Trumped part I: America's gimp

Australian foreign policy has changed profoundly in the past few weeks, more so than at any time since 1942 - but with the important difference that the current Commonwealth government seems at a loss for how to deal with it.

Our information about what was important to US voters, and how they might use that information to choose their President and Congress, was poor. The government has sources of information that go beyond the traditional media, such as an Ambassador who was a recent member of the Cabinet, and a golf course designer who has done business with the President-Elect. The rest of us, however, are left with this sinking feeling that we've all been had in assuming US voters would head off Trump, and this will get worse as media both deny any culpability and assert an exclusive and indefinite right to misinform us under the guise of reliable, factual, and relevant information.

First, let's go around the media and work out how Australia's relationship with the US and other countries is likely to be changed. Then, let's aim squarely at those Australian media dipsticks trying to crawl from the wreckage of their credibility, and remind them of the conditions under which they are to go forward, if at all. Finally, I want to explore the media's obsession with this idea of the "alt-right", while at the same time failing to examine the idea in any depth.

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Since US troops were first committed to the battlefields of World War I in 1918, Australians have fought beside them. In World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and other operations besides, Australia has joined US combat aims and suffered losses of blood and treasure. This relationship has shaped the foreign policy behaviour of both countries.

In Australia, it has bred a political monoculture across the governing parties that the US is the guarantor of Australia's political and economic success (and that of other countries, such as Japan or the Philippines) in the Asia-Pacific region. This is supported by a range of institutions, such as the Australia-America Leadership Dialogue or Fulbright Scholarships, which reinforce this relationship. Australians seeking a career in foreign policy, whether partisan (by becoming a member of a political party) or not (by eschewing party politics and following a career in academia or diplomacy), looked to US foreign policy as the star by which all vessels steered.

There is no way of regarding Australia's relationship with the US as anything other than closely intertwined with the broader aims of US foreign policy: outlooks and proposals that might have seen Australia break with the US altogether, or diminished the relationship (e.g. by closing Pine Gap or banning nuclear warship visits) were cast to the fringes of Australian politics and not entertained by serious careerist pragmatic people.

In the US, we have seen a bifurcation between official rhetoric warmly praising our alliance and a sub rosa commentary taking Australian support for granted, verging on contempt. "We think you're an easy lay", recalled Jack Waterford in outlining occasional Australian disagreements within a generally close relationship.

Yesterday we saw the Prime Minister admit that he tried and failed to secure a meeting with Trump, along the lines of Trump's meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Abe. One missed meeting need not have much long-term significance - but it hints at something more foreboding for the relationship, certainly as far as Australia's political monoculture is concerned.

Donald Trump's method of campaigning collapsed the difference between official high-sounding rhetoric and sub rosa contempt in almost every area of policy. While other conservatives were happy to mouth platitudes about freedom and equality while courting bigots through 'dog whistling', Trump was openly racist, sexist, and dismissive of people with disabilities - including veterans. Let's not pretend Trump is different to what he is. Let's have no truck with the fatuous media make-work scheme that is 'the walkback', and apply this pattern - seen throughout this campaign and beforehand - to US-Australian relations into the foreseeable future.

Trump will be openly dismissive of the Turnbull government and of Australia. Trump will openly state that Australia needs the US more than the reverse, and will make demands not even the most craven Washington-phile Australian could support, or even entertain. He and his Administration will be dismissive of the women who are Ministers for Foreign Affairs and Defence in this government, and of their shadows. Political opponents of the current government will titter at this new scope of failure, but the sheer effrontery will transcend partisanship and go to the regard in which our nation is held.

Nothing transforms a relationship (any sort of relationship) like stripping back the honeyed words and seeing it for what it is. It will be a massive break from the norms of the Australia-US alliance.

US Presidents have hung Australian PMs out to dry from time to time, as collateral damage for broader geostrategic reasons. In 1956, President Eisenhower refused PM Menzies' request to intervene in the Suez Canal crisis because of the US's wider interests in western Asia at the time. In 1972, PM McMahon condemned his political opponent Gough Whitlam for visiting and recognising the People's Republic of China - unaware President Nixon was about to do so, again playing a wider game.

Trump will wrongfoot Turnbull. He will do the same to any other putative Australian PM you might name. This is how the man does deals.

The best way to catch Trump out will be to catch him when he's distracted, as we've seen from his hasty and inadequate settlement of Trump University lawsuits. The current government may well be canny enough to do this - or not.

In his address to the Australian parliament in 2011, President Obama said that the US would be less inclined to unilaterally enforce international rules and norms and called upon allies in the region to do more to support shared aims, and expected allies to step up and share more of the burden. Australia is building warships at a rate never seen before because the US has indicated that it's in our best interest to do so.

Some commentators noted Trump's remarks along similar lines of making allies shoulder more of the military burden that had fallen to the US, and compared his approach to mafia shakedowns - but he was, in his crude way, aligning with bipartisan US policy. None of the Republican candidates Trump defeated in the primaries, certainly not Hillary Clinton and still less Bernie Sanders, were arguing for a Pax Americana where a rules-based global system is set up and enforced by the US military commanded by its President.

Criticism of Trump's rhetoric on this issue is just hype, snobbery, and bullshit: the central flaws of all his opponents' unsuccessful campaigns.

This isn't to normalise Trump. It's to do what the Australian media should have done, but failed to do: take his record and project it forward onto how a Trump administration might treat Australia within its view of the world. Australian journalists observing US politics, whether from Australia or on assignment in the US, tend to avoid original sources of information: they read The New York Times and The Washington Post and other established media outlets, not realising the audience in Australia for US politics can and does access those same sites - and more.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation covered the US election by sending reporters to Washington and having them relay banalities from CNN and Politico, which they could have done from Ultimo or Canberra. Shipping those people all that way gave no additional insight at all (except that ABC News thinks their audience are mugs, and should stop gibbering about resource constraints).

Most of the reasons why this deeply weird man was elected have nothing to do with us. The political class in Australia will hunker down and wait for him to pass, assuming the Democrats can and will come up with a candidate in 2020 that can beat Trump. The hunkering down will mean Australia both misses real opportunities in Trump-led US, and underestimates benefits awaiting us after he goes. They will underestimate the extent to which Trump has and will change the landscape, rendering "back to normal" impossible: there is no normal, there is no back.

Our leaders will not, however, do the hard but necessary work of rethinking the Australia-US relationship from first principles. The information isn't available; the very act of doing so is way outside our Overton Window.

Foreign policy wonks have said for a long time that we are moving from a world where the US calls the shots to a multipolar world, where other powers (e.g. Russia, China, India - maybe the EU if they can hold it together) play an important but not final role, along with the US playing a similar, diminished role. The trick, as they saw it, was to manage the transition peacefully. Part of this managerial assumption was that the people of the US would go along peaceably with their country's diminished role, diminished expectations thing. What else are they wrong about?

Australia will have to operate across a much broader front than they have; there will be fewer (expected, positive) options from Washington and more options from Beijing, Jakarta, Delhi, Lima, Nairobi, Berlin, etc. Politicians can't do this. Big corporates can't do this. "Pragmatic people" will blame everyone but themselves. There will be opportunities through sport or other means that are not directly linked to politics or trade, but which will open opportunities in those areas, which Australian politicians and corporates will miss and whinge about when their passing becomes clear. You won't need an app to disrupt foreign policy. Australians are heading into a time of missed opportunities. Coal and hobbled broadband will hold us back. Traditional media will barely notice.

For all its longueurs and ponderousness, foreign policy moves quickly when needs must. In 1910 Britain was indisputably the world's mightiest power: ten years later it was a whimpering basket-case of debt and pain, and Australian foreign policy (such as it was) didn't cope well then either. In 1941 John Curtin reached out to the USSR as the pre-eminent military power of the time; ten years later Australia's postwar consensus had hardened against the Soviets and the government sought to ban the Communist Party. We are again in such a moment of transition.

Nobody has any grounds for believing that our current ministers or their shadows have what it takes to set the nation on a new course in terms of foreign policy, defence, trade, or anything else involving the US; only hacks will pretend, only fools will believe them.

Expecting the unexpected

When any disaster happens it is reasonable to ask: could we have foreseen this, and could we have done anything to stop it?

The deaths of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran have been disastrous for Australia. People who once disdained them have been confronted with the awful unspinnable finality and barbarity of death, and government-mandated death at that. Our search for meaning has kicked off debates over the death penalty, the criminalisation of drugs, prison as a place of rehabilitation - even quaint protocols like blindfolds, or having a spiritual advisor present, when facing execution.

All of those debates goes back at some point to public policy, requiring responses and planning and resources to be spent. The debates arising from these deaths are different from most public policy debates in this country, initiated by a government wishing to announce a solution they have already developed. There is very little engagement from public figures in these debates: policy wonks on drugs and prison reform will get a bit of airtime and bounce their ideas around until they die from lack of traction.

Yesterday there was a palpable sense that the government had let us down in some way, without any clear idea how or why. This morning, media outlets interviewed Barnaby Joyce on the issues arising from the deaths of Chan and Sukumaran. Whenever the Coalition want to introduce a red herring into public debate, they wheel out Joyce.

Hard-hitting, savvy journalists should be awake to the Joyce ruse. If they had any professional pride they would resent being played. But they aren't, and they don't: off they went, following Joyce's lead on reintroducing the death penalty here. Traditional media enjoys debates that are heated and which lead to absolutely no change that might require coverage and analysis. They are happy to spare themselves the hard work of wondering how this situation might have been handled better.

When President Widodo was elected last year, foreign policy analysts wrote vague articles about how he might not be well disposed toward Australia. Places like the Lowy Institute, fatuous commentators like Greg Sheridan, all pretended to know more than they did. Nobody seemed to foresee that he would stop taking calls from this country's government and turn a deaf ear to the very idea of clemency, not only to Chan and Sukumaran but to the mentally-ill Rodrigo Gularte.

Isn't it lazy to assert that this really be just another kerfuffle that blows over soon enough - or as with the passing of a cyclone, will the landscape be changed by the blowing-over? Was there really no way of knowing Indonesian politics would lead Australia to this desolate, unproductive place, or where we might go from here? One thing's for sure: it's a joke to say that "Indonesia's credibility is at stake".

In all the escalating calls that Something Must Be Done, all those the last-minute appeals, there was no consideration given to the public debate in Indonesia: they too have their death-penalty opponents, and their drug-policy absolutists, and there too they talk past one another. We have less clout in Asia than we imagined - we are to that continent what Tasmania is to ours.

With his blithe dismissal of Australia's feeble, ill-considered threats of diplomatic action, HM Prasetyo looks like an absolute prick - but no more so than Scott Morrison, or Eric Abetz. Populist politics can work well for governments, and for journalists who cheer them on, but when the same politics goes against them the populists squeal loudest - and journalists cover the reversals like they were unexpected, and unfair.

Nobody seemed to anticipate the fact that the executions were announced on Anzac Day, and how it was a calculated insult to Australia. I've grown up watching interviews of old diggers, when asked why they volunteered to join a world war, exclaim "I wanted to see the world!" - a sentiment echoed by members of the Bali Nine, and by me at times, and maybe even by your own self dear reader.

Foreign policy is predicated on a strict division between high matters of principle (big themes: global initiatives, multi-lateral agreements) and consular matters (petty themes: Australians breaching foreign laws); in this case, as with Peter Greste in Egypt, these supposedly parallel facets of our foreign policy collided. Could this reshape the way we conduct our foreign policy?

Nobody seemed to measure developments in Indonesia against Abbott's proposal for "Jakarta-centred foreign policy". Whatever that might mean, or have meant, it looks like yet another area of policy in which Abbott is hopelessly out of his depth but can't avoid. Waleed Aly's fourth point exonerates Abbott - but I'm not so sure. Who knows what, if anything, Abbott feels? Does the Prime Minister have no advisors - in the permanent public service or in his partisan office - who could have crafted a better message for a man who has been a spokesperson all his life, at such a time?

We need better coverage of policy because that is the only way for citizens/ voters/ taxpayers/ people to judge whether we are being governed well or badly. The press-gallery method of covering politics is bullshit: stuck fast in meaningless minutiae, too easily ambushed by 'events' which they can't understand except by being spoon-fed by those with an agenda; too easily nobbled.

When the traditional media act all surprised at foreseeable events it isn't thrilling hype - it's boring, and robs us of the ability to seek out better policy, and to hold policy-makers to account. It does traditional media no favours either.

Jonathan Green attempts to draw false equivalence between traditional media - which has a tradition of restraint and in-depth consideration of complex issues - and social media, which doesn't, and which (especially in the case of Twitter) is constrained by space issues. Social media is not obliged to pick up the dropped baton of well-informed, nuanced information about complex issues. It is out of control because it was never under anyone's control, something that can't be said of the top-down empires of traditional media. Perhaps Green's implication is all too accurate (reinforced by Mr Denmore) that we cannot reasonably expect traditional media to lift their game.

A badly-informed populace is something journalists should take less delight and bemusement in than they do. Brigid Delaney probably consumes more Australian media than anyone, yet she was surprised by the outcome in a way that no well-read person should be. It is proof that journalism, and all the resources devoted to it (including legal protections and feather-bedding in places like the press gallery) has failed, and failures have no excuse sneering at those no better than they.

Chan, Sukumaran and the other members of the 'Bali Nine' were arrested in 2006. We've been through three Prime Ministers since then, and Indonesia has changed President. There are wider issues about what our foreign policy even is, and how it is developed and executed - and the way it is reported, and the role foreign policy plays in the narrative over whether the incumbents govern us well or badly.

That said, what does democratic input in this area look like? No country manages its foreign policy on the basis of populism and democratic will - it is largely an elite preoccupation, one that tends to change little with political complexion. Policy-makers don't have the political tools to engage the public, especially where security agencies get involved. Journalists are easily fobbed off with the "operational matters" thing, especially with recent legislation against disclosure.

While policies themselves will come under less and less scrutiny, the results of half-baked policy will become increasingly clear. Debates over big issues will go on in different media and call for public resources. When previously trusted sources of information on public policy (traditional media and what are now major parties) fail, people will have to pick up the slack - but how, and with what? That's the challenge of our age. Spokespeople and their bemused observers overestimate their ability even to describe the challenge, let alone meet it.

Found out 2: When the Beijing smog clears

The press gallery went to the last election conveying the impression that Coalition policy, even though it existed in scant detail, was immeasurably better than Labor policy on all fronts.

Then, when the Coalition started going back on pre-election commitments, the press gallery just got confused. There was no howl of betrayal, as there was over Julia Gillard's casuistry on carbon pricing, just a kind of befuddlement or cheerily insisting that disappointment must somehow be exciting - or in any case, something we just have to put up with that its words and actions should be so divergent.

As time has gone on the press gallery have engaged in a kind of Dance of the Seven Veils as this government has shed layers of credibility. So its environmental policy is pretty ordinary, and there really is so vision for carbon abatement or even the Reef. All right, so its commitment to civil liberties is non-existent. Yeah, so there is no economic policy to speak of, and the government can't even get its budget through the Senate. It has no ability to negotiate with those outside its command-and-control.

It's interesting to note that former Coalition members Clive Palmer, Nick Xenophon, David Leyonhjelm, and Bob Day are not subject to the same 'traitor' rhetoric that beset former Nationals Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor (Peter Slipper had been elected to Parliament as a Coalition MP, while the others hadn't). Nobody in the press gallery seems to have picked that, practising the goldfish journalism of an eternal present.

Was it only a matter of days ago that the press gallery consensus had congealed around the idea that while the Coalition wasn't great at any sort of policy really but it had some sort of natural gift for foreign policy. Some conceded that Abbott had a few early glitches with the Indonesians and the Chinese (Mark Kenny and the Murdoch outlets refused to acknowledge even that, insisting that such a graceful swan could never be considered an ugly duckling), but they all agreed Abbott was some sort of natural diplomat.

(Note that the more concerted the opposition to an Abbott government policy, the worse Abbott looks. Even with the prospect of opposition, as with paid parental leave, does this tough guy look shaky. Labor gave him unstinting support on foreign policy, and only with that absence of opposition could he even appear capable.)

With all his experience in domestic and foreign politics, Peter Hartcher never picked that the US and China would do a deal on carbon emissions at the APEC meeting in Beijing. [$] Hamish Macdonald in The Saturday Paper didn't pick it. Nobody did. The English-language papers in China and the venerable US news outlets all missed it, too.

It isn't only hippies who think it isn't good enough for this country not to have a carbon abatement policy. It never was. The Canberra consenus that proponents had to wait until Abbott was good and ready to come around to the idea in his own time was wrong, too, but it was consensus and all the press gallery had to do was put quotation marks around it. Our entire political class has been wrongfooted, and the journosphere can't properly report on that because it too has been caught out.

They don't even have the good grace to admit they missed the biggest foreign policy story of the past 20 years. How a mixed metaphor became a dumb story is the sort of thing you get when you fail to clear out dead wood from 20th century journalism.

Only now are the political negatives from Tony Abbott's threat to Vladimir Putin blindingly obvious

It was always stupid. Always.

(This is what shirtfronting looks like)

As soon as it was uttered, all of the images that Abbott sought to shake off - the thoughtless thug - were reinforced. Even if he had literally shirtfronted Putin, it would have made our foreign relations worse rather than better. What use is the press gallery if they cannot anticipate?

The opportunity to rub shoulders with global leaders usually gives the prime minister of the day a boost.

No it doesn't:

• When it was announced that the APEC meeting in 2007 would be held in Sydney, people like Cassidy hailed it as a triumph for Prime Minister Howard. By the time it was held Howard was on his way out.
• In the lead-up to the 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen, the press gallery agreed that it would be a triumph for Prime Minister Rudd. It wasn't, and he too was gone within a few months.
• When Barack Obama addressed federal parliament in 2011 the impact on Prime Minister Gillard was nil. She attended a royal wedding in London and secured a UN Security Council seat and did a CHOGM in Perth; zero political benefit.

It is time for that press gallery cliche to die. I know journos love it, but it has no basis in reality and hence is useless as a prop for reporting.

The opportunity to rub shoulders with global leaders does nothing for the prime minister of the day. Nothing at all.

The reporting, the photographs and especially the cartoons, have reduced serious diplomacy to high farce. For that Abbott has to take a large slice of the blame.

Abbott should take responsibility for his actions, the Murdoch press should take responsibility for theirs.

How Abbott would now like to erase history and start again, allowing himself to present as a mature leader nudging and cajoling the world's most powerful towards important global solutions.

Here Cassidy claims to have some sort of insight into Abbott's mind. He makes a number of assumptions that no member of the press gallery is entitlement to make about Abbott, namely that he has:

• done the work in formulating solutions within a convincing wider vision, and
• anticipated potential challenges to those solutions, and
• that he has the political skill to negotiate with people who owe him nothing. Look at parliament - he can get Peta to bawl out his own backbenchers, but he can't get yokels like Lambie or Madigan even to pass his budget. Other G20 leaders deal with people like them much more convincingly than Abbott.

Cassidy has no right to hold to those assumptions, or to hide journo inadequacy behind them.

There is evidence that the shift from domestic to foreign policy, from the budget to national security, will not be the permanent game changer the government had hoped for.

Well, no shit - what made anyone think people could be deflected from Narwee and Nunawading to focus on Naypidaw? Was there any basis at all to assume that this was even possible, and that those betting the government on it were crazy?

If that won't do it, what will?

30 years in Canberra and you really don't know? So much for being an insider. Give it away.

There would be no greater signal to our political class about the impact of cuts to the public broadcaster if Insiders were to be axed.

The global challenges - and particularly the conflict in Iraq - should be a plus, especially with the opposition offering bipartisan support.

The reason why Labor offered bipartisan support was to maintain their poll lead over the government. Cassidy should realise that politics is a zero-sum game; that the government cannot be said to be doing well if it is polling behind the opposition.

At home, there is a growing realisation that the country does indeed have both a spending and a revenue problem, no matter what Coalition frontbenchers said in opposition.

If only we had experienced journalists at the time to point this out, anticipate what a Hockey budget might look like, and whether it would even pass a fractious Senate.

There are excuses. Commodity prices are falling ...

This was foreseeable before last September.

... and the Senate is preventing the government from reversing some of Labor's spending initiatives.

So was that.

But when a party speaks with such bravado and conviction in opposition, excuses don't offer much shelter in government. Reality is starting to bite.

Reality is not something that was invented this year. Politicians talking with bravado should be called out by journalists, rather than merely quoted.

Before mid next year the Abbott government has to commit to targets out to 2025. According to the Climate Institute, to match what the United States has done, Australia will have to reduce emissions not by 5 per cent, but 30 per cent. Even if that was their inclination, how would they do it? And at what cost? Abbott has already said that even if it becomes clear the 5 per cent target cannot be reached by 2020, he won't be allocating any more money.

Cassidy really can't cope with the idea that a) changing circumstances call for different measures, and b) sometimes often there's a difference between what Abbott says and what comes to pass.

On top of that, because of where China says it's heading, there is now a question mark over coal exports.

That and the fact India has banned them outright, and nowhere else is picking up the slack. This has been coming for a while, Barrie.

The one breakthrough over coming days will be the trade deal with China. But again trade deals are not created equal. There is give and take.

It will definitely be a breakthrough, unless it isn't a breakthrough at all. What a classic piece of insider wank. Sometimes you sit on the fence, sometimes the fence sits on you.

The Chinese have the advantage in this deal. Abbott has said that he's desperate to do a deal of any sort - arse-selling, remember? - and you know how negotiations go when the weaker party is under pressure. Surely that press gallery experience has to be worth something.

Until the details are released and digested, it's impossible to predict how the public will respond.

Oh come on, no it isn't.

In Australia, there is unlikely to be full-scale rioting. Nor is it likely that Coalition MPs will be greeted in their electorates as conquering heroes, with garlands of flowers and kisses from a grateful public just like western forces received in Iraq in 2003. Studied indifference will most likely be the reaction. The media will focus on beef cattle exports, as they always do with trade agreements under this government, and skate over who gets stiffed. A few companies that donate to the Liberals anyway will express delight but will be unable to make good on the promises of the agreement. Long-term impact, economically and politically, can be be anticipated as bugger-all.

Against that challenging background, Tony Abbott could have done with a hassle-free APEC and G20 to build on his status and credibility.

That was never an option. This is a stupid assessment. Hassle-free means no achievements, another empty and expensive talkfest.

The US-China climate deal is a massive achievement, one for which Abbott deserves absolutely no credit.

The journalists who have not scrutinised Abbott and who disparage those who have questioned him cannot protect their boy now. He put all his chips on foreign policy, which journalists don't understand and rely on official announcements to interpret for them. This announcement is clear, and all the spin in the world can't fix things (if you believe the Australian government did know about the US-China deal ahead of time, then you have to believe they couldn't be bothered lobbying on behalf of fossil fuel companies, when this has been its core business to date).

Because the political class has outsourced our foreign policy, and the journosphere accepts this is the way it has to be (with the occasional empty gesture), our country is exposed to initiatives taken elsewhere to a greater extent than would be the case were we to have our own foreign policy.

This government is run by control freaks. They bet the government on things they can't control, developments in Washington and Beijing and the other great capitals of the world. And now events have gotten away from them, and now even the dimmest bulb in the press gallery is obliged to note this.

Political parties can't develop such policies and the media can't critique them. Neither can adapt. Both institutions will have to be gotten around to develop a meaningful foreign policy for this country.

Found out

Two dozen other stupid reasons
Why we should suffer for this
Don't bother trying to explain them
Just hold my hand while I come to a decision on it

Sooner or later your legs give way, you hit the ground
Save it for later don't run away and let me down
Sooner or later you hit the deck, you get found out
Save it for later don't run away and let me down
You run away, run away, run away, run away, run away, run away and let me down

-The Beat Save it for later

One reason to read foreign newspapers online is because you can. I am old enough to remember when foreign newspapers were available only in the State Library, a few days old and often monopolised by some lonely expat who'd surreptitiously rip out a piece, denying you that article and whatever was on the other side of the paper.

Another is to find out how other countries run, what their priorities are. In looking for that you can often get some insight into how this country is run, what its - our? - priorities are.

This article is instructive about Australian politics - but not just for the passing mention of Adelaide's own Lynton Crosby, still junketing away on that Australia-UK Political Relic Exchange Program which gave us John McTernan.

This blog loudly and often bagged the Coalition in opposition for not engaging with policy, and with those affected by various government policies. This blog believed such engagement was essential for the Coalition to regain office, and it was wrong. This blog believed that a few more defeats would be necessary to get some focus, as had been the case in the 1980s and '90s; wrong again.

What I wasn't wrong about was that a policy agenda is necessary to build some respect to replace the inevitable disaffection, and carry a government through the ups and downs.

This government, like that of Gough Whitlam, has an economic policy crafted for another time. It is based on assumptions that no longer apply, such as continued growth in China (weaker than expected), greater engagement with India (might take a while, and looks like going backwards in certain respects, despite all that foreign policy happy-talk at the time). Because nowhere else is picking up the slack, our economy is going backwards, and economic austerity is exactly the wrong remedy for that.

Joe Hockey got more airtime than he deserved in denying the Global Financial Crisis because of a press gallery assumption (reinforced by in-house polls) that economic management was part of the Coalition DNA. In office, Hockey has given scant consideration to the revenue side of the budget, and to changing budgetary settings in the face of changing economic assumptions about growth, iron ore prices, and consumer confidence. He hasn't done the work.

Contrast Hockey with Paul Keating, who had been Shadow Treasurer for a month before taking the substantive role in government. Keating had a far better understanding of the economic landscape and the tools available to him than Hockey does.

The less said about Greg Hunt or Kevin Andrews, the better - but the Vics continue to wonder why they aren't driving the Liberal Party any more.

They thought they were being clever in presenting as little policy as possible to the public before last September. They were reinforced in that belief by a willing media, which must never be indulged in its lazy claim that it was even-handed in its approach to reporting and analysis.

The Coalition wasn't been lean and mean, just skinny and cranky. It wasn't lithe and disciplined, just anorexic and wasting muscles and organs. Its mind was not clear, just vacant.

The press gallery took this bunch of politicians at their word. This goes against the whole idea of journalism and the idea that it is valuable other than as a make-work scheme for journalists. Now that there are laws that would imprison journalists for doing journalism, and now that funding cuts will see journalists sacked and resources cut, this is why nobody rallies to what looks like self-interested pleading from people who've shed their credibility and appeal to get access to people who mislead them.

It isn't true that the Coalition deserves the benefit of the doubt, though that has been the animating principle of the press gallery - it can look like bias and journalists should understand this perspective and resist the urge to brush those accusations away. It isn't true that Labor does, either. Who deserves the benefit of the doubt? Australia. We deserve better, both in terms of government and coverage thereof.

The government hasn't done the work. The press gallery hasn't done the work, and refuses to do so. If the Labor opposition refuses to do the work (and gives up on the idea that the press gallery can even recognise work when it sees it), the task of replacing the political class member by member will be longer and more far-reaching than some might think it needs to be. Those who haven't done the work are being found out by changes to the economy, society and technology that slip away from lazy assumptions of those who govern and inform us.

Where the press gallery beef hooked

The Parliament of New Zealand has its own press gallery, and it falls prey to the failings of all press galleries. It has its doyens (Colin James), its pack mentality (there's only ever one story and we're all going to write it no matter what) and the unshakeable conviction that the way it is must also be the way it has to be. The way the gallery reports on politics is, even now apparently, the only way to report on politics.

Insofar as it matters any more, the press gallery narrative on the coming election (due on 20 September) can be summarised as follows:

• John Key, the incumbent PM and leader of the National Party, looks confident and has presided over a united team and economic growth.
• David Cunliffe has presided over a divided Labour Party, even though he apparently beat Key in a set-piece 'debate'.
• There are other parties but they are just political tinsel. Therefore,
• It's Key in a canter, so let's make a National victory inevitable and any other outcome a disaster.

This is the politics of tidiness: the political party that presents the most couth, affable and easily summarised front to journalists wins. Their reward is to have their statements reported without serious challenge, while their competitors are either not reported or framed such that their words are to be mistrusted. Incumbent governments tend to win the tidy politics prize, with their extra resources and the higher stakes involved in decisions taken, but occasionally oppositions make a convincing case when incumbents let things slide.

Press galleries shrug off accusations of partisan bias - usually levelled by partisans - but they are wrong to defend themselves as unbiased. Their only agenda is to set the agenda, and that agenda is the politics of tidiness.

This is why political journos are constantly alert for gaffes: a gaffe is verbal untidiness. If you're the shadow treasurer and you speak of "eleventy" like it's a number, gaffe! - or maybe you're the shadow foreign minister and you refer to Africa as one country, gaffe! - then, having made a career from piling on gaffes, you can then write a thoughtful column about how our politicians are under such scrutiny and how trivial gaffes are. Other journos will retweet links to your column praising both your thoughtful bravery and brave thoughtfulness, and will go after bloggers who jeer at you.

Political reporting in NZ and Australia has been hostage to the press gallery and its politics of tidiness. In Australia it still is, but you'd be a fool to bet (let alone stake your career) that it will stay that way. In NZ the election narrative has been hijacked by Cameron Slater, an active member of the NZ Nationals, who runs the blog Whale Oil.

Whale Oil is scabrous and nasty and funny and untidy and partisan, in contrast to the bland offerings of the politics-of-tidiness press gallery. It won Best Blog in NZ's premier publishing industry awards, and it is only a matter of time before a focused site like that beats an all-things-to-everyone pablum like Stuff. Whale Oil isn't focused on policy or outcomes but then neither is the press gallery.

Political parties also succumb to the Politics of Tidiness. This used to mean that they and the journalists understood one another and worked by the same rules. With the rise of social media, where any site is no more or less accessible online than traditional media sites, there is no reason why a politician would take their chances with a capricious media when a trusted partisan will both get the message out and frame it in the way they would like.

In the absence of a comprehensive social media strategy (including a budget), a political party relies on committed amateurs with the purple-squirrel rarity of commitment to a political party and facility with social media. A person with long-standing commitment to a political party will not have a commitment to the party as a whole, but will have opinions about aspects (and personalities) within the party that they like better than others. A political party using a committed amateur in social media runs the risk that it will be presented unevenly, that members of the team who fall foul of the house blogger will not receive the same coverage as those in favour.

This is what happened with the NZ Nationals when they started leaking to Whale Oil rather than to the press gallery. One of Key's staffers was accused of leaking to the blogger, and briefing against a sitting minister. Judith Collins, NZ's answer to George Brandis (if she's the answer, etc), resigned after being found out briefing Slater against the Serious Fraud Office.

Nicky Hager had written about the NZ Nationals in his earlier book Hollow Men (which contains a clearer account of how CrosbyTextor works than anyone in Australia has managed), and apparently he's done it again with Dirty Politics, according to Richard Shaw. When Shaw details Slater's nemesis (known as Rawshark or Whaledump) we get into the hall of mirrors that is political shit-sheeting, turbo-charged by the internet, and screw that.

The whole business has destroyed the Nationals' image as Tidiest Party (and thus deserving the prize of government). Having been sucked in to Slater's drip feed, the press gallery lost what cool detachment it had. Both the government and the press gallery who report on it have lost the benefit of the doubt. Whether the Key government is re-elected, and whether or not NZ's press gallery keep on giving one another awards for excellence or whatever, the gig is up. Beef hooked, indeed.

Whale Oil is the bastard son of the UK's Guido Fawkes, which has had as significant an impact on UK politics today as the 17th century coffee-shop scandal sheets that grew into venerable titles such as Tatler or The Spectator. Fawkes, the brainchild of Paul Staines, exposed Labour spinner Damian McBride and NewsCorp's illegal requests for information on its targets. As with Whale Oil, and Woodward and Bernstein or Amy Corderoy's exposure of Alistair Furneval for that matter, it's instructive that the big political exposes come not from within but beyond the press gallery.

Recently in Australia, we have seen the Labor Party get the rough end of the press gallery for their wanton untidiness. Rudd even looked so meticulous, and as for That Woman with the empty fruitbowl ... people like Michelle Grattan run their fingers along the sideboards of the major parties, looking for smudges. Grattan's befuddlement at how Abbott's tidy opposition became an untidy government is understandable only if you excuse her from having to analyse policy and how it might work, rather than merely how it will play.

It is as though tidiness monitoring is what political journalism is, and all it could ever be:

• In Victoria, the ALP is much tidier than the Coalition. The Coalition used to be all about tidiness when they were run by well-bred Collins Street types, but this too has passed.
• In NSW, the Coalition are getting very untidy, but still less than the post-cyclone shambles that is the ALP.
• Labor won in SA because it was tidy but active; the Coalition could only be tidy through inertia, creating doubts as to what might happen if they had to do something.
• In WA, the Coalition government is starting to get untidy, even after it and the press gallery have stopped making excuses for Troy Being Troy. Same with the NT CLP (chock-full of Troys) and Queensland's Newman government trying to rough up the state's fastidious legal community. In all cases, Labor is yet to make their case for comparative tidiness.
• In Tasmania, Labor spent two decades getting untidy, while Will Hodgman got tidier and tidier. He can only get less so with the demands of governing.
• In the ACT, Katy Gallagher has kept Labor tidy while Jeremy Hansen has made no progress on The Road To Tidiness that all successful oppositions must take.

Some organisations are setting up their own media operations, including social media, to outflank moribund traditional media. The AFL is most advanced at that, relying on Channel 7 while preparing to screw them in a few years. If the major political parties were smart they'd do likewise, replacing press releases with their own pre-prepared grabs. You might say the press gallery would never cop that, but what choice would they have? This would be the only valid explanation for the major parties' insatiable lust for fundraising.

The major parties are not doing this because they are run by dills. They are spending and raising money with the same wit and judgment they apply to taxation. The Federal President of the Liberal Party is a former Communications Minister, and because we are talking Richard Alston here he never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity when it comes to constructive policy on media and communications. They are blowing all that money on ads that prop up faltering traditional media, on mailouts through the faltering postal service, on Mark Textor, stuff like that.

A decade or so ago my NSW Young Liberal contemporary David Miles set up a blog called Capital C. It could have been as big in Australia as Fawkes or Whale Oil are in their jurisdictions, but Howard was in power then and Miles was unwilling to rock that boat - even (especially!) as it began to founder. Miles could have become the Liberal Party's 21st century media guru. Instead, he's just another lobbyist, simpering away on ABC TV's The Drum, defending Coalition positions without the clout involved in having input, or even the dignity of being an official spokesperson. Like Maurice Newman, Miles is just a red herring in a suit. Both he and  The Drum diminish one another.

I'm surprised that disgruntled Labor rank-and-filers, rolled and humiliated time and again in their party's forums, haven't taken to social media more than they have. There will be a social media site that will have the juiciest gossip from within a major Australian political party, and journos won't be able to keep away from it. Too late, they will realise that social media has taken the initiative in political coverage, but will arrogantly insist that the press gallery remains the only crucible in which political reporting and agenda-setting context are forged.

The press gallery in Canberra is already having the narrative gradually taken from it, what with "on water matters" and its union unsure about censorship. The decline of the press gallery is like Hemingway's description of a slide into bankruptcy: first gradually, then suddenly. By the next election, it will have the narrative taken from it so comprehensively that it starts asking those long-overdue questions of what its purpose is, why should we give them any credence or privilege, etc.

The future of political coverage is unfolding in Wellington. Next year the city will host the Global Political Marketing and Management Conference. You could sit around in Canberra and act all shocked when political reporting goes around and past the press gallery, or you could keep ahead of the game so that the important stuff (accountability in a democracy, one's own job, etc.) survives fast and far-reaching change.

Up for negotiation

The main problem with the Abbott government is that it cannot persuade. It can't negotiate with Senators, it can't bring people with them.

It could never bring people with them. Peter Hartcher is wrong to represent, yet again, this incapacity as something that has only happened in recent days or weeks, or that it could not have been foreseen before the polls handed this story to him. This country has been sold a dog of a government, and Peter Hartcher bears more responsibility than he will bear for that. Hartcher is attempting to scuttle back to a pose of even-handedness that he regards as his turf, but having spent too long in The Hockey Camp and previously The Rudd Camp, what might be called The Middle Ground is turf which Hartcher has never occupied.

It is time to write Abbott off as a persuasive leader. He has failed all the 'tests' and has learned nothing. It is time to write him off as a sustainable leader. Liberals might declare that they have learned the lesson from dumping Rudd before the end of his first term, but they forget how much credibility Rudd had lost by then, how frightened his party was (and is?) of actual voters. Rudd had lost a lot of faith with the public by mid-2010 but he had lost even more with a party that had closed ranks behind him until that point. The Coalition has closed ranks behind Abbott to a similar extent, and the loss of public face is also apparent at this point: after he goes you can expect an orgy of I Never Liked Peta Anyway pieces, many of them to be written by Peter Hartcher.

I was in the NSW Young Liberals with Joe Hockey in the early 1990s, and I understand why people who work with him in politics and media regard him as a nice bloke (I'll have more to say about that in a future blogpost after I've finished Madonna King's book). The idea that Hockey might yet build a public persona based on that niceness and carry the Liberal Party to victory on that basis is a Canberra fantasy, with neither Liberal hard-heads nor journos any wiser on this. Hockey will not be able to contrast himself as a kinder, gentler Abbott. Hockey is finished after that budget, and all the journos and other Canberra denizens who doubt this are fools.

At the very least it will take him years to rebuild his image as a leader in his own right rather than as a supplicant who does the dirty jobs others won't do, in the same way John Howard took years to shake off the punchline of having been Malcolm Fraser's Treasurer. When Hockey delivered the budget in May he looked rattled, while Abbott looked smug; Abbott was nobbling a political rival on that night and he knew it. The Liberals thought they had built their future on the rock by choosing Abbott now with Hockey in reserve, but both captain and reserve have the same flaw exposed.

When Howard lost in 2007 and Peter Costello refused the leadership, Julie Bishop was considered an outside chance for the leadership. When Brendan Nelson stumbled the following year, Bishop was again floated as a compromise to Turnbull, and when he in turn stumbled Bishop was floated again (under the perfectly fair assumption that Abbott was unelectable). Now she's being floated again. The press gallery simply note this without looking at the pattern:

I am not saying there is likely to be any leadership change in Tony Abbott's first term ... it's not unreasonable to suggest ... anything could happen.

If your idea of political commentary consists of as many weasel words as possible, it's hard to go past Peter Reith.

Reith was himself floated as a potential leader in the late 1990s, believe it or not. This was leadership speculation as its most idle. He neither posed much of a contrast to the then incumbent (Howard) nor did he trouble the then heir-apparent (Costello), but this sort of fluff has kept Peter Hartcher employed. Reith imploded in a piss-blizzard of dishonesty in 2001. Virginia Trioli won a Walkley for asking Reith the sorts of questions that should be standard fare in political interviews. Trioli's employer, the ABC, and the Fairfax press have resuscitated Reith without any contrition or discernible improvement in credibility on his part, which has the effect of diminishing those outlets as reliable sources of information.

The Coalition has not yet elected a female parliamentary leader but the day will come and it would not surprise me if it were Julie Bishop. But it would not be because she is female, nor because someone has written a book of her life story, but because she is a class act.

Peter Reith used to give those sort of tepid, lame endorsements to former Liberal leaders like Andrew Peacock or Alexander Downer. That he would damn future leaders in a similar way is boring, and the whole idea of being a senior political commentator is to call this out. Simply reporting this development as though it were significant is an act of professional failure by the press gallery and the editors who keep them there.

Needless to say, Tony Abbott has set the right tone and provided the leadership that was so needed given the reluctance in Europe and elsewhere.

That kind of crap might play well in the Murdoch rags but it is nonsense. Later in his article Reith praises Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans. Can you imagine Reith finding out that the Netherlands is, in fact, part of Europe?

What is now evident is that Bishop is a totally professional and assured foreign minister. She is already on par internationally with Gareth Evans and, more recently, Alexander Downer.

Not really. Evans dealt with the end of the Cold War. Downer dealt with the tricky diplomacy surrounding the downfall of Suharto in Indonesia and the rise of Timor Leste. Bishop has not dealt with anything on that scale.

The first thing to say is that she has not put a foot wrong from day one.

Garbage. The Chinese have said that she's an idiot. Our relationship with China is terribly important and has been damaged to an extent that she can't fix. It took a lot of work from professional diplomats at the UN to stop them vetoing Bishop's motion. As it happens, the Ukrainians seem to be using the anti-Russian thrust of that motion to push their advantage; it does not quite mean that Bishop's much-vaunted efforts have been in vain, but let's stop going overboard (as it were) by lauding mere competence.

Much of the purple prose about Bishop, Abbott and MH17 has arisen from embarrassment that commentators overestimated how capable this government would be. There was about 48 hours where the government did the job they are paid to do, and that time has passed without any momentum, for the nation or its current government.

She started with more than her fair share of tricky problems but she did a good job managing Australian relations with Indonesia

The second clause in that sentence is flatly untrue.

My spies tell me that it was not the only time she has been forthright in her views. She also has clear views on key topics.

That's nice.

Look, never mind Reith - what Bishop has and what Abbott and Hockey don't is that she can negotiate. This government lacks negotiation skills and it needs them if it is to survive. Bishop demonstrated these as a corporate lawyer. She might not be [$] the wheeler-dealer that Guy Rundle's paywalled article makes Clive Palmer out to be, but she could play that game if Abbott had the wit to put her where she's needed. Palmer takes credit for the government's achievements while avoiding blame and responsibility. Bishop would have dealt with plenty of people like Palmer in Perth. Abbott and Hockey don't know where to start with Palmer, and drastically overestimate their abilities (in one another, and themselves) to cut a deal.

According to Rundle:

Yet somehow, by the end of this sitting fortnight, the only two major multipart pieces of legislation – the carbon tax repeal omnibus and the Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) regulation bill – had gone through in the form [Palmer] wanted.

That isn't quite true. The minister who has handled Palmer best, and granted him fewest concessions, was the minister in charge of FOFA: Matthias Cormann. Like Bishop, Cormann is a Perthling who achieved national prominence by wheeling and dealing with the best of them. The Senate is where this government lives or dies, yet Cormann must defer to two clowns (Senate Leader Eric Abetz and Deputy Senate Leader George Brandis) who are rubbish at negotiating and clear failures at their portfolios.

Cormann's in the wrong house, he has the wrong accent, and he is up to his neck in WA Liberal intra-party shenanigans in ways that Bishop isn't. When the Barnett government implodes Cormann will be trapped in the wreckage, while long-time observers of WA politics will remember how that state's Liberals proposed to draft Julie Bishop from Canberra instead of the exhausted Barnett and flawed Buswell.

Despite the ringing endorsement of the commentators, Bishop, too, is in the wrong place:

• No Australian minister seems to have met with newly-elected Indonesian President Widodo nor any senior member of his team. Same goes for the newly-elected government of India.
• It is unclear why the hell the Australian Education Minister, with a major review of his portfolio due last month, is in Israel - and what this means for our foreign policy.
• Thailand is in political meltdown, a country with tens of thousands of Australians at any one time and the location of one of this country's largest embassies; Australia's position, and its interests, have not been articulated.
• Speaking of political meltdown: Egypt, Peter Greste - and other Australians beside him, no doubt.
  
• The Treasurer has gone to Fiji, a dictatorship which is due to have elections this year - again, Australia's foreign policy is unclear.
• Why our entire foreign policy can only be administered from some dingy hotel in Donetsk or a morgue in Eindhoven is unclear.

Is Julie Bishop really doing a good job as Foreign Minister, or even a competent one? Who would tell us, how would we know? Who else in this government, or in politics outside this government, would do a better job?

Having stumbled into foreign policy, humour me as I blunder into feminism: Bishop is every bit as "deliberately barren" as Julia Gillard was. Much has been made of the heartlessness of Bishop when acting as a lawyer for asbestos companies, playing hardball with plaintiffs dying of asbestos-related illness who were seeking compensation from her client; Turnbull has done that sort of thing all of his life, and people love him for it in ways that don't accrue to Bishop. Qualities of hers will be overlooked and flaws will be emphasised in comparison to Abbott and other men who seek to lead the Liberals, by those (men) who make those decisions. Liberals are still setting up and knocking down the straw figure of quotas - the day when a woman will lead the Liberals is farther off than Reith's glib prediction might indicate.

One of Bishop's flaws/qualities is that she is not now on a plane home vowing to sort out the government, and frightening Hockey, Pyne and others into doing likewise. If she can sort out the UN Security Council then can't she knock some heads together in Cabinet? Can't she tell Abbott to fix things (like the budget, the education and health systems, the upward creep of unemployment and fact that relations with big business are starting to sour despite their success in getting what they wanted, among others) - and that if he doesn't, then she bloody well will? She was there when Turnbull did that to Nelson, and Abbott in turn to Turnbull. Reith gave examples of where she can deliver a kick in the pants, but to be leadership material she needs to kick a few people in the teeth. Reith could only do that to asylum seekers, and couldn't even pull that off.

The coming of the 2016 election will focus a lot of dull Coalition minds who disdained policy content and consistency before the election. Those people don't, and can't, understand that the government's problems now result directly from that disdain, that lack of preparation - as though Textor and the PR dollies knew anything, as though they are any help now. If Bishop walks down the street of a marginal seat with a nervous candidate and people warm to her in ways they don't to Abbott, Hockey, Pyne or the rest of them, perhaps their minds may change ...

... but still, the pattern is clear. Liberals turn to Bishop only when male leaders (Barnett, Howard, Costello, Nelson, Turnbull, and now Abbott) fail. She is the stalking horse, not the thoroughbred; the bridesmaid and never the bride. Reith, Hartcher, and the rest of the press gallery are wrong to tell us to keep our eyes on a dead but shiny lure - the government spends millions on PR dollies but somehow washed-up space-fillers like them distract attention most successfully. The Coalition need Bishop's negotiation skills, desperately, but they are also desperate to hide just how great that need is. The Coalition do not do far-reaching re-thinking while in office, and in any case Bishop is a transactional politician rather than a far-reaching re-thinker. Like Jim Cairns after Cyclone Tracy, she has her moment but then has nowhere to go but down.

Julie Bishop represents a lost opportunity for this government, and that will remain the case after the government loses office. The Liberals, and Bishop, will never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. The first woman to lead the Liberals and become Prime Minister must learn which qualities of Julie Bishop's she is to emulate, which to leave behind.

Capability, decency ... and the Abbott government

And for one crowded hour, you were the only one in the room
And I sailed around all those bumps in the night to your beacon in the gloom
I thought I had found my golden September in the middle of that purple June
But one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin

- Augie March One crowded hour

Traditional media reviews the performance of a new government at the hundred-day mark, and at the first anniversary of its taking office. The hundred-day reviews of the Abbott government catalogued how petty and nasty it was, overlooking the inconvenient truth of the gap between what it said it would do and what it actually is doing. It's too early for the anniversary, but bugger it, let's have the review anyway in light of current circumstances.

The Abbott government was elected in order to:

• Can the carbon pricing mechanism as its first order of business
• Can the mining tax too
• Stop asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat
• Run everything else pretty much as the Gillard and Rudd governments said they were going to, but with a bit of political stability

Since last September the Abbott government has:

• Finally abolished the carbon pricing mechanism, but with a lot of palaver and no credit for having done so
• The mining tax still in place (consider this: the persuasive skills of this government are so bad that they can't even persuade a mining billionaire, who campaigned against the mining tax, to abolish it. It's supposedly a massive impost on our economy, yet ten months later its abolition simply fell off the legislative agenda)
• Still dealing with asylum-seekers coming to Australia by boat, and there's no commentary about on-water matters until there is, and while Morrison is a minister in disarray the press gallery yearn to hear from him
• Botched everything else - education funding, interference in the national broadcasters, welfare, health, has been trashed to the point where you're entitled to believe everything this government says is bullshit; and last but not least
• Suddenly become destabilised. Unlike under the Gillard government, the press gallery is not implying that leadership tensions within the government are at fever pitch and that any moment now, the PM is going to be rolled. This means the government is stable, right? According to Madonna King, the leadership tensions of December 2009 have not been fully resolved, with Hockey, Turnbull and Abbott at weapons drawn like the warehouse scene from Reservoir Dogs. The press gallery had a) no idea about this LIBERAL SPLIT SHOCK or b) covered it up, before King embarrassed them for the higher cause of telling the truth about how we are governed plugging her book.

Given all that, and the feigned surprise of the press gallery about how we've all been had (how could they possibly have known?), the crash of MH17 ten days ago and the Abbott government's initial reaction to it was something of a surprise.

Since the fall of the Fraser government, the Coalition has stuffed its foreign policy with warmed-over US Republican suspicion of the United Nations. Certainly this government's disdain for UN refugee protocols, and its contempt for Rudd's quest for a Security Council seat, is a matter of record. Yet, the government was right to recognise MH17 as a problem requiring concerted international action through established forums; it dispatched Julie Bishop to New York without stating up front exactly what she was supposed to achieve by going there, a breach of its standard practice. This meant anything she did achieve was a bonus.

Bishop got all the credit for that motion before the Security Council from pretty much all of the press gallery. Little credit was given to Australia's permanent legation at the UN, and you had to go to foreign news sites to see the significant input from Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. One day the whole, nuanced tale might come to light, but for the moment it is jarring when the Dutch and others make the big decisions that flow from what, apparently, was an Aussie diplomatic triumph. So much for the first draft of history.

The press gallery has been deaf to the shifting global power relations evident in responses to this incident. Do the press gallery, and the traditional media outlets that employ them (for the moment) not realise that Australians can access foreign news sources?

Bishop couldn't even credit Rudd, Gillard, and Bob Carr for having put Australia onto the Security Council, and apparently she is denying a DFAT briefing to the Opposition (how she howled when she was in the post Plibersek occupies today). The woman who ran down the clock on people dying from asbestos-related diseases is now bending over backwards for victims of a much more abrupt act of negligence. For all her flaws, this could well be her finest moment.

Putin has been a world leader for as long as Abbott and Bishop have been frontbenchers in Australian politics - there are no examples where Putin has caved to world opinion, and Abbott won't and can't change that. People like Campbell Newman or Joe Hockey insisting that Putin might not be welcome at the G20 in Brisbane later this year has the potential to more than negate Bishop's diplomatic achievement.

Russia does not have the ability to project power beyond its borders that the Soviet Union did. In Georgia and Ingushetia we have seen that Putin relies on bands of thugs, with Kalashnikovs in one hand and vodka bottles in the other, roaming around making the territory ungovernable but in some vague way 'loyal' to Moscow. This is how Russia denied an intact Yugoslavia to the West, by arming marauding Serbs and reducing other players in the Balkans to their level. This is what he's doing in eastern Ukraine: given what we know now the shooting down of MH17 makes no sense geopolitically, but only as a horrible error. The audio evidence from intercepted communications, and the sheepishness by the Russian government, point to that conclusion. Abbott was dumb to paint Putin into a corner, this piece was a little too cute in ignoring Abbott, and The Daily Telegraph dumber still for making it appear that Abbott forced concessions from Putin.

All that said, the idea of Tony Abbott being competent and dignified is pretty surprising, and without seeking to verbal him Tim Dunlop takes a similar position.

Imagine there was a vicious dog living in your street, and that pretty much every time you and your neighbours went past it the dog reared up and barked menacingly. Imagine your entreaties to the owners were met with abuse, or jeers at your powerlessness. Now imagine walking by that house and, instead of barking, the dog began singing Donna e mobile pitch-perfect and enunciated beautifully - this is what it's like watching random acts of competence from the Abbott government.

Commentators are expected to have a response to every situation, but sometimes slack-jawed mute amazement is most eloquent.

After the amazement comes one of two reactions: either embracing the new situation, or a retreat into denial. However much I disagree with the findings of so-called "9-11 truthers", I have some sympathy with their inability to credit disaffected Arabs with such an event and their insistence on bigger targets like the Rothschilds or the CIA. However, as I said earlier, Abbott killed his golden moment with overreach.

The idea of sending armed federal police into a conflict zone was dumb, though understandable given the Dutch army's role in Srebrenica. It should have snapped the press gallery out of its "universally agreed" praise and support for Abbott, and reminded even its most consistently worthwhile correspondent that it too can be guilty of overreach:

Death and tragedy reset the national political conversation.

Tingle refers to the all-too-brief lull following the death of John Gillard and the low "died of shame" attacks from Alan Jones, Joe Hockey, and Tony Abbott against his daughter. Does this mean Australian politics - and the reporting thereof - will sink to a new low over coming days?

There is a restraint in what issues journalists ask questions about. A sudden observance of appropriateness rules.

Not really. Tingle's press gallery colleagues speculate whether MH17 (and the unqualified press gallery praise for Abbott's response) will give Abbott a "poll bounce", even while the dead passengers remain unburied. This is ghoulishly indecent and reflects poorly on all members of the gallery, and their editors, lowering their behaviour to that of the Murdoch journalist who rifled through passenger luggage spread across the steppes because they just can't help it. It negates whatever propriety Abbott and Bishop showed in the hours after the incident.

So whatever else is said about MH17, it stopped the noise generated by the Senate and Clive Palmer in its tracks.

It just did the same thing in a different form. The "noise generated by the Senate and Clive Palmer" was all about applying pressure to implement the government's agenda, to save an already failing government from itself. By contrast, the unstinting praise surrounding Abbott's initial response to MH17 was all about applying pressure to implement the government's agenda, to save an already failing government from itself.

Context is also playing a grotesque game with the portrait of Joe Hockey painted in Madonna King’s new book Hockey: Not Your Average Joe.

See above - the idea that this government, for all its shortcomings, presents a unified front is no longer true, and given the effect that polls have in Canberra the centripetal pressures on this government will only increase. Abbott, Hockey, and Turnbull are each diminished. None has any real incentive to pull together for any cause wider than themselves. Ten months after it was elected to supposedly address a budget emergency, no budget has been passed, and even the crisis has evaporated.

Tingle goes on to describe a critique of health policy by the AMA, but such criticisms were eminently foreseeable after years of policy dereliction from Peter Dutton (now Health Minister, Dutton had been Health spokesman for most of the Coalition's time in opposition; he has apparently done no policy work to speak of, despite its significance to the national budget and political sensitivities, leaving himself and the government open to criticism long before Owler's speech. You want context? That's context).

It seems 'context' is the press gallery's way of asserting that its interpretation of events is the only possible interpretation, a point echoed feebly by Annabel Crabb and Murdoch pissboy and propagandist Simon Benson:

What Abbott has exposed this week more than anything is the complete vacuum of leadership Australia had been living under in the six years of Labor government.

Rudd, Gillard, Combet - and yes, Shorten - any of them would have done what Abbott did, without the overreach and without having to fend off frantic attention-seeking behaviour from Tony Abbott (and Simon Benson). The rest of Benson's piece, and his body of work more generally, might fairly be described as crap.

The competence and decorum shown by the Abbott government was shown to be an aberration, reverting as it is to incompetent policy and indecorous politics. Those of us who (generally) aren't impressed by this government can draw no vindication as there is no safe, capable, real alternative. The adults boxed Abbott in to accepting things like UN Security Council resolutions, and there is some hope that may yet be replicated in health policy.

This government can only be rendered competent when its other sneaky, half-baked alternatives are firmly closed off. The press gallery are not yet awake to this, and may never be - they are waiting pointlessly but earnestly for a "poll bounce", a return to their 'golden September' of last year. The polls are, as ever, beside the point. All we should reasonably foresee from recent developments is "the tenderness of patient minds/ And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds".

Who your mates are

Why have an epilogue when you can have some context? Peter Hartcher has been political and international editor at The Sydney Morning Herald for over a decade. He was starting to get bored with the role when Kevin Rudd began using foreign policy to raise his profile; Hartcher became Rudd's press spokesperson, which paid off for Hartcher when Rudd became Prime Minister in 2007 and continued after he lost the job three years later. Labor people with a gripe about Gillard went to Hartcher first; Labor people seeking to promote the Gillard government were wasting their time; Liberals had written Hartcher off since his boy became Labor leader in 2006.

When Rudd became Prime Minister again last year, Hartcher was vindicated. The rest of the media had promised that Labor would get better coverage if they dumped Gillard for Rudd, then turned on him because ha ha too late and it was Abbott who could do no wrong. After the Abbott-Rudd debate in 2013 Hartcher turned on Rudd but the Liberals gave him all the respect due to a sated tick that has dropped off its host. He seems to have settled on Hockey but it is unclear to what extent this is reciprocated.

Here Hartcher is trying to show that he's Still Got It when it comes to The Big Geopolitical Vision, and splicing that into the daily grind of Canberra machinations.

The Chinese government was unhappy with Australia's new Prime Minister ... A senior Chinese official privately asked Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop for an explanation in Canberra in November. She disarmed the Chinese by laughing it off: "Tony does that all the time in cabinet. He puts his arm around everyone, everyone's his mate, everyone's his best friend."

When everyone is your best friend, no one is your best friend. It was a clever way of deflecting the protest that lurked behind the question.

It would have been clever had it worked. There is no evidence that it has. Hartcher should have looked for that, rather than talked up Julie Bishop.

So the Abbott government so far has set out two different hierarchies for Australia's foreign relations, and China isn't in top spot in either.

From the mid-1960s until about five years ago, Japan was our largest trading partner. Tokyo was never in top spot in Australia's foreign policy hierarchy for any Australian government during that time. He doesn't really explain what such a ranking might entail.

A new Labor senator looking to make a name for himself in foreign affairs, Sam Dastyari, has picked up on this.

What's happened here is that Dastyari has picked up on Hartcher. Any tidbits on Labor from hereon in will come from Dastyari, any "pragmatic assessments on the state of Labor" will basically be whatever Dastyari is trying to get across.

Dastyari, formerly the general secretary of the NSW Labor Party, sees a troubling trend, a turn away from the great rising power.

China dominated the world economy till about 1840. Just as the Middle Kingdom returns to the centre of world power, is Australia about to marginalise itself?

Dastyari is following the Rudd playbook to the letter. What a smart guy! If you want someone to suck up to powerful people, Sam's your man and so is Peter: to quote from Humphrey Bogart, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

I wonder if Sam has an opinion on President Obama meeting with the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama certainly has lots to say about empty vessels with important-sounding titles, like Sam and Peter. I don't expect either of them will be commenting on that.

Read the second sentence in the second line of that quote immediately above: it should be the central question of Hartcher's article, with the performance of both the incumbent and the alternative government judged against it.

Japan's provocative act was when its Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made an official visit to pay his respects to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine a month later.

Again, this doesn't sound very dangerous, but it inflamed opinion in Beijing and Seoul because it is the official shrine to Japan's war dead, including the war criminals who led Japan's invasions of China and South Korea.

Australia's best friend wouldn't go anywhere near Yasukuni.

Hideki Tojo, who led Japan during World War II, is entombed and honoured at that shrine even though he never made it to Darwin. So are a number of war criminals directly responsible for the abuse of Australian prisoners-of-war. A train carriage from the Thai-Burma railway is exhibited at the site as a triumph of Japanese engineering and infrastructure-building for an ungrateful Asia. Every time a Japanese politician plays to that country's more ignorant and xenophobic voters by going to Yakusuni, it is a big fuck-you to Australian war dead, Australian veterans, and Australians generally.

When you consider that the family of Shinzo Abe (Japan's current Prime Minister) benefited economically during the 1940s from indentured labour by Australian prisoners-of-war. That Abe went to Yakusini on the eve of an official visit from his Australian counterpart (and a few weeks before this country commemorates its war veterans), the sheer depth and breadth of Abe's diplomatic and ethical breach should be apparent.

As a former Herald correspondent in Tokyo, Hartcher should know this. He should report on it. His editors should call him on this.

In calling Japan "Australia's best friend in Asia", Abbott was merely repeating a formula that John Howard used when he was prime minister. Australia's ties with Beijing survived and thrived.

Bishop's point that the overall economic relationship with the US, including investment, makes the US, not China, Australia's economic best friend, may be cute but it's not wrong.

And Dastyari is wrong to claim her statement is in any way "at the expense" of relations with China.

As Howard demonstrated, and as Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard also demonstrated, it's entirely possible to improve relations with all the great powers at once.

Times have changed.

The relationship between China and Japan is more fraught than it was under Howard, Rudd, or Gillard. The incumbent government, the alternative government, and journalists who report on government, should all be alert to that.

Hartcher should know this. He should report current events in light of broader developments. What he is doing instead is buttering up the incumbent Australian government in order to keep his job. He is playing his employers, and readers, for mugs.

In fact, it would be a betrayal of the national interest not to. And this is exactly what Abbott will seek to do as he embarks on the three-nation trip to the region he announced on Monday.

He will travel to China, Japan and South Korea.

Now there comes the question as to the difference between what Abbott seeks to do, and what he does.

This is where we need an experienced political observer; someone who's been around Canberra, knows how it works.

Relations with all three are in solid shape.

Bullshit. The relationship with China has scarcely been worse since the relationship commenced in the 1970s. Note the laughable headline and rest of the content on this paywalled article by Hartcher's more reliable Fairfax colleagues.

Abbott's government has already concluded a free-trade agreement with one of these three, South Korea, and is making good progress on the other two.

It didn't have time to stuff up the work done by previous governments. There is no progress to speak of toward a trade deal with China, apart from the say-so of Abbott and his staff. The idea of a free trade deal with Japan has made no progress since 1957. As far as the governments of China and Japan are concerned, no progress has been made, and recent comments by the Chinese government have been clear that they do not regard a China-Australia trade deal as a priority (especially given Australia's involvement in the TPP process).

Again: Hartcher should know that, and report on it.

China has moved beyond Bishop's rebuke, or any of the other perceived Abbott government slights, as all countries do when they are getting on with the big issues.

The People's Republic of China does not suffer rebukes, nor girlish laughter and fobbing-off. True, Australia's relationship with China isn't as bad as that of Japan, but the fact that it is could be worse does not mean that it is as good as it can be. It is certainly not better than it had been under each of Abbott's three predecessors, or even as good.

Hartcher should know this. He is wrong to misrepresent the state of our foreign relations in this way.

The whole concept of a "zero sum" in Australia's world affairs, where progress with one country can only happen at the expense of another, is sandbox stuff.

Mostly this is true, but not always. It may not be true now, or into the foreseeable future.

In our first decade as a nation, Australian politicians maintained that we could have equally good relations with Britain, then the world's leading power, and Germany, the rising economic powerhouse of the day. They were mostly right, but it was silly to dismiss the prospect of "zero sum" just as Hartcher is doing now.

Now we are in a time of disequilibrium among the major powers in our region, and in the world. Hartcher's blithe assurances are not soundly based on anything but precedent for a time that has now passed.

The fact that gaffes by Bishop and Abbott haven't caused lasting damage is beside the point. The fact is they shouldn't have been made. We* put those people into office on the basis of inadequate information by Peter Hartcher and his ilk, who should have used their knowledge of politics and international affairs to tell us what it takes to represent Australian interests internationally and then measure the political alternatives against that. What Hartcher has done is sucked up to Bishop and Dastyari for his own sakes, and theirs.

The trade negotiations with China and Japan both appear to have gained impetus from the success of the deal with South Korea.

Based on what? To give one example, the share of the Australian car market for Japanese manufacturers has nowhere to go but down as a result of this deal with a competitor they don't really respect.

As for publicly ranking countries, Dastyari is right. It's gratuitous and juvenile.

But if the Labor Party detects an Abbott "pivot" away from China, it's more upset about it than Beijing itself.

This is more silly, straw-man stuff. Dastyari isn't the Labor spokesperson on foreign affairs. It is silly for the incumbent to slap a powerful country across the face as often as the Abbott government has and does. This isn't to say that it hurts that powerful country, but it's generally poor form on Abbott's part and on the part of Bishop, whose line is better expressed as: we have to put up with Tony being Tony, so you do too.

Labor should wish Abbott a successful trip. In the national interest.

Labor should be prepared for Abbott's foreign policy adventures not to go well, to bring this to public attention, and to develop foreign policy responses that might restore China-Australia relations (and our relations with the US, Japan, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and other countries) to a warm and productive state. That's what Labor should do, in the national interest.

You don't have to do much to be on good terms with the UK and New Zealand, our only "solid" relationships under this government.

Yes, Labor are biased against Abbott. They will give him little or no credit for any successes he may have, while highlighting the shortcomings and failures of the incumbents. This does not put Hartcher in a position where he must lecture them on what foreign policy is or should be. His assessments on the current state of foreign policy (or relationship with China is great! Couldn't be better! Go Tony go!) are poor, or at best suspect. Why a major newspaper represents the work of a cheerleader more highly than is appropriate is a matter of great misfortune, for the once-proud masthead itself, and for the public debate that is polluted by this sort of thing.

Peter Hartcher has form for insisting that political context is whatever he says it is. Now that we have established that context is other than what he says it is, or the opposite of what he says it is. The value of Peter Hartcher's reporting, his title and the employer who bestowed it, is less than each might appear. Like Kim Beazley or Andrew Peacock, Hartcher has gone straight from being Tomorrow's Man to Yesterday's Man with no interval of attainment, only promise unfulfilled.

What we need is someone who'll tell us what is going on, so we can decide how and by whom we will best be governed. What we've got in Peter Hartcher is someone who'll only tell us what will make us think well of a small number of people who also think well of him.

Scott Morrison should be sacked

... but he won't be, and that's why the Abbott government is pretty much done for.

It is not OK to conduct military incursions into other countries' territories. It has never been OK. Morrison promised never to comment on operational matters, but he had to comment on these 'repeated incursions' before the full details came from Indonesia, or from some source other than his own mouth.

All the PR smarties tell you that if you have bad news, get it out early and get it out yourself. Some news, however, goes beyond mere 'bad news' or even a misunderstanding. Military incursions into other countries' territories is in this category.

The other category error that Morrison made was to blame the Navy, as though it blundered into Indonesian waters:

It was brought to my attention at just after 4.00pm Wednesday that Border Protection Command assets had, in the conduct of maritime operations associated with Operation Sovereign Borders, inadvertently entered Indonesian territorial waters on several occasions, in breach of Australian Government policy.

I should stress that this occurred unintentionally and without knowledge or sanction by the Australian Government.

It strains credibility that the Navy veered off course and did not realise its vessels were in Indonesian waters. The Navy sent its vessels where government told them to go, and did what government told them to do. It is not OK to blame the military for government policy blunders, and ultimately such a tactic will work against the government rather than the military.

From now on people in the military are more likely to leak against this government. People in the military are more likely to have credibility that politicians lack. Any difference of opinion between a politician and the military will be resolved in favour of the military (with the possible exception of bullying allegations). When you consider that military personnel vote Coalition more than any other occupational grouping, this is a political own-goal as well as a governmental one.

Australia needs a long-term relationship with Indonesia more than it needs this or that lot of politicians in government. That relationship will change as Indonesia grows in economic and political power. A big part of Australia's economic growth prospects lie in our increasing engagement with Indonesia. This government has no capacity for improving relations with Indonesia. Even after this government loses office, the silly-buggers of the past four months will be hard to live down.

Almost every Prime Minister in Australia's history has been confronted with the prospect of politicising the military. On almost every occasion, they have flinched and backed down from doing that; indeed, the Coalition went too far in not standing up for service personnel returning from Vietnam and giving them fewer benefits than returnees from World War II got from the cash-strapped Chifley and Menzies governments.

Veterans from Afghanistan will get fewer benefits still, and naval personnel injured at sea while intercepting boats will get less than that. This is worth remembering when watching Abbott and his ministers proclaim themselves strong supporters of the military, and when the press gallery simply pass on words and images to that effect without comment or qualification.

If Howard had been Prime Minister, he would now be in Jakarta apologising, particularly to Mrs Yudhuyono. His smarter advisors would be casting around for someone with the same credentials with Indonesia that Dr Marty Natalegawa (PhD, ANU) and Dewi Fortuna Anwar (MA, Monash) have with this country. He would realise that a strong relationship with Indonesia is important and that anyone who had to go to maintain that would go.

Peter Reith lied about the military to advance the political prospects of the then government, and his own career. He left politics abruptly, suggesting that Howard basically lost confidence in him. Today, in the emerging Fairfax tradition of commissioning jowl-wobbling outrage from grumpy old farts as clickbait, he can make catty remarks about the Liberal Party presidency but he has little to offer (either from his own mouth or as an example) about how an elected government can and should relate to the country's armed forces as part of governing. Always be suspicious when a media tart goes to ground.

Peter Reith was once regarded by inside-Canberra sages as a potential future leader (while Reith has gone, many of said sages are still there). Senator Ian Campbell was pretty highly regarded when Howard sacked him for, um, whatever he sacked him for. David Jull was highly regarded within the Australian tourism industry, as Morrison was. None of the inside-Canberra reasons why Morrison is Too Big To Sack stand up.

The Liberal Party is organised around strong leaders; Labor has institutional checks and balances, but the Liberals are all about the Fuehrerprinzip. The Nationals can get a look-in when they bring quality to the table, as they did in the '70s with Peter Nixon and Ian Sinclair, but mostly they are passengers in a Coalition government.

Abbott is a weak Prime Minister: weak on ideas, weak on execution, weak on resolving conflict, weak on insisting that his team deliver more and better. The fact that he talks slowly is almost beside the point because his words seem to carry no weight. Because the press gallery are mugs, they agreed that his strutting around and declarative statements would make him a strong leader, and they are puzzled that the evidence before them contradicts their convictions. By this point in her Prime Ministership, Julia Gillard was pretty much written off by the press gallery.

What, then, should Abbott do?

Abbott isn't going to get rid of himself, though perhaps he should. When he was in South Africa, the big decisions on Holden and Graincorp were taken in his absence. He can commentate on the cricket, but not apparently on incursions into Indonesian waters. When the big decisions have to be taken, he's not exactly stamping his authority and nor is he conferring to find workable solutions. He's a passenger in his own government, not the pilot or even the navigator.

Getting rid of Bishop would be too hard. She would become a lightning rod for everyone who has their doubts about Abbott. We could end up with an unmarried woman who was a former law-firm partner in the Lodge with her male partner, and my goodness we can't have that.

Getting rid of "three star" General Angus Campbell would be too soft. Campbell was always human window-dressing and nothing would be achieved in scapegoating him, except to antagonise the armed forces still further.

Abbott hasn't thought through the implications of appointing Peter Cosgrove as Governor-General for our relationship with Indonesia. After hyping Cosgrove so much Abbott can't afford not to appoint him, as appointing anyone else would look like a slap in the face to a man widely admired in this country.

Getting rid of Morrison would be just right. The longer Morrison stays in office, the clearer it is that Abbott is not really sorry for the incursions, and that the whole policy of patronising Indonesia like we do Vanuatu or New Zealand will continue. Within the Liberal Party, nobody trusts Morrison: the right hate him because they regard him as a smarmy, self-promoting turd, while their opponents on the lesser right know him to be a smarmy, self-promoting turd. Right now he's doing nothing to turn around dicey polling numbers, but if he backs down altogether and starts weeping for the wretched cast upon the waters he is gone.

Like Kevin Rudd on 'the greatest moral challenge of our time', Morrison is finished no matter what he does. He isn't big enough to reinvent himself and spring clear of this current imbroglio, which is why he can't really 'resign' in any meaningful sense. He's just treading water and getting away with it. If you're the head of this government and you don't want the whole government to be similarly stuck, then you have no choice but to cut him loose and reframe the debate.

Mind you, Tony Abbott isn't one for public debate. He's never seen any good thing arise from public debate. Since he was at university, Tony Abbott aligned himself with powerful people and articulated their interests. The Catholic church and the monarchy are not democratic institutions, and neither is the Liberal Party in any real sense. As long as he's in with the decision-makers, he's happy to let what he regards as idle chit-chat run and run - but when the impressions of this government are so fluid and when simple declarative statements are contradicted by observable facts, he runs the risk that his own statements will be regarded as just more idle chit-chat, rather than the desired effect of Shut Up And Listen This Is Your Prime Minister Speaking.

It would be surprising, but not beyond the realms of possibility, for the Commission of Audit to decide that onshore processing is more cost-effective than Nauru or Manus Island. In the same way that only Richard Nixon could go to "Red China" without being red-baited by Richard Nixon, Tony Abbott could come to welcome boat-borne refugees without any of your "pick up the phone!" nonsense - but then, for the first time in his life, he would have to run a positive campaign and become a bigger person than he is. If you still believe that's possible, read this. Fat chance - not even with the considerable power of the office that he currently occupies.