Is there a story here?

It's been a while since Jason Koutsoukis was dispatched to the Middle East to get over his infatuation with Peter Costello and discover what real news is. After this piece, and a few others, it could well be that Katharine Murphy is the next candidate for a news hound with no nose for a story, no understanding that a story isn't just whatever some journalist feels like writing.

Read the Murphy piece linked above and tell me what the story is. Yes, it would appear that the former owner of one television network has bought a share of a different network. It would appear that some politicians who might have been expected to comment on this event declined to do so. That's it, really. No real insight about what Packer may or may not do with Network Ten were he to control it, no real insight about broadcasting policy or the media generally.

No news at all. No story worth writing, let alone reading. If I ran ads with the SMH I'd want a discount so I could claim honestly that "none of our revenue supports Katharine Murphy", and not just because the Audit Bureau of Circulation is a joke. So long as pap like this gets written and published, so long as you can find a blog with consistently more substance and better writing, never believe the self-serving bullshit from the journosphere about the "24 hour news cycle".

Jason Kissofdeath

Jason Koutsoukis was wrong about Peter Costello, and there is no reason why he has any more authority on Brendan Nelson in not one, but two articles in today's Age.

"It is certain, absolutely certain, that Brendan Nelson will not be leading the Liberal Party at the next election," said one Liberal frontbencher. "He is held in contempt by most senior people. People simply do not respect him."

If this had been made known before last year's ballot, it might have changed the result.

While no Liberal MPs were prepared to criticise Dr Nelson on the record, the leadership talk nevertheless had the ring of the beginning of a campaign to oust him.

Well Jase, all that ringing you've reported on the imminent challenge from Costello must have given you tinnitus.

Favoured by an increasing number at the moment is the former workplace relations minister Joe Hockey.

Oh no! This is the hook for Jase's career over the next five years: Waiting for the Hockey Challenge. I like Joe and think he could do well, but what he - and the Liberal Party - needs is less endorsement from Jason Kissofdeath, not more.

As manager of Opposition business in the House of Representatives, Hockey has also shown early signs of being a skilled parliamentary tactician.

He looked a bit too responsible for that Cardboard Kevin debacle for mine. Your article would have been better had you addressed that, Jase.

As long as he doesn't rush himself, Hockey may well be the Liberals' best long-term hope.

This may be true, but it's not clear what you're asking of the Liberal Party here Jase. Are the Liberals in such dire trouble that they need to punt Mr 9% as soon as possible? If so, why stuff around with Turnbull or whomever else?

Turnbull ... misread the party room mood during last year's bid to win the leadership against Nelson, and has many of the overweening personality flaws that proved insurmountable for Costello.

At least he's actually contested the leadership, Jase. I'm not sure about Turnbull either, but he is the nearest thing the Liberal Party has to Bob Hawke: he is an itch that party just has to scratch. Hawke was also a man of overweening, but not necessarily overwhelming, personality flaws. It's Jase's job to consider the man in greater depth than he has. If Turnbull puts the wind up the Rudd Government's first Treasurer, why shouldn't he go up against Rudd? If Turnbull could do for a few other Liberal MPs what he did in his own seat, he'd be Prime Minister.

Jase's failure to think about what he says undermines his spot at kingmaking:

Hockey has an amiable and warm presence.

Just like Kim Beazley, Jase?

He is popular, moderate ...

How do you suggest he shake off the tag of Mr WorkChoices, Jase (unless Julie Bishop is doing that for him)?

... and from the key state of NSW.

As opposed to whatever state Nelson and Turnbull come from; a state which can't even decide on a State Director, can't get behind one of the two best Liberal leaders at state level, and which can't and won't purge the Taliban.

Nelson's a joke and part of being an ex-Liberal means I don't much mind who replaces him. Joe Hockey was a good guy when I knew him, but that was long ago and we've both changed. The issue isn't the Liberal leadership per se, it's whether readers of The Age are well served by Jason Koutsoukis. I'd be surprised if nine percent of the target readership of The Age would agree.

Et tu, Jase?

Nobody was a bigger booster of the idea that Peter Costello should become Prime Minister than Jason Koutsoukis. Now he's suddenly realised that his career's work - no, its very aim - has turned to dust.

If ever there was someone who had a lot to be modest about, it's Jase. At the time he was putting Peter Costello's pocket lint into words, stuff like this was eminently foreseeable:

Unfortunately for future generations, not many jobs and industries will be generated by money tied up in houses.

He must seriously think people will believe guff like this:

The principal architects of this mess are John Howard and Peter Costello

He's tried to counter this by borrowing someone else's credibility:

According to University of Western Sydney economics professor Steve Keen, one way to do that would be to link the amount of money banks can lend to a certain multiple of the property's estimated rental income ... Introduce a policy like that overnight and it would cause an instant crash in the property market, so, Keen says, it would have to be introduced over a long period of time.

Oh well, at least you tried Jase. Shame about the lack of analysis of the very sort of idea that every experienced journalist knows will be doomed in Canberra.

Then, Jase tries the generational warrior angle:

If cashed-up baby boomers had been less crazed in their pursuit of property over the past decade, we might have avoided the housing affordability crisis ... In the meantime, today's generation of wage slaves can get on with the task of paying off the mountain of debt bequeathed to them by the baby boomers.

This column is about five years too late, in contrast with last week's exercise in premature ejaculation. Jason Koutsoukis has no credibility, yet The Age gives him a run: I dissect his articles like this for the same reasons that medical students practice on cadavers: you can develop a sound opinion by refracting it off something - like Jason Koutsoukis' credibility - whose viability has long passed.

"I have not changed my mind"

It isn't Peter Costello's fault that Jason Koutsoukis' life and career lack meaning in 2008, but of course Jase thinks otherwise.

Peter Costello ... might do well to reflect on what his true vocation is.

I think he's done that already, Jase:

... a note from the man himself on Friday afternoon was emphatic: "I have not changed my mind. Not at all. What I said on Nov 25 stands. Yours faithfully, Peter Costello."

That should have killed the story stone dead. Costello is a lawyer, as if he'd commit something like that to paper if there was any possibility it could be used against him. It's interesting that as soon as this rumour took off around Parliament, Costello - a man with experience of the Parliamentary rumour mill - went straight to Jase. You should have dropped this non-story and written something else, Jase.

It's difficult to imagine the people of Higgins would begrudge him a briefly less hectic schedule.

His job is to represent them in Parliament, Jase. The people of Bennelong have shown what happens to MPs who are too busy for MP duties.

Yet it turned out that he was faking it and pretty soon afterwards it was Nixon who was kicking around the press as president of the United States.

It was six years between Nixon's gubernatorial loss and his presidential victory, Jase, so this column is half a decade ahead of its time. The American system does allow for people to go in and out of politics, and Nixon did spend most of the '60s as a lawyer in New York. Besides, Nixon's is not the sort of career you'd wish on anyone.

Right at this moment, Costello is said to have suffered a rather unhappy few months. Having woken up every day since he was about 20 thinking he would one day be prime minister, he's said to have been feeling rather shattered at the thought that this will not come to pass.

So you'd argue that the guy needs to stop moping and get on with his life? What do you mean, no?

Over the course of his political career, Costello proved that he was very good at several things, including being funny in Parliament, sulking when he didn't get his own way, and being totally risk-averse. Hardly the things you need to run a business.

Hardly sufficient to leading the Opposition, or becoming Prime Minister.

The former Adelaide doctor Andrew Southcott traded a promising career as a surgeon for a seat in Parliament.

You could argue that the health system needs every surgeon it can get. Mind you, if you're holding up Southcott's political career as an indication of what he'd be like as a surgeon, perhaps it's for the best.

Nothing outside of politics will ever feel as good as standing at the dispatch box, ridiculing his opponents and dreaming about what he would do with the top job if he ever got the chance.

Yeah, he could become a national joke like Wilson Tuckey. The one thing the Liberals have is economic credibility: the stock market is tanking and inflation is starting to bite, so now is the time for Peter Costello to be very, very quiet. Labor in government are unlikely to be the sullen little mice they were under Beazley, and Costello may prove to be as ineffective in Opposition as Abbott or Nelson.

The landscape has changed, Jase, and you are no longer able to report on it (if you ever were). Costello has given it away and members of the "coterie", like you, should too.

Well disconnected

The one thing a press gallery groupie journalist needs is political connections. Like many Victorians, Jason Koutsoukis spent a while lot of time snuggling up to Peter Costello in the hope that he might prove a useful source.

When it came time for real news, like his decision not to contest the vacated Liberal Party leadership, Costello wasn't much use to Our Jase, and all those tidbits proved a poor diet. Now he's been stitched up again.

This article is a great example of poor journalism: "... is set to be ... is likely to ... One cabinet minister who asked not to be named [even though you already had, Jase]". Hours later, it was clear that Jase had been set up.

Never mind that it's not even April Fool's Day: anything that appears from now on under the byline "Jason Koutsoukis" is not only likely to be poorly written but to be sheer and utter crap. He's been set up gutless, the Aunt Sally of the Canberra press gallery. Fairfax stood by him this time, but how long can they keep doing so?

Nothing ventured

In this piece, Tony Wright leaves out the possibility that the Coalition might regenerate themselves by getting rid of dead wood. Peter McGauran and Philip Ruddock both entered Parliament in byelections following Coalition election losses. There are two reasons for this: first, there is no plan for regeneration and second, Tony Wright didn't get where he is today by imagining what might be.

The Brendan Nelson-Warren Truss Coalition is diving into a toxic stew

If you've written a boring and unimaginative article, it doesn't help anyone to waste dramatic imagery like that.

A lot of those voters are likely to be in a savage mood at being forced back to the ballot box so soon after the federal election.

Now you understand why Bennelong voters tossed out Howard. Mind you, there's the flipside that there's no point in having someone hanging around when they don't want to be there.

At 50, Peter Costello has a bit more time than the others to build an inheritance for the kids, probably in merchant banking or other parts of the corporate world that would be keen to have a former national treasurer on board. But that world is ruthless, with a short memory for achievements of the past. Costello can't afford to wait and watch his opportunities sail by.

Tony, Peter Costello did precisely that to the Prime Ministership of Australia. Merchant banks and corporate boards do not need someone who's going to wait until something falls into his lap, and neither do they want to cruel their chances with Labor governments by providing a bolthole for someone who kicked their arses for eleven years. Think, Tony, think.

Peter McGauran is 52, and his great love outside politics has long been the racing and thoroughbred industries. Once a jockey, a racecourse steward and a horse owner, the massive money lavished on horse racing in Dubai — or maybe Newmarket, in England — awaits his attention.

Yairs, after his stellar dithering over equine influenza I bet they can't wait.

In the back rooms, a rapid-transit view is crystallising ... That train of thought, according to Liberal sources, has led to a loose plan to hold all four byelections on a single weekend in February. The cost to the taxpayer and the pain to the Coalition would be over relatively quickly

It's called groupthink, it's called panic, it comes from the same bunch of clowns who blithely ignored Rudd until it was too late. A train does not crystallise, Tony. You're no more thinking clearly than they are, so what's the point of you?

Costello managed to keep the swing to the ALP in his Melbourne electorate of Higgins to a relatively small 1.3% last month, leaving him enjoying a margin of a bit more than 7%. Much of that, however, is attributable to his personal standing and the chance that Higgins voters could have produced a prime minister. It is not out of the question that the voters — even in a blue-ribbon area such as Higgins — could turn viciously anti-Liberal in a byelection with Costello gone, stripping the seat from Nelson's Coalition.

This doesn't explain why this mattered not at all to the voters of Bennelong. It would take a heroic effort for the Victorian Liberals to lose Higgins, such as if they preselect Josh Frydenberg.

The question bedevilling Costello, Downer, McGauran and Ruddock would be whether or not they should take the leap in the weeks before the budget — thus giving Rudd and Swan a blessed period where the media would concentrate on the Coalition's byelection horrors rather than the economy. Alternatively, to quit soon after the budget would likely grant Labor a greater budget honeymoon.

It's an indictment of the media that they can't snap out of the midset that Costello, Downer and Ruddock are still the master players while the Prime Minister and Treasurer can be excused for not focusing on the economy. A genuinely pathetic mindset. However, could be worse:

Victoria's Kevin Andrews, 52, dumped from Nelson's shadow ministry, is said to be utterly furious. He is, after all, Victoria's second-most senior Liberal after Costello. "Don't be too surprised if Kevin chooses to walk," one Liberal said. However, another senior Coalition figure dismissed such an idea, declaring that Andrews had come to politics in middle age (he was 39) and therefore had chosen it as his final career. In politics, everything, it seems, is in the timing.

Bungled WorkChoices, bungled immigration. No gratitude, some people! At least Andrews hasn't built a faction to wade into the Costello-Kennett miasma, but even so what he hadn't done defines the man and puts the lie to all that Teddy Roosevelt crap about the man in the arena.

Speaking of bungling, here's today's Jase:

I feel very confident that not a shred of evidence will be produced to prove me wrong.

Yes, he's finally found a bunch of Canberra people who don't rise to his silly goading, and he can't handle it.

Spend long enough in Canberra and you eventually get to observe these misfits at play. A more conspicuous bunch of odd-bods you couldn't imagine.

This is rich from someone who works in the Canberra press gallery.

Like the CIA, Australia's spy agencies are incompetent money-guzzlers and should be abolished.

Australia's intelligence agencies have far greater records of success on developments in our region than does the CIA, and it takes more than a bit of idle piling-on to realise that.

"Writing about spies and intelligence agencies occupied a large part of my career," wrote Knightley in his memoir, A Hack's Progress. "I do not regret it … but espionage itself is a dirty business riddled with deceit, manipulation and betrayal."

Which makes you wonder what sort of person would want to get into the business in the first place. Anyone who finds the idea of spending their entire working life not being able to tell a soul — not even their own families — what they do for a living is bound to be a fairly warped individual.

Politics and journalism are also dirty businesses riddled with deceit, manipulation and betrayal. What sort of person gets into those businesses, Jase?

As for foreign intelligence, there is no need to go beyond the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

It has hundreds of normal, well-educated people stationed all over the world who spend their days learning all sorts of interesting facts and gossip about the countries they are living in. And they send all that information back home in neatly packaged cables that inform policy-makers throughout the government.

Their performance on East Timor and AWB left a lot to be desired. Personally, I blame inadequate scrutiny from politicians and media, Jase.

It's time we put an end to this racket known as the parliamentary press gallery. To sustain a belief in the efficacy of press gallery journalism is to ignore at least 70 years worth of ineptitude, inadequacy and dereliction.

Two silly

First, the weakly Jase. I was getting worried that I was starting to agree with him, then toward the end he came out with some typical silliness:

The one Liberal who is having a very good election campaign is the party's former Victorian president Michael Kroger. Kroger is everywhere — on television, radio and in print. Kroger is everywhere, except the place the Liberals need him most — campaigning for a seat of his own.

And that's how he likes it, and as much good as he'll ever do.

Now that Malcolm Turnbull has turned a seat Labor has never held into a marginal what the Liberal Party needs is cash. Kroger should be taking over from Ron Walker as the bagman and the justification for the party not ignoring Melbourne, its worst-performing state capital.

It's not too late for Kroger, who is only 50, to think about a move into federal politics.

Yes it is. He had his chance in the early '90s. He had another chance when Peacock stood down - Kooyong was his for the asking. Yet again, when Peter Reith stood down he could have brushed Greg Hunt aside - no. You can see why he's such great mates with Costello, can't you? The Hamlet Brothers.

He's rich, he looks good, and he knows the Liberal Party inside and out.

Untainted by the Howard Government, Kroger has a freshness that none of the current front bench has and he knows how to wield the knife.

The hand that wields the knife and the head that wears the crown shall be fed by different hearts. It's some sort of rule, look it up.

If the polls are right, then more than one ex-minister will be a looking for an early exit ...

They needn't look far - looks like the voters are going to replace some ministers with Labor candidates. What on earth makes you think Kroger has any sort of common touch, Jase? Is he really going to sweep on with the fat and greasy citizens, writing polite letters to Labor ministers asking to help this constituent with their social security payments, that one with a visa? Do you really think he'll impress anyone at all north of the Murray? That's the daily grind of politics, Jase, and Kroger knows it's beneath him. Why can't you see that? Don't you understand politics at all?

... giving Kroger the chance he needs to get in and sort things out.

Kroger was a big man in Victorian Liberal politics late last century. Result: a decade of Labor government and that state almost went bankrupt. Jeff Kennett worked out the way to get the Liberals into government: shun Kroger. How important was Kroger in getting Howard up in '96? Not very - the safest place for him was on telly, at least you could see what he was up to and it left the professionals free to work unencumbered.

Feel free to leap to that conclusion yourself, Jase. You've finally got Costello, now wake up to Kroger.

Rudd left himself open to attack by vaguely defining the national security apparatus, but it required a better response than this:

Australia's current system works. Each of the 13 distinct organisations that Labor proposes to bring under the umbrella of its new department, including ASIO and the Australian Federal Police and customs, have adapted well to the post-September 11 environment.

There have been notable successes, including many that haven't come to light I'm sure. Yet, the stumblebum approach to immigration cases in particular makes an assertion like this hard to sustain. Plus, while civil liberties concerns would bog down an effective response to fake militant Islam and other threats, they have a legitimate role to play in considerations as to whether (and for whom) the system "works".

But it was the department's failed emergency response to Katrina that will be forever etched in the American public's mind.

The sight of thousands of helpless families waiting weeks for outside help was a low point in the Bush presidency.

In Australia, while somewhat on a different scale, state and federal emergency management authorities responded quickly and co-operatively to the devastation left by Cyclone Larry after it hit Innisfail, Queensland, in March 2006.

This is all true, and has nothing to do with averting disasters caused by human destruction. This is a real straw man, Josh.

Even the Americans, despite the problems with their agency, never sought to combine their law-enforcement agency, the FBI, with their intelligence agency, the CIA, in one department.

Yes they did, Josh. The original plan was for the heads of FBI and CIA to report to the head of DHS.

The Yanks have not come up with the right model for defence in an age of asymmetrical warfare, and the British and Canadians haven't come up with the right model either. Who has? If there was one area of government that needs to be profoundly rethought, national security is it - and she'll-be-right is the one policy response that is guaranteed to be absolutely wrong.

Joshua Frydenberg is a former senior adviser to Prime Minister John Howard.

Another reason to get rid of Howard, and The Age too.

The joke's on you

The job of a journalist is to expose the differences between what those in power say, and what they do. Jase provides his own say-do gap here.

then the killjoys moved in to snuff out all the fun — those mirthless warriors in the war against wit who have succeeded in banning all humour, candour and plain speaking in politics.

Not that politicians are to blame. The funnier you are, the more you get beat up

Beat up by whom, Jase? By you, and people like you. You could break from the pack, become a real journalist and actually write a story on something other than POLITICIAN DEPARTS FROM OFFICIAL LINE SHOCK, but you don't. Because you don't, you don't really have any right to write (or even "pen") a story like this.

A likely consequence of Kevin Rudd winning this election is that he will turn the country into one giant Sunday school.

Who in a Rudd cabinet, one may ask, will be the minister responsible for cracking a joke?

Looking at Labor's front bench, the chuckles are unlikely to come thick and fast.

Well, if the politicians are going to be this dull there's nothing for it but to get off your backside and write some stories.

As for Peter Costello, if he is leading the Opposition, we can forget about any more jokes from him. He'll be so miserable the most he'll be able to muster is a wan smile. The minders have already told him to pull his head in on the gag front.

Yes, because Peter Costello is a politician and wants to maximise his vote, Jase. Very few people would rely on Peter Costello to bring the funny: fewer still among the Liberal MPs seeking an extension of their tenure in office. What Costello has done here is avoid the smart-alec image that turns off thousands of voters. He can't afford to be turning voters off, and it's your job to point that out - not demand that he perform like a seal for your bemusement.

Costello would have done much better if he'd taken the gloves off and given his opponent Wayne Swan an old-fashioned whacking with lashings of ridicule and invective.

No he wouldn't, you've botched it again. Swan would have looked like the responsible Treasurer and Costello like a self-satisfied tosser.

Tony Abbott was vilified last week for using the word "bullshit" but was anyone really offended?

Personally I wasn't by the word itself, and you probably weren't either Jase. The point is that this is a man who turns up late and, instead of apologising, swears. While it's true that the only people offended will be old ladies, consider how desperately the Coalition needs their votes.

Peter Garrett [has] ... also been accused of selling out his principles. Surely we should suspend judgement on this until Garrett has actually been a minister and made a few decisions.

People who are really angry at Garrett for selling out don't want him to be a minister if he's going to sell out. It's your job to explore that Jase, not defend politicians from your readers.

There is humour, anger, sadness and real satisfaction in public life, but you have to hunt for it and not just expect it to be served up to you by press secretaries, which is how Jase operates. Let us be rid of this appallingly inadequate "journalist".

Update: A regular PH reader just sent me the following:

Wow, great blog! I agree with everything you've ever said, thought or done! How do I get an excellent blog like yourn?

PS, I love you.

You could start your own blog any time you like, seeing as you have so much spare time in a campaign that is going absolutely nowhere. It's not my fault that you're going nowhere.

Needing a clue

We are in the middle of an election campaign where this country's government may well change. We turn to the media to tell us what's going on, and they can't get over themselves long enough to think about what's in front of them, and write about it.

Badly thought-out columns like this are doing Jase no good at all.

It's a long-standing beef of mine that negative ads only work where you have voluntary voting: they discourage your targets from turning up and get your voters riled up enough to vote against said targets. It is uncomfortable having Jase on board, but it's a relief that he's not here for any good or sensible reason:

The first was a restoration of basic standards. "Before anything else, we need to produce children out of schools who can read and write and spell and add up," Howard said. Where does he think we are? Botswana?

He's been in office for eleven years, Jase, and you've never asked him a single question about education: not preschool, not uni, not anything in between. He doesn't deserve to be taken on face value and neither do you.

Nothing wrong with that, but is having a country full of top plumbers what we really need?

10-15% of Sydney's water disappears through faulty plumbing: we have too few plumbers, but too many clowns in the press gallery making idle statements like that. Roll up your sleeves Jase and get stuck into some useful work.

The same can be said for pre-glasnost era propagandists Milney & Michelle, who might sound like a breakfast radio show but without the heavy analysis you get in that format:

THE Coalition's shaky election campaign was in danger of running off the rails last night with revelations of a serious split in Cabinet on the critical issue of climate change.

In a gift to Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister John Howard and Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull refused to deny reports that Mr Turnbull had made a desperate attempt only six weeks ago to change Mr Howard's mind on climate change.

Mr Howard and Mr Turnbull stonewalled over reports that Mr Turnbull had taken a submission to Cabinet arguing that the government should sign the Kyoto Protocol. Ratifying the protocol is Labor policy.

There it is, in the third paragraph: the Environment Minister thought it'd be a good idea to sign the Kyoto protocol on carbon emission controls: he took it to Cabinet and it got turfed. That's the story here, guys. But oh no, M&M are determined to miss the point, and they miss it together:

The political embarrassment in the small shopfront in North Parramatta was palpable. It was one of the bad moments of the Coalition's campaign, of which there are now a few.

Yeah, but what would happen if Australia had signed up to Kyoto, M&M? What costs, what benefits? That's what your job is, not trying to second-guess the kind of knobs who feed you the tidbits you turn into droppings on the page.

Angry Liberal colleagues immediately accused Mr Turnbull of jettisoning the Government's position in order to save his marginal - and green - Sydney seat of Wentworth.

One minister said Mr Turnbull was not a team player and described him as being "desperate" about his prospects in Wentworth.

Mr Turnbull has been under pressure in his seat not only on climate change but also over his recent approval of a large paper pulp mill in Tasmania.

Wentworth is a seat that Labor has not held in 106 years on Australian nationhood. He should have done this ages ago, so that he might have some credibility: vote for me and I'll stand up to the powers that be. The "minister" quoted by M&M has done nobody in the government any favours by suggesting that the way to getting back into government is to introduce positive and forward-looking policy. The "minister" should have shared Turnbull's concern about Wentworth: hopefully this minister isn't one of the ones who was so blithe about Hanson.

The PM soon made for his car ... Then he sped off. We are left to speculate about who leaked the Kyoto story

Yeah right, as if John Howard was going to announce at a press conference who leaked. Good one! Until press gallery "Doyen(ne)s" like M&M regard Kyoto as something other than a twitch in the body politic, they'll never fulfil their only legitimate role of helping us understand what our government is doing.

Repeatedly, Howard simply parrotted that what we need is a new agreement.

The fact that Howard can't identify what that agreement should be and hasn't taking a leadership role internationally after hanging Robert Hill out to dry means Howard has no credibility on this issue, and M&M should be exploring that. M&M should wonder what value there is, hanging around North Parramatta or Canberra or anywhere else, listening to politicians 'parrot' the same old uninformative garbage, giving them free pass after free pass, ensuring that smart and tough questions are never asked, and that government doesn't have to bring any discipline to informing people how they are governed (let alone in analysing information and making decisions) - no, the only discipline comes in parroting, M&M love a good parrot. If he'd departed from the script, nobody would be more down on him than M&M.

Other signs are also emerging in the Liberal camp suggesting MPs have lost confidence in the Prime Minister.

And what does your "minister" have to say about that, M&M? How does it gel with the rest of your article? Do you think Liberal candidates should have to sneak back in, making themselves out as quasi-independents? Either John Howard provides election-winning leadership or he doesn't.
Now there's this:

Campaigns are all about momentum and John Howard lost his last week, courtesy of a debate performance that failed to knock Kevin Rudd off his perch and the trip wire of an underlying inflation rate that points almost inevitably to a Melbourne Cup Day-plus-one interest rate rise.

Campaigns aren't all about momentum, though one without it is in more trouble than one with. I'd suggest that ten months of dire polls would have meant that Labor went into the campaign with more momentum than the government.

Besides, which is the greater departure from the official li(n)e: the sudden recognition of Aborigines or the signing of a treaty whose targets we're going to meet anyway?

And then along came Malcolm, once again in the middle of a dreadful muddle.

Why a muddle, why dreadful? That's your job, to tell us. On the issue of environmentalism Turnbull shows greater clarity of thought than doyen(ne)s.

Howard expended a lot of campaign ammunition when he loaded the starter's gun with $34 billion worth of tax cut bullets.

Starters' guns are not loaded with ammunition. They make noise but otherwise have no substance, a bit like you really. That's the peril of the mixed metaphor: it shows you're not thinking properly.

Turnbull says he didn't leak the story and I, for one, believe him. My understanding is that two other cabinet ministers were responsible. The motive is unclear, but there are only two alternatives here: malevolence, directed at Turnbull in the context of the future leadership of the Liberal Party; or gross incompetence. The trouble is both suggest the Government at the most senior levels is unqualified to continue in office.

There are plenty of other issues that demonstrate this government's unfitness for office, too bad you've missed them. Too bad you think that the future leadership of the Liberal Party is the only prism through which to view policy.

Turnbull hasn't got a phone box worth of votes in the Liberal caucus and is therefore not even a remote danger to Costello.

Yeah, that's what they said about Kevin Rudd this time last year.

Viewed that way, the drop, if it was aimed surgically at Turnbull, was a grotesque failure in that it has hurt the Government as a whole, including Costello.

What a grotesque train-smash of a sentence that is, more evidence that the writer isn't thinking about what he's saying.

The reason why this story was leaked was to protect Howard. Their intended message is that Howard stands firm against flip-flopping and wobbly thinking. That is all. When you've been observing politics for as long as I have, Milney, you pick that sort of thing up. It's interesting that nobody bothered leaking directly to you!

But if the election finishes up where it's clearly headed now, it's the third of these failures for which Howard might most resent Turnbull.

Howard may well blame someone other than himself for his own failings, but it's poor analysis to imply that such a silly opinion may somehow be justified.

The media convention in political campaigns is to judge them on a week-by-week basis. On this measure, the Government had a good first week and a bad second week.

Stuff the media convention, Shaun. We're little better off in terms of understanding how we would be governed, and therefore you and your profession have failed. You do realise those jaunts - now Bunbury, now Launceston, now Glenelg, now West Ryde, now Innisfail - are designed to create a sense of movement and broad-mindedness that political parties generally lack. Your job is to unpick them, not get caught up in them.

This laziness isn't just confined to political journalism, though that's where it's most toxic and urgent. The 'firestorm' over Elka Graham's drug comments is caused by lazy journalists who could've followed up if they wanted to, chose not to, and have been shown up for not doing their jobs. It isn't Elka Graham who's cheated us.

Sometimes you just have to call it as it is, and your analysis just isn't good enough because you're analysing the wrong things. The days when media consumers/ citizens/ voters/ taxpayers just had to put up with this sort of self-indulgence is long past.

Making a meal of it

Once again we have a JaseAttack to show us who the boy has been having lunch with, and whom he wants to have lunch with going forward. What we also have is a clear example of how the mainstream media can't help us understand how we are (and are going to be) governed.

This piece sees Jase all upset that a Labor MP won't stay in the box into which factional heavies have nailed him. The entire history of the Labor Party - and of the Liberals too, for that matter - is of MPs deciding they're sick of toeing a line that's not going anywhere.

Gavan O'Connor has decided that he's going down with middle digit raised, unlike the bought objects content to slump into the bin of history, pocket their pensions and keep stumm. He's not a socially-divisive extremist like Pauline Hanson, so if he finds his old party so intolerable why shouldn't he take a stand? If Jase was still in his Peter-Costello-bumsniffer mode he'd be cheering O'Connor, but now that he perceives the need to build bridges with Labor then he'll sing whatever tune his luncheon companions want to hear.

From a media perspective, there is a story to be told here about what sort of government Rudd is offering. O'Connor is the only member of caucus who has been a farmer, a constituency that must be heard in the future debate over water and land sustainability, and which Labor governments have always treated as adversaries largely through mutual ignorance. Speaking of ignorance:

THE vote was unanimous. The inaugural winner of the Mal Colston Medal for Treachery

Who voted, Jase? How does O'Connor compare to Colston, who was induced by the Coalition to turn his back on the ALP? Do you have any proof that O'Connor has accepted an inducement, and if so what is it? Why would O'Connor, or anyone else, believe that John Howard had any capacity to follow through on any inducement anyway? C'mon Jase, do your job, not some Labor staffer's (unless that is the job you're keening for).

Liberals everywhere have been falling over themselves in the stampede to congratulate O'Connor

Such as? Howard made a few comments about O'Connor but Hanson showed him that his party's not immune to this sort of thing. Abbott has been particularly quiet, as has Jase's old mate Costello - but isn't it typical of Jase to signal at the outset of his pieces just how badly he's floundering? Notice how Jase undoes his insipid introduction with a quote from Howard that clearly procludes the Coalition from making political capital over O'Connor.

O'Connor accused his former party of branch stacking, money laundering and of making grubby political deals.

O'Connor's transformation from a man of principle and integrity to one deluded by self-interest and greed is a salutary lesson in how politics can corrupt. Make no mistake, O'Connor destroyed himself last Thursday, and everything he once stood for.

He has chosen a road at the end of which he will find only bitterness and misery.

Jase just assumes that it is O'Connor, and not the ALP, who has become corrupted. When he was a Peter Costello bumsniffer Jase was more than happy to point out these and other faults, but in this piece he assumes that any such accusation against the ALP must always be false, and rebound on the accuser. Whether O'Connor wins or loses, the structural integrity of the Australian Labor Party is of major concern, especially as it will bear the eight of governing the entire country and its sub-national political divisions.

That last line in particular is the kind of bullying you might get in schoolyards or Williams-Moran-style crime syndicates, but if you were a real journalist, Jason Koutsoukis, you'd question whether this has any place in the governance of state.

Way back in 1990, O'Connor was a nobody. A local councillor from Colac, he was given a job in the electorate office of then Labor senator John Button, who had an electorate office in Geelong.

Have you looked at John Button's critiques of the modern ALP at all, Jase? If so, you'd find the position of O'Connor vindicated - but that wouldn't please your lunch buddies at all.

With a taxpayer-funded salary in his pocket (a largesse bestowed on him by the Labor Party)

Well, which is it? Do employees in public service owe their loyalty to taxpayers, or the Labor Party? C'mon Jase, a real journalist would have a field day with that, a couple of Walkleys if not a career. You just do a garbage-in-garbage-out regurgitation onto the page.

O'Connor would still be a nobody were it not for his party and its members, who sent him to Canberra in 1993 and kept him there at the four subsequent elections.

Yeah, forget the voters - or "punters" as Jase calls them.

One can understand the basis of O'Connor's grievance, and why he was so upset at being dumped.

A hard-working, likeable, generous person, O'Connor was a popular local member. But in the end, whatever the flaws of Labor's factional system, O'Connor lost control of his branches ... O'Connor may have been a perfectly able MP and a decent person, but his political skills and acumen have hardly set Canberra on fire.

First O'Connor is all these things, then when it comes time to sink the slipper he qualifies it with the weaselly may have been. Jase can't admit that a good man has been traduced because that would make him, and his lunchmates, look bad - and Jase can't get where he wants to go unless he does a few tricks for his would-be sources in the next government.

It is Jase who is "the venal hypocrite who waited ... [to] do the most damage possible to those friends and colleagues he has worked alongside for the past decade" (his erstwhile lunch buddies in the Peter Costello Fan Club). Examining the way the country is governed is more important than Jase trying to establish himself as a playa.

In 14 years, he has scored not one major political victory over the Coalition, and has made not a single policy contribution of any significance.

Yes he has, everyone in the ALP and quite a few outside it have praised O'Connor in educating his party about rural issues without getting sucked into the largesse mentality of the Nationals.

Nor is Marles without claim to represent the people of Geelong. A talented solicitor and assistant secretary of the ACTU, Marles grew up in Geelong and has lived in the city for the past 10 years.

All the while, enjoying the hard work of Gavan O'Connor. Marles could have had his pick of any Labor seat in Victoria. He seemed quite content to take on David Kemp back in the day, in far-off Melbourne, why not keep him there?

Former leader Kim Beazley was one of those whom O'Connor worked tirelessly to remove almost from the day Beazley took over as Labor leader.

Yeah, well that would explain why Beazley isn't taking Labor to victory - O'Connor was hardly on his lonesome there. Witness your own jihad against John Howard, Jase.

Former federal Liberal MP David Connolly lost preselection for the Sydney seat of Bradfield to Brendan Nelson before the 1996 election.

The loss hurt Connolly, who was a friend of John Howard. But he kept his mouth shut, and Howard looked after him once he became Prime Minister, justly rewarding him with a plum overseas posting.

OK, so no lame mock-outrage stories about "jobs for the boys" when the Labor MPs on this list "justly" line up for "a taxpayer-funded salary in his pocket (a largesse bestowed on him by the Labor Party)"? Why would any journalist praise someone who "kept his mouth shut"? Why would any member of the ALP have to live up to the standards of former Liberal MP (and fellow nobody) David Connolly?

The McManus piece quoted above ends with the line: "Mr Marles could not be contacted last night". If this is Marles' response to O'Connor, using Jase as his hand-puppet, then it is despicable. It will reflect poorly on Marles (Labor's Frydenberg?) going forward. If Jase wants to play favourites and suck up to Marles and his game-players, who can't tell the difference between taxpayer funds and Labor Party largesse, then he is just another leech in Canberra seeking to advance himself at everyone else's expense.

Gavan O'Connor has been enhanced by being slimed by someone like Jase, regardless of whether or not he loses to the lesser man on 24 November. Piffle like this is sadly typical of Koutsoukis' articles: those to whom you have sold your soul, Jase, have got a much worse deal than the man from Colac and Geelong (no, I'm not talking about Richard Marles).

Update: I wouldn't go so far as Milney:

If the Liberals do preference O'Connor, the former Labor member who has quit the party in disgust at factional heavying and union influence to run as an independent, he may be in with a chance of winning back the seat he's already held for 14 years.

Hype. Bullshit. Shows you why you don't read Glenn Milne to find out what's going on in Canberra, merely who Milney has been having lunch with.

The biggest trick to getting O'Connor up for the Liberals would be to ensure their candidate ran third. There are two intersecting currents here and they are both media driven. The Liberals' "problem" (defined as pushing O'Connor into second place) is that Corio, based on Geelong, has a very strong local media, particularly the Geelong Advertiser.

The Liberals are fighting off a strong Rudd-driven Labor challenge to Stewart McArthur, their sitting candidate in the neighbouring seat of Corangamite. Facing this adjoining challenge, there has to be strong Liberal branding across regional media, making it hard to run dead in Corio.

This is crap. All the Liberal Party has to do is deny oxygen to the Corio candidate (like Milney, I can't be bothered finding out his/her name) and focus all their energy on McArthur: McArthur this, McArthur that, and pretty soon it won't even occur to Corio voters that if they can't vote McArthur they won't vote Liberal at all. This raises questions for the Liberal Party as to whether they have the right to put someone up as a candidate and then jerk them around like that.

Said Marles: "The only winner out of this is John Howard and the Liberal Party."

He got that bit right.

No he didn't Milney and neither did you. If O'Connor wins Corio he'll support Rudd over Howard, and in the process will get more concessions for his local area than Marles could, as just another clamouring newbie owned by caucus.

Hello?

The great thing about Jase is that you'll always know who he's had lunch with. Last time we heard from Jase he was attending a Parker Partners knees-up, where it's entirely possible that a Telstra flack was helping him with his next column. In PR, you've succeeded when people start absorbing your talking points as their own opinions: in this case, the Telstra job on Jase has worked a beauty.

The latest has it all: lame pun headline (Coonan the barbarian, geddit?), the self-reference ("my list of the Howard Government's All-Star Bunglers"), and the absolute absence of any judgment about policy and people ("I don't think that trying to wreck this country's greatest corporate asset is a good idea", as though that's all that telco regulation is all about).

Bashing Telstra might long have been a national sport, but isn't it time we all grew up?

Sure, Telstra has its share of problems — what company with 21 million customers wouldn't?

If customers are your problem, it's time to get out of business. A business with too few customers has more problems, not less. Not all criticism of Telstra is immature Jase.

Try picking up a phone in the United States, or in Europe.

Yep, done it Jase. Now what? Did you actually have a point there? Are you really judging our phone system by fixed-line standards? What about wireless networks in Asia, with more than 21 million customers carrying more than just voice and revolutionising the way we communicate? Still think it's a miracle, or have you been sucked in by people who want you to be amazed at occasional flashes of competence?

Who do you call when your system isn't working?

That meant competitors like Dodo or Optus who wanted to use that network to deliver their own products would have to pay a price that subsidised the cost of delivering the network to the bush.

Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?

Only if that is what they're actually subsidising, Jase. If they (and their customers) are actually subsidising Phil Burgess in the style to which he's become accustomed, then: no, it isn't.

the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which under the leadership of Graeme Samuel has decreed that anything Telstra wants, it can't have.

Jase, if you were a journalist, would you accept that the reverse was a better strategy? Have you actually asked the ACCC if that's what their strategy is? Do you think it might be something other than gimme gimme gimme?

Too weak to stand up to Samuel, and eager to shift the blame onto someone else, Coonan has demonised Telstra chief executive Sol Trujillo and its board.

Why should Coonan go into bat for whatever Telstra wants, and with what legal power would she do so? Did you even ring the minister's office, Jase? Doesn't really stand up to the whole all-conquering imagery in the headline, does it? I always find it fascinating when you scupper one of your own articles, but this time you're going for broke.

who is on the Telstra board and ask why a group of such exceptionally high achievers would be a party to what amounts to a giant conspiracy to rip off its customers.

This is not some left-wing NGO we're talking about.

Since when do left-wing NGOs (with the possible exception of some unions) rip off their customers?

The Telstra board includes ... a current director of Macquarie Bank ... a former chief executive of BHP Petroleum and a former chairman of AMP ... former advertising guru ... a close friend of John Howard ... one time New Right hero

Yeah, no price-gougers there.

Instinct tells me that if a group of people of this calibre can remain so united behind their chief executive for so long, then they are probably onto something.

Considering how long it took to find a management team, and how much face they'd lose if they dumped a leadership team that is focused on playing political silly-buggers rather than running a telco, they are onto saving their own reputations and to hell with customers.

But this new network is not to fill existing gaps in services in rural Australia: it's to duplicate what is already being provided by Telstra, but with unproven technology.

Then there is the Government's licence condition that Telstra maintain — at massive expense — its old CDMA mobile network beyond January 28 next year, when it already had its perfectly good Next G mobile network in place to take over.

NextG is unproven technology, Jase, just like OpEl. When you have a monopoly service it's hard to work out what the right price is and should be - and the last people you should ask are the monopolists themselves.

Here's a hint about PR, Jase: if they have enough money to duchess you, don't listen when they whinge about not having enough money to do their job.

"Structural separation" is code for splitting up the company and that would destroy what's left of the share price.

Really? For most companies, splitting the company actually releases value tied up in monolithic structures. Did you actually check with anyone who knows the stockmarket Jase, other than the Telstra PR dolly who fed you? Why would Babcock & Brown knowingly engage in value-destroying activity after all this time, Jase?

The only joke in this debate is the Government's ... refusal to lift a finger to make happen the one thing that everyone wants: a world-class broadband network.

Actually, I'm quite happy with more than one world-class broadband network to choose from. I'm not convinced that FTTN is that, Jase, but maybe you'll miss out on future junkets if you start asking questions about network quality by a company that just isn't interested in quality service - except for the most gullible journalists.

In no area of public policy has Coonan performed so poorly as in her management of Telstra.

And here's me thinking that Sol Trujillo's job was to manage Telstra. What's your idea of good management - other than lavishing taxpayer money on Telstra, Jase? The fact that you have no idea puts you at the top of my list of All-Star Press Gallery Bunglers.

When all other alternatives are exhausted

Now that Liberals have stopped taking Jason Koutsoukis to lunch in order to hand-feed him tidbits of blah, he's had to do some work. First the Gillard thing, now this.

The clearest illustration that Koutsoukis has missed the point of his own article is his dismissive approach to the one Democrat Senator with half a chance, Andrew Bartlett. Bartlett's leadership of the party might not have survived the incident described, but his work on committees and in brokering sensible outcomes in legislation certainly has - or should.

The main problem for the Democrats is, like the Liberals, they haven't planned for their future. The sign of a party in decay is not that Lees and Stott Despoja went at each other, that sort of thing happens all the time in politics. The sign of decay is that membership dried up and the pool of new candidates has stagnated and drained away. Andrew Murray claims that their vote went up in 2001 - but there were no new Senators elected then, and had there been things may have been different now.

A party is healthy when it attracts capable candidates willing to run for office, and the Democrats are not a healthy party. The Liberals might be eating their future but all the Democrats can do is starve.

Lyn Allison is a worthy contributor to Senate deliberations, but she's not a leader and nor is she a winning candidate for the Senate in Victoria. In a healthy party, she'd have been challenged by a number of wannabes and either lifted her game or succumbed. Now, all she's going to do is light all Democrats the way to dusty political death.

The Democrats have no choice but to throw everything they have behind Andrew Bartlett. With the likelihood that neither Labor nor the Coalition will have a majority in the Senate, someone needs to show what can be done through patient parliamentary busywork. Who else is going to do it? What choice do they have? Why have they worked themselves into a position where this, or extinction, really is their only choice?

The sensible middle ground of politics has been occupied by Kevin Rudd, who looks exactly like the sort of person the Democrats would have put up as a candidate ten years ago. In the next term of government people are going to vote Labor in the hope of securing that ground. The Liberals have abandoned it and their moderates are too weak to slip the leash and seize it for themselves. In the term after next, people will realise that the sensible middle has gone missing - what then? Will there even be an Australian Democrats organisation by then, or will the image of the party be dominated by ridiculous old hippies like this?

The image of the Fielding First Senator tooling around calls to mind that Christmas carol parody of "One on a scooter, blowing his hooter/Smoking a rubber cigar". Stop laughing, that guy is in a far stronger political position than the Democrats.

Full of it

You can hear the plop, plop, plop of suffused leeches dropping off the carcass of the Howard Government, and even bits of its own flesh giving way.

First, we have Jase dissing the sort of people who were once his luncheon companions and column-stuffers. The stuff in the third-last paragraph should have occurred to him much earlier and he should have reported on that basis, were he to have the credibility he lacks now. Margaret Simons from Crikey gave Jase a big rap, but only because she obviously isn't familiar with his tedious oeuvre.

There is a more contemptible example than Jase: this guy has learnt nothing from 11 years of his kinda government and drops his mates in it when they are of no further use to him. He owes the Liberals at least one more verbal handjob cheer.

To top it all is this hand-wringing effort worthy of an ABC luvvie:

He is fit, capable and, like that Energizer bunny, he could stay on to fight another fight. But voters appear to have turned off Howard. They appear to have stopped listening. Each new initiative that was meant to deliver a electoral bounce has failed to do so.

Janet, when Howard was announcing each of these new initiatives - what were you doing? You were cheering him on, weren't you. You were sneering at those who said that it wouldn't have the desired effect, weren't you. If Howard goes - at the polls or before - will you go too? Why should Howard alone bear the brunt of the mistakes of yourself and all the other Howard boosters?

The last rabbit Howard should pull out of the hat is Peter Costello.

Those who doubt if such a change (from Howard to Costello) would have much of an impact should reflect on recent events in Britain.

Gordon Brown had established a separate identity to Tony Blair; Peter Costello has kept his powder so dry for so long that it's reasonable to doubt if there's any powder at all.

Most importantly: Gordon Brown doesn't have to go to the polls in a few weeks. In a few weeks, Janet. Peter Costello might be less old than Howard but any notion that he's "fresh" is a joke. It would destroy whatever advantages the Coalition have as incumbents to switch now, rewarding Rudd for not being so flighty with a chance to prove himself.

the same qualities that made and defined Howard as this country’s most successful prime minister, his courage and persistence, may also work towards his eventual electoral ruin and that of the party.

Menzies was this country's most successful Prime Minister, not Howard. If they are the same qualities, you have to wonder whether the qualities you describe were indeed successful, or just chimerical.

There is little nobility in defeat if it means his prime ministership will be forever tainted by him losing his seat.

There is considerable nobility in sticking to your principles, and ignominy in abandoning them for populism which is rewarded only by electoral rout.

It's easy to be wise after the event - what's hard is to be right and to wear the sneers of silly people like Koutsoukis, Bolt and Albrechtsen. You flogged this horse to death, the least you can do is step away from it so that it can be buried decently and curb your hankering for a new ride.

The theme that's clearly emerging is that Howard can do nothing right. Watch for stumbles and bumbles by Coalition figures to fit this. While it would be great to think the MSM will at long last scrutinise government policy, in reality Rudd will get an easy ride and Coalition self-pity will be projected onto the press, which is as fickle as any addictive substance.

Eugene McCarthy said that being in politics is like playing football: you have to be smart enough to understand the game but dumb enough to think it's important. Annabel Crabb demonstrates that she's the latter without being the former, and that like any hopeless addict she's bored by that which she can't leave alone. Oh, and Annabel pet, The Brothers Karamazov is not a "lesser known work". It might not be the cliche that falls out of your head, but that hardly diminishes it.

If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure

The Age have identified failed Liberal preselection candidate Josh Frydenberg as someone whose views are worth publishing. Going by his efforts so far, this appears to be a mistake: has Jason Koutsoukis has so trashed his own name that he's using someone else's?

As I said in my previous post, exposure in the media is a potent factor in securing Liberal preselection. Don't let any of that ABC/The Age bagging fool you: these people live to see their name in the paper, and I bet no amount of criticism would rile this individual as much as if I misspelled his name.

Frydenberg sees his role as to not only defend the performance of the Howard government but also to suggest new ideas going forward. He fails on both counts. He doesn't address the gap between where we are and where we need to be, which is the whole point of an article like this.

WHAT do the wine cask, the bionic ear and the flight recorder all have in common?

All were invented and marketed in the face of a myriad of bureaucratic entanglements. Find out what these were Josh, whether they still apply and identify ways of removing those that do more harm than good Josh, there's a good chap. It might take more than a Wiki/Google search, but if you're the man people say you are then you can do it.

Australia needs to renew its commitment to generating ideas and exploiting them. At every stage of our economy, we need to be thinking creatively about new sources of value.

Firstly, this ignores the very good work that many people are doing toward this very end. Josh is showing that you can take the boy out of Canberra but he'll still be in a world of his own. Secondly, this point is so anodyne and has been made better by more sensible people: but this is only the second paragraph, so let's not be mean and give this article a chance of making a well-considered point.

the Howard Government has overseen an impressive increase in government investment in research and development ...

Really?

the promotion of closer industry and university co-operation

Rubbish.

Firstly, you'd think that a $500,000 research grant from the government was equivalent to half a million dollars from the private sector - but you'd be wrong. After 11 years of Howard government and AWAs in the University sector, academic careers live or die by their success in attracting government funding. The public sector remains the light on the hill to which the eyes of academics are always turned - you don't have to be a leftie to see that.

Secondly, the Australian tax system should, like its US equivalent, provide significant tax incentives for donations to research institutions. The absence of this makes a mockery of "a sharper focus on education and training more generally" (sharper than what, Josh?). It also makes a mockery of notions that the GST back in the late 1990s, or trimming corporate tax a bit, is all the tax reform this country could possibly need.

Seriously though, if you're going to have universities do research into Queer Studies, wouldn't you rather it was funded by some old queen's bequest rather than some hapless minister who's past the novelty of Media Exposure?

The OECD ranks Australia outside its top 10 in the production of patents per head of population. This is below that of some of our competitor economies.

Ranking Australia anywhere below top of the list puts us below competitor economies. It shouldn't be necessary to create a blizzard of buzzwords to make a blindingly obvious point - but hey, this sort of thing has gotten Josh some Media Exposure, and that's all that matters apparently.

I should point out that the title of this post is meant to be ironic, a reference to the kind of anodyne fluff like the above that riddles this article.

there needs to be a revolution in business' approach to innovation. Companies need to exercise the apparent paradox of less caution but more discipline in the creation and development of next-generation business models.

This is a man who has ingested too much press-release piffle. An example would not only help understanding but be a great relief from this pointless verbiage. WTF is a next-generation business model, and do I need some merchant bank to help me offset the cost of implementing it (and the responsibility if it all goes wrong)?

It is not about incremental changes that will deliver the next quarter's profits but about encouraging creative thinking that goes beyond linear approaches ...

Incremental change is innovation. You can build a better mousetrap without genetically overhauling all members of species rodentia. Gutenberg's printing press was a slightly modified version of the wine press used for centuries in and around his home town of Mainz. All the great innovators knew that they stood on the shoulders of giants: if you want this sort of stuff get it direct from Tom Peters, no point filtering it through Josh.

... and challenges conformity in the workplace

Have you even heard of WorkChoices? You can bet that Josh's employer punishes companies for spending on research that isn't immediately and incredibly productive, and that Josh isn't rocking the boat trying to change this.

Many businesses have the innovative idea within their organisation and people; they just need to be prepared to take the risk and spend the time to create change.

Those who lead government and business have little time and actively seek to minimise risk. More than a century ago, Banjo Paterson wrote: "For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste". All of the test between "First, there needs to be a revolution in business' approach to innovation" and "Others need to follow ..." is bullshit. Keeping it vague ain't keeping it real.

Other mid-sized economies, such as Ireland, Finland and Singapore, have capitalised on their proficiency in information technology to drive value-creating service sectors.

Yes, they have. What exactly is it about their economies and regulatory systems that we could use here, Josh? What is the Howard government doing, what should it be doing, to those ends, Josh? I'm increasingly of the opinion that we need to get rid of the Howard government to realise such a future, but for our man Josh this is touching the third rail.

The Federal Government is spending a record $6.5 billion on science and innovation in 2007-08, but federal and state initiatives need to be co-ordinated so that they are mutually reinforcing and deliver a common and agreed set of measurable goals.

How likely is that given Howard's commitment to duplicating federal-state functions? Do you really think state governments have a mother lode of research cash waiting to be invested? See my earlier point about private/public funding. One of us has to think about these issues, the other has a column with The Age.

Australians must demand world's best practice in science and maths teaching in schools and universities

By whom? With what? Why should a science graduate go teach at Frydenberg High when he/she could be taking your spot at Deutsche when you go off to Parliament, Josh? Answering that question might require more than an article, but the answer could make a useful policy paper. And if you ache to be in a position to make yourself useful, do so in a way that helps others - including the sort of people your anodyne jottings could not imagine except in some ridiculously generalised sense.

As the world awaits with anticipation the imminent announcement of the next generation of the iconic iPod, we are left to ponder a critical question — what will be Australia's iPod?

This assumes Australians are victims of whirring cycles of PR hype, and are sucked into a cargo-cult mentality. This may be accurate, but such mindsets are inimical to innovation, sensible planning and sound investment.

Appearances notwithstanding, people like Josh don't waste much time reconciling contradictions - there is no contradiction in wanting as much Media Exposure as possible. If all you have to do is generate a lot of drivel in a crunchy coat of jargon, then it's a low-risk proposition to generate Media Exposure and guarantee his prosperity in a globalised world for those who don't think, read or innovate for years to come.

Closing the window of opportunity

Christian Kerr has noted (you'll need to be a Crikey subscriber) that there has been no improvement in the polls for the government following the Budget.

There has been an expectation for some time that there would be a bounce. After the first few weeks of Kevin Rudd's leadership, when people found out what a stuffed shirt he is. Then, after Anzac day. Then after the Sunrise/Long Tan debacle. Then the Budget. Now, the strip club thing. Yep, any day now ...

Sounds like typical Liberal thinking to me. I can still see the NSW election campaign of 1999, all those guys leaning back in their chairs with their fingers interlaced behind their fat heads explaining how Kerry Chikarovski was cruising to victory over Carr and Labor, just cruising! All those guys who helped put the Fraser government where it is today, and who go around the country in state election time bestowing the same favours on hapless leaders who don't realise they've been dudded until this same Clown Squad have convinced them it's all the locals' fault.

There comes a time when you have to stop listening to these clowns. When you start regarding the as jokes things become so much clearer. Christian Kerr is the insider that people like Matt Price or Annabel Crabb pretend to be, but sometimes being too much of an insider can lose you perspective.

There are two reasons why there was no budget bounce for the government. Let's call them Peter and John.

Peter used to have credibility, he has been front-and-centre in election campaigns past as A Steady Hand On The Wheel, but no more. Since he stood on The Water's Edge too scared to take the plunge his credibility is shot. He has the same perception of gutlessness as Kim Beazley, another political dauphin who never made it to the big time.

John also used to have credibility. In trying to demonstrate boundless energy while becoming a sixtysomething grandfather, he has dispelled any warm-and-fuzzy nostalgic notions (remember Keating's sneer about Morphy Richards toasters? What's wrong with them?). Instead, he's cultivating that image of oldies frittering away our inheritance for their own enjoyment, splashing around money like it's, ah, water. This sense of unease is compounded by the fact that he has pointed to Peter's hanging, twisting corpse and paid tribute to its vigorous activity.

In this speech, it's interesting to note that such economic experience as the government has rests in John personally with the standard token acknowledgment of Peter utterly absent. Why should John get stuck with such a loser at a difficult time? Why should you?

The economic credibility of the Howard government is shot. You know things are bad when even Jase can see it - a distillation of stale the consensus around the press gallery perhaps, but better than insisting that the turnaround is just around the corner (when you're going down the gurgler, you're always turning the corner).

Cast your mind back to 1997 - or even 1987, when I first met Christian Kerr as Chris Pyne's right hand - and imagine John Howard losing an election for being too wasteful and centralist. Let the wailings begin about lost opportunities, closing the window of opportunity etc.

Just so you know: there will be no bounce in the election campaign either. Nothing bounces against a closed window: all that happens is that the window shatters.

The wreck of the Peter Costello

Finally, one of the most ridiculous non-stories of Australian politics is over.

Peter Costello will never, ever be Prime Minister. He will never challenge Howard. He will never beat Howard. He won't even win an open leadership contest where Howard is not a candidate. Peter Costello will no more become PM than Cheryl Kernot or John Hewson or Kim Beazley. He is politically dead. In the coming election nobody will listen to a single word he says about anything: this may even happen at APEC next month.

He could stand down. However, the new Treasurer will struggle to find his/her feet, and will involve moving ministers from areas of policy requiring extensive knowledge (the experience and trust thing, you see). Either way, the departure of Peter Costello will stuff the government - almost as much as the slow twisting of his carcass in the wind. The Howard government cannot come back from this.

How many hundreds of hours of airtime, how many hectares of newsprint, have been wasted on the idea that Costello is circling Howard like a shark and waiting to strike generational change into the heart of the Liberal Party? How many "insider" journalists have hyped this up as though it's imminent, as though the Hawke-Keating rivalry set some pattern that is bound to be repeated, only to identify no firm or building momentum for a spill?

It's possible that Howard promised Costello that he'd only stay as PM for a term and a half, or two and a bit. Even if he didn't, the passage of those "deadlines" must have given pause to those who regarded it as part of the Canberra landscape on which they were bound to report. Even the passage of the deadline Costello set in 2005 should have seen the three silly journalists who agreed to hush-up Costello's bragging come forth with the goods.

If he did, and I believe he did, what a masterstroke! Fancy stringing someone along for eleven years - there are people in prison who get treated better than that. John Howard can be a polarising character - some think he's brilliant, some think he's a shit; but this is one area where both will find plenty of sustenance for their views. Same with this going-over from a toothless old dingo.

In a story that shimmers and fades like a mirage, this outburst by Costello was one of the few nuggets of fact that might have built a real, actual story - but they sat on it, for what? On what grounds are they peeved? What juicy insider tips did Costello hand-feed them to keep them sweet? Are you more likely to read The Bulletin or watch The 7.30 Report as a result of all those exclusive deals? Me neither. Those journalists might not be liars but their credibility is pretty much damaged, which is a shame as I had thought their pieces seemed well-considered.

Still, it could be worse - Jason Koutsoukis will need counselling and job retraining. Fortunately, the Australian government provides ...

Peter Costello did the best he could. So far as one can tell from this angle, he did not siphon government money, political donations or other largesse into his own pocket, nor those of his mates. He didn't engage in sordid sexual affairs. He did some good and he missed a few opportunities to do more with what he had, a bit like many of us really. Vale Peter Costello, and thank you.

Maybe there will be a Liberal Prime Minister from Victoria at some stage into the future. By then it will be the country's third most populous state and it will have some of the humility it lacked from its days as the party's engine room, days which are now long past. Sentimental Victorians made up much of Costello's base. So too did moderate liberals, who are now either going, gone or Chris Pyne: Costello was never a moderate, but he shared the same air of bemusement that moderates have, and that was enough when you're standing in line for the "showers".

Like his predecessor as Member for Higgins, John Gorton (except he became Prime Minister, ner ner!), Costello has lied to the press and been caught out. As with Gorton, this is the beginning of the end. While it's true that journalists and politicians lie to each other all the time, what's different here is that Costello is damaged goods. It's one thing to be lied to by someone powerful: if you call them on it, they could deny you the kind of juicy tidbits referred to earlier that seem to be the very essence of what the parliamentary press gallery does. Annabel Crabb is wrong again: all has changed, changed utterly. The press gallery rose as one in refusing to cop that sort of treatment from a loser.

Journalists will eat all sorts of shit - and pass it onto you, dear reader/ listener/ viewer/ citizen, under the GIGO principle - but not if you're on the way out.

Easily tricked

Once again a Jason Koutsoukis article yields no value in terms of actually letting you know what is going on in our political system. Here is Jase surprised by democracy:

"they" are middle Australia — the people who will decide the result on election day.

But in a time when 93 per cent of Australians think of themselves as being in the middle, getting to the right ones is not as easy as it used to be.

Professionals, tradespeople, wage and salary earners, those in small business — all are now lumped together in the amorphous middle.

Your job is not to do the lumping Jase, your job is to examine those who do the lumping and report back to the lumped on what you've found.

But look at the list of marginal seats Labor has to win — and the Coalition has to defend — and the swinging voters are still located in those same outer suburbs that have been the key to winning elections since Gough Whitlam's 1972 victory.

Here, according to Ozpolitics, is the list of seats Labor needs to win to form government in 2007:

• Hindmarsh SA


• Kingston SA


• Bonner Qld


• Wakefield SA


• Parramatta NSW (actually held by Labor already, but nominally Lib due to boundary change)


• Makin SA


• Braddon Tas


• Hasluck WA


• Stirling WA


• Wentworth NSW


• Bass Tas


• Solomon NT


• Moreton Qld


• Lindsay NSW


• Eden-Monaro NSW

Parramatta, Makin, Bass, Braddon and Solomon aren't outer suburban. Bass was a safe Labor seat in the 1970s, which is why the byelection on the departure of Lance Barnard was so traumatic for Labor. Wentworth couldn't be any more inner-city if it tried, covering the relentlessly urban centres of Kings Cross and Darlinghurst - it has never been held by Labor. Eden Monaro is mostly rural, according to local-yokel Dr Phelps. Anyone who can't accept that Australia has changed demographically in the past 35 years is a fool.

When Parliament is not sitting, [Rudd] will talk to anyone and everyone he can in a bid to sell Labor's message.

Fancy that, a politician who will talk to anyone. Such a contrast from John Howard, or any other politician really.

Rudd's new forgotten people have little to do with the forgotten people of Robert Menzies, who coined the phrase in the early 1940s. What Menzies was on about was that there were people at the top who could look after themselves, working class people who could organise themselves through their trade unions, but then there was this other group who felt they were left out of politics. This was a much narrower constituency and not really the sort of people Rudd is talking about now.

This is exactly the constituency Menzies was talking about, notwithstanding obvious differences about hat-wearing and the idea that those who were returned servicemen were also those in their thirties with families to support. In what way are they different, Jase? You need to do a bit of work before you airily dismiss a notion like that, just as you need to do some more research into someone like Ashley - when a radio station has more than 650,000 listeners, you shouldn't be surprised to encounter real life encounters, nor so patronising when you do.

Clive Hamilton says the art of politics today is being able to carve out a conception of middle Australia that is ordinary man.

Leaving aside the idea that not all people are men, how is this conception of politics different to that of Menzies' or Whitlam's day? It isn't really, is it Jase. Your job is not just to transcribe what is said to you, but to unpack and examine it against what's really there.

Housing affordability may be an issue for many people, but that's not a problem Howard can be fairly blamed for.

Really? Why not? And what about the notion that a preposition is something you shouldn't end a sentence with? Jase's presence is an indictment on The Age as a whole.

Getting the treatment

Congratulations to Jase on getting out of the press gallery for this piece, and for once leaving the Howard-Costello non-story alone. It just shows that the sloppy research and silly assumptions go beyond what happens inside Parliament and surrounding restaurants:

• The Heckler-style tone of the article generally


• The silly sweeping statement in the third paragraph


• The idea that a doctor might refer a patient to a specialist - they don't know everything, that's because they're not press gallery journalists!


• "The rebate process actually takes a few seconds, but why let the truth get in the way of a good story?" - any proof for that Jason? A five-minute visit to a harried GP makes you more of an expert than an experienced doctor heading her professional association? The challenge is on Jase to come up with "a good story", and this isn't it


• The idea that a pharmacist concluding a retail transaction takes less time than a doctor conducting a physical examination - duh! It takes a press gallery journalist to point this out.

After all that comes this telling piece - and as with all Koutsoukis articles, you have to hunt to get the good oil -

The most telling moment, though, came midway through the question and answer session when Capolingua was asked to name the three things she wanted to see most from both major political parties in the run-up to the election.

Three months out from polling day, Capolingua — the head of the peak medical organisation in the country — actually started stammering.

She finally managed to mumble a few platitudes, but the damage was done. The truth is that, apart from more money in doctors' pockets, the AMA doesn't actually know what it wants.

The Australian Medical Association seems to be pretty clear about what it wants, if you do a bit of research. However:

• Perhaps, in the theatre of a press conference, practiced professionals wrongfooted an unpracticed speaker. This just means you do a bit of research to put this in context, which might excuse any snarks about the head of a major lobby group not being media-savvy.


• Maybe Capolingua has a stammering problem - what proportion of the population does it affect, how is it treatable, etc.


• She may have been fearful of offending Abbott, with whom she shares Catholic ideological issues on healthcare.


• This isn't three months out from polling day - it's three months from when you guess polling day might be. You have no intellugence in this and you should admit it to a readership who wrongly trusts you


• Governments are sensitive to criticism at the best of times but at a time when the government can't take a trick, Capolingua understandably didn't want to be seen piling on.

That said, Capolingua should have rattled off a list of objectives from her recent election to the head of the AMA.

A press gallery journalist would have wondered why this is the first AMA President in a long time who hasn't put the boot into the government, and what they'd hope to gain by a tactic they haven't tried before: snuggling down into the minister's pocket. How will that tactic impress the Abbott's successor as Health Minister, and what implications will that have for Capolingua, the AMA and health policy generally?

There's also the issue of Australia having too few doctors generally (let alone those who don't instantly recognise the Koutsoukis name - "you any relation to that try-hard who takes up space in The Age?"), and of deporting those fitted up by a silly government - but more on that later.

Once again, I have to do Jase's "work" for him - in this, my 101st post on this blog.

The broken record

Jason Koutsoukis has nothing to say, and he's said it again. The same column he always runs in The Age on Sunday, the same non-story based on false assumptions, and once again trying to blame the object of his fantasies for their not coming true.

Had Costello [challenged for the leadership], he would have faced the charge of disloyalty and of putting his own ambition before the Liberal Party. But, as subsequent events have shown, the judgement would have been right and have put them in a better position to win this election, because the electorate has stopped listening to Howard.

This doesn't consider the possibility that Costello isn't strong enough to face those accusations, especially as he has no convictions other than that he'd like to be PM (if that). Think about Andrew Peacock, widely regarded as Malcolm Fraser's heir apparent, after he went to the backbench in 1981. No sleeping at the Lodge, no eating there, nothing. You had to leapfrog Peacock to talk about Fraser, yet it is the Sunlamp Kid who was the Costello of years past.

Kim Beazley got the leadership of his party without having to challenge for it, and he and his wife probably dined with the Hawkes, Keatings or both in the Prime Ministerial residences. In wanting to have the leadership dropped into his lap, Costello is the Liberals' Kim Beazley. Never mind Fraser and Gorton: here is a parallel in recent times you've just ignored.

Stop recounting some anonymous briefing and actually think about what you're being told, where it comes from, does it hold together under scrutiny. Start doing that and you'll become a journalist.

As for these "subsequent events", Jason: your whole job is helping us anticipate those, not trying hundreds of variations of the same story.

Costello's second reason for not challenging Howard is that he didn't want to be seen as disloyal or be blamed for splitting the party. Then why did he choose politics as a profession? He should have stuck to the law. Leadership is not about being a nice guy, it's about backing your own judgements and convictions.

What convictions?

Costello has never grasped what showing a bit of steel could do and the only reason he is not prime minister now is because he hasn't had the stomach to do what he has believed in his heart was the right thing to do.

Mixed metaphors reveal confused thinking. You can't show steel, stomach, cojones or whatever if you just don't have them. This story has been right in front of you for years and you've missed it, Jason.

And instead of history remembering him as one of the country's most successful treasurers, it may well recall him as a craven wimp who let his party down right when it needed him most.

Not "instead of", both. History, like good journalism, can be pretty bloody nuanced when it's of a mind to be so.

There is a story to be told on Peter Costello - like Beazley and Peacock, tomorrow's man who became yesterday's man without him ever being the man for today. Jason Koutsoukis can't tell it because he's too close; and because even though deploying words is central to his profession, you don't get much sense from a man who thinks people get grilled or shot while on a marathon.

Silver bullet

This week, Jase has hid his candle for Costello deep under a bushel - click here.

You have to scroll down to the third-last paragraph to see what all his wittering about age is really about. He neglects to point out that non-developed nations (I assume he means countries outside the OECD) tend to have average ages below the age of 68, as do all but a handful of Aborigines, such that someone in their forties is very senior indeed. That, however, is the sort of criticism you'd make of a proper journalist.

So Jase:

• What's Peter Costello's Chief of Staff like? Do a better job than Nutt, eh? How, exactly? Give your answer using examples, and cut out any crap about Equatorial Guinea.


• What pearls of wisdom have been stomped into the mud by Nutt's trotters? How would the fortunes of the government, and the future of the country be different if only those ideas had a better reception?


• Given that it was only a few days ago that you said it wasn't too late for a switch to Costello, what (not who, what) changed your mind?


• Do you think Costello's smart-arse performances this week about groceries had any impact in the marginals, Jase? Any at all?


• Would Vanessa Goodwin (or any other Liberal in a marginal seat) really want Costello campaigning with her, rather than Howard?


• Where are the voters who'd vote Liberal if Howard were gone and your man Costello held the top job? Are they outweighed by the numbers who voted for Howard previously and will vote for the seemingly (and actually!) younger, fresher version of Howard known as "Kevin Rudd"?


• A year ago, Kim Beazley was leader of the ALP. The conventional wisdom from places like this suggest that Howard well and truly had the measure of both Beazley and Costello.

Honestly.

there remains the question of how much younger and fresher he would appear to the voters, given that he has held the nation's purse strings for 11 years.

Insofar as a piece like this has a point at all, it is to examine what a Costello Prime Ministership might be like, and how (if?) it might be more appealling than a Rudd one. This is the piece you should have written, Jase.

By the way: Costello has been the Treasurer of the government, not the nation.

I am starting to get tired of doing Jase's job for him. His love letters to Peter Costello get more embarrassing the less he has to say. Anyone from the MSM who still whinges about bloggers is weighed down by having to defend the waste of space that is the JoK.