Flinching at the future

I look to the future it makes me cry
But it seems too real to tell you why

Freed from the century
With nothing but memory, memory

And I just hope that you can forgive us
But everything must go

And if you need an explanation
Then everything must go

- Manic Street Preachers Everything must go

In 2018, traditional broadcast media is dying and politicians are starting to look for alternatives to standard media management. Two recent incidents from two current politicians, and the responses from the media covering them, show that the place of the media in the future of politics is clear: there isn't one.

Disintermediation

There are those who govern, and those who are governed. For the past two hundred or so years in western democracies, the entirety of Australia's post-settlement political history, that relationship has been mediated by accredited media. Accredited media was supplied with details about government decisions that had been taken, and it also took to reporting both reactions to those decisions, and proposals for government decisions not yet taken. In that gap, between the government and the governed, Australia developed political systems and cultures developed and are developing still.

For much of Australian political history it was possible for a politician to build a career through close, physical contact with the community they represented. Since the 1960s politicians had to deal with broadcast media as the most efficient way to reach a mass audience: one of the reasons why Gough Whitlam was so lionised by journalists in the late 1960s/early '70s is because he took broadcast media journalists more seriously than his Coalition opponents at the time. For a generation, it was largely only possible to get into politics through a major party; and the major parties outsourced their public outreach function to broadcast media, which operated on a similarly clubby and oligopolistic basis as the major parties themselves.

Today, political parties have their media relationship down to a pretty fine art, bound by conventions (such as 'off the record', or observing publishing deadlines) and imposing tight rules to govern the press gallery within Parliament House. However, the environment has changed around them to the point where this fine art actually works against the relationship between those who govern and those who are governed. That relationship is paramount, and it prevails over secondary, failing relationships with the broadcast media.

Over the mainstream media

I hate journalists. I'm over dealing with the mainstream media as a form of communication with the people of Canberra. What passes for a daily newspaper in this city is a joke and it will be only a matter of years before it closes down. 

- ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr, 8 March 2018

When The Canberra Times (the daily newspaper referred to above) discovered Barr had said this, it initially couldn't believe it, reduced first to dumb and incredulous reporting of his words; then it went officially berserk. No calm and measured reflection on changes to technology and reader information needs. For years, senior management at Fairfax Media has sought to assure investors that it has a strategy for transition to digital: the hysteria from The Canberra Times shows either no such strategy exists, or it is so tightly guarded a secret that head office will have to do the whole lot by itself.

Instead, The Canberra Times carried one unsourced assertion from Barr and another from its editorialist about readership figures, and then insisted that its coverage of municipal Territory affairs is equal to detailed scrutiny of government. Of course, most of its coverage is merely relaying press releases; as with the federal parliamentary press gallery, the person who drafts the press release does much more work than the journalists who simply pass it forward. Only when a government is fading in the polls, or when it has actively alienated its press gallery, is there any scrutiny worth the name.

Politicians spend a lot of time crafting their message, only to have journalists fail to grasp it or go off on some frolic of their own. That relationship has its frustrations; but parties to that relationship can only patch over its frustrations in both parties are actively convinced that dissolving the relationship would be worse than patching things up and getting on with it. Kirsten Lawson's initial article quotes Barr as actively looking for channels for engaging his constituency in the affairs of its government, in ways that go beyond the standard relationship with broadcast media - inadequate and consistently failing. Lawson was wrong to claim Barr has "set out his new plans to bypass traditional media", because later in the article she makes it clear no such plans exist.

The editorialist identified this lack of a coherent alternative to traditional media relations when it portrayed Barr's look to the future as some sort of mental problem. Opening the framing by comparing Barr to Trump, using terms like "pique", "lashed", and deploying straw men in such numbers and futility that it must surely be in breach of ACT environmental regulations, The Canberra Times draws on a record of competence hoping to create the impression that it has a future.

[the ACT government's] implicit push towards controlled messaging and social media ...

Which is it? The use of "implicit" shows this is a figment of the editorialist rather than the work of the Barr government. You can either have a controlled message or a social media engagement strategy; you can't really do both. You show me a tightly controlled social media account and I'll show you one that fails to engage. Lumping those terms together shows The Canberra Times doesn't understand either of these terms, which bodes ill for its future as a viable media organisation regardless of what Barr might or might not do.

This arrogance, combined with that of other Fairfax mastheads, leads the company to demand resources that might more usefully (and profitably) go to other ways of disseminating information to Canberra and the world. If you're serious about resources for good journalism, consider whether the resources might better be spent on sites like The Riot Act, arguably Canberra's ragless true local rag, rather than propping up The Canberra Times for old time's sake.

This arrogance sent ace reporters Daniel Burdon and Katie Burgess into a tizz:

ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr's comment that he "hates journalists" has been labelled a "brain snap" and likened to views once espoused by the disgraced former Queensland premier, the late Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

When someone in the public eye swears or laughs so hard that snot dribbles out their nose, that's a brain snap. Listen to Barr's speech again: you do your readers a disservice and discredit your own work when you mislabel events like that. As for Bjelke-Petersen: my dudes, he sure as hell wasn't trying to connect with Queenslanders under 30 using multi-channel strategies. Griffith University political analyst Professor Paul Williams, quoted in that article, has beclowned himself with that comparison.

The utter absence of media solidarity with Canberra's oldest broadcast outlet is notable, as is the speed with which Burgess dropped this existential threat to civic life in the nation's seventh-largest city and seat of government. But never mind such trifles. Here is the much-vaunted Uhlmann statement:

Here's where Uhlmann is right: broadcast media is dying. Here's where he's wrong:

• "And now [sic] we are gifted with politicians who can't be arsed being accountable". No jurisdiction in Australia is gifted with politicians. We elect them on the basis of information supplied by accredited broadcast media. A politician keen on multi-channel engagement ought not be confused with one who wants to shut down any and all scrutiny;
• "I have known Mr Barr since he was a youth" - oh please, condescension without superiority;
• "far greater political minds than his have grappled with the torture of dealing with the mainstream media and decided it was central to a healthy democracy" - those minds dated from periods where mainstream or broadcast media really was the only media, where both the politicians and the journalists were better than they are now. Barr is a provincial politician in a well-informed polity right now, and he can see the beginnings of a post-CT future, while all Uhlmann can see are Orwell's cavalry horses answering the bugle;
• "Given it is going hand in hand with the decline in trust with all political institutions ...". Here Uhlmann goes for a bit of tu quoque and comes up short. It is a fantasy of insider journos that politicians must go down with them, grappling and plunging like Holmes and Moriarty off the Reichenbach Falls. That isn't how politics works: if you're going down, pollies cut you loose and laugh at your descent. If Uhlmann doesn't know that much he clearly doesn't understand politics as much as his job titles over the years might suggest.
• "When the last, irritating, journalist is sacked and when the last masthead closes, does Mr Barr imagine his already underscrutinised government will be improved?". The question is: will Canberrans be better informed? Scrutiny is not exclusive (still less EXCLUSIVE) to journalists at outlets like The Canberra Times, and Barr deserves credit for trying to discern the dim outline of what is yet to come rather than that which has the reputation but no future to speak of;
• "does Mr Barr honestly believe that the social media alternative will be better?". Again, Uhlmann assumes social media is an alternative rather than a supplement to the emaciated and fading broadcasters. As he doesn't understand the state of the media today he has no business lecturing politicians, or anyone else, about it. He also overestimates the extent to which Barr can pick and choose his own media. Barr is not, as politicians are often accused, "picking winners"; he is picking losers, and his picks seem more astute than Uhlmann's throat-clearings and harrumphing;
• "will its wild winds create a storm that will have [Barr] longing for the smell of newsprint?". Why are you asking him? Even if he did sup the Kool-Aid of nostalgia as deeply as Uhlmann has, would he be able to save The Canberra Times from its fate by embracing it?

The above statement, purportedly by Channel 9's Political Editor, does not seem to appear on Channel 9's political news site. Perhaps [$]Bernard Keane was not entirely wrong when he claims this whole issue is a storm confined, if not to a teacup, then to that hill-edged basin surrounding Lake Burley Griffin ... but if so, why write about it at all? If he's spent so long in Canberra, is he the right person to judge hard news, or its absence? This was the best bit though, all the funnier for being so earnest:

Why can't a wealthy city of 300,000 people, the nation's capital, populated by people notionally engaged with public affairs and home of one of Australia's best universities, sustain a publication focused on what they do?

Like the beep of a reversing truck, that word "purportedly" shows Keane has it backwards. Canberrans *are* engaged with public policy and other matters that journalists might bundle up into "public affairs". The whole business model of journalism requires a market that is less well informed than the journalist, and content both to remain so after the journalist's output has been consumed and to come back for more. This is a hard ask in Canberra, where public servants in any given area must resent journalists' glib misrepresentations of their work and the misallocation of credit or blame to those blow-ins sent to town from elsewhere in the country.

The coverage of public service affairs rarely extends to sloppy press gallery journalism causing problems for politicians, who in turn cause problems for public servant heads, who in turn impose career-ending limitations on lower-ranked public servants who have done what they were asked, let alone drives improvement in reporting to a well-educated population demonstrable capable of appreciating nuance and disdaining hype and bullshit. The idea that the people of Canberra are unworthy of the newspaper foisted upon them rather than the reverse is not just a self-own on Keane's part, it shows why journalists will never be able to solve their career problems in an information age.

Part of the problem is that not much actually happens in Canberra ...

How does he know this? Even committed readers find The Canberra Times thin gruel. And so the downward spiral continues.

... beyond the Raiders and the Brumbies in winter.

Both kinds of football: rugby league and rugby union. But I digress.

Of course Barr has backed down, to an extent. Julia Gillard also flirted with female bloggers as a way of getting her message through to people, and the traditional media outlets that make up the press gallery (then as now) went berserk. Barr has to run a government today, and gauzy visions of the future have to take a back seat to realities here and now. The Canberra Times has to deal with the ACT government, and it is both good and bad news that its coverage has returned to the same old pattern; I'm sure readers are delighted and new readers flock in to see what the fuss is about. Another reality is that the ACT government does have to deal with The Canberra Times, but what future either have - in cahoots or at daggers drawn - remains to be seen.

Desperate needs

... the crazy lefties at the ABC, Guardian, the Huffington Post ... [who] draw mean cartoons about me ... They don’t realise how completely dead they are to me.

- Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, 22 March 2018

This is not a man who is trying to engage with people using multi-channel strategies. He would be flattered by the comparison with Bjelke-Petersen, which may be why Professor Williams of Griffith University hasn't made it. This is a man who makes decisions and does not expect to have to answer for them to people who aren't already fully supportive of them, as 2GB's Ray Hadley is. He is one of the few ministers in this government who does not own the ABC's Leigh Sales, whether through smarm (as Turnbull does) or bamboozling her with bullshit (as Morrison, Hunt, or Frydenberg do). The only time he regularly accounts for himself is in parliament, where he flaps and squawks like a panicked goose; his criticisms never land like well-considered, well-turned phrasing sometimes can. Lacking the power to haul Labor MPs down to the station for questioning, he seems rather lost and impresses nobody but the anti-Turnbull right on the Liberal backbench.

Jacqueline Maley tried to call out Dutton's tactics, but only drew attention to how easy it is for a galoot like him to play the broadcast media:

But far from being dead to him, Dutton’s critics are actually an essential part of his political tactics.

Without critics, you can’t have controversy, and controversy is the oxygen politicians like Dutton need in order to breathe and grow.

Consider his feat last week - with no warning, he came out with a left-field proposal to help an obscure sub-group of the world’s persecuted population, a group whose suffering, such as it is, is so niche it has escaped global attention for several decades, and is beneath the mention of the United Nations, which appears focused (however ineptly) on the persecution of Syrians, Rohingas [sic] and Christians in the Middle East.

No one in mainstream political discourse has talked about South African farmers in decades. They are a '90s throwback.

It wasn't a proposal, it was a brain-fart, and should have been reported as such. If journalistic experience in covering politics has any value, it should be to know the difference between a major policy shift and a bit of kite-flying designed to distract journos who can't and won't focus on actual policy.

[Dutton] said “independents can scream from the sidelines” but they only thrive on disruption and are not serious parties of government.

And yet, when the government tries to get their legislation through parliament, they go cap-in-hand to those same independents. Again, experienced journalists know this and avoid getting wound up; yet, Male thinks you have to be devilishly clever to fool not just one journalist, but absolutely all of them, en bloc:

Dutton’s trick is to co-opt the disruption and sideline-screaming of the right-fringe and bring it into mainstream political debate. To civilise it. That way, voters don’t have to turn to independents, because their grievances (anxiety over reverse racism, nerves about how far political correctness will alter social values) are embedded in the main party of government.

If they stayed on fringe outlets like 2GB, right-fringe issues wouldn't enter political debate. People like Jacqueline Maley, the sorts of dills who employ people like her and Mark Kenny and the rest of Fairfax's appalling politics team, they are the ones who bring right-fringe issues into political debate.

Maley refers to Trump: but much of the US media, their readers, and others such as academic journalism schools, are engaged in deep reflection and debate about how they were played in 2016 and what they can do to improve the way they work. They are aware of their need to contribute to a healthier body politic, that the freedoms of the press are joined to responsibilities about sound public information and debate.

It's rights-only-no-responsibilities for Jacqueline Maley and her frantically silly colleagues at The Canberra Times; when the next bit of political tinsel catches their eye, whether from Dutton or the ACT Opposition or anyone else, they'll charge after it and leave more pressing and serious issues in the dust. Then they have the gall to complain about resources! If journalists had any pride, they wouldn't be played so hard and so often by Peter fucking Dutton. Dumb journalists are the reason why he's being positioned as a potential Prime Minister, rather than as a bollard or some potentially useful piece of civic infrastructure.

Dutton, like Andrew Barr, is a politician today. There are lessons those guys can learn from Pericles or one of the Plinys or Churchill or [insert your favourite dead politician here], but for a lot of it - including how to deal with today's media - they have to make it up as they go along. Some of it involves getting journos on side, some involves ignoring them, and for all this pas de deux large sections of the public will be left cold. This disenchantment has different effects on politics and media: politics can and does survive public disenchantment (to a point), media can't and doesn't.

Every time a journalist complains about resources, call out an example of a self-own like Maley or Keane (they do it all the time) to demonstrate that the problem with Australian journalism today isn't a stubbornly ungrateful readership, but a lack of sense in allocating the resources they have, which discourages giving them still more resources to squander in yet-undreamed-of ways. Resource misallocation is also what bad governments do, and yes the two are directly related. Symbiotically. There's nothing more Aussie than facing the future and flinching.

For crying out loud

The editorial in The Sydney Morning Herald today embodies everything that's wrong with the Abbott campaign, as well as every reason why it seems to be working. It suffers from a logical fallacy called 'begging the question', where it accepts the premises of an Abbott government and then flaps about trying to justify such a beast, using those same assumptions.

Australia is crying out for a stable government that can be trusted to deliver what it promises. The Herald believes only the Coalition can achieve that within the limited mandate Tony Abbott will carry into office should he prevail on Saturday.

There's two begged questions right there.

No party platform in Australia's history has been fulfilled so comprehensively as the agreement signed between Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott with the Gillard government in 2010. Had the last election returned a simple majority of Labor MPs, it would have set aside key pledges and seen internal brawls. If Tony Abbott had become Prime Minister then, by contrast, his government would have set aside key pledges and seen internal brawls.

There is no such thing as a 'limited mandate'. You either win government or you don't. The first Howard government and the first Rudd government achieved relatively little of what they were elected to do. The second Howard government (1998-2001) and the first term of the Bush Administration in the US (2001-05) had what this editorialist would call a 'limited mandate', whatever that is, but they pretty much did what they liked.

The Sydney Morning Herald predates our federal political system and the parties that seek election to it. The editorialist, speaking in his masthead's name, trashes its history by such gullibility and ignorance.

Abbott does not so much deserve the chance to do what Labor could not do in the past six years. Nor has he earned the right to govern with a clear, articulated vision, as the Herald has sought from him during the campaign.

Tony Abbott has been leader of the Liberal Party for more than three years. For very little of that time has it been seriously attempting to pin Abbott down about what he might do in government. Negligently, its coverage has mainly taken two forms: first, gushing at his effective media strategy of saying nothing of substance, and secondly quoting his words verbatim as though no further verification might be required. Again, the Herald has no excuse for indulging any politician to that extent.

During the campaign, the Herald has accepted Abbott's shortcomings rather than challenged them in the exertion of the power of the Prime Ministership. Its political editor even asserted that we cannot handle the truth, reinforcing him and the editorialist - as well as Abbott - in their belief that facile reporting is all we deserve, and all that ought be expected of them. Their chairman has over many years demonstrated his commitment to this sort of feeble, reader-repelling content too.

The feeble plea at the end of that last quote that the Herald has done all that could be expected of it is only true if you underestimate what journalism is, and how little thorough journalism there is in federal politics, particularly coming from the Herald.

But the party he leads is untainted by scandal and infighting, and therefore has the best chance to unite a tired and despondent electorate.

That is sheer bullshit. The opposite of that is true.

Scandals surrounding Mal Brough, Christopher Pyne, and even potentially Joe Hockey arising from Justice Rares' judgment on a sexual harassment case are yet to be played out. Arthur Sinodinos' links to the Obeid family are yet to be clarified, let alone explained. There has been plenty of Liberal infighting, but the Herald has chosen to ignore it and treat outbursts as isolated incidents: only today, the confusion about whether or not our internet will be slowed further by a filter imposed upon us bodes ill for calm and measured government. The fact that the Herald has chosen to cover those matters in a cursory fashion does not mean that the assertion of its editorialist can be sustained.

Labor will not be able to do this until it is stripped of corrupt rules that have rewarded those who value power more than the public interest.

The Coalition is not exactly short of "those who value power more than the public interest". Putting out facile statements while asserting that they are detailed, costed policy is the work of those who really do value power more than the public interest. Its internal matters are a matter for its members, and for those who feel loyal to the party by voting for it. It's a mistake to assume that the Liberal Party that brought forth Jaymes Diaz, Fiona Scott and Matthias Cormann can be regarded as "unblemished" or free of "those who value power more than the public interest".

Abbott needs to be true to his word. As he says, "No surprises, no excuses … No more, no less."

And if he's not? Seriously, what sort of idiot takes Abbott at his word?

The Coalition has put to the people some aspirations of which the Herald approves if applied fairly: value for taxpayers' money, greater workplace flexibility and ending the age of entitlement. It has aped good Labor policies and banked sensible savings.

If applied fairly.

Is it fair, or even sensible, to assume that such measures might be 'applied fairly' by such people? If it is, to whom is the 'fairness' to be directed? The Herald has catalogued political promises made and broken for over one hundred and eighty years. Why Tony Abbott of all people is the shining, sea-green incorruptible exception to such a history is both inexplicable and amazing.

Notably, Abbott has also signalled policies the Herald considers unfair and a threat to national progress: slower broadband, his paid parental leave scheme, turn back the boats, and education inequity. And we will, as many Coalition figures privately do, continue to rail against these populist and frivolous indulgences.

So that's the purpose of the Herald: to rail, like a blogger. I guess all those 'Coalition figures', unnamed but railing, put the lie to the idea that infighting is unknown in Coalition ranks.

A Coalition government will be entitled to pursue any elements of its agenda that have been detailed to the public.

A Coalition government will feel entitled to pursue any elements of any agenda it bloody well feels like pursuing. And the Herald will do little more than praise such a beast for its political shrewdness, apart from the odd bit of railing maybe.

Then voters can judge Abbott on delivery in three years or, should he prove unable to manage a democratic parliament, much sooner.

See, this is where I'm confused. The incumbent government succeeded in managing a democratic parliament and yet it is considered unfit to continue governing (which of our parliaments might be considered non-democratic?). What if Abbott is removed by his own party (without, of course, any infighting at all; a phenomenon unknown in the history of conservative politics)?

Abbott will be free to conduct his commission of audit on government spending and implement recommendations within his pledge of no cuts to education, health or frontline services.

What if he has his audit and cuts those services anyway? Will the editorialist faint from sheer surprise?

Imagine Tony Abbott breaking a pledge. Journalists may pride themselves on lacking such imagination, transcribing what is said to pad out word-count rather than examine how we are and would be governed.

He should conduct the promised reviews into workplace relations, industry assistance, regulation, legislation, competition law and tax.

He should have done those already.

The whole idea of election policies is not to provide checklists for journalists (or even party activists, within one party or within its opponents) to tick off. The idea of election policies is to show the extent of your thinking over the past three years - who you've spoken to, who has impressed you, and what sources you use for your anecdotes, data and ad content. The quality of that thinking informs what is done in government far more than what may or may not appear on a fucking brochure, for crying out loud. Politically homeless knows this, and The Sydney Morning Herald doesn't. Ponder that, ye perishing few who still believe the future of Australian media is strong.

Why hasn't the Coalition been having those debates from Opposition? Surely the Best Opposition Leader Ever would, like Whitlam, prosecute his case with whatever meagre resources are available to oppositions so that his capacity for government appears all the more formidable. And here we find ourselves at the very event horizon of the black hole at the heart of not only this Herald editorial, but the very idea of an Abbott government:

That will help him develop the sort of detailed policy reform agenda he has failed to flesh out in the past three years for fear of a political backlash. Australia needs to debate new ideas and better ways to ensure the economy is flexible enough to survive the end of the resources boom.

One person's "backlash" is another person's "debate", I suppose. The Coalition can't pursue ideas from any forum other than from government. They can and do even disconnect the very idea of debate from what is actually done, rubbishing painstaking research and expertise with the sheer force of executive decision-making. It's surprising, and more than a little sad, that the Herald can't see that and doesn't think it's a problem.

It seriously shares the Coalition's belief that you put them in government first, and then hold them to account to, um, what little extent they discussed it beforehand. 'Limited mandate' my arse, you stupid bloody people.

But the Herald will scrutinise a first-term Abbott government with the same independent eye that has exposed Labor graft and attacked Coalition policies.

i.e. none at all.

Too often Abbott has asked voters to buy his plan sight unseen; to believe his numbers even though they have emerged at the eleventh hour.

Given the complicity of the journalists in all this, at the Herald and elsewhere, Abbott cannot be blamed for trying it on. Voters are the ultimate decision-makers here. The quality of the information they receive, from the Herald and others presenting the low farce of campaigning as though it was all that politics is about, is inadequate. The Herald should not escape culpability for the poor quality of information about politics that is leading to a deeply inadequate choice at an election where not only adequate, but capable government is called for.

Then there is a surprise reduction in foreign aid and water buybacks as well as an extra efficiency demand on the public service.

Which bog-ignorant political ninny is in any way surprised by Coalition proposals to cut foreign aid, or impose an imaginary 'efficiency dividend' and punish public servants for failing to nail it down? Here the sheer inadequacy of the contemporary Herald is in full view, its perfectly justified lack of confidence in its own self, its history and its future. Those of us who disdain people surprised by easily foreseeable events have a point, don't we.

Abbott's mandate will be weakened as a result of this opacity.

No more than Howard's was with his light-bright-and-trite campaign in 1996.

Abbott has hidden much and, as such, much must be taken on trust, just as Gillard Labor had to be taken on trust at the 2010 election.

Bullshit. NBN, DisabilityCare, education funding, tobacco packaging - hiding in plain sight the whole time.

Labor then was a party that had corrupted the NSW government and allowed faceless men to unseat an elected prime minister.

If you had the resources of The Sydney Morning Herald at your disposal, you'd know that the corrupt Askin government in NSW played little role in the Coalition losing the 1972 and 1974 elections, and was little impediment to the re-election of an unelected Prime Minister the following year. It's funny how things turn out, isn't it.

After that election produced a hung parliament, the Herald recommended Abbott be prime minister because "stability is more likely".

Rarely does a slow-media outlet own up to getting it so wrong. Gillard provided more stability than the Herald gave her credit. Abbott would have gone to a double dissolution election, and it's a real pity that the Herald's political reporting resources fail to point this out. And as for this:

But Gillard retained power by, it emerged later, breaking her promise of ''no carbon tax under a government I lead'' in a deal with the Greens. Labor betrayed the voters.

That's a Coalition talking-point rather than a historical fact, as an examination of the Herald's own archives will attest.

While the Gillard government achieved important national reforms in trying circumstances and kept the economy strong, it squibbed tax reform, skewed taxes, overspent on optimistic revenue forecasts and did nothing to remedy Labor's fatal flaws.

The Howard government did little of the former and much of the latter, and Abbott promises less and worse on all fronts.

All the while, Rudd remained a destabilising force; a reminder of betrayal - and an even bigger one when he retook the leadership just over two months ago.

Really? I thought the instability in the Gillard government was all her fault, not Rudd's. The Political Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald said that Rudd was "a happy little vegemite" on the backbench and that the instability was simply due to 'umble Labor loyalists concerned about the polls. The Chief Political Correspondent of The Sydney Morning Herald said that the Gillard government's problems were caused by one of her former lovers decades before. Now, all of a sudden, this instability is Rudd's fault? Imagine my surprise.

Rudd Mark II has presented some laudable policy reforms on boat people and emissions trading.

Really? I thought they were cop-outs myself.

Which part of asylum-seeker policy is in any way 'laudable'?

He talks of Labor's big ideas so Australia can rise beyond our station. But reformers must take the people with them - and reformers must be trusted to deliver.

The amount of trust placed in Abbott is unbelievable, and unsustainable.

Rudd has struggled to outline how Labor would strengthen the economy, beyond relying on its worthy record during the global financial crisis. Faced with shrinking budget revenues, Labor did well to outline a plan for a return to surplus, yet lost the moral high ground over Coalition costings.

There is no Coalition high ground on budget costings. The government has provided evidence of sound economic management that the Herald, at the cost of its own credibility, has chosen to ignore. Be that on its own head, not Abbott's or Hockey's.

It wasn't until his official launch that Rudd pushed Labor values based on a fair go for all.

All parties, at every election, base their pitch upon a fair go for all. Even Abbott did that. Again, if you had access to the archives of The Sydney Morning Herald you'd see that it's true, but hey.

The Herald believes Australian democracy needs Labor to modernise and prove it respects the privilege of power. It cannot be supported for abusing that privilege.

There is nothing, nothing 'modern' about the Liberal Party - still less about any of the other parties in the Coalition. It has not proven that it respects the privilege of power. Tony Abbott certainly has not proven that, Jaymes Diaz and Malcolm Turnbull and Peta Credlin and Christopher Pyne haven't, and neither has any other member of his team. This too is sheer bullshit, useless to support the Herald in making such a case.

Voters should not reward Labor before redemption ...

The Coalition is unredeemed from 2007. It does not know why it lost that election and will govern as though the past six years were an interregnum rather than a legitimate government. Again, the Herald is in breach of the What's Sauce For The Goose Is Sauce For The Gander Act in its partisan defence of its position.

... nor reward those who owe their influence to factions and betrayals of trust that have marked the past six years.

Abbott became leader of his party because of a betrayal of trust. His ascent is inexplicable unless you examine factional manoeuvring within the Liberal Party. Another silly and ignorant assertion that undermines not only the case they are making, but the very idea of the Herald as repository and provider of political information.

Labor under Kevin Rudd in 2013 is not offering a stable, trustworthy government on which Australians can depend. The Coalition under Tony Abbott deserves the opportunity to return trust to politics.

Matthew 7:3-5, motherfuckers.

First, The Sydney Morning Herald decided to support the Coalition and then it decided to build a case upon all of its readers accepting that assumption. You'll note in the above that it is possible to point out the logical flaw in the Herald's reasoning without resorting to Labor (or Green or Liberal) talking points. Nonetheless, those who defend this worthless piece will claim that any and all criticism can only be partisan.

That failure of perception, real (in this editorial) and reasonably anticipated (in the defence by whoever the editor is this week), underscores why those who trust in the future of The Sydney Morning Herald, and who blame only others for its demise, are kidding themselves and avoiding the real ailments of a withered organ they mistake as vital.


---
It almost goes without saying that I'm beyond pissed off at this elaborate practical joke unfolding around me.

... Yeah, my blood's so mad feels like coagulatin'
I'm sitting here just contemplatin'
I can't twist the truth, it knows no regulation
Handful of senators don't pass legislation
And marches alone can't bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin'
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin'

And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
How you don't believe
We're on the eve of destruction ...

- P F Sloan Eve of destruction

All week I've been dreading the very prospect of an Abbott government, but last night I saw someone who dreads it more: Joe Hockey, sweat-beaded and gasping like a landed fish, having laboured so hard for so long and all for so little.

Hockey's much-awaited economic statement was worse than Richard Nixon in 1960 because Nixon hadn't crammed it all in the last minute, with an easy and lazy cut to foreign aid. So much for all those costed policies, ready to go last year or the year before.

All week, one in every eight to ten Australians are yet to make up their minds about who to vote for, making a mockery of 50-50 or 52-48 or whatever. There is a veneer of complacency in the assurances that Abbott will become Prime Minister no matter what, and underneath it is a shrillness that underlines a failure of persuasion; a government that has supposedly failed so comprehensively should be made of less stern stuff. It should not be so hard to knock over as it is clearly proving to be.

The experiments for our future in telecommunications, education, and disability care may well be abandoned. The dimmer journalists and Liberal shills will claim those as failures, not as spoils but as trash. Another series of experiments is being set up and may well be given a chance that those big-ticket items are yet to have. These experiments were gingerly begun under Howard, ideas to which he dared not give full rein if they endangered his tenure of Kirribilli House.

The enfeebled union movement could have been finished off by workplace legislation deft enough to outflank them; hell, they may have willingly embraced such legislation, as strategic geniuses like Martin Ferguson and Doug 'mind mah tea' Cameron had under Keating and Kelty. Instead, the union movement was emboldened by the inept WorkChoices. An Abbott government workplace relations policy (both the do-nothing one from two months ago that was abandoned, and the frenzied but gutless hints of Abetz and Alexander) assumes most people have secure salaried jobs. Let's have it, then, and see how we go. That 2m jobs thing is starting to look sick already, especially when you consider than one hour's paid work a week is a 'job' in Coalition terms.

There are few proven facts in economics, but one is that if you tax high-income earners highly then they move to low-tax countries. Something similar happens with researchers: when you cut research funds, and refuse to do anything clever with tax breaks for research, researchers leave or dumb down their output. The cuts to NICTA and to ARC grants, and coming to the CSIRO and NHMRC, show that the potential for economic growth and welfare through innovation is being squandered. I don't mind people trying and failing - hell, the fact that the Australian media hasn't shut up shop can be traced to the same attitude - but people who won't try at all are contemptible. We face a government that would hold us back, and yet want credit for having a go; fuck that, and them.

Those cuts to innovation from the Beechworth bandit Sophie Mirabella look like her final act of spite in public life (unless, perhaps, she bites someone outside a booth on Saturday). My generation of researchers, people whose careers were just getting going when Howard was elected, have achieved less than they might have because his government came too late to realising the value of publicly-funded research. Hockey promised to preserve research funding but was clearly overruled, assuming he opposed it at all. Along with the basket-case economies of Europe, we'll be proving-grounds for what happens when you bugger research; and that worst of all, those you hope might be grateful for eviscerating the boffins never are.

If you think sound economic management (or even effective politics) involves traipsing around the country acting like the Job Fairy, sprinkling ten jobs here loading boxes onto trucks or whatever, then you won't miss innovative jobs and the potential they offer until it's too late. Whether it's building infrastructure, or providing aged care to baby boomers who won't put up with the conditions that today's mustn't-grumble generation of seniors cops with good grace, the future workers of this country are almost certainly immigrants. They want to join us here and, even if you can set aside the cruelty to them, what 'cries out' to me is the lack of imagination involved in putting them to work.

There are only two choices with the 2m jobs thing: either they will come through, in which case the electorate won't thank them; or they won't, and all that "we'll keep our promises" stuff will be seen for hollow bullshit. The editorialist of The Sydney Morning Herald cannot imagine Abbott and bullshit to be anything but inimical to one another, which may explain why the demise of one may well also see the demise of the other.

One of the most cogent Coalition criticisms of the NBN was that most data travels over wireless, and that this is likely to increase. This doesn't explain the army of dumb boxes coming to our streets, where future posts and other dis-content will be coming at you via copper wire. Have you noticed that Coalition policy does not address actual problems that face this country? I have, because I'm not a press gallery journalist or a slow-media editorialist.

I've seen governments come and go, this ain't my first rodeo. I still think more babies than bathwater will be tossed out with the incumbents, and pity those who believe that the Coalition's own bathwater can be confused with the elixir this country needs.

I still think polls (as published in the newspaper) are bullshit. I'm sure there are some great polls, in the same way that there are nutritious hamburgers, but the diet of newspaper polls that temporarily sustains the slow media and some of the dimmer bloggers is no good for anyone. Not even the most ardent stats nerd can defend their use as determining the outcome to the extent we have seen at this election. It's monstrously disrespectful to say that the ballot is over before it's started, like the elections in North Korea or Turkmenistan are.

This blog will continue into the Abbott government, and beyond it: fuck it, every other bastard is breaking their pre-election promises. If The Sydney Morning Herald can assert that they are 'Independent' of anything other than sensible business and editorial practise, or that The Australian might be the heart of anything, this blog reserves the right to tinker with its subheading as may be required from time to time - and the rest of you can get used to it with as much good grace as you are capable.

Full of promise

Life is great in the Sunshine State
Every Queensland heart sings a song
To its tablelands and its golden sands
We are proud to say we belong

And our faith is great in the Sunshine State
For our Queensland future is grand
From the northern cane to the western plain
It's a full of promise land

All the while every mile, there's a sunlit smile
And a welcome handshake too
For friendship's great in the Sunshine State
May its sunshine keep smiling for you

- Official state song of Queensland

When the Coalition engaged in a development plan for northern Australia, it was a sign of their intellectual bankruptcy. Their policies mainly benefit large landholders and larger mining companies, proposing more infrastructure built from the public treasury while also promising that those who stand to benefit most from their policies should also be given tax breaks. They are vague and frankly untrustworthy about measures to help ordinary people (e.g. encouraging people to move to urban centres like Karratha or Townsville, skills development), measures that might've had more credibility in the 1950s than they do today.

That policy was largely written by the IPA. No longer independent of those who pay them, the IPA have a pseudo-policy development capacity that the Coalition no longer has, generating dull and senseless prose and meaningless picto-stats on demand to plea for government lolly. Any document with a Liberal/National logo on it longer than a press release has been outsourced, and probably not read by the shadow minister nominally responsible for it. It will certainly not be read by candidates, who are all being treated by Liberal Campaign HQ as though they are as stupid as Jaeiuymz Diaz.

At first it was surprising that the ALP would even try to match such policies, but a quick look at the electoral position in that area explains why:

• Coalition-held seats in far north Queensland like Dawson, Herbert, Hinkler, and Cook Leichhardt are up for grabs;
• Durack in northern WA, as with Capricornia in Qld, is open to a credible appeal from a candidate who would champion communities in those area as distinct from FIFO destinations; skyrocketing house prices are useful only if you want to move out of those communities. Labor, Katter, or a reformed conservative (e.g. Windsor, Wilkie, Oakeshott) independent would be well placed to make such a case - Rinehart's LNP or Clive Palmer's outfit, much less so;
• Wide Bay, the nation's poorest electorate (see tables with supporting data linked from here), is represented by the docile, experienced and relatively moderate Warren Truss. Rightwing parties like the CEC are represented all too well in his electorate and, because the right are morons, it is likely they will try to knock Truss off or replace him when he retires. Any LNP candidate who replaced Truss would be weaker, and probably more than flirt with far-right ideas, putting Labor, Katter or a solid independent in a solid position to take the seat by default; and
• Solomon, which takes in metropolitan Darwin, is currently represented by Natasha Griggs. The local Coalition franchise, CLP, holds the Territory government and has blown its goodwill in the sort of credibility-bonfire to be expected from rightwingers unprepared for office. People will be looking to send them a warning - and if that means Tony Abbott finds it harder to win, too bad for him. Griggs needs to learn that the reason why you stop to help people in accidents is because you never know when an accident might befall you.

The above list doesn't take into account expected ALP gains in the Gold/Sunshine Coasts or suburban Brisbane. There are as many, if not more, seats in play in the nation's north as/than there are in WesternSydney™ - and not just in Lab-Lib terms. The people there are subject to the same sort of half-witted stereotypes from those of us who don't live there as in WesternSydney™. They also lack services, with the Queenslanders (being the majority of people in Australia's north) having voted against Anna Bligh for reasons other than her government's service provision, and not having realised that Brisbane would be no better disposed to the region under Newman than it had been under Bligh, or Beattie, or anyone else really.

This makes Labor's half-hearted me-tooism understandable.

For a start, Katter is preferencing Labor on the strength of that 'commitment'. Katter is preferencing Labor because his politics are all about a sentimental attachment to Queensland Labor policy of a century ago: protectionist and mercantilist, welcoming-handshake inclined, not necessarily racist but none of your southern celebrating-difference bullshit either. Katter's conservatism comes from Labor having moved away from that. Rudd can talk from that heritage but he can't necessarily live it; Wayne Swan was part of that generation that excised that legacy from Queensland Labor's brand, whereas someone like Gillard didn't even know where to start with that stuff.

Rudd can also do things like disendorse the Labor candidate for Kennedy so that Katter has a freer run. This is a bit of political sophistry for which the press gallery exists in order to report on, but which in this instance they failed to even detect: lumping Kennedy in with a slice of suburban Melbourne is irrelevant, point-missing journalism.

Labor's northern development policy, such as it is, is not limited to viewing local communities as life-support systems for mining companies. The reference to the NBN holds out more promise to the future of communities like Mackay and Karratha than a few jobs at some increasingly mechanised mines or non-jobs in agriculture. If only a car company would build a factory at Port Hedland. Seriously though, the policy should have gone into greater detail, but to do so would require answers from infrastructure-deficient communities elsewhere in the country.

Part of the infrastructure problem for the north involves protecting it from extremes of weather, which will only get more extreme over time. These can no longer be regarded as freaky occasions that incur acts of charity from the rest of the country, but as part of the costs of living and doing business in that part of the country. There was none of that in Labor's policy, nor the Coalition's: but few political commitments are so bipartisan as those involved in avoiding issues that are real, large, and uncertain in resolution.

The NT has long sought to diversify its agricultural sector beyond beef cattle. Such success as it is starting to have is coming at the expense of northern Queensland, offering a similar climate for produce that requires it but with less risk of the cyclonic wipeouts that afflict that region. Producers in the region can offer Asian markets neither the mass production volumes nor niche specialisations such as pesticide/fertiliser-free certified-organic niches. From a national perspective, depleting established agricultural communities in northern Queensland to boost those in the Territory is a zero-sum game, yet any post-facto justification of a northern development policy will tout NT agriculture as part of the "good news story" to pitch to gullible journalists.

The biggest thing that the Federal government could do to boost communities in northern Australia is to station more ADF personnel there. ADF personnel are skilled and disciplined and get paid a fraction of what equivalent workers get in the mines - and in times of low unemployment the ADF can barely meet recruitment levels while maintaining standards.

The Great Barrier Reef is a greater economic resource than almost any other use to which that area can be put, including oil exploration. Yet, any credible economic (and hence population) plan for northern Queensland will include creating shipping channels to ports such as Gladstone and Mackay, which will end up segmenting the Reef and leaving each segment worse off environmentally. The reefs and other environmentally-sensitive areas of coastal northern WA are under still greater pressure from ports and offshore developments. Again, neither the Coalition nor Labor address those issues (except in the Coalition's fatuous and self-defeating term "green tape"), which reveals the limits on their commitment to making northern development happen. And before you talk about the Greens saying no to dredging and whatever else - it also reveals their lack of commitment to northern development, too.

Labor, the Coalition, and the Greens don't have much to say about engaging Aboriginal communities in the area with regard to economic or community development in the region, or on any other issue really.

Northern development plans have a wider purpose, however, than what's in them and whether or not it adds up. They're about respect for people who are few and marginalised. They're not stupid: they know that decades of northern development plans have been floated and died, and these most recent ones will almost certainly go the same way. In that sense, northern development is a bit like gay marriage - a small minority of the population is even affected, and a fair subset of those are don't appreciate what's on offer, but they seek the gesture nonetheless in the name of equality and respect. As with gay marriage, most Australians are well disposed to the idea of northern development, and only a stingy, nasty few are actively hostile.

In a political environment of programmatic specificity and rigid adherence to talking points, northern Australia provides the impression of blue-sky, limitless vision. You can look at tablelands and golden sands and see anything you want, I suppose. You can see Rudd or Abbott as Prime Minister. Whatever else might happen, in northern Australia as elsewhere, is in the eye of the beholder.

A lesser future

I’m on the record as saying that Tony Abbott will never become Prime Minister, which is not a widely-held opinion. In recent weeks, however, we’ve seen a number of developments that cast doubt on Abbott’s ability to lead the Coalition to victory over the government. The Coalition really is offering a lesser future in terms of rail, roads, and telecommunications infrastructure, and these are the sorts of developments that affect polls.

Recent articles on Abbott's refusal to fund urban rail projects have been telling:

• In Perth, Premier Barnett had been clever in branding Federal-State infrastructure initiatives as his alone, only to find that Abbott won't fund them and Gillard is unimpressed with his grandstanding. The possibility that they might not go ahead has brought him and his back to earth with a wet crunching sound;
• In south-eastern Queensland, the disappointment in this is palpable;
• In Sydney, we deep-sixed a government that used PR to paper over serious deficiencies in the rail network. The current government retains its credibility on the basis that it is doing something constructive about it. Much will be forgiven - dodgy casino work, national parks teeming with armed randoms - until some silly accountant decides to trim the rail upgrade budget;
• In Melbourne there is a proposal to build a tunnel under the city, or not build it, and oh aren't Richmond doing well this year?

Playing silly-buggers over rail projects means that road projects won't have the desired effect in improving traffic flow. It means that the disruption that happens with big construction projects will be resented even more than usual, and that the grandstanding involved with ribbon-cutting will also be resented.

Politically, it's pointless for the Coalition to promise this. It might have been true in the 1970s that Labor voters used public transport and Liberals private, but the uptake of public transport in recent years of expensive petrol and traffic snarls simply does not correlate to rusted-on federal voting intentions. It looks like they are natives to Planet Canberra and have no idea what life is like in the suburbs.

When the Japanese bombed northern Australia during World War II, it was often difficult for those co-ordinating the war effort to contact affected sites to work out what happened, what the damage was, what assistance was required. Visiting US officials were appalled and impressed upon Australian politicians the need for a national telephone network. In both Labor and the Coalition, some understood the importance of a national telephone network delivered through copper wires, and others didn't. It was started under the Chifley government and completed under Menzies, it is a bipartisan achievement. When Telstra was sold the national telephone network was sold with it, and the Gillard government bought it for NBN at a cost of $11b.

The first major failing of the Coalition's broadband plan is that it assumes copper will provide a sustainable solution, and overestimates the degree to which it can provide current services, never mind upgrading to 25 megabits per second. It's part of the Coalition's theme of insisting The Old Ways Are Best, but this tactic simply doesn't work when dealing with technology.

Turnbull's rapid blinking at the launch could have been a function of bright studio lights, but he is accustomed to the media glare and more comfortable in it than his leader. Some say rapid blinking can be an indication of mendacity, but I'm not going there. At one point Turnbull frowned and turned to look at Abbott as though he thought his leader had said something quite mad. With his stern face and Abbott's sticky-out ears, they reminded me of the Sesame Street characters Ernie and Bert.

I get that Turnbull has to demonstrate being a team player, and that people who rail at him for not seeing the technical inadequacies of his plan don't understand why he can't break from the team-imposed ashes-and-sackcloth routine at this point. By the end of September he will almost certainly be leader once again, and I should be more pleased at that prospect than I am: Turnbull cavils before Murdoch as much as Abbott does, and that is a real worry.

The key measurements of a broadband network are how much data can be downloaded - and uploaded, thanks BigBob - and how quickly. The NBN promises much in changing the way health and education is delivered, changing the way that people work in those sectors - and changing the way people work outside those sectors, too (including transport policy, but here we run the risk of blowing the tiny minds of Coalition policy-makers). None of that was present in that announcement.

The vision of the Coalition's policy was limited to delivery of high-speed, high-definition video - but compression technologies make that less important. The sorts of high-definition images required in medicine, and the need to have those delivered in real time, would have been a better example. This would have provided a tangible vision for rural Australians, as access to health (and education) is one of the key reasons for the depletion of country towns, about which the Nationals in particular profess to care.

This leads us to the second major failing of that plan, which is that a speed on 25 megabits per second - a faster download speed than most people have in 2013 - is Good Enough For The Likes Of You. Given that their policy in 2010 cost $6b and that this one costs $29.5b (yeah right), they have no right to complain about cost blowouts under Labor.

Cost blowouts on a project is largely a function of competent project management within clearly defined scope. Despite the yearnings of some of the nuttier Libs competent project managers are not on strike until Tony Abbott moves into the Lodge, and the Opposition frontbench contains no more program management or scope-setting skill than is present in the Gillard government.

It was unutterably stupid of the Libs to schedule their policy launch at Fox Studios, to speak of the possibilities of broadband in line with News Ltd product offerings - and to hand out Daily Telegraph articles in lieu of press releases. This will make it difficult for the Libs to refute accusations that their policy is designed to avert the threat that the NBN poses to Foxtel and other Murdoch outlets, and that their interests and those of the nation are subsumed to those of News Ltd. Journalists from broadcast media other than News Ltd were meant to be, and probably were, slack-jawed with wonder at the Foxtel broadband - but no government will ever build the sort of connectivity that the world's largest media organisation has built for itself.

The Liberals' fawning to News Ltd reinforces the message in this phoneshot of Abbott, Murdoch and Rinehart, taken at the recent IPA dinner:

When I was a Young Liberal, I paid fealty to senior members of the organisation and parliamentary party in a similar manner to that. At a function full of essentially conservative people, someone should have given up their seat so that Abbott could take his seat at a table with Murdoch and Rinehart like an equal. Whatever office this man might hold, he will never exercise real power. It's every bit as bad a look as Calwell and Whitlam in 1963. Another Liberal weapon from 2010 is blunted: that image trumps any Liberal who rabbits on about Gillard and 'faceless' union leaders.

People who work in ICT regard it as maximising human potential; all that's good and bad about what humans do can potentially be made faster, cheaper, better by ICT. People who go into journalism and stay there tend not to see that. Almost all broadcast media journalists report on ICT issues from two contradictory perspectives:

• ICT is overwhelming, e.g. BIG BROTHER READS YOUR BRAINWAVES! A FACEBOOK POST ON A DRUNKEN NIGHT OUT MIGHT STOP YOU GETTING A JOB YEARS FROM NOW! HI-TECH CHILD PORN RINGS! The square-eyed inactivity that was once sheeted home to television, etc.
• ICT is irrelevant: boys' toys, phone apps built by teenagers that solve insignificant problems, gadgets that cause great excitement among certain people but who can't clearly explain why they feel that way, etc.

That disinterest about ICT should not be confused with journalistic distance and balance, however. The internet has diminished once-mighty organisations that employed thousands more journalists than they do today. The internet took their jerbs! To propose faster internet is to ask journalists to look upon the tides and rips that have drowned the careers of their colleagues and see a tsunami that will finish them off. Journalists who can cover a closed factory with a colder eye than a dead fish will wail and keen at a rumour of cutbacks at a media outlet where they've never worked.

Most of the Coalition's criticism of the NBN, with cost-benefit analyses and what have you, mainly involves failure to understand the possibilities of high-speed broadband, and what might flow from these. To give one example, policy-lightweight journalist Mark Simkin was ill-informed, and passed on that ill-information to ABC TV viewers, by claiming the NBN is a "rolled gold solution" (i.e., more than is required). Simkin usually dismisses policy detail with "the devil is in the detail", but by using the Coalition's frames to describe its own policy against that of the government Simkin shows that he lacks the ability to explain what is going on in politics, especially in actual what-it-means-to-you policy, and that his years of experience isn't helping him or us to that end.

Simkin is at his best when politics is at its most puerile. If you want a comparison of broadband policies go here, but if you want to know who farted during Question Time then Simkin is the go-to man. Whatever he puts out is no more than you deserve, ABC viewer. His employer, and organisations like it, employs journalists like him because, well, they have always employed people like him. This is not a sustainable business model, regardless of what broadband model we end up with.

Most of those whose job it is to provide information in a highly controlled way can't see a future for themselves in an age of uncontrolled information. Journalists who don't understand ICT issues but who are rattled by the disruption caused by broadband to their industry do, and can only, produce lousy reporting. The best analysis of the Coalition's broadband plan and the launch is not in the broadcast media; it is here, on a website that didn't exist a couple of months ago, or at Delimiter. On this issue, yet again, press-gallery "context" counts for fuck-all.

The cuts to urban rail projects and the cut-down broadband projects cast doubt over whether even the amounts cited in the policy will be spent. It shows people that no matter how hard you work, no matter whether you pay for private health insurance and private education for your kids, the Liberals really are offering less to the country's future than the incumbents, that will give us less to show for the prosperity coming from Asia at this point in history. Its role in creating that impression is why the Coalition broadband policy will cost it votes, not because Australia's notoriously hard-to-organise geeks have become some huge and strategic voting bloc.

Why not cut all government services? Why not restrict the age pension to those who make it past 100? Why not cut back the ADF until it would be flat out going nine rounds against Fiji? Imagine the tax cuts. Any fool can balance a limited budget, but governing Australia is another question altogether.

For three years now, Abbott and Joe Hockey and other Liberals have raised alarms about government spending and the state of the economy generally, and within that context have advocated cuts to spending. Kevin Rudd showed in 2007 that an opposition can win if it merely matches the government in areas that aren't central to their main message, as did Howard in 1996. Offering less is a real risk for oppositions, as Howard learnt in 1987.

The essential failure of John Howard is that his political instincts overrode his abstemious, low-risk rhetoric of the 1980s, warning against government bloat and centralisation, and welfare dependence. Strangely, he retained that reputation even after he led Australia's biggest-taxing, biggest-spending, highly centralised government which shovelled welfare at anyone who could whine at the right pitch. That failure must be resolved, not replicated, before by the Liberals get back into office.

Abbott is trying to get people to vote Liberal in the name of economic responsibility, while also retaining the belief that any spending cuts won't really affect them. This is a bit like selling lots of low-fat snack food rather than convincing people to buy fewer/no snack foods. It's a tricky balancing act, and others might think that Abbott can pull it off. The cuts to infrastructure (and the therefore suspect commitments on roads and to broadband that isn't broad enough) compounds all that no, no, no to create the negative impressions that stay with people and will only attract further evidence going forward: the Coalition is offering a lesser, scattershot version of the future compared to the incumbents.

Politically-savvy people study polling very carefully, and act on the basis of what they find in that data. For them, polling is a leading indicator. Yet for those who provide the data, polls are a lagging indicator of impressions formed up to the time they were asked. The idea that the Coalition are offering less and worse, not more and better, for Australia's future is taking root and polling will react accordingly. The most highly-respected poll, Newspoll, fluctuates erratically. The first paragraph of this story is, and will come to be seen, as risible as these statements. I struggle to take seriously those who are convinced that polls taken in April or earlier will reflect the result of the election to be held in September.

Even so, I've had my doubts. As a Young Liberal I was shattered when the Coalition lost the elections of 1987, 1990 and 1993. Am I kidding myself again when I say the Gillard government will be re-elected? Do I have some form of mental illness?

At the right time my Pandora feed threw out its version of this song: "Rudie can't fail", the commentator singer insists repeatedly, but if you listen to the song more closely, the Jamaican rude boys have failed already: drinking beer at breakfast and harassing morning commuters, those guys might think they're on their way but they are going nowhere. In the same way, the Coalition's policies and actions are leading them away from government office, at the very time when the broadcast media and other poll-jockeys agree they are inevitable. Look at the Coalition in Question Time and wonder whether their monkey-house antics are any more appropriate than harassment by rude-boys on a London bus. Joe Strummer (a man long and lamentedly dead, who never saw a Newspoll) is a more perceptive commentator on contemporary Australian politics than Mark Simkin, but who isn't?

What we cover when we cover politics

The Federal Parliamentary press gallery purports to cover goings-on in federal parliament, with a central focus on the lame theatre of Question Time and the pursuit of rumours. When called upon to cover major issues of substance and complexity that arise in that place from time to time (e.g. the Budget, Aboriginal disadvantage, misogyny, sexual abuse of children), supposedly experienced correspondents dismiss them with "the devil is in the detail" and go back to the ephemera that sustains them.

Stephanie Peatling's press gallery stories that are worth reading: they can be traced back to actual public issues and rarely involve the same dreary flights of fancy that apparently keeps her colleagues employed. In any industry full of mouthy bludgers the quiet achievers are the most interesting; this article is in that vein.

Peatling refers to Peta Credlin opening up about about a topic that could hardly be more personal. Given that Credlin approached the journalists concerned to do so, and given the fact that she is more powerful than almost any elected Liberal MP, is she now deserving of greater scrutiny by the media than she has so far received? If we are to really understand what the Coalition wants - in the short term, within some passing parliamentary standing-order feint, or in the long term from "an Abbott government" - surely it is fair and relevant to scrutinise someone Credlin more closely than has been the case to date.

The odd profile that declares someone to be a "power behind the throne" and leaves it at that might suit the person concerned perfectly well, but in a democracy it is not on.

When you elect a government, you elect a whole package. Senior staffers and advisers are part of that package. Many of those people who came out of Paul Keating's office with a book publishing deal might have served their employer, party and country better building linkages between vague big-picture pronouncements and practical outcomes of same. The early Howard government would have been better understood had journos not just used Grahame Morris as a source for colourful quotes, but really examined what made him tick and how he made his presence felt. The transition of Julia Gillard from a wooden repeater of catchphrases to a genuine and direct communicator has to, in large part (but not wholly) the result of a turnover of staff. Staff deserve scrutiny.

The problem with that is twofold, as Peatling alludes to in her quotes from Paula Matthewson. Firstly, nobody elects staffers. Secondly, thanks to The West Wing many think that their roles deserve more attention than they get, and would only be too happy to hog what little limelight falls upon Australian federal politics.

The response to that is also twofold: first, whether or not people elect them, they are there; they are influencing policy outcomes, they way our taxes are spent and our laws made. Second, professional journalists should be able to filter out self-aggrandisement chaff from the kernels of real stories.

This applies to staffers who become lobbyists. The Rudd Government set up a lobbyists' register where lobbyists are identified individually, along with who they are working for. No press gallery journalist has made effective use of this resource. In the corridors of Parliament House, lobbyists sail past journalists on their way to ministers' offices to conduct business that will change the way government policy works; journalists wave them by without a second thought that these people might have a story worth telling.

Peatling's quote from Damian Ogden fails to examine what happens when there are jarring differences between a politician's personal story and their subsequent actions in office, as happened with Obama. It seems (and you have to do a fair bit of inference to Peatling's article, and drag in a lot of other stuff to reach this conclusion) that you have to rely on the other side to run a bunch of turkeys, but are rewarded with mandates that vindicate both image and reality.

There are journalists who cover substantive issues, and who do so seemingly in isolation from the federal parliament whose deliberations are so crucial to those issues. It is silly to demarcate journalists who, for example, have been patiently describing what the NDIS is and how it might affect particular individuals, from those who are supposedly following the passage of the relevant legislation through the parliament (there is so often a surprise deal in the Senate in the early hours of the morning of a sitting day that changes a bill so profoundly, which is almost never covered in any detail, that it is worth having dedicated Senate correspondents).

It is often said that covering politics is like an iceberg, where elected representatives are the above-surface visible portion while the far larger part (staffers, lobbyists, permanent public servants) are below the surface and out of sight. This may be so, but isn't that what journalists are for: to uncover what is hidden and to make sense of it?

Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.

- George Orwell

Press gallery journalists should be more often guided by their colleagues who cover those areas that federal politics regulates - between them, they would make for better coverage of how we are governed than we receive today. It would mean less jowl-wobbling outrage about "context" and the forced redundancy for many who are now, falsely, regarded as paragons of a profession that can only survive with such disruptive innovation. Someone like Stephanie Peatling would almost certainly handle such a transition much better than the stale, cliched offerings of almost all of her colleagues, particularly those encrusted with self-referential journosphere accolades.

You must be disappointed

Channel 9 copped a lot of criticism for the way it covered the London Olympics, much of it deserved. To be fair, it covered the Olympics using the same bag of tricks it has always used:

• Insistence on gold from Australian athletes, especially in the pool;
• Deployment of network stars on the coverage;
• Referral to female athletes as 'girls'; and
• Aussie-Aussie-Aussie über alles.

It didn't work. There were no new tricks being tried, let alone succeeding or replacing tried-and-failed ways of covering multiple sports with compelling claims to viewer attention. If Channel 7 had "won the rights", they would substitute Bruce McAvaney for Karl Stefanovic, and if the ABC had won it they would have anchored it with that Vesuvius of Sporting Cliches, Gerard Whateley; but otherwise little would have been different.

It didn't work because coverage always starts off assuming that if an Aussie ain't competing, we ain't interested; and every single time viewers show this isn't the case. The first Olympics I remember was Montreal 1976, where Australians performed below expectations but Nadia Comaneci made it transcend nation and even traditional sport-following habits. That sort of thing has happened at every single Olympics, every one; and every single time the media have been caught out, gobsmacked that their Aussie-centric assumptions about the audience failed yet again.

It didn't work because:

• Cutting away from a sport just before a juicy bit will enrage more people than will be pleased at the cut from one event to another;
• Nobody wants to hear footy commentators jabber on about a sport they don't understand;
• We all have access to Wikipedia and expect more from Voice Of Authority commentary than recitations from that;
• Referring to female athletes as "girls" was designed to turn off female viewers, wasn't it? Why else would you do that unless it was to shun their involvement and interest?
• Commentators who do know what they're talking about, and can describe what's in front of them, aren't part of the lead-up to the Games and play no part in the lead-up to the next one (or an event like it).

Even after a tactical maneuver in pole-vaulting was explained to Karl Stefanovic in clear English, he claimed not to understand it - no further proof is required that the man is a dunce. The Stefanovic brothers are proof that if you suck up to people in television then the opportunities will open up to you; whether you show/tell people any more than that when your doughy head takes up the screen is another matter.

That said, I was impressed with his humility in interviewing Linford Christie, Michael Johnson and Daley Thompson. I was sure he'd insert himself into proceedings more than he did, and like the best interviewers he drew out each of these great and interesting men and made the interview about them. How long can this last? When will YouTube feature his reddened face through the window of a restaurant/nightclub/other venue shouting "Don't you know who I am?".

The best coverage and commentary came in the hockey. The commentators were former players and professional broadcasters, providing the right mix of nitty-gritty description and context. Lucinda Green in the equestrian events, with the right blend of sport knowledge and broadcasting skill, was also very good. The next best commentators were a long way short of those high standards.

Greg Jericho reckons that pay TV coverage is better and I'll defer to him because we at the Politically Homeless Institute don't have an account. I'd watch marginally more TV if I had pay TV but I'd resent the rest of the bundled dreck with which I'd be lumped. Eight Olympic channels might be better than one (certainly more than one) but it still relies on a 'director' to decide what the viewer does (not) see and hear.

Jericho had sympathy for this person but he should consider whether or not the very job is doomed. There is also a question as to whether the owners of Channel Nine, who have increasingly common interests with those of the owners of Foxtel, are not running down the less profitable free-to-air offering in favour of the more lucrative pay TV.

One media commentator who should have been sacked and sent home was Ray Hadley, for his petulant refusal to learn long foreign names. If you're being paid to commentate then you have to learn how to pronounce players' names. If you can't be bothered then stay at home. You don't prove you're an Aussie by ducking the challenge; there are plenty of Australians with non-Anglo names. If you can wrap your gob around names like Civ-on-i-ce-va, Peter-o Petro oh-can-I-call-you-Pete, then you can extend the same courtesy to other no less gifted athletes: and to the audience that wants to hear about them.

Another who deserves no sympathy is the oaf Phil Lutton. On a day when his paper trumpeted disaster for Australia and failure on the part of individuals, Lutton had the temerity to blame people for rising to the bait set by his colleagues and managers - and to blame everyone else but them:

Twitter came out swinging and web stories started groaning under the deluge of comments.

Twitter is just another media platform, a bit like being in a pub. When something happens you might get some marvellous responses, or you might get some stupid ones; if you arc up at the stupid comments, does that make you any better than those who made those comments in the first place? Stupid commenters disappear from my Twitter feed, and Phil Lutton doesn't even make it into mine. It's hard to make generalisations about Twitter users, but not hard or unfair to assume that the wit and wisdom of Twitter users would beat those of any pack of journos hands down, every time.

See his weaselly reference to Giaan Rooney, channel 9 commentator and former champion swimmer:

That's not to say Rooney, a former top-level swimmer herself, has been at fault here. She seems to be a bright and happy type and obviously knows her stuff.

Nobody gets a job in media by being "a bright and happy type". They get those jobs because they do what they're told. Rooney has forgotten more about the tactical games of swimming than Ray Warren has ever learned, yet it was Warren who chuntered away at us during the race leaving Rooney to instruct exhausted and emotional young swimmers, "you must be disappointed". I hoped James Magnussen would have told her to get stuffed, but no.

When asked for comment by Rooney, [Magnussen] had little to offer. He looked completely stunned at what had just transpired.

Well, yes. Every weekend, cricket and netball and football commentators thrust a microphone under the noses of losing players who are not in a position to reflect on what has just happened to them, and who therefore fall back on their 'media training' (a practice performed by failed journalists not very different to Lutton) in spouting cliches. People like Lutton then blast them for spouting cliches, which is his way of deflecting blame for their own dull stories.

When the Wayne Bennetts of the world are short and dismissive of the media, they are often applauded for giving it back to the hacks. What do they owe a bunch of journos? Magnussen, still just 21 and our best freestyler by a country mile, wasn't afforded that sort of latitude.

I don't even know what any of that means, and I suspect Lutton doesn't either. Who didn't afford Magnussen any latitude? Who applauds Bennett for being dismissive of journalists, or expects that he might react any differently to the way he does? If an experienced sporting figure like Wayne Bennett is dismissive of the journalists who attend to him, then surely those of us who are interested in what Bennett might say aren't well served by such people.

[Emily] Seebohm's raw emotion, the thought that she had a gold in her grasp only to not be able to replicate her Olympic record heat time, was just too much. Twitter trolls let rip in her direction and comments on stories which quoted her post-race weren't much better ...

You should have seen the groupthink among the so-called professional journalists that wound people up, Phil! Complete crap. I saw the Twitter messages telling Seebohm to ignore the media, that they weren't representative of Australia at all, and that everyone was proud of her. Did you see them? Did you dare?

That she partially blamed a day spent on social media probably wasn't the best call. But she's only 20, and that's what kids do. Some football clubs won't let their 20-year-olds conduct a single interview in their first year of top-level competition.

 20 year olds can handle social media, but so-called professional journalists are such pricks that it's best to steer well clear of them. Got it.

Even Leisel Jones wasn't spared. She had been defended to the hilt all week after stories questioning her fitness, but when she proclaimed delight at finishing fifth in the 100m breaststroke final at her fourth Olympics, she was taken to task about why we sent her in the first place if she was happy to finish out of the medals? Where is the love?

Stories by the so-called professional media, Phil. Swimmers in a practice session before the Olympic Games are not the same as swimsuit models on a catwalk, but a half-witted media forced to cover events they didn't understand could not tell the difference. Have a look at Dawn Fraser in her prime. Hell, have a look at Giaan Rooney in hers, doing a Sally Robbins* at a medal presentation. Then look at Jones again; a few days before the Games began there was nothing to report on really, and so the journalists decided to make observations about Jones' body.

You'll note that much of the Twitter storm surrounding that was directed at journalists, and their lack of sense about what constituted a real news story.

The post-race live grilling has become a Star Chamber for a swimming team already under pressure for not producing in the London pool.

Sure it has, because it consists of journalists who hunt in packs, who don't do the necessary research that might yield different and better stories, and who are hired and managed by morons just like them.

Social media has given Australians a forum to unleash without fear of retribution.

No retribution for journalists either. If Leisel Jones refused to speak to any of the journalists who called her fat, or to Giaan "you must be disappointed" Rooney, people like Phil Lutton would accuse her of sulking. The time and resources that sports administrators channel toward media management is time and resources drained from actual coaching and competing, an arrangement that suits the Phil Luttons of this world and which never quite makes it into their half-baked coverage.

The irony that the barbs lack any sort of grace themselves I would assume has been lost.

Another schooner of grace for Mr Lutton. My 20 year old self was a lot more awake up to media scrummaging, and the sheer lack of reward for all that effort for the reader/viewer/listener, than Lutton is now (or will ever be, one suspects).

Australians used social media to try to tell journalists what sort of coverage they/we want of events like #london2012. There is no evidence that any mainstream media outlet, nor any journalist, has taken the slightest bit of notice of how such coverage might be done differently or better. The BBC and Canadian television apparently served their audiences better than the Australian media did theirs. It will be interesting to see whether subsequent sporting events learn from this experience, or whether they cling to formulae that simply don't work, and whose failures cannot be dismissed Bennett-style by media executives.

Interspersed during the Olympics coverage were ads for a TV miniseries about Kerry Packer's takeover of international cricket in the 1970s. I thought such nostalgia jarred with the running of a modern sporting event, especially one with fewer international competitors than the Olympics, until I realised: the people who run Channel 9 yearn for an age where people just watched whatever people like them bloody well felt like putting in front of them. The nostalgia is on the part of Channel 9 people, not for those of us who aren't surprised that Ian Chappell was as daring and as obnoxious off the field as on.

On social media and elsewhere (and who knows, maybe in his quieter moments even Phil Lutton might agree), two people keenly missed in coverage of the London Olympics were Roy and HG. It needed some perspective other than Kenny Sutcliffe's sad references to rugby league matches played at the same time as the Games, matches where Australians could at least be counted among the winners. That perspective is so sorely needed that the technology, and ultimately the coverage of events like this, will surely adapt to meet it.

The International Olympic Committee exerts tight control over the images that come from Games events. It is only a matter of time before it takes its own footage and sells it at a premium. What it can't do is the commentary: the explanation of who comes into a particular match as favourite, who might the dark horses be and why the game is unfolding as it is.

Like any puffed-up organisation, whether other sporting organisations or governments or corporate gabfests, the oral and written output of the IOC alternates between facile soundbites and turgid officialese. This is language designed to obscure meaning more than reveal it. Such language is the opposite of what is required in sport: because all the action in sport takes place in front of the viewer, you have to call it as it is. Commentators will be forgiven for omissions or gaffes if that is the end to which they are striving at the bow-wave of adrenaline in the event itself. Diplo-speak like "the Singaporean has performed commendably" will not do, and nor will reading from the internet about passing landmarks.

The commentary is where the intermediaries, media execs and commentators and journos and Tweeters (but I repeat myself) add value. The background, the lead-up, and the drama of how it all plays out - that's what people will tune into, and ultimately pay for. Vietnamese-Australians want to hear how well Vietnamese athletes did, and it should be possible for them to get that coverage without the heavy-handed nationalism of official Vietnamese broadcasters being their only option. The facility with language describing complicated situations under pressure with wit and style is where the action is, now and into the future. Whose is the brighter future in sports journalism: the knowledgeable and erudite Lucinda Green, or clowns like Lutton and Eddie McGuire?

As a result of Olympic pearls cast before low-tech Ausmedia swine, the Olympics brand can only suffer, in a country that has traditionally bought it wholesale and done more than most to burnish it to a high sheen. The old ways of covering sporting events - regarding the director's choice to switch to this event or that as a challenge in itself, and getting any old commentator to say any old thing as the event unfolds - will not do. The director and the Stefanovic-style host is as redundant as those who swept city streets of horseshit in the age of the motor vehicle. This sort of coverage had no heyday, merely a lack of coherent audience voices for media execs to hear and none but their employer's to heed.

We're all media employers now. We are not wrong or even particularly unreasonable to ask for more than what the established media is prepared to deliver. It isn't my fault they are not up to the job, I'm just pointing it out long after my shouting at the television has faded (and there was no mechanism for getting those messages across, either). If Australia has such excellent athletes and coaches, if we can pull off short-lived excellence in sporting accessories such as Speedo or Billabong once enjoyed, why can't we get some excellent sports reporting? Why do clowns like Lutton or the people who put Rooney up to her "you must be disappointed" performance confuse their stale performances with competence in this field?


* Don't ask.