Flogging a Trojan horse

Press gallery journalists continue to assert that their years of experience are valuable, and that they draw on it to the benefit of readers. It should be valuable - but the actual value of press gallery experience is one of those PolSci101 nostrums that vanishes upon closer inspection. There is simply no evidence to support it. The press gallery regularly finds itself in positions where they don't understand what is going on with people and events they have supposedly been observing closely, and blame others for their confusion. Now is one such time.

There are a number of issues here - the supposed resurgence of the Liberal right, etc., - normally I would deal with all those issues in a book-length blog post. I'll deal with that stuff as time permits over the next few days. Let's start with Turnbull and the republic.

Consistency is turmoil

On the evening of Saturday 6 November 1999 it became clear: the referendum for a republic held earlier that day was heading for defeat. Malcolm Turnbull, the former head of the Australian Republican Movement, declared the question of a republic was over for a generation - possibly not to be revisited until after Queen Elizabeth II had died.

When he ran for Liberal preselection in 2003-04, Liberals were concerned Turnbull would revisit the republic again. He reiterated that the question of a republic was over for a generation - possibly not to be revisited until after Queen Elizabeth II had died.

When he became Opposition Leader in 2008, Turnbull said that the question of a republic was over for a generation - possibly not to be revisited until after Queen Elizabeth II had died.

In January 2016, he said once again that the question of a republic was over for a generation - possibly not to be revisited until after Queen Elizabeth II had died. The Daily Telegraph was so desperate for a front page (no I won't link to it) that it presented a story almost two decades old as some hot new please-please-buy-the-paper development.

There was no intervening moment over that period where Turnbull lapsed back into revving up the republic. It looks uncannily like a consistent position on Turnbull's part.

It also looks consistent with polling - and press gallery journalists love polling. Polls in 1999 showed the referendum was bound for defeat; regular readers of this blog will not be surprised that I voted for it. Polling since then has not shown dramatic spikes in support for a republic, not even after last year's knighthood for Prince Phillip.

Experienced press gallery journalists regard Turnbull's position on the republic as a backflip, evidence of turmoil within the government. No, me neither.

Under traditional understandings of what journalism is, you'd expect journalists to report Turnbull's position as no change. Even excitable outlets like The Daily Telegraph would normally regard this sort of thing as a non-story: on par with the sun rising in the east, the Pope attending Roman Catholic Mass, bears defecating in the woods, EXCLUSIVE NUDE PIX: RANDY RUPE'S NEW BLONDE etc.

What the Australian Republican Movement learned from Turnbull and 1999

Nothing. Skip to the next subheading if you like.

The current practice of the Australian Republican Movement confirms the wisdom of Turnbull's position. They have a passionate advocate in Peter FitzSimons, who is all over the broadcast media like a hospice blanket (fewer and fewer readers, listeners, and viewers tap into the broadcast media despite the population growing and ageing since 1999).

They are courting celebrity endorsements, which count for very little. After half a century of advertising politics as another commodity, we can see that celebrity endorsements on national issues do nothing for either the endorser or the endorsee. Until a few weeks ago, you could imagine the ARM striving to secure endorsement from clean-cut and highly regarded players of popular sports: like, say, Jobe Watson or Mitchell Pearce.

They argue that a minimalist position on a republic would both change the country very little, yet also change it a lot; this places it alongside other suspicion-inducing, self-defeating political promises.

They present a republic as utterly disconnected from national issues like:

• structural reform of different levels of government, and
• Indigenous land issues that arose from the High Court's judgments on Mabo and Wik and have not, despite Tim Fischer's buckets, been extinguished; and
• Half-hearted/baked alternative flags.

These are important issues (the latter one less so - until a great design changes everything, as with Canada in 1967) and can't be wished away. Clearly, they can't work with republic to produce the kind of coherent reform vision hankered for by commentators beyond the press gallery.

When state and territory leaders endorsed a republic recently it was very much not a triumph for the ARM, nor for a republic. It demonstrated that supposedly practical politicians had taken their eyes off the ball, and they better get back to work soon if they know what's good for them.

A politician that can tackle those issues as part of a coherent role is the sort of leader who can bring about a republic. Placing the republic first and insisting other reforms must work around it is arse-about. Turnbull is right to recognise that (insofar as he does).

The Australian Republican Movement today is repeating most of its mistakes from the late 1990s, even with (bipartsan! Lovely policy-goodness bipartisan!) political leadership both more potentially supportive and less wily than John Howard. I set a low bar for the ARM and FitzSimons has limboed under it. You can hope for a republic but reject the ARM in the same way people believe in God while rejecting institutional religiosity.

Turnbull would be a fool to throw in his lot with such people - which may explain why he hasn't.

The real story

Journalists, and Turnbull's enemies within the Liberal Party, insist that his consistent position on a republic is some sort of ruse. They insist their fevered imaginings of Turnbull's republican fifth column are "the real story". Turnbull's Prime Ministership definitely isn't a Trojan horse of republicanism, but neither is it a dead horse. Good journalism should allow for complexity; but then good journalism could not be more absent from the press gallery if it were illegal.

Where imaginings become "the real story" and demonstrable fact is ignored, both politics and journalism suffers.

You might say that politics is a realm where black becomes white, and yes I've read Hunter S. Thompson too. If you are representing black as white then either you don't understand what black or white are, or you're covering up for those with an interest in the difference remaining obscured - or both. Either way, you're so much less of the experienced and capable press gallery journalist you might assume yourself to be.

Debates and outcomes

And we'll paint by numbers 'til something sticks
And I don't mind doing it for the kids
(So come on) jump on board
Take a ride (yeah)
(You'll be doin' it all right)
Jump on board feel the high
'Cause the kids are alright

- Kylie Minogue and Robbie Williams Kids

Not far from where I live is a bend on the Parramatta River called Kissing Point. You might think it's called that because the outlook shimmers prettily in the moonlight, because it's secluded without being remote, and is therefore a perfect place for young lovers to go for a pash without being interrupted. It is, but that isn't why Kissing Point is so called.

The kissing-point is a nautical term for the furthest point up a river that an ocean-going ship can go. Ships that are big enough to withstand the big waves of the open ocean can go varying distances from the open sea up a particular river. On mighty rivers like the Yangzi or the Amazon, ships can travel hundreds of kilometres before hitting the kissing-point. On the Parramatta River, the kissing-point is less than thirty kilometres from the river's mouth at the Heads of Sydney Harbour.

Debates over Australia's head of state and our flag are a bit like nautical processions up the river. They start off with great pomp and splendour, cheered on by the city's great and good from their glass-fronted balconies; then they start having to weave and dodge around smaller craft as the Harbour narrows into a river, before foundering at - or turning back ahead of - the kissing-point.

What is the kissing-point in our national debates about symbolism? The nation grudgingly accepts the political class and places public resources at their mercy, but baulks at handing over its symbols to them.

This is what Peter FitzSimons and Tim Mayfield miss in their attempts to revive old debates and anticipate old objections.

First step: the way that article is set out, you could be forgiven for thinking Mayfield is just another Guardian Australia journalist. He isn't: he's the Director of the Australian Republican Movement, which isn't disclosed in that article as I write this.

Second: FitzSimons was appointed to his role, not elected from a wide range of candidates in a vigorous campaign among the people. A supposedly democratic movement that calls for popular input but seeks to manage the outcome? Sounds like one of the major political parties, whose social base is small and getting smaller.

Peter FitzSimons is arguably Australia’s king of Twitter ...

So is anyone, really, given that medium's democratic nature.

You'll note, as I have, that FitzSimons uses social media to shout out to political-class mates like Joe Hockey and Christopher Pyne. How is he going to break it to them that he is out to rock their world? Easy: he isn't. Neither the head of state nor the flag will undergo any change of which they do not approve. Indeed, any such change would be in their gift, their plaything if you will:

FitzSimons said he favoured keeping the current system where the prime minister chose the governor general, but that the choice should not require the assent of Buckingham Palace.

There are good arguments for and against that position, but they aren't being made here.

Days after the Speaker of the House of Representatives has presented herself as proof, yet again, that the Age of Entitlement is not over, it is the wrong time to assert that a new high office should be created and handed over to the political class. This is not to say that political-class appointees are absent from the Governor-Generalcy - they aren't, but appointees are required to distance themselves from the political class in a way that isn't obvious with a presidency.

In 1999 people saw Malcolm Turnbull, with his blithe exterior barely concealing a control-freak modus operandi learned at the feet of Kerry Packer and Neville Wran, making it easy for his opponents to make a case against a politicians' republic. Turnbull said that very little would change under the model he proposed, while at the same time a great deal would change.

What Turnbull saw as a selling point was in fact the fatal flaw of his proposal, all the trivia and administrative adjustment of a symbolic change without any substantive effect. Government departments merge, demerge, and change their names and logos regularly, but these changes are not put to a public vote: if they were, they might suffer the same fate as the 1999 republic.

Turnbull got the message that if he wanted to go into politics, he couldn't just glide into the top job but had to join a party, win a seat, etc.

FitzSimons appears to be offering something similar to Turnbull: happy to court popular support but not happy to let outcomes elude his grasp. Perhaps this is why Mayfield's piece goes heavy on FitzSimons' yarn-spinning and up-the-guts rugby abilities (journalists hailed Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey, and Senator Glenn Lazarus for similar biff-and-barge qualities, which haven't necessarily translated well to public debate).

The idea that we might build a social movement big enough to change the environment in which the political class operates without them noticing or participating is rubbish, and most people realise this. Let's look to other public debates to see how a republic might fare.

Four months ago, the Treasurer promised us a genuine, sensible and mature debate on tax reform. He and the Prime Minister then set about ruling out taxes that weren't up for discussion, jumping all over the very spectre of a carbon tax for good measure. We have now arrived at a point where:

• the only tax open for discussion is the regressive GST, and
• against all evidence, ACOSS and the BCA still believe that broader tax reform is possible; and
• nope, that's it.

Hockey launched his debate at ACOSS in March, but four months later the same organisation has pretty much written him off. The BCA accepted Liberal assurances that they would implement their agenda so long as they kept quiet about it before the election, and had BCA President Tony Shepherd usher it in with his Commission of Audit - but this didn't work either. The BCA lacks even the remnants of a community-based organisation that the Liberal Party has, and can't convincingly run candidates for office like the union movement does through the ALP.

The press gallery dares not report that the BCA has lost confidence in the Liberal Party, a politically seismic event that would lead to more independent politicians and place public debate further beyond the BCA's capacity for influence.

Mayfield claims around 50% of voters support a republic in general terms. At least that amount support same-sex marriage, an issue stymied by the political class to the point where it brings on learned helplessness.

The idea that debates about national symbolism distract from bread-and-butter issues is palpably false where it is so clear that a focus on those issues yields such poor results.

FitzSimons still appears to be a director of Ausflag, which expands the scope of the change he seeks to effect to our national symbols. Conventional media management practice suggests that the scope of an issue for public debate should be narrowed rather than expanded; Turnbull was careful to separate the republic from the flag but FitzSimons has not.

Nothing will kill public affection for the current Blue Ensign flag faster than Tony Abbott's use of multiple flags as backdrops for security announcements, or galoots wearing them as capes.

FitzSimons does not appear to be a director of the other great symbolic issue of our time, recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders within the Constitution and removal of racially discriminatory passages within it. This issue - and the practicalities of what such recognition might mean - is part of Australia's national identity as much as the flag or the head of state. Again, broadening the scope of debate will appal message-control freaks; either the issue must be embraced by republicans and flag-changers, or abandoned as it was in 1999.

The one thing we need to hear from proponents of a republic - and by "we", I mean both supporters of a republic (in whatever form) as well as opponents of any form - is what they have learned from 1999. To reference one of FitzSimon's books: we need the Knight Commander Monash of Le Hamel, not the duffer in the gully at Gallipoli. FitzSimons appears to have learned nothing from 1999 while opening more fronts for debate than he can possibly handle. 1999 made second-rate operators like Sophie Mirabella and Tony Abbott look like tactical geniuses.

We have a press gallery, and a wider system of news/current affairs reporting in our broadcast media, that can only report on decisions that have been taken (and not even do that well). They are easily fobbed off when questioning politicians. Over the past ten years they have assured us of the suitability of politicians for high office who are manifestly not suited for responsible office at all. They have no ability to involve people in those decisions that are yet to be taken. The broadcast media is limited and exclusive. FitzSimons - an employee of a broadcast-media organisation - is starting from the wrong place to launch a far-reaching and inclusive movement.

Schoolchildren are taught to debate issues without any expectation that those debates will change the issues under debate. Political debates are like those school debates, taking time and resources but resolving nothing, giving the impression that real decisions are made elsewhere. When John Howard said that he was "happy to have the debate" on an issue, it meant his mind was made up and that he could engage in pointless banter until his opponents gave up.

Quite why FitzSimons is, as Mayfield insists, the man to inspire the Youth Of Today toward a republic is unclear. He may well wish to inspire his own children, but apart from that his youth appeal is not as obvious as he might insist (here is the segue to the quote at the top of this post, incase you missed it). After 1999 republicans seemed to agree that their cause should wait, like a watchful vulture on a dead tree, until Queen Elizabeth II has died; that commitment appears to have been abandoned, but again it is not clear why.

A far-reaching public debate - one that might change the way media and the political class operate - is both what the country needs, and the outcome least likely. Far easier for them to burn FitzSimons, to portray him as some unfocused nutter, and reduce him to an irrelevant caricature of his rugby and his yarns ("Did you hear the one about the winger in the lineout? ... I gotta million of 'em!").

The very idea that we might have a sensible and wide-ranging discussion on national symbolism is beyond wrong, it's absurd. Our public debate is so inadequate, and the proponents of change appear to have learned so little from earlier debacles. They arrogantly underestimate the amount of thought necessary to build a wide-ranging, inclusive movement of people with both goodwill and focus. Peter FitzSimons is not the person to lead his organisation, nor the nation, toward a new system of government that might be better than the one we have.

The clearest and best example of how to conduct a wide-ranging, complex, and mature debate that involves everyone - politicians and journalists, policy wonks and frontline workers and even victims - is the debate around domestic/family violence. Leaders of the debate, like Rosie Batty, are prominent without being grandstanding. They can handle themselves in media interviews without over-egging the "importance" of either broadcast or social media in themselves. They bring politicians with them while making it clear they may not take credit or use the issue to score points.

The broadcast media's traditional tools of hype, cliche, and bullshit have been applied sparingly to coverage of this debate. Mercifully, nobody asks whether Rosie Batty has "won the night" or "had a good week", is she "feuding" with other stakeholders, or who she is wearing. This debate, the media, and the nation - from the highest offices of state to the poorest individuals who've just been abused by members of their household - are better for this absence of media business-as-usual. They can so take serious issues seriously. They should do it more often.

Earning your pineapple

As I've said before, when Tony Abbott gets into trouble he will reach out to his base on the far right, and that's why he offered Prince Phillip the knighthood.

Only right-wingers can even discern what Prince Phillip's service to Australia has been.

When he married the then Princess Elizabeth in 1947 the State of Queensland presented 500 cans of pineapple to the happy couple. They must have assumed they were like other war-battered Poms, in need of food aid but reluctant to fork out £10 to come over and work for it. The medallions of the different levels in the Order of Australia look a bit like thin cross-sections of pineapple.

She has earned her pineapple, or at least been gracious about it - but has he? To ask such a question is to demand accountability, and since when has Tony Abbott been about accountability (oh, you thought because he asked all those questions in opposition ...)?

The award was designed to get lefties upset, as Adam Brereton notes, and only when lefties are upset do people like Tony Abbott know who they are and what they're about.

Abbott's natural base consists of reactionaries, people who define themselves by what they're against. They have no ability to distinguish between a passing fad and a substantial shift. They will hunt for evidence to support clean coal or wind turbine syndrome, but ignore that supporting climate change or vaccinations.

This is why Abbott is rubbish at the normal daily tasks of being Prime Minister, announcing this and opening that in the name of slow and steady progress. It's as though all these things happen in the normal course of government without intervention from people like him, taunting lefties and rewarding supporters.

Insofar as the Abbott government even does policy development, here's how it works:

• Should we lock up asylum-seekers? There are plenty of conservative reasons not to do so, but does locking them up upset lefties? Therefore, asylum-seekers get locked up.
• Should we protest Australian citizens being executed, or locked up without charge, under foreign judicial systems? There are plenty of conservative reasons to go through the correct channels of registering a protest (and maybe even securing a reprieve), but does this upset lefties? Therefore, Australian citizens get executed or detained without charge.
• Should we increase taxes on those who benefit most from government decisions, in the same way that political parties extract donations from companies who benefit from those decisions? Again, what upsets lefties - placing the burden on working people, cutting penalty rates and pensions - so that's what happens.
• Should we treat disabled Australians as full citizens, as envisaged under the NDIS? There are plenty of conservative reasons to do so (standing on one's own two feet, as it were, not to mention cost savings) - but I ask you, does abolishing support for disabled people upset lefties? Senator Fifield's assurances that the government is committed to the NDIS should be seen in that light.
• Some people think Senator Eric Abetz is politically suicidal by seeking to alter the workplace relations system - but he sure is sticking it up those lefties!

Lefties propose and conservatives dispose. Now you have the thought patterns necessary to understand conservative government.

On the night before the 2013 election, he defined his program for government by negating his accusers, saying whatever needed to be said; the Lance Armstrong of Australian politics.

It happened before then, too. He didn't understand why Gillard could negotiate her way into government in 2010 and get legislation through a hung parliament. He couldn't, and still can't understand why Senators outside the major parties will neither bend to his will nor be won over by his smarm.

When Barack Obama made his historic speech to Parliament about the US pivot to Asia, Abbott did not rise to the occasion as a putative Prime Minister; but he did go the niggle on lying and carbon tax. Nobody had any right to expect better from him - nobody inside the Liberal Party, nobody in the press gallery, no swinging voter, nobody at all. The insiders all knew what he was like. They just underestimated their ability to cover up for them.

Experience should count for something. Mark Kenny is an experienced and senior political reporter. Yet, once again Mark Kenny shows himself to be a gibbering dupe with this:

It is telling that Tony Abbott believes the strongest argument for his continued leadership of the Liberal Party, the Coalition, and the country, is the dysfunction of his enemies, to wit, Labor's self-inflicted Rudd/Gillard debacle from 2010.

It is a further mark of Abbott's personal problem however, that even before the political contest has been fully joined for the year, he is having to field questions on his own longevity in the job, his grip on power.

It's the same mark, Mark.

Knighting Prince Phillip doesn't raise "fresh doubts". It shows that Abbott's detractors were right, and that his supporters - and those who believed them - were fools.

Abbott could only ever be defined against his enemies: more right-wing than Turnbull, more cocky and jocky than Rudd, more steady and traditional-family-oriented than Gillard. He could never be defined in any other, positive way. Attempts to project Prime Ministerial qualities on him were always doomed, saying more about those doing the projecting than about Abbott himself.

Abbott hasn't shrunk, he's being rightsized. Ignore those who think Abbott has time to get his act in order, like this or that, covering their embarrassment at talking him up in the first place.

Instead, go look up at the night sky and see the twinkle of a star that died years ago. Pull a fish out of water, and watch it try to push the reset button. Now compare those activities to the behaviour of the Abbott government, and pity those who are overly impressed by powerless raging against the dying of the light.

People like Abbott have been reactionaries since their university days: simply spitting the descriptor at them makes no difference. Instead, understand how:

• weak reactionary behaviour is as a motivator; and
• little can be done when such people occupy office; and
• they fight tooth and nail to stay in a position where they dispose regardless of what might be proposed. To be in a position where they neither propose nor dispose underlines their irrelevance.

Can the press gallery help you understand that? Not really. They don't understand it themselves. Every instance of public policy bloody-mindedness is so jarring in contrast to their apparent personability one to one, which stymies effective reporting. This is the whole idea from the government's point of view, and press gallery journalists deserve all the respect due to willing tools.

The press gallery should evaluate how we are governed, and alternatives to how we might be governed. Members of the press gallery have a privileged role, like the members of parliament on whom they report. With privilege comes responsibility: to their loyalty is to their audience above maintaining their contacts or sucking up to their employers. Journalists like to point out how few primary votes Senator Muir received, but more people voted for him than voted in any member of the press gallery.

As an exercise in determining whether or not Tony Abbott and his Coalition team were a suitable government for this country, we can see that Kenny and all of his press gallery colleagues failed to do their jobs. This diminishes them and will, ultimately, diminish their privileged role inside parliament.

How much of a privilege is it to simply note this empty gesture or that? Is it even valuable work? Is all that busy-busy really important or does it distract you from what's really important - and if so, how would you know? I often give the rough end of the pineapple to the press gallery, but if you gave them anything more juicy or productive it would be a waste.

Being subject

The recent royal visit did not demonstrate continuity, but its opposite. The old tropes are inadequate and this country is undergoing fundamental change, which traditional media can barely describe or even understand.

When agents of the Murdoch media tapped Prince William's phone, they set off a chain reaction that none of them could have foreseen. Other celebrities need to keep themselves in the public eye to land the big roles and boost their going rate. Prince William's position, and the privilege that comes with it, does not depend on publicity. He does not need the media and has been raised to disdain them; they killed his mother. He pressed charges, against the conventional wisdom that keeping the media onside is a Smart Move.

The Murdoch media lost a royal editor and a key investigator ('professional journalists' having lost their investigative skills), and investigations are underway as to how high up the Murdoch hierarchy the phone-hacking went.

UK Labour leader Ed Miliband realised that no amount of Blairite grovelling would ever get Murdoch onside. He cornered the Cameron government into calling the Leveson Inquiry and giving it sweeping powers. That decision set Miliband above political-class hackery and forced press gallery to snap out of its clichés as they no longer served to describe him.

In Australia, Murdoch has a much tighter grip over the media, in its own right and in setting a tone that the timid non-Murdoch media seems bound to follow. The coverage of the recent visit by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince George can only be described as fawning. There was no sneering, no crap about elitism or dressing rudeness up as iconoclasm: the Murdoch media observed protocol scrupulously, because even the slightest departure from propriety would have rebounded on Rebekah Brooks and her co-defendants. Kiss the hand you cannot bite.

IN this era of butt selfies and slut walks, Kate Middleton, aka the Duchess of Cambridge, is a revolutionary.

In her clumsy way, this is what Miranda Devine was getting at with the above quote and the rest of her piece. Name me one person more responsible for "this era of butt selfies and slut walks" than her owner, Rupert Murdoch. Devine got where she is through an accident of birth and by doing what she was told. For her sins she has been tasked to write about someone who's also been obedient and attained an even more lofty position. By shouting out to the Duchess she is trying to validate herself. She is trying two psychologically tricky things that I doubt she has ever done before: she is conferring superior qualities onto someone who is younger and prettier than her, with even fewer career achievements; and she is sucking up to someone who can do her career no good at all, someone who can be forgiven for being ignorant of her very existence.

The Murdoch media has also done its best toward a less powerful entity than the royals, one on which it relies but over which it exerts greater control: the Abbott government.

As I've said, the month or so before the Budget involves discussion on spending priorities, particularly in terms of what gets cut. The royal visit was the biggest distraction going. There are no big sporting contests to distract attention, and pensions and healthcare are so primal that debates cannot be left to wonks and spinners. Media space devoted to a handsome young family is media space not devoted to cuts, cuts, cuts; nor to Bill Shorten's attempts to pry open the doors to the crypt to which the Murdoch media has consigned his party.



The herd of media at staged photo ops, scrupulously obeying the conditions of those events, is self-validating for those involved and for those who employ them, in ways that public opinion cannot hope to penetrate.

The one that was most telling about this government was the picfac at Katoomba. Clearly, the royals' publicity machine wanted images of "the real Australia", the outback, while the government wanted them in the cities for economic and political reasons. As British racists claim that "the wogs start at Calais", so do insular Sydneysiders believe that the outback begins at Echo Point; and that, dear reader, is why the royals were photographed there, a place of real significance to Aborigines but from which almost all trace of Aboriginality has been scrubbed.



That said, one can only do so much. Those pictures where the Duchess attempts to maintain a sunny disposition in the leering company of Abbott, or where Prince George turns his grimacing face away from Abbott, undoes any cudos he and his media people hoped to get from the visit. The Cambridges were polite to Abbott, but they weren't loyal; they weren't grateful. They made him look cloying and desperate in ways no Labor leader has managed to do for long.



You'd think that such an ardent monarchist would have found a way to deal with the actual royal family. If anyone can integrate the royals deftly and comfortably into our national life, surely Abbott is the leader to make it happen. After his non-engagement with Prince Charles and his embarrassing schlockfest with Prince Harry, as observed earlier, the question must be asked: does the constitutional monarchy really have a future in Australia? By treating them as photo props, he makes the royals appear more alien to this country than they would otherwise be. After this royal visit Tony Abbott has made it easier, not harder, to argue that the monarchy is superfluous to our country.

You'd think that experienced newspaper people would realise that one of the key roles of a constitutional monarchy is to honour those who died fighting in their name. Every time the Queen or Prince Charles visited this country, they laid a wreath and spoke warmly of those who fell. By honouring those remembered at the going down of the sun, and in the morning, they preserve their own positions and they know it. How silly is it, then, to be surprised that the royals might pay tribute in the same way they always do? You can either be a credible paper of record or you can disgrace yourself with ignorant drivel, but not both.

Of course, in 1999 most Australians voted against a particular form of republic that would disrupt the political system as little as possible. Peter Brent believes that Australians will never vote for far-reaching reforms, and he is entitled to his opinion. It is possible for pollsters to be surprised, even ambushed, especially as political journalists have taken to cowering behind them and only predicting things that have already happened.

Beyond the Murdoch media, and beyond the questions that pollsters dare not ask, the political system is being remade. The Coalition, having enjoyed hefty margins and considerable goodwill, are sinking without a concomitant rise in Labor fortunes. The idea that Clive Palmer and Tony Windsor, as former members of conservative parties, are basically Coalition people has been proven to be delusional to anyone who will face it. There is a vitality in this part of our political system that the Greens have only in fits and starts, and which is dormant in the majors.

At some point, one-off victories here and there will form patterns that not even pet psephologists can ignore. Those victories will have effects on the political system that press gallery veterans can't understand or explain. Piping Shrike is right to say that the rise of Palmer is an indictment of the politico-media complex and not, as they would have it, of the electorate. The constitutional monarchy, like other aspects of the Constitution, might not be revolutionised but nor will it be as immune from change as Abbott and Brent would hope.

Rupert Murdoch's business model involves staying close to the political system. Yet, Murdoch's media do not help you understand what is going on within that system: the differences between what this government says and what it does, and how else we might be governed better. If members of the alternative government, and those emerging as alternatives to both the incumbents and the previous government, regard Murdoch media as an obstacle then it cannot last.

The royals don't need Murdoch, or Abbott, and it would be best if they did not come again for a while. Abbott and Murdoch, on the other hand, need one another more as each day passes.

Dickhead removal strategy

The Australian Defence Force is one of this country's most admired organisations. It lies at the heart of our national self-image, it is one of our largest employers, and unlike a lot of organisations it provides a real method for young people from relatively poor backgrounds to secure ongoing employment and skill development, to find meaning in and through their work, and to attain a degree of social mobility that is not as available in Australia today as we might hope.

There is a positive pattern at work in the ADF. Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith VC MG is every bit cut from the same cloth as, say, Ted Sheean or Sir Neville Howes VC. Actions like those of Roberts-Smith, and recognition of those actions, reinforces the high esteem in which the ADF is held. The positive bias toward the ADF is such that we seem immune from sinking to the low place where we found ourselves during the 1970s, where Vietnam veterans were social outcasts and were excluded from the recognition and adulation given to other veterans.

There is also a negative pattern. If you accept that Corporal Roberts-Smith is a product of training and tradition then the same is also true of the grubs who perpetrate and cover up for sleazy and criminal incidents.

The odd negative incident won't damage the high esteem in which the Australian Defence Force is held: but a pattern of incidents over many, many years will.

The Australian Defence Force defends Australia, and in Australia women aren't tokens, they aren't barely tolerated; women are centrally important members of the community. The ADF isn't some sort of sheltered workshop for Guys Who Want To Only Want To Be With Guys But Not In A Queer Way. If you can't handle women, you're going to be crap on the battlefield. That's why you punt these guys; not because it's PC, but because military necessity demands it. During times of war you bring your best people to the fore and weed out time-servers and game-players, so start with the sorry little wankers who pick on females.

If someone behaves like a dickhead behind the lines, chances are they'll be a dickhead when it really counts. As that commenter in the Oz said, if you're going to videotape a woman who's been fooled into having sex with you, why would I want you watching my back? You're probably setting up a videocam to film my head getting blown off rather than looking out for your mates. Punt these dickheads now.

If you're going to cut the Defence budget, don't skimp on supporting those dodging bullets in Afghanistan. Don't cut that submarine/tank/plane. Undergo dickhead removal and you'll save a motza and boost this country's defences at the same time. I thought Peter Reith was going to do this, but in Children Overboard he showed that he's more problem than solution. The DRS worked best with his departure.

Smith and Clare have really stuck their necks out by getting involved in disciplinary issues - they'll either succeed greatly or fail greatly, and though the odds are on the latter (not only in terms of this government, but all governments) it will be fascinating to watch.

By contrast, hasn't Minchin made a right clown of himself? The commandant of ADFA bent over backwards to help his son so he thinks they're Christmas. In environmental debates Minchin shows himself to be someone who surrounds himself with people who only tells him what he wants to hear - much like the worst military officers. It is best that this man should be departing, better yet if it were sooner.

It's one thing to fulminate about leaving military justice to the military, but that works only if you can trust them - which you can't. The crowd who advises you that rustbuckets are ready to go, that a small bunch of wankers deserves the benefit of the doubt, can't expect a politician to stand between them and the public who pays for them. The military brass have always taken their chances in taking on politicians - military officers are highly regarded, politicians aren't, who are you going to believe? - but there is such a pattern where military justice is a contradiction in terms that a canny politician just might land a few blows.

Note that the Governor-General hasn't spoken yet. Consider her background, then consider that she's the Commander-in-Chief, she ranks above Air Marshal Houston - and note that she hasn't spoken yet. I doubt that she's too busy arranging flowers or whatever to take careful notice of these developments.

We deserve a better military than this. Given that we look up to our military and at the same time recognise them as us at our best, then we'd be a better country if we had better people to look up to. Let us have more of the courageous Angus Houston, of truth-to-power in 2001 and the no less dexterous chopper pilot of 1979, rather than the weary figure today who must announce another death, another disgrace, another disappointment. What comes next? Dare we hope for better, and what would it look like?

Voting for the leader

It's all very well to have sympathy for Kevin Rudd, but the mawkish sense that lingers that Rudd has - and by extension, we have - been cheated is something different. It's been two whole weeks now. There's something going on.

At first I thought all this sympathy for Kevin Rudd was just a stick which the Liberals use to beat Labor. So Kevin '07 was just a slogan, a non-core promise, rather than some sort of patsy who would shuffle off to defeat and drag his party down with him. Turns out that the ALP was far more resolute than the hand-wringing Liberals who could not step up and save themselves from Howard.

In a column I don't normally read, this guy let out a howl that showed it wasn't all about trying to wring emotion out of a man who cultivated an image of being efficient to the point of coldness:

Am I the only person who feels like I've been putting $500 on the Melbourne Cup every year since 1988 only to be told the result is decided in the stewards' room before the horses have even jumped?

If I and the rest of the Australian public don't vote for the prime minister, why the hell did Bill what's-his-name and his chums in caucus sack the one we had?

If I and the all the other mug voters don't make the decision, how come it's the prime minister (or the leader of the opposition) who stars in all the advertisements on the tellie?

Oh, please. I was a fairly active and observant member of a political party and studied politics at uni. People like Sam de Brito have spent their lives ignoring or sneering at politics nerds - until they get blindsided and stumble around like some comic actor who ends up with a bucket on his head, feebly waving his arms.

This isn't the place for a lesson on the Westminster system. It isn't the place for some absurd conservative-libertarian wail about how ignorami decide the outcomes of political contests. Nor is it (however tempting) to lecture this mainstream media employee about why you can't believe everything you see in the mainstream media, particularly when it comes to politics. de Brito is not alone here, in pining for a leader who wasn't that popular. There's something else going on here.

What's going on here is that we thought we had a de facto republic, and so all the fuss of 1999 was somehow unnecessary. The focus on party leaders meant that people thought we did elect leaders and thus a republic was unnecessary. Now it's clear that this idea of electing the Prime Minister directly was a bit like blocking the budget: if the immovable object of political convention comes up against the unstoppable force of political interests, back political interests. Never, never bet on sentiment.

In NSW we've seen that you don't vote for a Premier, you vote for a Praetorian Guard who may direct the knives outward from the leader or inward toward them, as they and not you choose. If the same thing happens federally (and if hacks like Arbib, Randall and Feeney get ahead of themselves, it will), if Gillard goes and is replaced by someone else who is subsequently replaced, etc., the whole republic thing could come to the fore again in a way that the wide boys can't control. We'll want a local member and more broadly based members, who currently sit in upper houses - and we'll also want a leader, who tells it like it is and who meets with whomever has to be met with, and who then makes the call and then that's the issue dealt with. We'll want a President/Governor, and we'll want to vote for them ourselves.

The Prime Minister and the Premier used to play that role. They may do so again, but the facade has gone now and can never be fully restored. The weakness of party leadership and the Praetorian role of the factions means that the desire for a single, personified leader - one elected directly by the people - will grow.

For the first time, the direct election model for an Australian republic appears to have a point. Countless mayors across the country are elected, with a face and a name that sets them above the mere "tickets" offered by their opponents. The push for an elected head of state will continue long after the latest empty nuance to the failed parliamentary nomination model of 1999 has vanished without trace.

It's true that the established political machines will have a head start in building and winning competitive races for an Australian Presidency. It's true that anyone wanting to be a contender for that office will have to play factional games. It's no less true, however, that once in office this person will be free to react to political situations in a far more authentic way than seems possible under the primus inter pares model of party leadership. Again, Gillard may knock that notion into a cocked hat and so might O'Farrell - but then they might be the exceptions that only prove the rule.

Yes, I'm doubtful at the prospect of some elected jack-in-office disconnected from all the machinery of government but the military. Yes, I disdain the appalling leadership that US state governments, recent presidents of said country and indeed of other republics. There is no structure that compels only good process and outcomes.

Political parties have seen the rise of professionals/ hacks who take greater control, only to have that which they control become diminished. That's what's happening and there will be a response that reshapes the body politic. Hopefully there might be something in it for we citizens, we who contribute to and are recipients of the common wealth.

That untravell'd world of moderate liberalism

After so many years in the darkness, Liberal moderates can be forgiven for stumbling blinking into the harsh light of media attention, and relishing the novelty that a wider public might want to hear from them. You'd have hoped that Chris Pyne and Marise Payne spent their long years in exile thinking, but no.

As Mark Twain might have said, rumours of our death are greatly exaggerated.

Not greatly exaggerated, Marise. The dying pillow was smoothed, and thankfully it lay under your heads rather than over your faces. This is only the first term of Opposition, and you remember what 1995-99 was like in NSW.

Such a defiant image contrasts with this:

"edge of the waterfall"

Well, which is it? She'll be right or panic stations? As long as you're part of the Main Stream, who cares about a waterfall? Makes a change from being up the creek without a paddle, eh?

There is tremendous scope for fresh ideas, for new thinking, for being prepared to use 2008 as a year of modernisation of our organisation. The party needs to embrace a change that will replenish our membership.

Just one year, mind you. By Christmas, the Liberal Party will have all the members and all the ideas it needs, thank you very much, and my haven't they got the inspiring leadership to make it happen. Fuck the membership, I can hear party hardheads blockheads say, give us some votes.

A strong membership base is a strong resource - for developing policy, in campaigning, in fundraising, in spreading the word, in providing the candidates, staff and personnel that every political party needs.

Yairs - it's a resource, certainly not the resource it was in the 1940s, which is why the Liberal Party membership will continue to be passed over when it comes to ideas and money, and yes even candidates. The ideal Liberal Party candidate is someone who wouldn't dream of sitting in a draughty room on a cold wet weeknight in May, listening to policy ideas regurgitated straight from talkback radio and helping plan desultory fundraisers that wouldn't cover the cost of mailing meeting notices to branch members.

We need to acknowledge the growing inevitability of the political cycle.

This is bullshit. Governments that are disciplined enough to purge lazy ministers and lazy thinking can be much more durable than wankers who just shrug and blame their own venality upon "the cycle".

What we should take from our recent federal experience is the challenge of creating our future, and avoiding wallowing in the past.

The Liberal Party's troubles is that it could not distinguish between what was currently viable and what was past, and one can have no confidence this recognition is much further advanced.

The Liberal Party of Australia has been custodian of two strands of political thought: liberalism and conservatism.

The Howard government neglected liberalism to the point where it is right to question whether the Liberal Party can seriously claim it at all. Last seen during the Fraser years, it is as musty and decayed as a catechism in the later years of Henry VIII. This is partly the fault of Howard and his orcs like Minchin and Abbott - but only partly.

Moderate liberalism should have manifested itself more strongly, in the debates over refugees but also in other areas of policy. It was up to moderates to make the case that education funding need not mean more resources for Trotskyite womyn's collectives. It was up to moderates to make the case that there is nothing at all "trendy" about Aboriginal policy, to grab them by the lapels and make them see that all the rhetoric about 'fair go' and 'family values' is so much bullshit because it is so palpably denied to Aborigines - and others, but don't start.

One of the key challenges of moderate liberalism lies in the meaning of civil liberties in an age of terror. Do checks-and-balances, parliamentary dramaturgy and rules-of-admissable-evidence really contain some precious kernel of freedom, and if so what is it? Are those things, handed down (yes, down, unto thee) from an ancient and distant land and which can apparently only ever be preserved or diminished, helpful in preventing us from terror and other evils? I am equally certain that these are central questions for moderate liberals, and that Pyne and Payne have squibbed them. They are much more important than monarchy/republic. I doubt they've thought about these issues much, and I think less of them for not having used their time in philosophical exile more productively.

Did they even try to adapt moderate liberalism to Australia in the early twentyfirst century? Did they bollocks. All we got was a slow wet fart like this:

We should embrace a practice that has been initiated by right-of-centre political parties around the world to their benefit: allowing all party members to select the parliamentary leader. In one sweep, we would give Australians a reason to join and become active in the party.

There is, of course, no connection between an idea like that and a rejuvenation of a political party. In 1986 - where the idea belongs, and obviously the last time Pyne did any actual thinking - it would have yielded Joh Bjelke-Petersen or John Elliott as leader, or even Wilson Tuckey. Imagine something like that happening today, with David Clarke or some sun-baked pinhead from Western Australia, and Pyne having the guts to admit that such an outcome wasn't what he had in mind.

Part of the reason why someone like Jeff Kennett increasingly lost touch was because he was convinced that he was carrying his parliamentary colleagues, and that they were a hapless lot. A leader not elected by the parliamentary party would be confirmed in that view. People with greater political sophistication but less appeal would run rings around them, which is why David Cameron is not UK PM yet (nor, indeed, has Barack Obama yet convinced Democrats that he is their future).

Chris Pyne spent many years holding a flame for Peter Costello to become Liberal leader. Costello would never have won a ballot of party members. Tony Abbott, Mal Brough perhaps; but not Costello. Not Nelson either, and definitely not Pyne.

But that is to treat the idea seriously, which is more than it deserves. This idea is born out of panic. It follows the same three-step of political skittishness identified in Yes Minister:

1. We must do something.


2. This is something.


3. Let's do this.

It's a silly idea and not at all attractive - like the Democrats' idea of lowering the voting age to 16 (and look where that got them).

There can be little argument that in the US, where the Republicans have involved their membership in this way since the middle of the 19th century, the Republican Party is a healthier specimen because of it.

Healthier than what, Chris? Is it healthier because it purged itself of moderates? Is it healthier because money and lobbying have invalidated the contribution of branch members? Is it healthier because it will never remove the taint of one poor leader who snuffed out debate and left the party bereft after he'd had his go?

So, in building broader representation and diversity, we must attract more members from multicultural Australia ...

The more multicultural an electorate is, the less likely it is to vote Liberal and the more likely branches there are to be rightwing "rotten borough" branches. Marise Payne has no excuse for not acknowledging that, let alone taking steps in her newfound freedom to act.

... more women and more young Australians who see membership of a centre-right party as a way to express their ideals in a stimulating environment of open minds and open debate.

Not that such debate would change anything, mind you. Chris Pyne said that wouldn't be healthy.

We need an agenda where the modern priorities include: climate change and water issues; addressing why women are still paid less than men in exactly the same jobs; dealing with the reality of modern family life in its many versions - particularly the notorious work-life balance. We cannot afford a head-in-the-sand approach to these and other pressing life challenges of the 21st century.

Work-life balance does not include spending one five nights a month week at branch meetings discussing stormwater recycling when someone like Peter Debnam will airily dismiss as impractical, after being patronising of course, whereupon any attempt to pursue debate will be viewed as divisive or undisciplined. The environment Payne talks about requires a critical mass which isn't there, and Payne and Pyne both know it.

We must encourage open discussion and robust debate. If we feel constrained about open expression, if there is any culture of intimidation, we are venturing into illiberal territory and I have had enough of any suggestion that a political party is the last place to discuss policy.

Hear that? She's had enough. I can almost hear the foot being stamped. How it stops the philosophical noodlings of the 1980s which only served as a foil to a can-do government is not clear.

Also, a similar view from families, who believed that the life of their family member was perceived by our government as insufficiently "mainstream" to merit the respect and basic human rights that the rest of the community takes for granted, just because they were gay. We can talk about the importance of family all we like, but once we are perceived as telling Australians that we disapprove of the lives of members of their family, I believe we are crossing a line, and we also pay a philosophical price for that.

Indeed. But gay rights have hit the mainstream with such force that any action by the Liberal Party would just be backfilling rather than actual progress. The legislation defined by a recent HREOC report as discriminatory to same-sex couples will be repealed within the next five years, and probably not by a Liberal government. The Liberal Party will always have conservative dogs in the manger of minority rights, always.

Interesting that equality for gays is closer at hand than equality for women - if I were a moderate Liberal, I'd have thought about that and it would show.

Australians are more actively interested in politics than at any time in our nation's history.

This is garbage. The decade or so after World War II, the systematic failure of capitalism in the Great Depression, the conscription debates in World War I or Federation saw much more political activism from a greater proportion of the population than we have now.

They have more ways to be involved.

Or, not involved. Nice assertion, it's just the reverse of what's true.

The internet has transformed politics.

The impact on Australian politics has been pretty minor. There have been no mass fundraising efforts like those in the US, and it's just another delivery channel. TV was introduced in Australia in 1956 but it took more than a decade to have an impact on the country's politics.

There are 1.8 million members of the "Australia" network on Facebook. That equates to 14 per cent of the people who voted on November 24 last year. That number will only grow.

Equates, not includes. The political parties in Australia will not succeed in using this effectively unless a foreign politician of the future finds some way to crack it, and even then the Liberal (or liberal) approach will be a feeble imitation. No plan, no sign of any consideration from Pyne - and yes, signs of intellectual life are possible in a wide-ranging, heavily edited speech.

Like Odysseus, like Robert the Bruce or Nelson Mandela or Jose Ramos Horta, moderate Liberals have done time on the outer and seen their life's work traduced. Unlike these others that exile was not sufficiently terrible to prompt far-reaching questions about their motivations and applicability of their beliefs; they basically dusted off stale and irrelevant ideas and are now going around stirring up apathy, like street hawkers offering chipped crockery and stained and dented cookware to passers-by.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate ...

Yep, sounds like the moderate liberals I knew.

... but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Nah, sorry - you must be thinking of somebody else. Who exactly I'm not sure, but not Marise Payne or Chris Pyne. Even their opponents within the Liberal Party have encouraged them to take long hard looks at themselves: Pyne has clearly taken this to justify his preening. If they haven't spent the past fifteen or so tumultuous years thinking, what have they been doing?

Polly filler

John Roskam doesn't understand the sovereign role of the majority of voters in setting the direction of government in this country, apparently.

Keating had dragged reform of economic policy along at a cracking pace. Issues such as Mabo, the Redfern speech and the republic threatened to do so with social policy. The whole idea of John Howard was to ease the pace of social reform and see which elements really were unsustainable, and which were just victims of Keating's sharp tongue.

Howard showed that the republic was not an issue that burned in the national soul, and that Australia wasn't so desperate to be shot of the monarchy as the old Fenians in the NSW ALP Right. Howard thought that 1950s paternalism was an idea not properly tried in Aboriginal policy. He thought that unions could be legislated out of the employer-employee relationship. He thought that processing a refugee application required the refugee him/herself to be "processed". He thought that if the Americans went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, Australia should send a deployment that was big enough to attract political attention from Washington yet small enough to minimise monetary and casualty cost.

Howard has now outlived his usefulness. He was wrong not to apologise to the Stolen Generation, those who were removed from Aboriginal families for no reason other than they were Aborigines. He was wrong about refugees, the incarceration of people within a legal void is a poor preparation for life in Australia or anywhere else. He was wrong about Iraq and Afghanistan has developed to a point where Australian forces are no longer required.

Good policy doesn't turn into bad policy overnight.

No, but an idea that upset a majority of the population was never sustainable. The Rudd Government's policies on the matters Roskam identifies as the core policies of the Howard government surprise only those who dismissed the very prospect of a Rudd Government until it actually came about.

If key policies can be ditched so quickly after what, in the end, proved to be a relatively narrow election loss, voters will inevitably ask whether Liberal MPs ever believed in those policies in the first place.

Those policies were imposed on Liberal MPs, who did not question them closely. They accepted Howard's assurances that they were both good policy and that they would lead to electoral success, and are now bearing the consequences of his failure of judgment. Roskam feels that they should bear this and other failures of judgment in perpetuity, like the rock of Sisyphus.

There's also the problem of what replaces the old policies.

This is a pressing problem for the government, which promised to replace them but was less than precise about what; they are responsible for governing, and responsible also to their Labor base. They have to replace WorkChoices with legislation that is acceptable to the Labor base but which is also sustainable across a diverse national workforce in a growing, changing economy. Good luck!

The Liberals have been excused the pressing responsibilities of government. They have to come up with a policy before the next election, and can learn from the mistakes that Labor are making. They needn't be hurried as John Roskam would wish, and indeed Roskam does himself no favours by urging them to do so. This lot are busy exercising the freedom to think for themselves, a precious quality that must be nurtured over time.

None of this is to say that policies cannot ever be changed. When circumstances alter, policies should be altered.

This assumes that WorkChoices adequately addressed the challenges facing Australia in 2005, much less in 2007-8. It didn't, and doesn't. It was a policy for 1985, when the ACTU and the H R Nicholls Society were at the peak of their influence.

What's notable about each of the Liberals' recent policy changes is that each was done in a hurry and each was done in reaction to something that Labor did.

Sounds like the Liberals are getting used to Opposition, John.

The Liberals can't afford to be put into such a position again.

This is why they shouldn't have frittered government away, and should act as an incentive for them to get it back again.

But at the moment there's every chance that the Liberals will respond to Labor's moves on the republic in the same way as they responded to Labor's initiatives on the apology and the Pacific Solution.

This is true, they run the danger of following Kim Beazley into reactive, crumbling opposition. It took Beazley ten years to get to that point, not ten weeks.

Many Liberals would say that the very last thing they need is a divisive internal debate about the republic. But if you can't have a divisive internal debate when the party is in opposition, federally and in every state and territory, then it's legitimate to ask when would be a better time.

Well said. Some debates cannot be fobbed off an it is poor political management even to try.

The best thing for the Liberal Party would be if the decision on the republic were taken out of their hands: if the voters decided on a republic, Liberals would have to decide whether they really wanted to be part of a governmental process from which the Crown was absent. Some Liberals feel they should take an active role in shaping the republic, but it would be extraordinary - too much to expect, really - for any Liberal leader to do that and keep a united party at the same time.

It will probably take three years for the Liberals to arrive at some sort of position on the republic. The advantage of starting the debate now is that they'll have the time to engage in analysis and reflection.

This assumes an environment tolerant of differing opinions, and the Liberal Party is the opposite of that. Moderates found this out in the late 1980s when they started losing preselections, political death being the ultimate form of censorship. Roskam has no excuse not to know better.

It's something the party hasn't done enough of since November 24.

Nor for the decade-and-a-half before that. There's the flaw in your argument John. For some time yet, debate within the Liberal Party will lumber and lurch like awkward teenagers learning to dance (the presence of cretins like Sophie Mirabella won't help). Clapping your hands in annoyance and insisting they all bounce and glide like Nureyev might make you feel better, but any sensible person knows it will be a slow process - until the next Leader comes along, with a gang of enforcers compelling everyone to shut up.

Roskam's despair of the political process is echoed by his colleague Chris Berg, and reflects a tendency of denigrating democracy itself - not just the odd dodgy decision, but the very idea of having government policy responsible to and reversible by the popular vote. Insofar as the Eye Pee Yay warrants concern, this is a worry and deserves close attention.

Twilight of the monarchists

Those of us who support an Australian republic should hope that John Howard becomes Australia's first knight in twenty years.

At a stroke, the monarchist myth that the Queen is a figure above politics would evaporate. The myth that the support base of monarchists crosses party affiliations would go too, as those who support the monarchy and did (do?) not support John Howard, or vice versa, are few and far between. I believe that the monarchy is firmly anchored in the past rather than the future: the rise of Sir John Howard would render such an image inescapable, with the predictable harrumphing by David Flint only cementing this.

The "not this republic" crowd who helped scupper the 1999 referendum, led by people like Ted Mack, would not be able to ally with the monarchists over those who would strive for some sort of Australian republic.

If he cared about the Australian monarchical system, Howard should reject a knighthood. But that would be to place institutions above self, and Howard did not get where he is today by doing that. He and his wife would rather swan around like Lord and Lady Muck. This would help do the republic's work for it, and attract nobody to support the monarchy who hadn't already done so.

Think about it

It seems that John Roskam's straw-man work has spread throughout the organisation he heads, the Eye Pee Yay. Thankfully this peanut holds an honorary title, but it's the thought that counts: the thought that attacks can be prefabricated, targetted at imaginary abstractions and used to develop useful perspectives on government and society - abstractions that seem to wheel back and smite those who launch them. Chris Berg shows you don't need to be a committee to produce poor outcomes.

There is a strange fantasy held by many serious people in politics that if you get enough experts in a room, some sort of magical consensus will emerge and everything will be wonderful.

Really? Where, whom?

Given that it is unlikely the Rudd Government will adopt any of the summit's proposals - at least, none they weren't already familiar with - the 2020 talkfest is unlikely to do too much harm.

What a silly set of givens this is. The government is expected to commit to ideas that haven't been thought through yet, so that even Chris Berg could go them.

No doubt the proposals from 2020 will be as pedestrian as those produced by the half-dozen "future-oriented" conferences around the country each year. That is, we should do more on climate change, spend more on education, infrastructure and innovation, engage more with Asia, the republic is the most important issue facing Australia today, children are our future, and on and on and on.

Not much credit due for foresight there - where is the straw man who seriously believes that the republic is that important? I suppose that any progress on these issues will be step-by-step, incremental changes to the forward positions of individuals under their own locomotion - i.e., pedestrian. Berg's use of the word seems to be pejorative. Strange.

So if the only big idea behind Rudd's education revolution was to set up an education committee at a gigantic conference, it's hard to avoid wondering why we bother having revolutions at all.

Assuming that was the 'only big idea', Chris.

We've just had 11 years where any idea that departed even slightly from an already-decided official line was attacked, not on any intellectual level and not in terms of competition, but in petty, sub-Keatingesque ad hominem attacks on individuals who dared question that the policy of the incumbent government was in any way sub-optimal. Nobody expects this hundred-flowers thing to go ion indefinitely, but getting people's ideas engaged with the machinery of government will be a nice change from what had gone before. If you're going to have an education revolution, for example, you need the whole unruly bunch of educators involved. That's revolutionary, and that's the point, Chris.

After all, what great idea ever came from a committee?

Well, I won't count those wackers on Mont Pelerin if you won't. Do the Wright Brothers count as a committee? Does the IPA? Led Zepplin? The Diet of Worms? The AIF? Geelong Cats?

The dirty secret of Australian politics is that conflict makes good government.

Not really. The Howard government ramped up the conflict, and government got worse rather than better. "The blame game" is only a game until it becomes tiresome, which it has.

The idea behind Federation was that the states would compete to develop the best public policy and that the Commonwealth would do the things that the states didn't. If they start working closely together, as Rudd has assured us will now happen, it will only further erode our critically weakened federal system.

I'd love to see an example where this competition yielded positive results: a better way of teaching maths, or running hospitals, anything would do. You have 106 years of examples from 1901 to 2007, go to it Chris. Give us something to be sorry for that which has disappeared, other than a vague dream.

Similarly, trying to get business and government working together is fraught with difficulty. Usually, the only things business want from government are money or protection from competitors. The only thing governments want from business is help achieving political goals.

And when the government works with the "community", it inevitably ends up consulting special-interest groups who harbour ideological views not shared by the community as a whole. It is us, as citizens and consumers, who get the raw deal.

Yep, that governing is difficult Chris - not sure what solution you're offering there, if any. It's difficult, therefore not worth doing?

I liked this self-defeating argument best, the intellectual boomerang that smacked Chris Berg on the back the head thus:

It would be easy to run a country on consensus if everybody shared the same views. But not only do people disagree on means, they also disagree on ends ... special-interest groups who harbour ideological views not shared by the community as a whole.

Having established universal agreement as a fantasy, he then criticises government for not even attempting to struggle toward a fantasy, which would, one assumes, make it easier for someone like Chris Berg to complain.

The 2020 summit is more than just a happy-clappy approach to governing.

Is it? I thought you started your article saying it was exactly that, that and nothing else.

Rudd has to be careful that his eagerness to build "consensus" doesn't leave the Government open to interest groups and poor policy.

But could you expect anything else from a government, Chris? If so, what would it be?

- Andrew Elder is a Senior Mountebanke and Pifflemeister-General at the Politically Homeless Institute, similar to the IPA but less well funded and much more poorly edited.

Why Bush isn't really President

This article shows why George W. Bush is not really President of the United States.

Every decision that Cheney wanted - the war on Iraq, the tax cuts - have all come through, with funding and resources in spades. The whole abstract democracy thing, the nearest thing Bush has to an idea of his own, hasn't come through and has not been resourced.

"Policy is not what the president says in speeches," the bureaucrat replied. "Policy is what emerges from interagency meetings."

In that statement is the truth that what is done is more important than what is said. Those who claim that Bush is not just de jure but de facto head of the American government, that he's a clever man in his own right and can survive the departure of Karl Rove, is just PR puffery and wishful thinking. Compounding this is an inept foreign policy chief, whose qualifications in Soviet policy ill equip her to deal with Putin, let alone other international leaders and predicaments.

The American media has played little role in explaining to the people of that country why Bush is such a poor leader (rather than the weak construction that he is poorly perceived), and why the gap between what he says and what he does creates opportunities for enemies and competitors. The meek acceptance and presentation of Bush's framing as a strong leader has got to stop, it's not helping anyone - not even Bush. The media place a high premium on interviews and direct quotes, but Bush's all-talk performance shows that a weak leader can be a distraction, and ultimately more trouble than he's worth.

In a parliamentary democracy, Bush would have been rolled by now. Australians who favour a republic should help us avoid this eighteenth-century despot model, as I've said before.

All his life, Bush has had people clean up after him and the next President will be no different. If they use the same decision-making processes to choose their next President as they did with this one, they'll end up with another dud and will only seal American decline.

Not thinking

The Sydney Morning Herald ran a series of opinion pieces (not published online) called "A country that has stopped thinking". They are trying to assess our grounds for optimism in a changing world, some sort of update on The Lucky Country.

In the body of the piece it's clear that, well, some Australians are thinking, but this is being stifled by cost-focused and unimaginative leadership. He's right to lament the advances in solar energy and other innovations going offshore after being neglected here. Fair point, and the headline should have reflected these issues. It's just that Burrell and others should have strained at the bit more than they did, if for no other reason to show what's possible (and to negate all those nasty blogger accusations of stale and unimaginative writing coming from the MSM).

Keating ... was voted out not because he had run out of ideas, but because he had too many that were too big and remote from an electorate that yearned for a return to a quiet life.

Keating was exhausted, as I've said, and he couldn't translate that big-picture stuff to practical reality. He didn't show us how we could help, other than by voting for him, so we didn't. With Howard, he creates the impression that what little he does is sufficient, or even all that's possible, to match the wider vision (e.g. "practical reconciliation" with Aborigines).

Burrell skates over the national lack of imaginaion as a function of its head of state arrangements. Donald Horne and David Marr have gone into this in some detail, and this debate has not been settled for all time in 1999. It was germane here, it could have been with better writing, and Burrell et al and their employer should have weathered the storm from monarchists who'd actually help prove the wider point: the monarchy acts as a brake upon ambition.

Burrell notes but does not explain the "stoush" over broadband. Basically what's happening is that Telstra wants to roll out "broadband" such that it entrenches its pre-existing monopoly over capital, and the G9 (other telco providers) want to do so in a way that makes Telstra just another provider. The government is dithering over this, and is not willing to invest the sort of money necessary to roll out the infrastructure. This political dithering by both the incumbent Coalition and their Labor challengers is deplorable.

Noting the "stoush" is not enough. Nor is it good enough not to note that the Federal government is happy to run a rail line from Melbourne to Brisbane. Will changing land-use patterns in response to sustainable water use have ann effect on this project over the longer term? What effect will it have on Sydney, having all that produce from the NSW Central West diverted between Australia's second and third cities? How will it help Brisbane become second-biggest and Melbourne third? What if we ran a massive fibre-optic "spine" by the track? No thinking outside the box for Steve, oh no.

Burrell's comments on art demonstrate the kind of "poverty of ambition" he would rail against in others. It's not necessary to have films funded by government. The fact that Kenny was financed by a private company ought not be as disappointing as it was to Steve. Crocodile Dundee wasn't publicly funded - does that make it less Australian? The Matrix, on the other hand, was partly funded by government money. It was filmed in Sydney but only the most bland, generic streetscapes were used - it's hard to imagine that anyone would be motivated to visit Sydney after seeing that film.

Given that Kenny was centred on toilet humour, who else would have done it but a private company? It wasn't to everyone's taste, and it was commercially successful. These are two factors that should insulate it from (not always philistine) complaints about wasting taxpayer money, as with, say, Bastard Boys.

The same applies to films Burrell praises. Priscilla was about a bunch of people whose manic flamboyance drained them internally and affected those around them negatively as well. Muriel's Wedding was the story of a banal person, distinguished by nothing other than having her story told. Same with Strictly Ballroom, Petersen, the Bazza McKenzie films or even Jedda. Perhaps the reason why people seek out "reality" TV is to achieve this transcendence, hoping that others can reveal a core that they themselves can't get in touch with.

Why the focus on film, though? People seem convinced they cannot tell a story effectively unless they have at least $1m of taxpayer's money at their disposal. They're wrong, aren't they? Given years of consistently declining standards at the Archibald Prize, given repeated grousing about public sculpture in Australian cities, could those that know about these matters not generate a response that involves bitchiness - itself a sign of narrow-mindedness unworthy of Art?

Lisa Pryor should have done the piece ahead of Steve Burrell. This piece is witty and perceptive. She should have made the link that Richard Florida makes between being open to new possibilities and discernment in private life and extending that to economic activity. Maybe she could have, with more space. The SMH should also have made better use of Elizabeth Farrelly's oeuvre, too.

When economic pull from overseas is strong, cultural push is also strong, so we merely become wealthy enough to buy imported stuff (or local copies thereof). This is an important issue, made not by Burrell but by Pryor. When demand for raw materials from overseas is strong, the country tends to do as little as possible to resist it, and as little as possible to fully exploit it in terms of building infrastructure.

Incase you thought Burrell, Pryor et al represent a change of direction, the same old, lame old comes through from Michael Duffy. Duffy is right about the shifting and narrowing focus of the left, but the poor bugger probably finds a treasury of diversity among Albrechtsen, Devine and other members of the choir. It is not essential to be a Trotskyist, or even a Labor voter, to hope for more from Howard; it is perfectly possible to do so within the main stream of Australian life. This article is a symptom of the puzzlement with which Howard supporters regard increasing dissatisfaction with mediocre performance.

When the authors want to compare Australia with other countries, they often make out the worst cases: on freedom of speech the comparison is with the United States; on government response to climate change it could be Germany.

This is called benchmarking, Michael. Companies do it to lift their game, and those who love Australia compare it to the best in the world and dare hope for more that what's dished out to us.

With this approach it doesn't take long to portray Howard as the Saddam Hussein of the First World.

What, a long-standing American client who is now dead?

I used to be a Liberal because I thought they'd build infrastructure to vouchsafe our longterm prosperity; I left that party because I was wrong, they weren't serious at all. I thought that with all this push and pull, we'd become more grounded in who we are. I was wrong about that too, but I just can't give up hope that it may yet come to us.

Headless state

Australia does not need a head of state, and neither do its states or territories. Not some hand-me-down arrangement from the Poms, not a President either (elected, appointed or whatever). Australia and the states are bigger than any individual and government should be structured accordingly. The Governor-General of Australia and the State Governors are irrelevant, and their ceremonial function becomes all the more hollow the less relevant they become. It's time to amend the Constitutions of the Commonwealth and the states in order to remove gubernatorial positions.

The current batch of viceroys - like Her Maj - aren't doing a bad job, but they are doing a non-job. Australia's current Governor-General is often represented as a rorty old figure from Gilbert & Sullivan, all epaulettes and campaign medals, while his defenders say he's an eminent person you can be proud of. They're both right, but if you read The Major General's song he is telling you directly how eminent he is, while at the same time being completely irrelevant.

Former Governor-General Sir Ninian Stephen said that the viceroy should 'represent ... the Australian nation to the people of Australia', but a good writer holding no office whatsoever will beat any public official at that. There are basically two roles performed by the Governor-General and the State Governors (and I include here the Administrators of the Northern Territory, Norfolk Island and whatever other equivalents exist in other territories), administrative and ceremonial.

First, the administrative role: they rubber-stamp parliamentary bills and regulations on advice from ministers. Cabinet decide the form of regulations and when bills will commence as legislation, so the next step of "vice-regal approval" is irrelevant. If an unconstitutional law or regulation is passed, the High Court strikes it down and "vice-regal approval" counts for nothing. Any other governmental process that added so little value would be cut out of the budget.

Second, the ceremonial: they open fetes and give out prizes. In the case of the incumbent, the Prime Minister has basically elbowed out the G-G and does this stuff himself. It is, as Menzies said, what politicians excel at: giving away things that do not belong to them. The theory goes that you might not want to accept a gong from a particular head of government, so a harmless old governor takes the political edge off. The fact is that there is no way of taking the political edge off a gong, if the government wants to give one to someone they'll do it to make themselves look good - and if you don't want to be made a political tool of, say that you'll refuse to accept it and call a press conference during the award ceremony. The next Prime Minister and the one after are extremely unlikely to revert to convention. If you must, the Australian of the Year is eminently qualified to do the ceremonial stuff, and no threat to the elected government.

The State Governors (including the territories etc.) can be done away with by legislative change. In NSW this is a little more difficult thanks to Lang's Game, but a well-informed referendum should yield the right result. One little piece of legislation amending the state constitution or the statutes governing the territories, and one last letter to London saying: we won't be asking you to rubber-stamp any more heads of state, but thanks anyway for all those duffer rear-admirals and useless nobles.

The Governor-General has two other roles that the others don't have: commander-in-chief of the armed forces and constitutional umpire. These are not merely niceties or relics and must be dealt with properly.

The Chief of the Defence Force is actually the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. He acts under direction from government and in the name of the Governor-General, but it is this position which is at the head of the command structure and the Constitution should reflect it.

As for the constitutional umpire role, e.g. 1975: that could be done by the full bench of the High Court. Whitlam sympathisers fulminate over Barwick's behind-the-scenes role in 1975 but the full bench would be more learned, relatively pluralist and open than the case at the moment. The model - even though they got the result wrong - is the US Supreme Court in Bush v Gore, and I agree with this eminently Australian solution to an impasse like that.

1975 and all that

You have to take a stand on this issue and here's mine.

I believe that Whitlam was trying to play with the Constitution by circumventing Parliament in order to raise money. Rex Connor was a dill and that we'd still be paying for his infrastructure dreams today without necessarily being better off - so much for "temporary purposes". Not worth losing government over.

Whitlam's own behaviour during the budget blockage is, as Clive James write in The Monthly a few months ago, a subject that deserves as much scrutiny as that given to Fraser or Kerr - today's baby-boomer journalists and academics tend to take Whitlam uncritically as given. Basically, Whitlam tossed the extra-constitutional boomerang out and it swung back and hit him in the face on 11/11/75. No sympathy is due to the man or his shallow government: for every "recognising China" there's an "East Timor".

The fact that the people so roundly rejected him at the post-Dismissal election cannot be brushed aside. Attempts by Labor apologists to do so reveal flaws in the Labor psyche over their genuine desire to win government and to govern, as opposed to the cop-out that is secular martyrdom.