isn't funny. The Labor-doomed-Abbott-inevitable thing doesn't make sense, but it is all she and her colleagues are offering. It's not good enough, but they're not offering anything else.

They want information without the narration, the calculated ellipsis, the bias, the back story. I can understand the impulse, because there is a lot about the modern media cycle that is toxic and random, even if the intentions are to be otherwise.

Given that the Narrative is inadequate, a just-the-facts approach is a useful way of rebuilding trust. And make no mistake, rebuilding that trust is vital to Murphy's stated aim of building a community of trust with her readers.

Last October, in a debate about then-Speaker Peter Slipper, the Prime Minister made this speech about sexism and misogyny. It was electrifying and made many people see Gillard in a new light. Murphy was one of those who insisted on imposing Narrative onto that speech, and she was rightly derided. Here we are, less than six months later, and she's insisting that the gate is kept as well as ever, and that the Narrative she adheres to is the only way we can understand our national politics. Murphy has failed to understand that hers is not the judgment, but a judgment; and if you have to run down journalistic shibboleths to make that point, that isn't quite the unfathomable act of vandalism Murphy (and many others) considers it to be.

I love reporting live. I love the purity and the discipline of it - it strips the art out of journalistic practice. There's a rawness to live that feels very honest.

If you're focused on every word you need a pre-digested Narrative, you don't have time to question it. One day, the Department of Parliamentary Services will develop the ability to relay verbatim quotes just as Murphy, and other press-gallery relay-stations like Latika Bourke do today. Chances are the broadcast media will fall about in shock when that happens, if they are run by the same sorts of dills who run those organisations today.

Federal Labor is busy right now fashioning its own peculiar hell. This is no media fiction - but the rolling news cycle is itself a factor in the current leadership woes. The cycle cheerfully amplifies dysfunction. The cycle is relentless and it has no dog in the race except the next update.

The same dogs that have been barking for three years are barking again. Rudd didn't stand against Gillard in June 2010, nor did he do so after the election. He ran against her last February and got slaughtered. There is no story in continuing to insist that a dead challenge is alive, just as the Howard- Costello thing was an extended confidence trick against the public by the journosphere. The story cannot disappear simply by being bullshit, because an explanation would be required and that would reveal those who build and maintain The Narrative as bullshitters occupying jobs that create no value.

Yes, that's my opinion - but if yours is different, there is no proof that your opinion on this matter is any better informed than mine.

In an attempt to be constructive, I went to the Parliament House website and noticed that the NDIS was under debate in a Senate committee. I sent Murphy a suggestion about the issue thus:

Murphy wasn't obliged to take up my suggestion, of course, and she was too busy replying to congratulatory tweets to acknowledge mine. Perhaps Senate committees are less than scintillating, but how scintillating could it be listening to Joel Fitzgibbon whinge? Then again, by taking up my suggestion (or another made to her by someone else) she would have spared herself the embarrassment of having written this tendentious crap.

It's not well written and the logic of the Hollywood-Canberra leap is weak. It is, however, sort of related to politics, and Murphy gets paid to write about politics, so the people to whom Murphy submitted that article decided it was good enough for the likes of us. This is another example of the sort of cack-handed value judgment that makes close and regular readers of Australian broadcast media refuse to accept gate-keeper Narrative judgments by Katharine Murphy and her ilk.

If she continued down the same path the following day I would have bagged her as I usually do, but this was a genuine surprise.

Do we really want a repeat of the 2010 federal election campaign? Does politics want a repeat of that campaign?

Depends who you mean by 'politics', really.

Journalists like having information spoon-fed to them. Simple, inverted-pyramid press releases; colourful backdrops; wacky actions and/or phrases a bonus. The 2010 election campaign was not a departure from politico-media trends over recent years but a perfection of them. When Katharine Murphy simply reports what was said and done at stage-managed events, and applies the predictable Narrative to it, then she she is helping - to use her own words - "play voters for mugs".

It is not possible to talk about politics without also talking about how the media covers it. Katharine Murphy reports the way she does not because she's a fearless, intrepid reporter, but because people within the government and other parties want her to react exactly as she does.

Dear politics. Please don't play us for mugs.

The trouble with that defiant-sounding assertion is, if 'politics' does exactly that, Murphy will have no choice but to do exactly what she did last time - namely, play along with 'politics' and treat us all like mugs. She might grumble a bit in the process but she will not, cannot, push back or depart from it. When you realise that the people she airily dismisses as 'politics' are people known to her personally, people she speaks to in the course of her day; when she broadcasts her findings, which are little different to those of others in the press gallery, she is talking at us and not to us. Katharine Murphy has no right to address 'politics' in the third person: she is 'politics' too.

What was different about the 2010 election was the emergence of specialist media (e.g. in ICT) and social media. Social media kept, and keeps, journalists honest in a way that the MEAA, Media Watch and other feeble mechanisms of a shrinking industry could never do and will never do. It is a lie that journos keep journos honest.

Broadcast media coverage of the 2010 election was dire. A few senior journalists, like Murphy, admitted as much but just couldn't snap themselves out of it. Walkleys were bestowed rather than being cancelled, hurled or inserted. The criticism by Greg ("Grog's Gamut") Jericho cut through like no mealy-mouthed self-referential journosphere nonsense ever could: we're here for the policies, you've got access to the policies, so give us policies and do the other stuff in your own time.

After journos got over themselves there was some grumbling that Jericho might have a point. The 2010 election campaign did not end with the re-election of the Gillard government because Abbott threw an extended tantrum like the US Republicans. The press gallery was happy to treat every day as though the election campaign never ended, with a stunt from Abbott and regular polls and a government that refused to play along with The Narrative.

Recently former Sunday Age editor Gay Alcorn claimed that she and other journalists were "duly chastened" after that election, but people who are truly chastened actually change their minds and behaviours. I dealt with that piece here. The solution she calls for has already been done by AusVotes 2013, leaving the press gallery to wallow in polls and what Twitter calls #leadershit (i.e. deliberately overstating Kevin Rudd's ability to become Prime Minister again because they pretty much missed his departure three years ago).

So Labor is upset about the polls while the Libs are exultant. There is more to the government of this country than that, more to politics than that, despite Katharine Murphy's insistence that There Can Be Only One Narrative, and that if she wants to write tendentious crap within that Narrative then that's all you deserve, dear reader. Instead of complaining that 'politics' could be better, why not show us how 'journalism' could rise above it (rather than insisting, unconvincingly, that it does so).

Compare Murphy's and Farr's work with this. The Labor-doomed-Abbott-inevitable Narrative is there but it's in deep background, like Jane Austen's references to the Napoleonic Wars. It's policy-focused but not dull like an academic/wonky journal paper. Journalists seriously believe that their servings of stale cliche soup are actually zippy and engaging, bless 'em. If Farr and Murphy and other press gallery journalists dared depart from The Narrative more than they do, they would be more engaging and informing than they are. Any grumbling they might do about 'politics' would have more purchase than it does.

If I were Malcolm Farr's employer I would ask him to explain why he decided that eleven key pieces of legislation were overlooked because of an exclusive focus on a non-story in the '90s. When it came to his non-reporting of Abbott falling over, physically and politically, I would be asking him to show cause why he should remain employed at all. But I'm not his employer; his employer is as guilty of Narrative building and maintenance as anyone, and seems happy enough to keep Farr doing what he does. It's disappointing that he and Murphy are free-spirited enough to grumble a bit about the Narrative but not enough to actually change how and on what they report. Murphy is soon to get herself a new employer, and will she use that to break free of the Narrative? Will she bollocks.

*  *  *

I've been running this blog for almost seven years. I have despaired that so little has changed in the broadcast media: that the PM's speech to the National Press Club was reduced to the election date and glasses, that The Situation does the same old stunts and doesn't get called out or even questioned, that journalists have the hide to claim that social media can only ever be inferior to their own offerings. This isn't the end of this blog but I doubt I will have much to say (that I haven't said before) between now and the Budget in May - unless provoked. You'll be seeing more of my work on other sites, linked from here.

My career outside of writing about politics/media has taken off sharply and, potentially, powerfully; other parts of my non-blog (meta-blog?) life are crowding this out too. Even so, I repeat: this is not the end of the Politically Homeless blog. There is plenty of powder and it is being kept very dry, and planning is underway to deploy it most appropriately (and in the same "good time" that Abbott is using for his policy releases).

I still think that Julia Gillard will be Prime Minister this time next year, and that Tony Abbott will not be a viable political force at that point.

Having said that, if you're the sort of person who's pleased about the prospect of this blog coming to an end, you should know that it will pop back up when you might least expect or appreciate it. If you're a valued reader and contributor you can take comfort from the preceding sentence. There's something for everyone here at Politically homeless - but you knew that already.

Fault lines

The more one of the most popular Prime Ministers in Australian history listened to Lachlan Harris, the less popular he became. This happened because Lachlan Harris' advice was rubbish. It's still rubbish, as you can see from this sorry shower of garbage (perhaps I shouldn't be so prejudicial in framing Harris' piece, but it's in a Murdoch rag so stuff it).

In politics cynicism isn't a pitfall, it's an aspiration. Politicians, journalists and staffers pride themselves on being an unsentimental lot.

That's why Labor people wheel out the Curtin-Chifley stuff, both when they make a public announcement and when they cry into their beer about why they wreck their personal lives in order to work for someone they often secretly despise. That's why Libs wax indignant about "the mums & dads" or gild the lily about Howard under the same conditions. Sentimentality takes the role that knowledge and empathy should play in underpinning the analysis, development and presentation of policy. It is a pitfall, Lachlan, and you're still falling.

The harsh reality is that in modern politics lasting popularity is a thing of the past. This reality doesn't just apply in Australia. It applies in almost every comparable democracy around the world.

Popular oppositions still exist, but there is no compelling evidence to suggest that this popularity can outlive a year or two in government.

The Howard government hit a peak in popularity in 2001, its fifth year in government. The Carr government in NSW was never so popular than in 1999 and 2003, its fourth and eighth years respectively in office. The Bracks government in Victoria was consistently popular throughout its seven years in office. In Britain, the Blair government was consistently popular from its election in 1997 until 2003 - its sixth year in government Lachlan.

There are more examples against your contention than for it, Lachlan. Like much of your work, your opinions only makes sense if you don't think about them too much.

There are a variety of reasons for the end of lasting popularity as a realistically attainable political goal. The timidity of modern politicians, and the complexity of the remaining national reform projects, can take some blame.

Timidity isn't restricted to the modern era: Cicero and Sallust blasted their lily-livered (but self-described "hard-headed") contemporaries for imperilling the Roman Republic, and they lived to see the downfall of not just a government but an entire political entity. John Curtin was a timid man and the Second World War was pretty damn complex. You should keep that sort of talk for when you're half cut at The Holy Grail, if taxpayers and voters hear you talk like that they'll think you a fool.

Another extremely important reason for the end of lasting popularity as a reasonably attainable goal is the rise of the opinion cycle.

The short version of the reasons for the rise of the opinion cycle is this; opinion is cheap to form, easy to broadcast and interesting to share.

There are two basic reasons why the opinion cycle makes lasting political popularity (not short term popularity blips) a near-structural impossibility.

Firstly in the news cycle basic straight down the line government-governing stories (like most of your typical budget yarns) are the filler that keeps the news cycle cycling between big events, big announcements and big stuff-ups.

This loses sight of the fact that "the opinion cycle" is a circle-jerk of which voters/media consumers give not a shit. Seriously, media loses circulation and politicians lose credibility when they descend into the opinion cycle.

What's in the budget is what's going to be done this year, and what's not there probably won't. It's not filler - the "opinion cycle" is the filler. If you're too dumb to make a good story out of improved mental health care, get Andrew Bolt wound up about whatever. Just because you don't understand what government is, doesn't mean it's filler.

My column on Tony Abbott last week was a clear example of this type of content. These opinion-based critiques are much more brutal than their fact-based predecessors.

They are critical, polarising, and usually impossible to disprove.

They're not polarising if you don't give a damn. Facts may be ignored by they are not redundant.

As to "impossible to disprove" - the idea that the BER was a failure (journosphere/"hard head" received wisdom) rather than a success (Orgill Report and thousands of school principals and P&Cs nationwide) is a great example of this. The idea that hard-heads construe a success as a failure is pretty soft-headed, and as Orgill demonstrated easy to disprove.

The news cycle just needs newness to keep on keeping on; the opinion cycle needs newness and new divisions in opinion as well.

Voters/Media consumers need only relevance - the circle-jerk in which you have been a long-term participant isn't polarising, it's just irrelevant.

Budget numbers rarely divide opinion, which is why community fault lines not budget bottom lines dominate so much budget coverage in a cycle that is now just as dependent on opinion as it is on fact.

There is no link between what goes on in the community and what goes on in the politico-media complex, Lachlan. It isn't the community that's at fault here, they/we are right to be bewildered and even annoyed that these circle-jerks intrude on public debates. Just because you're in thrall to something called an "opinion cycle" doesn't mean we all are.

The chance of convincing someone you are governing responsibly through a flow of information that is dependent on personal criticism and divided opinion is basically nil.

So, the circle-jerk won't help you get through to people. What is it for, then?

The Budget wasn't perfect and the federal government has made its fair share of mistakes.

Those mistakes have centred on non-delivery, and assuming that you can engage in "opinion cycling" as a substitute for having delivered sound policy as proper return for votes and taxpayer largesse.

Freak emotional events that are well handled can result in almost Jekyll and Hyde like conversions of negative coverage into positive coverage (think Bligh/Floods or Obama/Osama).

Firstly, Jekyll and Hyde was a story about a drug addict (fact, not opinion) rather than a responsible government. Secondly "freak events" fail because delivery in one area (to use your example: Bligh/floods) doesn't result in delivery in other areas (Bligh/education, Bligh/health, Bligh/transport, etc).

In the opinion cycle, assuming the vast majority of opinion-based political coverage will be nasty, narky and negative, is a good rule of thumb. Forget about hitting the panic button because the Budget, or the carbon tax, or the pokies reforms got hammered. Nasty, narky and negative coverage is the new black.

It just gets ignored, Lachlan. If you want to get announcements out, make them real and stand up for them.

Lasting popularity in politics is dead ...

No, it's just too hard for you as a child of the "opinion cycle". To quote from a book with which your old boss may be familiar: you sowed the wind, and you reaped the whirlwind.

... taking action based on ideals (even if unpopular) may be the only effective communication tool left.

Action based on ideals is not a tool; it is that which is communicated by tools such as Lachlan Harris. Action based on ideals may be good or bad, depending on circumstances and on those to be affected by such actions. It will not be at all dependent on the "opinion cycle", a make-work scheme for failed Labor staffers like Andrew Bolt and Lachlan Harris.

Elsewhere: the essential Mr Denmore on how Bob Brown sent the opinion cycle into a tizz. He was caught out by Chris Uhlmann but basically he showed how it's done: make the opinion cycle spin on its own axis while you pursue your ends by other means. A self-referential opinion cycle is, at the risk of mixing metaphors like Lachlan Harris, digging its own grave.