Abbott and the limits of Gerard Henderson's support

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly: if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We'ld jump the life to come. But in these cases
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips.

- Shakespeare Macbeth Act I Scene VII

In this article tobacco-subsidised Gerard Henderson is getting ahead of himself in not only assuming that Tony Abbott will be PM, but what sort of PM he'll be. The whole article sounds very defensive, a rally-the-troops effort rather than a calm appraisal of the inevitable.

These days, Malcolm Fraser is much beloved by the left ... leftist journalist ... standing ovations from sandal-wearing intelligentsia at taxpayer-subsidised literary festivals.

Standard opening by asbestos-apologist-subsidised Henderson: he wants to filter out any reader who doesn't already support him and won't question him with a sort of verbal barrage.

But it was not always so. As Graham Freudenberg pointed out in his 1977 book A Certain Grandeur: Gough Whitlam in Politics, "Fraser's performance in 1975 was one of the most concentrated, single-minded and effective exercises in political destruction ever undertaken in Australian history".

Fraser took over the Liberal Party leadership from Billy Snedden in March 1975, opposed virtually all Whitlam Labor's legislation in the Senate and finally blocked supply. In the parlance of the day, Fraser was the embodiment of negative politics. A veritable "Dr No". But his tactics worked. In December 1975, Fraser led the Coalition to one of the biggest victories in Australian history.

That's right: Fraser took over in February and was Prime Minister by Christmas that same year. Abbott's experience is so different that pokies-subsidised Henderson's attempt at a parallel cannot really be drawn - at least not in the way he might hope.

Abbott took over the leadership of the Liberal Party in December 2009. By December 2010 he still wasn't Prime Minister, even though there had been a general election in the meantime. He could not persuade rural-based independents to back him, a problem Fraser would have handled with ease. Today, those who backed Gillard as PM have, with the exception of Wilkie, been confirmed in their decision; those upon whom the Coalition relies to force the no-confidence vote that would bring about an Abbott Government before the next election is due have been disparaging of the negative campaign that Henderson praises. Abbott has more in common with unsuccessful Opposition Leaders than with successful ones.

Had Abbott become Prime Minister in August-September 2010, he would have done so 9-10 months after taking the leadership of his party: the same period Fraser took to achieve the feat, and slightly less time than Rudd or Howard did:

Opposition Leader elected PM	Became Leader	Became PM	Duration as LOTO
Whitlam	Feb 1967	Dec 1972	5 yrs 10mths
Fraser	Feb 1975	Nov 1975	9 mths
Hawke	Feb 1983	Mar 1983	1 mth
Howard	Feb 1995	Mar 1996	1 yr 1 mth
Rudd	Dec 2006	Nov 2007	10 mths

The lesson is clear: if you're going to become PM you don't want to spend too long as Opposition Leader. Whitlam's incumbency is the odd one out because of a number of factors unique to his experience: the turnover of Liberal Prime Ministers (losing one was an accident, but three shows carelessness), Labor's extraordinary performance in the 1969 election, and the fact that his competitors within the ALP were either drones (e.g. Frank Crean) or the sort of people who got standing ovations from sandal-wearing intelligentsia at taxpayer-subsidised literary festivals (Jim Cairns).

This lesson is even clearer when you look at those Opposition Leaders who were unsuccessful at becoming Prime Minister:

LOTO who never became PM	Became Leader	Dumped/Quit	Duration as LOTO
Snedden	Dec 1972	Feb 1975	2 yrs 3mths
Hayden	Dec 1977	Feb 1983	5 yrs 3 mths
Peacock (1)	Mar 1983	Sep 1985	2 yrs 3 mths
Howard*	Sep 1985	May 1989	3 yrs 8 mths
Peacock (2)	May 1989	Mar 1990	10 m (total: 3 yrs 1 mth)
Hewson	Mar 1990	May 1994	4 yrs 2 mths
Downer	May 1994	Jan 1995	8 mths
Beazley (1)	Mar 1996	Nov 2001	5 yrs 8 mths
Crean	Nov 2001	Dec 2003	2 yrs 1 mth
Latham	Dec 2003	Jan 2005	1 yr 1 mth
Beazley (2)	Jan 2005	Dec 2006	1 yr 10 mths (total: 7 yrs 6 mths)
Nelson	Nov 2007	Sep 2008	10 mths
Turnbull	Sep 2008	Dec 2009	1 yr 3 mths

* Yes, yes, he later became PM. This period is regarded as some sort of learning experience because he didn’t become PM immediately afterwards and actually dissuaded many Liberals from giving him another go.

As of the date of this post, Abbott has been Opposition Leader for 2 years and 5 months, about average for an unsuccessful Opposition Leader - and by this I mean someone unsuccessful at translating his party leadership to a majority in the House of Representatives. Abbott fans like merchant-bank-sponsored Henderson insist that the position of Opposition Leader must be appreciated on its own merits rather than the way parties of government regard it: as a stepping-stone to the Prime Ministership.

Plenty of Opposition Leaders have limped out of politics insisting that Opposition is a worthy job in and of itself:

• Mark Latham insisted that he "took the fight up to" the Howard government;
• Labor won 51% of the popular vote in 1998 but still lost office;
• John Hewson defended Fightback! for forcing Bob Hawke - one of the most talented politicians of the past century - off his game and out of his job, and keeping Keating on his toes;
• Andrew Peacock out-campaigned Bob Hawke at his first election, despite Hawke having one of the most highly-regarded Cabinets ever and Peacock was stuck with left-overs from the defeated Fraser government;
• Bill Hayden took his party from the second-worst loss in federal election history to the point where "a drover's dog" could have won the election;
• Billy Snedden maintained that he had not really lost the 1974 election.

But really, so what? All Opposition Leaders have experienced a bit of a swing here and a strong performance there, but there is nothing so evanescent as an achievement in Opposition. Henderson should not only know better but stop asserting the contrary case, namely that Abbott is a substantial person in a substantial office doing substantial things.

Today, Tony Abbott is vilified by Julia Gillard and her colleagues, along with quite a few commentators, for his negativity. Yet this is not unusual behaviour for an opposition leader. 

Yes it is.

Since Freudenberg wrote the book upon which Henderson relies so heavily, twelve (very) different men have occupied the position of Leader of the Federal Opposition. None of them has taken the position that Abbott has taken, that the government is so lacking in legitimacy it must be opposed strenuously at every turn, regardless of the merits for the public of what is proposed.

Henderson's use of the word "vilified" is misplaced here; Abbott has received no more or less criticism from the government than anyone in his position might expect. When the Rudd government laid off Brendan Nelson, and when the Howard government went easy on Crean, it was a sign that each man's leadership was terminal - that the incumbents no longer took their so-called leading opponent seriously as an opponent.

The 2010 election result and current opinion polls indicate this tactic is succeeding.

The 2010 election should be regarded as just another election loss. There was a general election, the leader of the Liberal Party did not become Prime Minister and still does not hold that office: as with other competitive endeavours, there are no second prizes in politics.

The Coalition lost the 2010 federal election in the same way they lost the 1995 NSW election, the 1998 Queensland election and the 1999 Victorian election - only just, but those narrow defeats were harbingers of Labor landslides rather than errors soon rectified on the part of the Coalition.

As to the polls, they also indicate that Abbott has not yet failed. Gillard should be much further behind than she is were she to be written off as pollution-subsidised Henderson and others seem to hope.

Jonathan Green, the presenter of ABC RN's Sunday Extra, is one of a bevy of leftists ...

The standard practice of ABC-subsidised Henderson is to aggregate leftists into "brigades" (e.g. "the black armband brigade"). He has set up and knocked down so many brigades, consisting mostly of straw men, that I was surprised that he does not lead the Anzac Day March. Now he has exhausted the very term 'brigade' itself. Are Green's criticisms of the HSU leftist, or are critics of the HSU like critics of the Catholic Church, where expressing even the mildest qualm is proof that you never accepted the very precepts of such an organisation and that you are in league with its enemies? Vital questions of Green's embeviment turn on this.

Green ran the familiar leftist mantra that "Tony Abbott is a total dud that everyone hates but he's going to be prime minister because the other lot are just such an incompetent rabble".

Green, citing Australian Financial Review journalist Geoff Kitney, went on to claim that Abbott's net approval rating is minus 17 and "that compares with the great minus approval ratings of history like Billy Snedden who copped a minus 30 at one point".

But Snedden was not replaced as Liberal leader in 1975 on account of his approval rating. He was dumped because he was a lightweight who did not enjoy the confidence of his parliamentary colleagues. The real comparison is not between Abbott and Snedden ...

Oh yes he was. Oh yes it is.

Snedden lost the confidence of his parliamentary colleagues because of his poor polling. He had his supporters and his detractors; all leaders, even successful ones, have and do. Snedden was no more or less a lightweight than Abbott is; he was Attorney General in the Menzies government. He was Minister for Immigration during the early steps away from the White Australia Policy, and Minister for Labour and National Service during the first attempts to equalise male and female wages. When he was Treasurer both unemployment and inflation were less than three per cent. Snedden's record on fiscal discipline is much stronger than Abbott's, and his record on sound policy well executed as a minister is much, much better than Abbott's. However, Snedden was also prone to the sort of undisciplined and frankly nasty outbursts that Abbott fans and detractors alike have come to accept as an essential part of the man.

How is that defeatist 'mantra' (whether or not it truly belongs to Green) significantly different from the pro-Abbott one that says "Tony Abbott might not be everyone's cup of tea but he's going to be prime minister because the other lot are just such an incompetent rabble"?

... Abbott has been able to get both Liberal and National MPs behind him as he set about the destruction of a first-term government and, since the election, a minority government. Many commentators thought this could not be done.

And a fat lot of good it has done anyone. The "destruction of a first-term government" didn't happen, and "destruction of ... a minority government" hasn't happened either, so it looks like those commentators got it right. Famously, no legislation has actually been blocked under a minority government, which is more than can be said for many majority governments. I can't think of a single policy introduced by the Gillard government which was improved in any way by having been opposed by the Coalition, despite Abbott's vow to hold the government "ferociously to account".

Like all weak Liberal leaders, Abbott has kept the Nationals on side mainly by giving in to them. Nationals stand up for farming rights over mining rights despite the two being in direct conflict in many cases. This conflict is every bit as significant to agricultural interests, and to the nation and its future, as those posed by Aboriginal rights arising from the Mabo and Wik High Court decisions in the 1990s when the Howard government came to power. In that conflict it is not in Australia's interests to give all power to one side to vanquish the other; certainly, the Liberal Party's alignment with mining interests will make for the sort of titanic struggle that makes the sophisticated policy development necessary to balance such important interests harder, rather than easier. This is a structural weakness for a potential Coalition government, and treating 'leadership' as some sort of magic emollient that must not be questioned is weak and poor analysis.

In the 1980s, when the Liberals were fully on board with the economic rationalism debate and the Nationals saw it as their role to block it, Gerard Henderson recognised that the economic future of this country depended on the Nationals being beaten hard and often. Now he looks on benignly and thinks it's nice that the Coalition are playing happy families, when Barnaby Joyce is a latter-day Joh National and poses real difficulties for both Coalition policy-making and peace-making.

Quite a few commentators, who concede that Labor will lose the next election, want Turnbull to lead the Liberals. La Trobe University academic Robert Manne ... Clearly Manne believes Turnbull should be Australia's alternative prime minister.

You can imagine Henderson intoning sonorously: "We meet again, Professor Manne". Manne talked to a girl whom the then-unsubsidised Henderson liked at Melbourne University in the 1960s, or something, and has copped it ever since from Henderson. Woodchip-sponsored Henderson and Manne should get a room and sort it out. As to Manne's opinion on Turnbull, so what? Is this news or something? It might be a red-rag to Henderson but it's both entirely predictable and all part of wider debate.

Henderson is right when he says that Turnbull isn't ready to become Liberal leader again because all of the weaknesses he had as leader the first time around. Henderson is even right when he says that Abbott should continue to lead the Liberal Party to the next election: serves 'em right, I say, and his defeat will show the necessity to move on from Howardism.

Why should Liberal MPs, or indeed Coalition voters, care that a self-confessed Greens voter such as Manne believes Abbott should be dumped as opposition leader?

Why should Henderson care so much? It depends on whether or not you see the role of the Coalition as trying to convince those who did not vote Coalition in 2007 and 2010 to do so. Maybe Manne is playing cute in trailing his coat for a Liberal vote; I haven't read his interview.

Unlike the Gillard/Rudd leadership battles, Abbott prevailed over Turnbull on a matter of policy - namely the emissions trading scheme/carbon tax. If elected, his first priority would be to junk Labor's carbon tax. In other words, Abbott intends to dismantle his predecessor's legacy, something Fraser did not attempt. It is a significant policy challenge, incorrectly classified by some as simple negativity.

Before the 1975 election Fraser talked about dismantling the Whitlam legacy, but did not do so after the election (with the exception of canning Medibank before it could take hold) despite a clear mandate to do so. Abbott can talk about dismantling the carbon pricing mechanism, the NBN, or a host of other aspects of the Rudd-Gillard legacy, but Abbott is not entitled to be believed so credulously as Henderson does, and as he hopes we might. Henderson should have examined the difficulty in reversing that legacy, or indeed the appropriateness and wisdom of doing so, before embarrassing himself with fanboy nonsense like that.

It is fashionable for sneering secularists and sectarians alike to mock Abbott's Catholic faith. In fact, he is a traditional Catholic who believes in human imperfection, forgiveness and eventual redemption. Abbott is no fanatic and is not without personal doubt.

The problem with that is that Abbott's personal feelings, real or imagined, do not translate into public policy. There was a time when Catholicism was regarded with the sort of suspicion that falls upon Islam today; it is the mark of a fanatic to believe that those days have not gone, and even Catholics recognise that Abbott lies outside the mainstream of his co-religionists. Abbott loves his lesbian sister but can't see why her relationship deserves the sort of recognition that accrues to the marriages of his other sisters, or to that of his wife and himself. He recognises that he had a privileged upbringing, but can't see that others need help to give their children similar opportunities. He wants a Jakarta-centred foreign policy, but Jakarta thinks he's a goose. He doesn't trust the lessons learned from his own life.

Abbott is a man who has cut himself off from his public policy positions that we can't be sure that he is strong enough to use his humanity for good. Consider Gillard's idealisation of education in her own life and that of children today, or Keating's passion for the arts proving that he was more than a NSW Labor Right bovver boy or a soulless economist. Consider Malcolm Fraser, the Defence Minister who waged war on Vietnam, bringing in refugees and daring Labor to reopen the door to "Yellow Peril". That was evidence of soul at work in the Prime Minister's office, the idea that atop he political system was a human being for all the maneuvering and hoo-ha. Abbott brings nothing to that, nothing. All sorts of monstrous people reveal some show of humanity to their intimates, and it does not negate or balance or even matter terribly much at all. Against this awful weakness, Abbott's strutting is absurd.

I'm not one of those Henderson hisses at so alliteratively. In any awful but vital job in our community there will be committed Christians: dealing with the mentally ill, prisoners, drug addicts, doing the most wretched work you can imagine with bugger-all resources, day after day. I am in awe of such people and even though Tony Abbott has been raised to respect if not revere such people, he regards them as do-gooders. The people who make him possible regard and treat them with contempt and Tony Abbott is not strong enough to stand up to them. That's why professions of Abbott's true and humble faith are nothing but so much bullshit.

Quite a few Liberals and commentators believed Labor's Bob Hawke did not have the discipline to be a political leader. He became one of Australia's most successful prime ministers.

Hawke gave the grog away. Abbott gives away nothing and gets nothing in return. Hawke surrounded himself with capable people who challenged him while Abbott shuns those who challenge him, surrounding himself with people who titter at his jokes and Peta Credlin. Desperate parallel after desperate parallel just dies on the page for Henderson. All those straw men and nothing to clutch at.

Gerard Henderson is a nostalgia act for editors rather than someone with something to contribute to our understandings of important debates today. Abbott is not Fraser in sluggos but Snedden with a rosary. Henderson's attempts to rally people behind Abbott is undermined by the fact that he hasn't read any books since he started writing them, and that his shock-jock writing style shows his powers of persuasion have deserted him. He repels all but the perishing few who would rally to Abbott regardless. He gives his Fairfax-reading opponents more hope than he might have intended.

Henderson lessens himself

It's normally the practice of the Politically Homeless Institute to ignore Gerard Henderson, a man still fighting the battles of 1985 (or, in the case of Robert Manne, long before) with the sort of half-baked polling analysis that tries to make savants from idiots. In this piece, Henderson has learnt less than he ought from the recent British election, and thus his ability to advise Barry O'Farrell (or anyone else reading his column) is limited.

In 1974 the Liberal Party leader, Billy Snedden, obtained some unintended notoriety when he declared that the Coalition was not defeated at the federal election. Rather, it did not win enough seats to form a government. That was all.

In 1974, Billy Snedden was attempting to lead the Liberals back to office after only 17 months in opposition, having been in power for the 23 years before that. In 2011, Barry O'Farrell is likely to lead the Coalition to victory after 16 years in opposition. Poor analogy, whether at the opening or close of an article. The parallel is closer to the position Tony Abbott is in, rather than O'Farrell.

In some academic circles in Australia it is fashionable to blame the global financial crisis on what is termed neo-liberalism ... The current electoral boundaries in Britain do not favour the Tories ... Cameron and his advisers made the political task more difficult by agreeing to debate both Brown and Clegg ... There is a lesson in the Conservative Party's performance for the Liberals and Nationals in NSW in the lead-up to next year's state election.

Maybe so, but this article doesn't prove that case:

• Neo-liberalism and the GFC is not an issue for the NSW election. When there was plenty of money available in NSW, Labor was busy wasting it and pursuing facile media opportunities. Henderson takes more notice of "some academic circles" than most NSW voters, I suspect.


• The electoral boundaries in NSW are neither particularly pro- or anti-Coalition; balanced, I think, is the word to describe them. It is eminently possible for the Coalition to win outright on these boundaries, and to win a proportion of seats roughly equal to the vote next March.


• There is no coherent third-party force in NSW politics; you have the Coalition and Labor, then a motley collection of locals-first whatever-works pragmatists who lack a statewide scope. O'Farrell and Keneally need not have to choose between, say, Clover Moore and/or Peter Draper as debate partners. For Brown and Cameron to exclude Clegg would have given him other platforms plus a grievance, and would have diminished both the other leaders.

Henderson overreaches himself when trying to adapt different circumstances to NSW.

In Britain Cameron failed to distinguish himself sufficiently from Brown and New Labour.

No, Cameron failed to distinguish himself from the kind of economic vandalism that saw Britain kicked around by the EMU in 1992, policies that Cameron was then spruiking for the Conservative government at the time. He failed to win a majority because he could not rebut Labour claims that a Conservative government meant slashing and burning public services.

[Prime Minister Cameron's] major attempt in a speech to define a Cameron Tory leadership took the old form of the Hugo Young Memorial Lecture ... "big society" ... "empowering and enabling individuals, families and communities to take control of their lives" ... resembled a meaningless mission statement ...

This was Cameron's attempt to distinguish his government from the combination of diminished social services and sexual peccadillos that characterised the last Tory government. O'Farrell doesn't need to distinguish himself from the Greiner-Fahey government of 1988-95: not to the same extent and not for the same reasons. Credit to Henderson for keeping tabs on the Hugo Young so the rest of us don't have to - but not for failing to understand what Cameron meant while on the Hugo.

On economic policy, Cameron decided not to square with the British electorate about the tough-minded policies necessary to solve Britain's economic discontents.

And quite right too: whatever ideas the Conservatives have about what should be cut will have to be renegotiated. Best they keep these to themselves: the old pantomime that "things are much wors than we thought" won't do. By contrast, O'Farrell can afford to target 16 years worth of Labor boondoggles, log-rolling and fucks-up while creating space in the budget to support infrastructure investment. It is fair to describe Britain's deep-seated economic problems can be described with a much stronger word than discontents.

And on issues of crime and terrorism ... the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition deal promises to water down the anti-terrorism legislation.

Firstly, I doubt that Barry O'Farrell has a major policy on terrorism other than working with federal and international authorities. Secondly, it should be possible to make these measures more effective by not sacrificing civi liberties in the process: good on the Brits for making this attempt, and hopefully an O'Farrell Government can distinguish itself similarly. Henderson is wrong to regard this as "water[ing] down".

In Britain the Conservatives found that Labour was deeply embedded in many of its traditional seats. The same applies in NSW.

The same applies everywhere, really. Long-established political parties have safe seats that remain with that party even in the face of considerable swings.

Since World War II the NSW Liberal Party has won only twice from opposition ... And Greiner was committed to economic reform.

Yes, but he didn't run on it. He didn't emphasise cuts and disruptions that would have sent voters fleeing back to Labor, did he Gerard. Cameron did the same thing, and ended up with a coalition of conservatives and liberals like we used to have in NSW - and it is to liberals you apply the slander "left of centre".

The opinion polls suggest Barry O'Farrell is heading for a comfortable victory. However, the sassy Kristina Keneally is popular. It may be that the NSW electorate is so tired of government by Labor mates that it will vote to change government irrespective of what the opposition has to offer. However, as Cameron has found out, the small-target strategy can backfire.

It would have "backfire[d]" if Labour and the LibDems had formed a coalition to keep the Tories out. As it stands, Britain has ended up with a moderate conservative government, lucky them.

The position O'Farrell is in today is more like that of Victoria's Jeff Kennett in the early 1990s. I don't know if you'd describe Joan Kirner as "sassy" (I wouldn't describe Keneally in that way: hopefully O'Farrell learns not to describe her that way either), but basically Labor is so unfit for government that the Coalition can be, should be, and clearly is given the benefit of the doubt.

Over the past couple of years O'Farrell's message has not always been clear. In 2008 he declined to support Morris Iemma's attempt to privatise the NSW state-owned electricity generators. Here O'Farrell lined up with the Labor Left and Greens against the right-of-centre Iemma government. Politics aside, this was not good policy since this is the kind of reform that many would expect an O'Farrell government to make.

NSW's coal-fired electricity generation system is in need of such drastic reform that it can only and must be done by government directly. The technological, environmental and regulatory changes facing coal-fired electricity is far greater than that facing the Commonwealth Oil Refineries in 1950. This reform cannot be left to an organisation run by people who are charged with maximising short-term profit. Iemma would have sold these assets for a song, and extracted such concessions for the sale, and squandered the proceeds, that O'Farrell's manoever was the right public policy choice. This makes it brilliant policy by itself: the fact that a generation of Labor politicians (particularly creatures of the Sussex Street Right) have since been pinned to the barbed-wire and machine-gunned is a bonus, and one for which O'Farrell continues to receive too little credit.

The Liberal Party's three most successful leaders - Menzies, Malcolm Fraser and John Howard - all won elections from opposition by staking out Liberal Party positions that were dramatically different from those of the incumbent Labor government at the time.

Really?

• I'll give you Menzies, but that was a while ago and much has happened since then.


• The first thing the Fraser government did was to pass the budget developed by its predecessors, in full. It retained contentious Whitlam initiatives of family law, Aboriginal land rights and much else besides.


• On coming to office the Howard government did cut government services and distanced itself from its predecessors on, well, Aboriginal land rights in particular. It almost lost the following election.

While not criticising those policies in themselves, one can dismiss Henderson's idea that the Coalition must first look to Labor to set the agenda, and only then adopt a position markedly different from whatever Labor initiates, preferably in line with Henderson's preconceptions.

O'Farrell will win office when he sets out an agenda that is right for NSW, regardless of whether or not Labor's media-cyclists adopt the same position or a different one. This is the secret of Labor's success federally: Rudd is often called "Howard lite" when his positions coincide with those of his predecessor, and a dangerous radical where they don't; always, however, Rudd can be said to be more his own man than his disingenous opponent who would restore Howard in every way except personally.

While the Conservative Party only narrowly failed to achieve a majority of seats in the House of Commons, it still failed.

It would have "failed" had it not secured the Prime Ministership, the three great offices of state below that office, and control of the government generally. Compromise isn't failure Gerard, in politics it's a strength, and O'Farrell has demonstrated that strength to build alliances that show Labor can be frustrated without a collapse of government in this state. Will Hodgman could do worse than ask O'Farrell what his secret is in dealing with the Greens - particularly when the NSW Greens are more militant than Tasmania's.

In The Monthly, John Hirst said that Henderson gave O'Farrell a job in John Howard's office in the 1980s. It's not ingratitude for O'Farrell to learn from Henderson's rant that he shouldn't let Henderson's misjudgments limit NSW, the Liberals or even one's understanding of contemporary British politics.

Dr Henderson and the Liberals

Gerard Henderson has long bemoaned the poverty of intellectual discourse within the Liberal Party but his perceptions of the major issues facing the Liberal Party, and the motivations behind those issues, are not as clear as they once were. This piece is the sort of thing Henderson is increasingly putting out, his new norm: mostly wrong, but not (yet) so risible that you can dismiss him out of hand.

The decision not to make Turnbull shadow finance minister cannot be viewed in isolation from the decision as to whom that position was actually awarded. Senator Joyce is not an unintelligent man, but it is not only in retrospect that we can see that he was a poor choice for this key position. He had crossed the floor 29 times and was known for ill-considered outbursts that put Coalition unity at peril to enhance his own profile, yet even with such a record he was preferred over someone who had never done so but who might (have).

The Liberals are not adequately prepared for the Henry tax review or the coming budget; this is because of the Joyce choice and despite the efforts of Hockey, and to a lesser extent Robb.

Consider the fact that Abbott as an Opposition frontbencher would regularly cast doubt over Coalition policy by contradicting the leader and shadow ministers, and writing a book in isolation from the consultative processes of the party room and shadow cabinet.

Henderson is also wrong to make much of the Henson case, an arty storm in a teacup if ever there was one. If you have a problem with David Marr, Gerard, that's your problem. The Henson case was much less significant culturally than the Ern Malley affair - and it is far, far less important as a social issue than the arrogant approaches of churches toward actual sexual abuse of children. If Henderson is going to act as some sort of tribune for people in marginal seats and what they want, try the big and real issues Gerard. Really.

Hockey was right to question the idea that anti-terrorism legislation diminishes our rights under law in the interest of protecting our rights under law more generally. Henderson was wrong to claim that questions about our rights under our laws ought only be investigated by members of a (minor) party.

You can quote a minister in support of your arguments if you like, but there are two issues missed by self-serving Henderson: firstly, Tanner isn't the Attorney General or some other minister concerned with the justice system, and secondly Tanner didn't disagree with Hockey. The question of convictions merely means that some aspects of the laws work while others don't; there is a wider question of whether our legal protections against terror should be such a curate's egg/dog's breakfast/Gerard Henderson column.

Stephen Conroy is not trying to stop child pornography on the internet. He is deliberately avoiding real measures that real pedophiles actually use, and deliberately acting in ways known by those who work in this area to be completely ineffectual. He is doing this because he wants to create an impression that he is taking action when he is not in fact doing so. He is playing on the ignorance of people like Henderson (and Tony Smith) who think they have excuses for failing to inform themselves about this policy area (internet policy is no more complicated than, other areas of economic or national security policy). Hockey didn't go far enough in criticising Conroy: it is not true that any criticism of Conroy is a permissive one that allows for child pornography. It's not true, and it's not fair of Henderson to slur Hockey in this way, but he'll probably do so again.

Where Henderson is right, though, is Turnbull's failure to adopt Menzies' humility in the 1940s. Henderson might also profitably have raised Menzies' traversing the country during that time, making speeches and consulting about what a postwar non-Labor force might and should look like, another comparison that reflects poorly on Turnbull. It appears that Turnbull lacks this drive (however much he might have demonstrated in other fields), and the country (and its non-Labor politics) is poorer for it. Henderson can't imagine a post-Howard Liberal Party, one not fixated on trade unions and culture wars, and doesn't wish to; any attempts at reconsideration, any signs whatsoever of intellectual activity, will attract his increasingly feeble ire.

Henderson started his piece by asking - rhetorically - whether Turnbull should reconsider his decision not to recontest Wentworth for the Liberal Party. Those who want Turnbull to recontest fear that it may be lost to the Liberal Party unless he is its candidate. The Liberal Party, by electing Abbott as its leader, has cemented in place a deliberate strategy to repel people who would have voted Liberal in the past. It must follow through that strategic vision and, if they continue to lose seats like Wentworth, Bennelong and even North Sydney, so be it; there will come a time for the Liberal Party to decide how committed it is to voter-repellent policies, notwithstanding Henderson The People's Tribune.

When Henderson encourages Turnbull to "stick to his guns", it is only because Turnbull has those guns trained on himself. Where Turnbull had those guns trained on issues that Henderson barely understands but adopts positions in The People's Name, Henderson does not pause to examine the issues but lunges for barricades which aren't there, and certainly aren't actually blocking anything.

His pre-emptive attacks on the prospect of Liberals re-examining the Howard legacy shows that he has gone from attacking an unsustainable status quo within the Liberal Party to defending one, with little to show in the way of policy or political achievement in the interim. Much less than, say, Phillip Adams, or even Andrew Peacock. The more time passes and the more the issues of the 1980s recede, the less important Henderson will become - but that won't stop Fairfax retaining him.

Too excited to think straight

Now you can see why Gerard Henderson is usually such a sad sack - when he tries to be optimistic he gets all giddy. He also trots out some of his hoary old themes which haven't survived the passage of time.

A reasonable result in Bradfield would give Turnbull the chance to re-establish some authority in the lead-up to the next federal election.

Not really. A reasonable result would be a reprieve rather than a bonus. The following paragraph, apart from the pointless piling-on to Latham (once hailed by Henderson as one of Labor's great thinkers), puts paid to the whole pay-peanuts-get-monkeys thing: there was a time, before the culture wars, when Henderson would have given some thought to that.

The indications are that the candidates will include the lawyer Sophie York, the businessman Paul Fletcher, the Menzies Research Centre director Julian Leeser and the former journalist Tom Switzer, who worked briefly on Nelson's staff when he was Opposition Leader.

All four would add much-needed youthful talent to the Opposition frontbench.

Fletcher is good on telco policy, that's about it. He's a cold, aloof man with not much to show beyond his area of interest. I can picture him raving on and on about optic fibre and digital content to a disbelieving and bewildered bunch of oldies who regard computers both as trivial children's toys and at the same time all-powerful evil machines that will eat you. A lightweight like John Alexander will run rings around Fletcher, and that will piss him off no end.

Julian Leeser is both very bright and very personable, and while he should be in parliament one day - but not now, not here. Selecting him would be a clear demonstration of fealty to Turnbull, and the leader's grip over his party is still too tenuous for that. If he loses in the first round it will be a clear rebuke to the current leader, and a good man will be collateral damage (but hey, that's politics!). Henderson undermined his own point by failing to praise Leeser's considerable intellect and hard work, especially when compared to Frydenberg or Switzer.

Tom Switzer is a shrieking goon who has only two operating modes: thunder and bluster, or whiny victim. It is a symptom of the intellectual poverty of the US Republican Party that it only offers such people, and for Switzer to enter Parliament would demonstrate that the Liberal Party is similarly bereft. Switzer and Wilson Tuckey would compete for getting chucked out of the House most often. His public appearances give no sensible person grounds for basic respect for his views, as both his ego and intellect are so brittle he could not face down a challenge. The far left are either defunct, or have become conservatives (but I repeat myself). In a meeting of minds you'd send Tom out for the biscuits, but he'd probably scoff them all Cookie Monster-style just to show his rugged disdain for namby-pambyness.

The recent preselection of Joshua Frydenberg for the relatively safe Liberal seat of Kooyong in Melbourne is a plus for the Coalition. His work experience in Howard's office and in business entitles him to a frontbench position after the next election.

Joshua is intellectually and morally lazy, as we at the Politically Homeless Institute have pointed out repeatedly, and any minister shadowed by him would get an easy ride. Someone with his resume should be the goods, but Gerard you have a responsibility to look beyond what's on the label.

Unlike Labor, too few Liberals read widely on policy before they enter politics.

This was probably true in the 1980s: it simply isn't true any more. It is absurd to claim that, for instance, Kate Ellis would be better read/more experienced than Greg Hunt, or that Craig Thomson would be better read/more experienced than Michael Keenan. Once, perhaps: no more.

The Howard government had only a few ministers who were subsumed in politics since their schooldays and who had the conviction and the intellectual courage to take on all comers in the political debate. This group included Howard, Peter Costello, Alexander Downer and Tony Abbott. Howard and Downer have left politics and Costello says he is about to depart. This leaves Abbott who, on his own admission, had a poor 2007 election campaign and is regarded by some colleagues as a risk.

Abbott is the bollard over which Julia Gillard, Nicola Roxon and Jenny Macklin have cruised into office. If Abbott merited the intellectual reputation that unthinking people give him, these promising Labor up-and-comers should have been political road-kill by now, skulking back to dingy Melbourne moaning about how tough politics is. Battlelines has sunk without trace - for intellectual content, not to mention lasting political influence and resonance in contemporary debate, it makes the works of Don Chipp look like Kant or Gramsci.

Nelson was a competent performer in the Howard government and a fine education minister. Yet he was never leadership material.

The first sentence is tosh and Henderson can only ruin what remains of his reputation with crap like that. The second sentence is a reversal of what he said during Nelson's leadership at the time - again, as with that other failed Opposition Leader, Latham - Henderson is being smart after the event.

It's almost two years since the Coalition lost the election and its prime minister lost his seat. The years have not been kind to Howard's refusal to hand over to Costello in his final term. The opportunity of a Costello leadership is now lost. The task is to rebuild the party with young, articulate political conservatives who believe in their cause. Traditionally, the conservative intellectual political tradition has been weak in Australia. There is no reason why this should remain the case.

Bradfield offers the Liberals a chance to demonstrate that they are willing to engage in the battle of ideas with a view to returning to government.

Yes it does, and they will squib it. Self-belief gets you a long way in politics but it is not the same as, nor a replacement for, the willingness of others to believe that you understand the challenges facing Australia today. Switzer doesn't, Fletcher does only in very small part, and Peter Costello's fine words were not matched by the necessary bravery on his part whilst in office.

Gerard Henderson used to be intellectually nimble enough to adjust his beliefs in line with objective reality. No more: he's a broken record in an iPod age. He didn't say anything different to what Miranda Devine said on the same topic on Saturday (except she didn't deign to mention Leeser or Fletcher), and people wonder why we don't want to pay for online content from Fairfax.

But with a whimper

Gerard Henderson was a pioneer in Australian politics. He is now a wittering irrelevance, a living example of what happens when you get what you have prayed for and can't move beyond it.

There was a time when chaps with a few brains could exercise some influence in right-of-centre politics discreetly, behind the scenes. C D Kemp, B A Santamaria and Peter Coleman all did this to different degrees during the 1950s and '60s. Gerard Henderson positioned himself to do something similar for John Howard when the latter was Liberal leader during the 1980s - but John Howard doesn't like to be managed by his staff, and so Henderson was jettisoned before the Liberals did the same to Howard in 1989.

In other countries, fellows like Enoch Powell and William F Buckley had shown that you didn't have to hide your light under a bushel. By the time the 1980s came around, the red-in-tooth-and-claw culture warrior was matched with thinktanks like the Cato Institute and the American Heritage Foundation. Neither existed in Australia until Gerard Henderson invented them.

His attacks on the ABC were inspired. First, there was extensive precedent from the US in their tirades against PBS and the "nattering nabobs of negativity". The ABC has a much more substantial presence in Australia than PBS does in the United States, and it's a soft target: lefties have become intellectually flaccid and underestimated their need to fight back. Besides, the media loves talking about itself and while someone listening in to Radio National with notepad at the ready would be dismissed as a crank, Henderson could and did get a run. After a while he could, in passive-aggressive style, bully his way onto left-leaning media organs like the ABC and the Fairfax press by claiming that he represented balance, and that to exclude him was to be unbalanced. At a time when declining readership of mainstream media was starting to bite, and when insecurity about political influence was at a premium, media organisations dreaded lack of balance. Really.

Henderson's prime was in the early '90s: the Liberals were trying to work out who they were and what they stood for without wanting to look disorganised. Tobacco advertising was banned and, to use a passive construction deliberately, the Sydney Institute was not unopposed to the sale of products in a capitalist consumer society that were not unlawful. The Sydney Institute ran what looked like a salon but with the behind-the-scenes control of a press conference. Its popularity paralleled that of the Harold Park Hotel's Politics at the Pub for lefties, except with coffee and wine and nibblies rather than schooners and Hall Greenland. It became the venue of choice for those selling weighty tomes who could persuade their writers to come to Australia.

By the time of the 1996 election, Gerard Henderson had helped us understand what we might be in for if we were to elect a Coalition Government: and so it proved, a government of limited imagination but great determination to achieve what little it did. Henderson was mildly disappointed by the Howard government's gradual abandonment of the Howard opposition's commitment to smaller government. He was supplanted as culture warrior by Frank Devine's daughter and Janet Albrechtsen, and was replaced as an intellectual force by refugees from the left like Paddy McGuinness and Keith Windschuttle. He lacked the intellectual strength of Thomas Sowell, the nagging consistency of Grover Norquist or the wit of P J O'Rourke - but he did his best.

Today, Gerard Henderson is a burnt-out shell as you can see from this piece. It fails on two fronts, the political and the moral, missing the threat in both cases.

The new sectarianism is quite different from the old sectarianism. Yet it is real enough. From European settlement in 1788 until about the mid 1960s, Australia was afflicted with a prevailing distrust of Catholics - many were of Irish descent - who formed the nation's largest minority. In those days sectarianism was essentially driven by Protestants.

Whatever people's objections to Catholics were at that time, nobody seriously claimed or believed that the Catholic Church was dedicated to the protection and advancement of child molesters, nor the persecution of their victims. It does not hold that anyone who criticises the Catholic Church for any reason whatsoever must be inherently biased, motivated by the same pettiness and lack of empathy that saw state school and Catholic schoolkids throw stones at one another at bus stops across the land. Yet, this is what Henderson is trying to establish by starting with this: Australia! Not only ragged mountain ranges, droughts and flooding rains - but also people who hate Micks!

Henderson also implies that only non-Catholics are sectarian. Good luck with that.

Nowadays sectarianism in Western democracies is fuelled by what Michael Burleigh terms the "sneering secularists".

Henderson conflates the idea of sectarianism with secularism. Sectarianism means narrowly confined or devoted to a particular religious sect, or bigoted or narrow-minded adherence to a sect. Secularism means that matters of civil policy should be conducted irrespective of how religious movements think they ought to be conducted (from the Latin saecularis meaning worldly, temporal). Henderson believes that sectarianists are secularists, secularists sectarians, and that anyone with any objection whatsoever to any of the attendant fuss that has accompanied the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Australia is solely motivated by this secularist-sectarian bias.

The sneering secularists in our midst oppose all the Judeo-Christian beliefs.

Secularists oppose the idea that all matters on which Judeo-Christian religion has an opinion must be done in a way that accords with Judeo-Christian teaching. It's one thing to frame an article in a slanted way, but to be misrepresentative sets Henderson up for the same intellectual laziness of which he would accuse the ABC and other targets.

The NSW government has - without passing legislation through Parliament - proscribed any act that might be considered annoying to Catholics for most of July 2008. There is no evidence that the Catholic Church has sought this legislation, but they have a duty to express sufficient confidence in their own beliefs that would make such a proscription unnecessary. The Church should have called for the ban, imposed in their name, to be lifted: it has not done so and has attracted criticism as a result. This is not "Pope bashing", as it is not the same as sectarianism. It is, however, secularism at its best: the freedom for Catholics to express themselves is the same for anti-Catholics to do likewise.

On the very day that the High Court decided that the NSW legislation was unconstitutional, Henderson had nothing to say about the issue of free speech: nothing. He had nothing to say about "balance", apart from a bleat about official complaints-handling processes at the ABC.

So far the award for the leading sneerer goes to The Age columnist Catherine Deveny.

And you can imagine Deveny embracing such an award. This goes to the nature of the political threat Henderson perceives: a Melbourne lefty commentator of limited influence beyond those of like mind, and of course the dreaded ...

... NoToPope Coalition.

That coalition wouldn't be particularly large, influential or substantial. It would be a small number of leftwing activists - small to the point of irrelevance, Gerard. I wouldn't say they'd fit into a phonebox, because they don't have phoneboxes any more, but they'd certainly fit into the loungeroom of a small flat in Newtown. Henderson is getting himself all worked up about a small number of people expressing predictable opinions. The fact that they are campaigning for free speech is admirable, but otherwise they are irrelevant - except for their ability to inspire Gerard Henderson columns.

I readily acknowledge that some of the cleverest men and women I have met, or read about, were believers in one of the great religions. They do not warrant mockery.

This is a straw man: nobody is suggesting they do. Deveny was mocking the idea that a major religion should celebrate its own existance with something so lite-brite-n-trite as WYD. There are many devout Christians and good people who wouldn't go anywhere near WYD. This does not mean, however, that they are in league with NoToPope, Catherine Deveny, or other aspects of the sectarian-secularist miasma.

Last year I sent Jane Connors, the manager of ABC Radio National, a note suggesting that it was somewhat imbalanced for Stephen Crittenden to line up three critics of Cardinal George Pell to take the only interview slots on one program of The Religion Report. All Connors wanted to know in her reply was whether this was a formal complaint.

This is what happens when you develop a reputation as a pain-in-the-arse, deal with it.

Last week Lateline began a campaign against Pell concerning his handling of a complaint of Anthony Jones who, at the age of 29, was sexually assaulted by a Catholic priest, Terence Goodall.

Last Tuesday Pell admitted that he had made a mistake in the manner in which he handled the case.

Lateline did not accuse Pell of making a mistake. Lateline accused Pell of being mendacious, writing one thing to one person and another to someone else on the same day regarding the same matter. Pell has no right for his admission to be taken on face value. As to Jones' age: is there an optimal to be sexually assaulted?

Apparently Lateline could not find anyone who would put an alternative view.

Was there anyone with an alternative view? The only "alternative view" was that Pell is, on he whole, a good man who ought not be criticised heavily for having made a mistake. There are plenty of Pell supporters out there willing to make that case, I'm sure, had Pell asked them to do so. However, the points made by the other commentators about the Catholic Church's stonewalling and/or prosecution of victims were well made and, for anyone with any sympathy for sexual assault victims (at any age), hard to refute. Lateline cannot be blamed for failing to find people who don't exist or don't want to refute the irrefutable.

It's also a fact that the Catholic Church takes a hard line against homosexuality. Yet, in the Goodall-Jones case, there was Pell explaining away an intimate moment between two adults - just like any secularist would. Henderson's admiration for Pell has blinded him to this, um, inconsistency.

Such crimes should not diminish the good that priests, brothers and sisters - and bishops - have done over the years. The Canberra Times columnist Jack Waterford is a critic of contemporary Catholicism. Yet, in a column on June 26, he conceded that the stigma ignited by a few offenders had cast a grossly unfair burden on up to 80,000 Catholics who signed up for religious duties in Australia over the past century.

No, they certainly shouldn't. However, Pell muddies the moral waters when he, as leader of Australia's Catholics, makes excuses for sexual abuse and other crimes among clergy that he should condemn and punish. If Pell is under attack, it is for falling short of his professed standards.

If you only listened to the sneering secularists you would get the impression that Catholicism is somehow responsible for high birth rates and the spread of HIV/AIDS.

No, you'd get the impression that Catholics preach high birth rates without practicing them, and that they reject preventative measures for HIV other than abstinence from sex and drug abuse. Mind you, if you only listened to Catholic spokespeople you'd get the same impression.

So this is what it comes to: Henderson sees a political panic from an Age columnist and a handful of radical students, and has wilfully missed the point about freedom of speech. He is amazed when a church leader who regards tireless caring people as human shields for sexual predators has found himself in a moral muddle. Gerard Henderson diminishes the "fine education" he claims for himself with his inability to perceive real issues and his doggedness in irrelevant straw-man work. He gives comfort to his opponents and doesn't help his fellow-travellers. He is unlikely to recapture the lucidity and determination that made his writings must-read commentary, and it is time to write him off.

Henderson's intellectual poverty

Gerard Henderson is blaming a range of organisations for intellectual failure within the Liberal Party, without examining the anti-intellectual culture within the party itself. So long as this happens, the problem he identifies cannot be solved.

The problems with Buswell or Nelson are not in the individuals themselves, but in the collective decisions that these individuals really are the best available leaders and that Liberal energies are best devoted to propping them up.

Historically, conservatives in Australia win more elections than they lose - it's just that they are not so successful in the intellectual debate.

They don't want to be, they don't think it's important. Intellectual consistency limits political flexibility and makes politicians look powerless to influence outcomes for those they regard as their clients. Nobody is more despised than the "pointy-headed intellectual" in Liberal circles.

John Howard's recently defeated Coalition government tells the story.

Indeed it does. The compromises over waterfront reform and the cumbersome, unwanted WorkChoices; the nanny-state authoritarianism of Abbott as noted below (he has been "demoted" to a position consistent with his rhetoric yet still out of his depth); the inadequate responses to defence issues; the lax approach to skills training and inflation; all these stand as indictments of the Howard government both politically and intellectually. You can't complain about intellectual failure if this is the standard to which you aspire.

An Opposition leader's lot is seldom a happy one unless election success seems evident, as was the case with Howard in 1995 and early 1996, and with Rudd throughout last year. Yet the task seems easier if there is evident, albeit minority, support in the ongoing political debate.

What a fatuous statement this is. On neither of the occasions cited did intellectuals rally to the opposition. Part of the "discipline" that both ultimately successful oppositions showed at those times involved shutting down competing ideas, equating dissent with disloyalty or at the very least rendering it unhelpful. Howard in particular attributed much of his political success to his disdain for intellectual "elites". You can't complain about lack of support from those you despise, scorn and de-fund.

During Howard's time there was considerable hype among the left about what were termed the culture wars. If such a cultural battle was ever engaged, Howard did not win it. His appointments to the ABC board did not change the national broadcaster's prevailing leftist culture.

I'm sure the view from Kirribilli compensated for the witterings of, say, Ramona Koval. Liberals and Nationals were never encouraged to apply for jobs in that organisation; indeed, such was the vituperation heaped upon it that any such ambitions would be considered career suicide.

Howard decided to fund his own think thanks, hence the generous taxpayer subsidies to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra and, more recently, the United States Study Centre at Sydney University. Neither organisation, however, has been of much help to the Liberal Party in the battle of ideas.

Taxpayer funds should not be regarded as the partisan gift of the Prime Minister, which is the clear implication of the above paragraph. The success of the ASPI and the yet-to-commence US Studies Centre depends upon a bipartisan character, and cannot be held responsible - nor compensate - for the intellectual failures within the Liberal Party. Same with the Henderson Institute, really. I have already commented about the failure of Liberal Students to storm academia the way that leftists have done since World War II. Henderson should be doing some Herbie Marcuse work to implement the only real solution to this predicament.

Now the Rudd Government is proposing to match a Victorian Labor Government contribution of $15 million to fund a think tank at Melbourne University based on the Brookings Institution in Washington ... Maybe Howard would have funded this as well. The likelihood of such a body being headed by a considered conservative is as likely as a flying pig.

See, this is just being churlish. The Menzies Research Centre should be leaving this proposed centre in its wake, or even acting as a model. It is doing neither, a hollow log for fundraising that does not translate into helping Liberals win elected office.

While the Liberals struggle to defend the Howard/Costello legacy, many former Coalition members have agreed to be interviewed for a documentary titled The Howard Years to be presented by the ABC's Fran Kelly this year. It speaks volumes for the lack of intellectual confidence among senior Liberals that they would agree to sign on to having the history of the Howard government presented by the left-of-centre Kelly, who failed to disguise her opposition to Howardism on a range of social, economic, environmental and foreign policy issues when presenting the Radio National program Breakfast in recent years.

If Kelly didn't do it, nobody would. That's the real indication of intellectual confidence. Your own performances on Fran Kelly's Breakfast, Gerard, were dull both in intellectual and entertainment terms. Acting as an apologist for policies you have played no part in shaping and are not fully informed about will do that to you.

The Liberals and Nationals do not take the intellectual debate seriously, which is why it is left to pinheads like Miranda Devine, Tony Abbott, Janet Albrechtsen or Gerard Henderson to carry the (empty) can of rightwing intellectualism. If you really want people to take on the challenge of right-of-centre intellectual development, create an environment conducive to it.

Rain dogs

Dogs navigate their way around by patterns of odours. From American cities comes the phenomenon of "rain dogs", where a sudden downpour washes away the patterns of odours and leave dogs stranded wherever they find themselves, without any sense of how to get home.

The Liberal Party are a bit like rain dogs at the moment, with all their familiar reference points gone and no sense of direction. This is why Gerard Henderson has demonstrated his firm grasp of the wrong end of the stick by using the media to attack the media. The headline writer of this piece has framed Henderson's article as though it is the Liberals, not the media, that is being criticised.

The headline writer has it right. It is the Liberals who need a new sense of direction and purpose. They, and Henderson, also need to understand that sometimes the media will be critical of them, if not outright unfair.

Bongiorno put it to Pyne that he should not raise the issue of Kevin Rudd's past dealings with the West Australian operative Brian Burke since this was "raking over old coals" ... can anyone imagine Bongiorno telling Senator Bob Brown three years ago that he should not raise the children overboard affair against John Howard since this had been adjudicated at the 2004 election? The Bongiorno question provides just one example of how some journalists apply different standards to the Coalition as distinct from Labor.

Burke is "old coals" because we are talking about a minor political issue - not at all equivalent to the life-and-death magnitude of children being thrown into the ocean and a group of people, if not Australia's entire humanitarian migration program, vilified by implication. The Coalition are working themselves into a state over nothing, and journalists do us a favour by bumping them off their talking points.

The cartoonist Michael Leunig, The Age's house leftist, set the tone recently when he bagged the Prime Minister's apology speech as being both "feeble" and "banal".

Henderson might tilt at Leunig out of habit, having spent four decades doing so, but criticism from Leunig is to be expected. Henderson asserted but did not establish that Michael Leunig sets the tone - in The Age or anywhere else. Does Paul Bongiorno, or anyone else "bagged" by Gerard Henderson, really take their cues from Michael Leunig? Honestly. Certainly not worth complaining about, Gerard.

How about that?

There are no prizes for nailing whimsy, Gerard.

The left's critique of Rudd will not help the Coalition. All the Liberals and Nationals can do is to perform as well as possible in a difficult environment. So far, the evidence indicates that they will need to enhance their political skills.

Well, no shit! After a penetrating insight like that you'd expect Henderson to set some performance indicators, and at least show us what political skills might look like. After twelve months of frittering away a strong incumbent government in a time of economic prosperity, you'd expect that Henderson would have identified this lack of political skills a lot earlier.

But there was no obvious reason why [Joe Hockey] saw fit to tell [ABC reporter Liz] Jackson, who is hardly a fan of the Liberal Party, that his colleagues were ignorant about the details of key legislation. A senior Liberal should be able to find a place to download somewhere other than in front of an ABC camera.

This does not go to the question of political skill. Hockey did keep his criticisms to himself, or within Liberal circles, before the election. Fat lot of good it did Hockey or his party, Gerard. It is now fair to question the utility of that tactic.

Some Liberals in the last Howard Cabinet have already gone, having lost their seats. Others, such as Nick Minchin and Peter Costello, won't go and won't stay to make a useful contribution, either. Hockey is right to be frustrated with such people, and right to put this in the forum they can least effectively manage: the public record. The Liberals need to recast their image and insiders have a role in that by putting hitherto unknown facts into the public record.

Jackson doesn't have to be a dyed-in-the-wool Liberal to be worthy of an interview. It is a measure of political skill that Hockey should use an experienced, possibly antipathetic journalist so effectively to his own ends. There may come a time when all journalists are to the right of Gerard Henderson, but until then one must do what one can with what one has. Jackson did not - and could not - dictate how her interviews are received by viewers.

Meanwhile, in the Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee, the Liberal backbencher Concetta Fierravanti-Wells has decided to focus on the domestic pets of the Prime Minister and his wife ... As with her past hyperbolic criticisms of the ABC, Senator Fierravanti-Wells's critique of the Rudds is completely counterproductive and, as such, worse than a mere waste of time.

Now if a journalist - any journalist - made the simple observation that Fierravanti-Wells is a hack and a waste of time, Henderson would hop right into them and onto the bandwagon of lefty journalists. The mistake here is to believe that Fierravanti-Wells is capable of better, and that she has a useful role to play both in holding the Rudd Government to account as well as in shaping the next Liberal Government.

I realise that Henderson hasn't said that Fierravanti-Wells isn't a waste of time - but I'd say that you can't produce any evidence of any contribution she has made that would mitigate such embarrassment to self and party.

... the high employment record of the Howard government will look quite impressive.

Not when you consider the jiggery-pokery used by the Howard government to redefine unemployment.

The Prime Minister and the key economic ministers (Gillard, Wayne Swan and Lindsay Tanner) are well aware of the potential difficulties in [wages-driven inflation]. The problem for Rudd Labor is that it sent out a message before the election that working families had suffered as a result of Work Choices ... it would be reasonable to assume that working families expect that they will receive higher remuneration under Rudd than under Howard. This could put greater pressure on wage growth.

The reason why the Liberals lost the last election was because of the jarring dissonance between its two main messages. On one hand, they said that the economy was doing well; on the other hand, the message of WorkChoices is that individual employees may not share in the general prosperity. The message of the Rudd Government is that all that economic sunshine has now led to a spate of economic sunburn and economic melanoma. The idea of interest rate rises is to curb inflation, and it is too early to blithely deem this the failure that Henderson would regard it as. Some of the assumptions that Henderson makes, such as an aggressive and powerful union movement and a centralised wage-setting system, no longer apply.

... it is likely that Labor will suffer some political cost if fuel and electricity prices rise as part of the solution to climate change as envisaged by Garnaut. Such an eventuality should put the Coalition back into the political debate - even if the majority of journalists remains hostile or indifferent to its message.

The quality of state-provided facilities provided by Labor governments has fallen inversely to the costs of maintaining them. Yet, the Liberals are only in the debate as naysayers, for piss-weak parliamentary tactics and internal turmoil. The idea that Kevin Rudd will grow weary and drop government back into the lap of the Coalition is fanciful.

Opposition is invariably difficult.

Many things are difficult, Gerard. Journalists can be sympathetic or unsympathetic, but just as they should be judged as to whether they are applying the appropriate scrutiny, members of the opposition should make sure they measure up to the business of government before deeming the Australian media beneath their dignity. Uncritical support just gets filtered out, which is why Glenn Milne (and, indeed, Gerard Henderson) has not swung a single vote anywhere or anything.

... it is somewhat easier if those in opposition do not trash their own policies (past or present)

They need to do this, Gerard, to demonstrate that they have something to offer voters other than nostalgia. Some people may get hurt in the process, but that's politics.

Da G-dog has complained once again about the existence of leftists in the media, and equated political skill with his own wishes. He thinks the Liberal Party should settle into opposition as one would settle into a comfy armchair, controlling the media remotely. Henderson is being unreasonable about the media - there is no friendly or unfriendly coverage, only different degrees of scrutiny - and setting fanciful and absurd standards for the Liberals. This makes him no better than those he criticises; worse if they take his advice, and worst still if people ignore him.