It could go either way

We are at a point with Federal politics where, if the carbon tax and the Malaysia deal both end up working, then the Gillard government will deserve and get the benefit of the doubt and probably be re-elected in 2013. If both of these fail, there won't be much point to the Gillard government and it will be pretty much shot.

As you can imagine, Niki Savva is seething. She concedes:

Political parties should argue over policy. It is acceptable, excusable and often necessary, so long as it's really about issues, not ego or ambition.

Then, she seems to indicate that only the ALP are capable of sensible policy debate: members can have impassioned positions on asylum seekers, live cattle exports or whatever, so long as they give the government a boot on the way through; but any Liberal who disagrees with their leader is a stirrer, a splitter an egotist.

I'm glad that Niki Savva approves of democratic debate, however grudgingly. What she may not realise is that the debates and issues are pretty much given, as is the idea that different people have different opinions about those issues. If political parties can't handle policy debate, or if their only way of debating is nasty and destructive, then that only limits the party's ability to participate in democratic government rather than limiting the debate itself.

Also stupid is the failure to produce alternative strategies.

As you know Niki, anyone other than the leader of the Liberal Party who comes up with a coherent strategy is just an egomaniac. Because the current leader is strategically disabled, it is better to cruise toward defeat than propose a alternative which might get screeched at by the sort of people who leak to Niki Savva.

Continuing to pledge to repeal the tax is sustainable, but more problematic is the question of compensation.

Oh come now: surely a scare campaign at the prospect of a new tax, won't be completely deflated by the equally illusory prospect of compensation?

When has any opposition anywhere ever repealed a tax on coming to government? Tinkered with it perhaps, called it a new name with slightly different provisions, but complete root-and-branch removal? Nah, can't happen, and anyone who promises it is a bullshitter - particularly if said promiser a) proposed such a tax as recently as 2009 and b) is one of the few politicians in Australia who is less popular than Julia Gillard.

Nothing during the past two weeks implies the government has steadied, nor that its policies and approach are working, only that there is the potential for it to be saved from itself by the opposition ...

Only journalists think in terms of two weeks. The budget was a month ago, and so was the incompetent self-indulgent response of Tony Abbott (it was a written response, so you know he wasn't making it up as he went along, and the Shadow Minister for Communications wasn't heckling or otherwise rattling him).

The conclusion from watching the government struggle with two issues alone, border protection and the carbon tax, is that its [sic] presentation, formulation and intent are flawed and-or incapable of clear explanation by people fundamentally ill-equipped to deal with them.

Put into context, it illustrates the limits of transactional politics: it's all very well to cut a deal on the fly like lawyer-politicians do; but it's hard to really claim that you believe in that hasty and ill-considered deal with all your heart, and that it really is the solution for every member of every community from Byron to Exmouth.

Savva is still appalled at the idea that those she advised were beaten by lesser people, and even more appalled that there's nothing she can do about it. There's not a lot to be done about, or for, that attitude. From it you can see her inherent nastiness:

... a broken promise at its core, which has infected the debate from the beginning and will carry through to the end ... the PM at her absolute worst, mulish, cruel and bungling.

Just five years ago, the Murdoch press were busy labelling people as HowardHaters™. Pretty much everyone who had ever disagreed with the then Prime Minister, however gently and however careful to focus on facts and principle rather than personality, was labelled a HowardHater™. Could there be such a thing as a GillardHater™, perhaps? I know it's not alliterative, but such creatures may well walk among us and it would be foolish to discount the possibility that they might exist.

For the sake of those 800 people, or 801 if you include Chris Bowen, one of the more talented frontbenchers who is being slowly destroyed in that portfolio, it is long past time for Gillard to abandon her pride, reopen Nauru and reintroduce temporary protection visas, and if she doesn't then her party should tell her to do it.

If they can rise up over the fate of cattle, they can do it for men, women and children who also cannot speak for themselves.

The pain of any backdown will pass if the boats stop, otherwise, the stain on her prime ministership will stay forever.

Niki Savva was born on a war-ravaged island with fewer opportunities than those available here, and came to Australia by boat. Niki Savva is a boat person - yes she is, c'mon Niki phone your lawyer and get a writ, because I'll say it again: Niki Savva is a boat person. This is the first time she has ever evinced any sympathy for her fellow human beings who have done the same as she and her parents did, only more recently, and even then she's qualified it pretty heavily.

This rare act of humanity is immediately eclipsed when she seriously equates difficulties faced by a politician she claims to admire (again, first bout of sympathy for Bowen) with the tribulations faced by people deported to a country unsympathetic to asylum-seekers. She equates people with voiceless cattle - those men, women and children do have voices Niki, however many can't speak English and even where they do, government-funded goons keep them from being heard.

From a policy point of view, however, the Malaysian deal appears to be an attempt to build a regional solution to deal with those forced to travel not just outside their own country's borders to seek asylum, but to travel far beyond it. Such a deal will, almost inevitably, involve a higher scrutiny of human rights than is present now. This policy differs from Nauru detention not because of location, but because of the intent to obviate the clear need to take a risky journey to this country by boat. Abbott's call to "pick up the phone" shows how idle his proposals truly are: there's a lot more to policy like this than picking up a phone, and we need to vote for people who appreciate that.

People who spend their lives pretending to be other people do not change votes unless they are serious political players.

Michael Caton appeared in the same series of ads that Cate Blanchett did. Caton has chosen his roles so well that any politician stupid enough to bag him would suffer more derision than today's delicate poppets could bear - or worse, they'd be ignored.

As to "serious political players", every living ex-PM bar one supports a carbon price - and the exception went to his last election promising one.

For months now the government's case has been both poor and poorly put. It has not answered satisfactorily the fundamental questions of why we need a carbon tax ...

It's easy to say that you can only have missed this if you've been asleep, or listening only to gruntback radio. This is something that modern governments are better at, repeating the same old lines on the same old thing over and over until people cry out for the thing to be passed so that we don't have t listen to it any more.

... why now, especially as we were told less than a year ago it would not happen ...

See, that's just a dig.

When you've been in and around politics as long as I have, Niki, you understand that politicians sometimes say one thing before an election and do another afterwards. Oppositions and journalists that whinge for too long about that look like they don't really understand what's going on.

... why no comparable economy has introduced one, why our main trading partners refuse to have one, or how it will affect climate or behaviour.

See, those are just lies. When you lie, you pollute the pool of information on which public debate depends. When you do that you can't complain that others aren't giving you information or are selling it badly. To use an old American expression, don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.

Compare that with the previous government's mantra when it argued the case for a GST: if you broaden the base of taxation, you can lower the rates, abolish inefficient taxes, cut personal taxes and secure the revenue base to fund schools, hospitals, roads, police.

Yes, let's compare: every word in that paragraph after "taxation" subsequently proved false.

On the other hand, Glenn Milne is blithely ignoring the possibility that the narrative of decline might be derailed by facts.

There is no campaign on foot here, nor any organisation, not even a candidate ...

And yet, there are hundreds of words that follow like a shower of drivel. Milney assumes the carbon tax will fail and that Abbott will stand firm despite having nothing on which to stand, nothing of substance to apply as pressure, and no firm grasp of anything with which he can offer as an alternative. That's a key point missing from the debate here: Gillard doesn't have to beat Pericles or Robert Menzies or even John Howard; as in a sporting contest, she only needs to beat the opposition in front of her.

Focus group research conducted by John Scales of emerging research powerhouse, JWS, reinforces the perception that Gillard is suicidally trying to sell a carbon tax into the headwind of a national obsession about rising costs of living. Scales, who previously worked with Liberal pollster Mark Textor, suggests the headwinds are likely to prevail.

He's a cheap date, isn't he? Ply him with his own weight in shiraz, tell him he's a doyen of the press gallery and tickle his tummy, and you get national media coverage before breakfast.

So, a government that apparently pays too much attention to focus groups is going to be done over by the sort of eighth-rate outfit that would stoop so low as to walk Milney through their confections. Let me guess: they were conducted in the electorate of Lindsay. And, let me guess further: the Liberals are close to preselecting a candidate for that electorate who, as with all elections over the past decade and a half, is a rolled-gold pissant.

I can understand why the ABC let Milney go but I never understood why they picked him up in the first place, or why News Ltd have him back. After the Costello Prime Ministership ran its course, surely his credibility has got to the point where anyone who leaks to Milney has no idea. Milney is genuinely funny when he does that smoke-and-mirrors stuff ("but more on that in a moment ... one senior member confided to me ...", etc), but anyone quoted by name in a Glenn Milne article is a fool shrugging off their credibility: a powerhouse with unsustainable emissions.

It is interesting to see the reaction from the anti-Gillard media, and how appalled they are that recent polls mean so very little. The reality of a hung parliament, with a long-term strategy where media are fed and present issues in a way that actively disengages people, means that sometimes things go your way and sometimes they don't. Recent polls and a consistent strategy from the Opposition have not resulted in the sort of historic inevitability that we saw in 2007 (well, all of us except Dennis Shanahan). It's anyone's game at the moment.

What if the carbon tax, with its associated compensation, is accepted as blithely as the GST was (and which showed all that hue and cry surrounding it to be so much hollow nonsense)? What if the countries of southeast Asia stopped treating asylum-seekers as aberrations and criminals, and work together to build a constructive, longterm method of dealing with such people? The wheels of government grind slowly, too slowly for adrenaline junkies - and on cold Canberra mornings you can wonder what you're doing there, whether something that looks dormant really is, and whether you are really missing much if you decamp from there to the sorts of climes that will support your permanent tan.

What do we do with an ex Prime Minister?

After reading Niki Savva's nasty and self-defeating piece, I realised that former Prime Ministers are often regarded as a blight upon successive governments:

• Menzies was physically absent from the Liberal-Country Party governments that followed, but he loomed large over them nonetheless;


• Holt was of course also physically absent but left few policy legacies to his successors;


• McEwen's legacy of protectionism (and trade with Japan) had been built long before the possibility of hiom becoming Prime Minister was ever contemplated, and by the time his short tenure passed he was past his most politically potent;


• Gorton was both mischievous and incompetent for his successor;


• Whitlam never had to worry about previous Labor PMs, he made plenty of problems for himself;


• Neither Gorton nor McMahon had the good grace to exit the stage for Fraser, though they didn't do much other than give rise to inconvenient headlines;


• Whitlam was co-opted by Hawke and Keating even though they undid many of his 1970s social-democrat policies;


• Howard got where he was by denigrating Fraser, and that continued while the former held office;


• Hawke and Keating continued their own spat while Rudd was in office, until Hawke joined the chorus calling for Rudd's head; and


• Hawke and Keating seem to want to support Gillard without much of a clue how to help, and Rudd doesn't help much at all.

What do you do with an ex-Prime Minister? Surely there is some use to which they can be put that benefits public policy without posing a threat to the incumbent. No Prime Minister has really come to terms with their predecessors.

The best (or least worst) at dealing with former leaders was Hawke. He sent Whitlam to a ceremonial role in Paris (also inadvertently sending Mark Latham there as well, in an attempt to de-bogan him). He indulged Bill Hayden's first-class tourism. He seemed to value Malcolm Fraser as an envoy to South Africa, until Fraser and others were overtaken by events following the de Klerk-Mandela talks of the late 1980s/early 1990s. No other Prime Minister has made more effective use of his predecessors.

These days Hawke seems content to play golf, and he seems to consult between domestic and foreign interests that are so large they require government-to-governnment involvement. Keating is too busy being Mayor of Toytown, a role that will (hopefully) disappear within the next month or so. Whitlam is apparently in frail health. Malcolm Fraser seems too frail to travel much or offer much beyond his memoirs. John Howard seems hale and hearty enough, but what use could you put him to, what could he offer?

This leads us to Kevin Rudd, Foreign Minister:

As I walk this land of broken dreams
I have visions of many things
But happiness is just an illusion
Filled with sadness and confusion

What becomes of the broken-hearted?
Who had love that's now departed?
I know I've got to find some kind of peace of mind
Maybe

The fruits of love grow all around
But for me they come a-tumblin' down
Everyday heartaches grow a little stronger
I can't stand this pain much longer

I walk in shadows, searching for light
Cold and alone, no comfort in sight
Hoping and prayin' for someone to care
Always movin' and goin' nowhere

What becomes of the broken-hearted?
Who had love that's now departed?
I know I've got to find some kind of peace of mind
Help me, please

I'm searching though I don't succeed
For someone's love there's a growing need
All is lost, there's no place for beginning
All that's left is an unhappy ending

Now what becomes of the broken-hearted?
Who had love that's now departed?
I know I've got to find some kind of peace of mind
I'll be searching everywhere
Just to find someone to care

I'll be looking everyday
I know I've got to find a way
Nothing's gonna stop me now
I'll find a way somehow

- Jimmy Dean, Paul Riser and William Witherspoon, What becomes of the broken-hearted?

The "dispute" over the no-fly zone in Libya was a perfect demonstration of Rudd's weaknesses and Gillard's strengths.

Rudd was (is?) fixated on the no-fly zone as the one and only solution to the Libyan problem. There was no explanation of the context, no exploration of what Australia's interests were in having Gaddafi gone (and no indication that Australian blood, treasure and equipment would be expended toward the possibility of post-Gaddafi freedom). You just know that Rudd would have dismissed other alternatives: the no-fly zone is a quick fix and by his presence he could claim some credit for it (the longer it takes to come about, the less credit Rudd can claim).

Gillard insisted on taking the longer and wider view, with the implicit recognition that a) there's not much for Australia to do except be broadly supportive of any specific request for assistance, and b) carbon abatement measures such as the tax really is the main game in Australian politics right now.

Savva lists the countries that Rudd has visited recently: no India, no Indonesia, no follow-up work for Gillard's recent visits to New Zealand, no Thailand (after the political uphevals of recent years, what does that country's new government look like, how does it work?). Those omissions bode ill for Australian foreign policy over the long term:

• Surely Gillard should appoint a junior Minister Assisting to DFAT who can learn the ropes of Australian foreign policy with a view to grooming them for more senior roles down the track?


• Surely a Liberal MP with too much time on his/her hands will be doing some reading and consultation with a view to contributing to the foreign policy debate, and shaping it when the political tide turns?


• Is there a Green foreign policy? What would it look like?


• What would a Christian foreign policy be, and how would a small number of Senators with the balance of power bring it about?

All this high-minded policy stuff confronts me with complex issues that neither my studies nor experience equips me to critique. I want a sound and positive foreign policy for Australia; I am aware of complaints by DFAT insiders that the department is under-resourced. Foreign policy and trade policy are not identical; one need not be subordinate to the other but they do have too be coherent to Australians as well as foreigners. Kevin Rudd seems on paper like the ideal minister but it's also possible that he's a nightmare for those who work there - not that any government department should be judged chiefly by the criteria set by those who work there, but good morale is important for any organisation.

Good policy should be matched by good reporting, rather than crap like this:

He is not so much prime minister-in-exile as he is master of the mythical vessel the Flying Dutchman ...

He's neither; he's the Minister for Foreign Affairs. It's a distinct job in itself and Rudd brings strengths and weaknesses to the role. If Niki Savva can't get over her dislike of the man then that just devalues her commentary about foreign policy under this government, and her political commentary generally.

Choking back sobs over the moon landing ... You could hear the noise rising above the treetops of the leafier suburbs as the grabs were replayed.

In other words, Savva is confirming my earlier thesis that the only people down on Gillard are those who never voted for her, which ought not be confused with the opinion of swinging voters, much less The People.

If there is the whiff of a protest in Ulaanbaatar, you can bet that Rudd will head there, or if he can't get there, then to the airport closest to the Mongolian capital that will allow him to land and report to the Australian people as swiftly as modern technology will allow.

Firstly, Australia has large and growing investments in Mongolia, thus there is a legitimate foreign policy interest there which might not have been present back in Niki Savva's day. Second, there was this, and by Savva's own admission Rudd was nowhere near the joint. Some journalist, some political analyst she is.

With his trusty mobile in his top pocket, as soon as he disembarks he will press the speed dial to call any number of radio or television stations to offer his expert commentary on whatever grievances might have spurred the locals to take to the streets and how Australia might or might not be affected by the consequences.

Imagine an Australian foreign minister using modern technology to do his job! Savva can sneer at Rudd, but not when he does what he is supposed to be doing:

... unless, of course, there is a flood in Queensland and he has to help neighbours rescue their suitcases ...

Rudd helped his constituents through a crisis: everyone in Australia thought better of the man for doing that, except clueless and bitchy Canberra insiders like Niki Savva. This person really has no idea, does she? How did readers bear to read her output for so long? Why did Costello put up with it, and her? How does an imperceptive clown like this not get shunted into early retirement?

A big job at the UN? With Australia's help? Doubtful.

There is extensive information available on the internet and elsewhere showing that Kevin Rudd runs his own race, doesn't consult, gets fixed on short-term stunts to the exclusion of wider issues, and can be a nightmare to work with.

If he became Australia's Ambassador to the UN he could be left to his own devices from there; if he were appointed toward the end of next year Labor could develop its own plans for the seat of Griffith. By then, the political landscape will have changed: Abbott will be terminal (see previous post), and the local LNP will either be poised for State government or tearing itself apart at not destroying Bligh when they had the chance. But all that is to get ahead of oneself.

It isn't just the first paragraph of Niki Savva's article that was bullshit. I thought they did well to get rid of Glenn Milne but in net terms the appointment of Savva doesn't enhance the federal politics capabilities of The Australian. We need good and sound foreign policy, and a journosphere that can critique it effectively. MSM organisations need to get rid of dead wood so that new talent can thrive: Savva, Colless, Sheridan and Franklin are surplus to requirements (but then so is Chris Mitchell, who is ultimately responsible for making such a call).

Australia should make better use of its former Prime Ministers while they are capable and willing to offer real assistance; this means the incumbents need to be big enough and secure enough to find roles for them. Australia should have a better foreign policy than it does, which again is down to the incumbents as well as the media. The flatulent response by the Lowy Institute toward the coup in Egypt shows that politicians and journalists can't outsource foreign policy analysis to that organisation. If I can find any specks of good foreign policy out there, given my own limitations, I'll let you know: but the first step has to involve chucking out the dross.

The bifurcated message

Americans refer to the process of uncritically believing one's own PR as "drinking the Kool-Aid", a reference to hippy activist Ken Kesey offering his followers soft drink spiked with hallucinogenic drugs. The Liberals are drinking their own Kool-Aid, not only by leaking their own research to Milney but allowing themselves to be as carried away as Milney is about the results.

First, the community has been deeply "unsettled" by the manner in which Julia Gillard became Prime Minister at the behest of faceless factional and union power brokers. Even among those who did not particularly like Kevin Rudd, there was the feeling that "this is not the way things are done in Australia".

The bifurcated message to emerge was: "I'll decide who is our prime minister, not these f..kwits."

Then the subtext that the "NSW disease" - as Rudd called it at his last caucus meeting - had now arrived in Canberra.

Sure they would, if this wasn't politics as usual. Labor have changed leaders once since the last election: the Liberals are on their third leader since John Howard led the Liberals to defeat. Only people outside NSW believe is something called "NSW disease" - one in three Australians is not a disease, a state that is and has always been pivotal to Australian politics is not a disease.

When Keating and Richardson were exercising what they saw as their birthright in taking over the federal ALP, nobody was gibbering on about "NSW disease". When the NSW Labor Right were firmly locked in behind Beazley, when they shifted to Rudd is late 2006, there was no "NSW disease". If there was such an ailment Rudd would be a symptom, a carrier rather than a sufferer. It might be a State of Origin thing but it's dumb politics to apply the antics of Bill Shorten and David Feeney to the country's largest state. That said, state politics is a predicament and we voters of NSW will deal with the NSW ALP in ways that will reshape Australian politics. The point is, however, treating NSW as less than integral to the national body politic is an indulgence for those not serious about understanding how this country is governed.

Abbott will get absolutely nowhere with crocodile tears about poor Kevvie-wevvie. Firstly, he has form in his own party (in NSW, as it happens) that would make him look hypocritical: the Liberals are no more One Big Happy Family than is Labor. Secondly, now that Rudd has committed to staying in Parliament, and given the magnanimity of his exit, it is highly likely that Rudd will publicly commit to the wider Labor cause even while admitting to a little disappointment - thus elevating his own public standing without vindicating Abbott at all. If Rudd had spat the dummy the Liberals might be in with a chance with this idea. If you like Kevin Rudd and admire what he stood for, then you'll have to vote against Tony Abbott.

I live in Bennelong, where local MP Maxine McKew was a Rudd loyalist to the end: Rudd will almost certainly campaign for McKew in this area, particularly among the electorate's large Chinese community. Nobody will vote Liberal on the basis of what happened to Rudd, and this is a must-win seat for the Liberals. Nobody who lives outside Bennelong will vote Liberal on that basis either. If there was anyone who voted Liberal in 1983 because they felt sorry for Bill Hayden, who cares?

The second, and probably most important, message from the Liberals' research is that Gillard's approval is only "top of mind". In other words most people, including Liberals, wish her well as Australia's first woman prime minister. But that does not necessarily mean they'll vote for her.

Well, that's always been the case with "approval rating" - there was never any correlation between approval rating for a leader and actual vote received by that leader's party. An experienced politics reporter has a duty to point this out rather than getting carried away with the spin, or examining the self-delusion involved in believing that Gillard's popularity will have no bearing on tight races.

Doesn't Milney's second point negate his first? If people were genuinely aggrieved by Gillard supplanting Rudd, wouldn't her approval ratings be in the doldrums? If she was some sort of evil Lady Macbeth figure, or the kind of bonnet ornament that Kristina Keneally is, her approval ratings wouldn't be that high. Focus groups can send mixed messages and political savants flatter their ability to find consistent messages in these bull sessions, but Milney hasn't done that here. Skull that Kool-Aid, Milney.

The third area of vulnerability to emerge from the Liberals' focus groups is that whatever she does, she has been irrevocably "branded" by the debacle of the Building the Education Revolution. Voters simply will not forget the gross mismanagement of funds involved in a multi-billion program that now seems more about electoral advantage than economic stimulus. "It is red hot out there," says one senior Liberal familiar with the party research.

Politicians waste public money, it's what they do. It would be hilarious for any Howard government veteran to work themselves into a lather over this. The BER was hit and miss and for every expensive balls-up there's a much-needed facility that's being used effectively. I'd be surprised if any marginal seats feature a million-dollar fiasco with BER signage acting like Liberal how-to-vote cards. Keep in mind that the Liberal education spokesperson is Christopher Pyne, a suited-up King Charles Spaniel with no real vision for school education.

Fourth, Liberals have been heartened from their research by evidence that despite the media over-hype that has accompanied Gillard's ascension, voters still have not made up their minds.

This overestimates the Liberals' ability to put a sufficient case to get people to vote Liberal this time, especially those who did so up to 2001 but probably didn't in 2004 and definitely didn't in 2010. These are people who aren't averse to voting Liberal but who need a reason to justify why they should not give Labor another go.

This is where Gillard could be really vulnerable. Consider the three major policy problems facing Labor, which Gillard claims to have either fixed or says she will fix; the mining tax, a new emissions trading scheme and boatpeople. The optics of the so-called deal on the mining tax were good for Gillard. But the fact is it was a backdown and Abbott says he'll rescind it if he becomes prime minister. Gillard's "new" policy on climate change is likely to resemble much more closely Abbott's "direct action" model. And if she does toughen Labor's policy on boatpeople, she will have moved substantially in Abbott's direction.

The fact is the mining tax deal was a compromise and that's what politicians do. If the miners agree to the tax, who is Abbott to rescind it and why would anyone who has voted Labor vote for that?

Why would Gillard's ETS be like Abbott's? Given that Labor was elected to do something about climate change, given that it is haemmorrhaging votes to the Greens - votes that matter, in Melbourne and in the Senate - and given that it lost a Prime Minister over the decision to defer the action for which he was elected, why would Labor offer less than John Howard did in 2007? Why wouldn't Gillard offer more than Rudd offered - having stared down the mining companies she's in a position to sell a more stringent carbon reduction target, reinforcing that idea that she's doing what Rudd can't (and Abbott won't)? If she said that she's going to give it the focus it deserves, that it's the focus of the next term in office, she'd romp it in.

A bit like the Liberals, but not quite: this has been the ALP mantra for the past 15 years, and it has worked in terms of winning and holding office. This drives Labor stalwarts crazy as well as the smarter Liberal strategists (the dumber Liberal strategists, such as Loughnane and almost everyone in NSW except Barry O'Farrell, don't think it's an issue), but only because they can't beat it.

I cringe in anticipation with what they're going to propose over boatpeople. It will be expensive and it will be bullshit, but there's hope for a more considered time in her refusal to countenance turning the boats around.

Meanwhile in the key battleground states of NSW and Queensland, they've seen it all before and don't like what they see.

Yawn! the state-federal blurring thing. Honestly, no body who's been through more than one electoral cycle has any excuse for that. Consider also that the Coalition's candidates in five of the eight most winnable seats are outright duds such that your dull union-organiser Labor MP/candidate from central casting will walk all over them. When Peter Dutton gets politically secure to the point where he can put out policy documents that aren't just dot-points, then we'll talk about Queensland. As far as NSW goes, send Kristina on holiday for a month to give federal Labor clear air, and no problems.

Says one Liberal: "If the voters had the baseball bats out for Rudd, don't think they'll just automatically put them away because there's a new face in town. It will take more than that."

Wait a minute, aren't people sorry for Rudd? Isn't that the whole point of Gillard's flurry of activity, to differentiate herself? Aren't the finest minds in the Liberal Party snookering themselves and rendering victory impossible? Isn't that the story you should be telling Milney, ringing the alarms and - if not forestalling Liberal defeat - making sure your party learns the right lessons?

The real issue here is not Milney himself, but the extent of self-delusion within the Liberal Party that Milney has transcribed without really analysing it - or without the Liberals effectively analysing what the focus groups - and their party's own recent experiences of defeat - are really saying. You can have all the research you like, but if you're too stupid to analyse it properly then you've got no chance.

In a big country, dreams stay with you

I still believe in a Big Australia and am sad that my country's government no longer does.

It would be a poor, poor thing indeed if this government cut back the country's infrastructure and growth because of the temporary ebb and flow of budgeting, or worse because of a desire to drape racism in some dull grey garb in the hope that nobody will notice. The environmental concerns of Flannery and Brown in this announcement just don't ring true.

Who better to pull the wet blanket over hopes and fears alike than the lisping monotone of Tony Burke, the new Phillip Ruddock that the Liberals could never produce. It was Burke who was set to carefully unwind all those "temporary" "assistance" measures bestowed on hapless, helpless and hopeless farmers. It was Burke who ground to a halt the push by Marshall Perron and Philip Nitschke for legal euthanasia (the only national political movement to originate in the Northern Territory).

All long-term governments want to instill in their people feelings of dull-witted satisfaction with the status quo as a substitute for incessant demand for action. When this government starts feeling its age and resorting to that, it is Tony Burke who will lead that initiative - not the wild-eyed and grating-voiced Albanese, not Gillard (who as putative leader will have to both inspire and calm as needs be), not bossy Roxon, not any other of those slightly grasping wrong-side-of-the-tracks-made-good Labor types. Listening to Tony Burke speak is the equivalent of a meal consisting entirely of mashed potato. His student debating skills of polarising his opponents as unhinged ratbags have grown sharper and more subtle, not duller, with age and ascent.

Like Combet, however, Burke has a portfolio that is not just broad but hopelessly schizoid in focus. If Rudd isn't trying to confuse his ministers he is doing a mighty good job anyway. One has the feeling that neither man will feature prominently in the election campaign, but that when portfolios are reallocated afterwards in more coherent lines none will be more relieved.

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison dismissed Mr Rudd's announcement as a diversion to cover his failure to control boat arrivals. "Effectively what he has announced is a plan for a plan after the next election," he said.

All big announcements can be pooh-poohed by quotidian concerns. It is silly to quibble that a population of millions is hostage to a few hundred desperates and unfortunates, and the "plan for a plan" thing suggests an impatience for the hard work of long term thinking. If the Liberal Party won the next election it would implode under the responsibility of governing. Don't vote Liberal, it would be cruel. Keep the Libs in Opposition, it's only fair.

It will be interesting to see where the new ministerial talent will come from - despite such a large backbench, this rearrangement of existing portfolios suggests that everyone who is already a minister is pretty much everyone who should be one. Seeing as the NSW ALP put up such a fight to keep Chris Hayes, and as he holds a seat held by two former Cabinet Ministers and two party leaders ... what do you mean, no? Next you'll be dismissing the mighty Senator Steve Hutchins. What about the scarily bright Melissa Parke, just waiting to be compromised by the rough-and-tumble of political life; or a second-chance for poor old Kelvin Thomson, who gave up a ministry in the Victorian government (stop laughing) for, uh; or bright young talent like that pudding-shaped brunette from Adelaide who chews gum behind Rudd during Question Time? Putting her on the front bench as Minister for Obscure Potfolios would keep her out of shot, at least.

No one, least of all Rudd, seems to have noted Tony Abbott's stand in all this.

No sensible person gives a damn, Milney. The competence thing won't work because the Coalition haven't made the case that they'd be better than Labor; Howard's government was a ranshackle thing, ragged toward the end, and only those who already vote Liberal regard it as a shiny stainless steel machine disrupted from its work due to clerical errors on ballot papers.

The next step on from this critique is dramatic in its political impact. Abbott is approaching the point where for the first time in living memory bipartisan support for existing and projected immigration intakes will be abandoned by the Coalition in the run-up to an election and declared open season for community debate.

Yeah, just like Howard in '87. Only when the Liberals drop this crap will they be electable.

But the politics of this debate have the capacity to spin wildly out of control.

Out of whose control, Milney? Is there a single issue where the Coalition's media savvy and resources runs rings around Labor's?

Labor and its proxy refugee supporters -- who've been hypocritically quiet as Rudd has stumbled from one crisis to another on boatpeople -- will immediately accuse the Coalition of being racist by opposing the immigration programs necessary to meet the 36 million number.

What's racist is the focus on a couple of hundred non-Caucasian boat people rather than thousands of overstayers and illegal workers who fly here. If you want to point to problems in our migration system, never mind Christmas Island - go to the Coogee Bay Hotel late on Friday night, there's your piss-off-we're-full deportation quota, Morrison's indictment of the whole immigration system, right there.

Morrison's point is that Rudd didn't bother asking voters whether this was OK with them. "The Coalition," he says, "believes we should ask Australians about what they think about future population growth before signing on to any particular growth path."

Bullshit. They never did it in government, and Tony Abbott isn't going to start and neither is Scott Morrison. Milney, your job is not to be Abbott and Morrison's stenographer: yet on he goes.

Morrison points to the Pauline Hanson ascendancy, to which the Howard government responded by more than doubling the annual immigration intake during the next decade to a peak of 158,630. During the same period, according to independent polling, the number of those concerned about immigration fell to just over one-third of the population.

But critically, as Morrison points out, this was also a time during which Australians were confident the government had control over the nation's borders. Not a claim that could be made now, especially in the context of increasing the nation's population to 36 million.

"When the Coalition started calling for a population debate, the usual charges of racism followed. However, just like with border protection, this would be a dangerous assumption for Labor to make, let alone assert, as they have," Morrison says.

Hanson was responding to the Keating government's economic policies, which stripped well-paying jobs from the low-skilled and ageing rural workforce. Howard was attempting to blow the racism dog-whistle, one reason why he almost lost in 1998. Only when he dropped that crap for all time and put migration in the context of growing Australia - skill-wise and not just in numbers - did he regain credibility. Border protection is the last issue that hasn't crumbled in Abbott's hands, and it seems that no amount of polling will persuade him to drop this most sleazy of issues: that we're being overwhelmed by boat people.

I hate the fact that this big country is run by small-minded people, I hate it and my only choice is to rail against it until I can find some way of forcing them to leave the stage by confronting them with issues too big for them to handle.

Obvious talent

Peter Dutton has always appeared wooden and not particularly swift on his feet, before the media, in Parliament and in other public functions. He has managed no policy initiatives, nor managed competing interests to arrive at a workable arrangement over a complex issue. Why he is regarded as great political talent is unclear.

Dutton should have managed his political career better. If he was going to leave Dickson because it was too marginal, he should have managed the transition and supported a candidate who'd be likely to win the seat and make a positive contribution to Federal politics and the Liberal Party. If he was going to another seat, you'd think he'd have done the groundwork with local people and issues long before the preselection. Long-serving NSW Liberal party official John Carrick observed that you can't fatten the pig on market day (a quaint image in the age of "98% fat free", but the principle still holds), it is a basic lesson of politics and Dutton did not learn it.

Why he is regarded as great political talent is unclear.

Milney certainly thought so. However, in his plea for Dutton, Milney holed his own case below the waterline in the first two sentences here, and all that remains is to watch its trajectory to the briney deep.

GENUINE renewal in any political party has to come from the grassroots. Considered in that light, the weekend preselection of Paul Fletcher in Bradfield sends an important signal that the Liberal Party is looking to the future.

Fletcher didn't live in Bradfield, he lives in Paddington. He was a staffer and sucked his way upwards by networking with a small number of highly-placed Liberals rather than doing grass-roots politicking, which he considered beneath him (and probably still does, unless it benefits him directly. As I said earlier, it's a sign of nostalgia and stunted growth for the Liberal Party to shunt senior staffers into Parliamentary ranks in the hope that the glory days of the Howard government may soon be replicated and therefore re-elected.

What Milney means here is that when volunteer members of a political party do what they're told, by him or the sort of people with whom he lunches, that's renewal When they return someone to Federal Parliament who's already familiar with Federal Parliament, that's renewal. It is odd that his plea takes a hectoring tone worthy of Alan Jones:

[The Liberal preselection for McPherson, which was held earlier this evening] will resolve whether Peter Dutton's gamble in abandoning his seat of Dickson, outside Brisbane, to stand for McPherson, has paid off. For the sake of the Liberal Party, it had better. For a start he hasn't nominated for another seat. If he fails in McPherson, he will be lost to politics. Any other outcome than the endorsement of Dutton by the Gold Coast Liberals would render the party not worthy of a vote across the country.

"For the sake of the Liberal Party, it had better"? Oh, piss off! If he's put all his eggs into a basket not obliged to carry them, that's his bad luck and poor political judgment. The Liberal Party/LNP, in McPherson or wherever else, is not obliged to rubber-stamp a decision foisted on them by some chancer from a hundred kilometres away who won't take the time to understand their concerns and is still clearly suffering Relevance Deprivation Syndrome.

Because if the preselectors of McPherson can't see that Dutton is part of any future the party might have, then why should ordinary voters believe in that future either?

Is it really not possible that Karen Andrews has much to offer the future of the Liberal Party? If Peter Dutton can't cope with Kallangur, how will he go in the back streets of Currumbin or Mudgeeraba? He's supposed to be a former Queensland copper, isn't he? If he's gone soft in Canberra, Milney, that's hardly the problem of Gold Coast LNPers.

Dutton's chances of being saved by an anti-Rudd swing are negligible.

Right: better get off his backside and do some work then - unless that's not an option either.

As the years of government roll away from the Coalition it is going to need to conserve the corporate memory of office. Dutton, now in the shadow health portfolio, will be crucial to this process. He's aggressive and he's economically literate.

It's something of a pity that a) Nicola Roxon has been utterly untroubled by Dutton in anything she's done as Health Minister, and that b) his aggression and economic literacy was not obvious in the Howard Government. Dutton would appear to be no great loss to the Liberal Party, the Parliament, or to anything other than Peter Dutton's own sense of self (and that of a small number of others).

If Turnbull falls on his sword or is pushed on to it before the next election, Dutton will be a candidate for the deputy leadership, which will accompany that scenario. He'd probably win.

Not any more: show me the biggest joke in the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party and I'll show you someone who's won preselection. Why would McPherson preselectors support someone who's waiting for a chance to profit from leadership instability? It doesn't make sense, Milney.

State Liberal Party president Bruce McIver and vice-president Gary Spence are strongly supportive. Under party rules the president has the power, with the state executive, to appoint a candidate. The idea was considered, but with the political camel that is the Liberal National Party in Queensland still in its infancy - whether it gets beyond that stage federally is debatable - it was decided intervention in McPherson would not set a good precedent.

However, the option remains live if things go badly for Dutton. He has the backing of John Howard, Peter Costello, Turnbull, Joe Hockey and even Barnaby Joyce.

Having gone through a preselection process and chosen Andrews, a person of considerable potential, only to be overriden by McIver and other members of the LNP heirarchy, there is no reason why Gold Coast Liberals should turn out for a candidate whom they did not choose. The supposedly hard men of LNP head office know this: they dare not risk a grass-roots revolt, which is why they've taken their chances with a preselection in the hope that Dutton's obvious talent will see him win over the locals. Otherwise, those guys (two retirees, a guy who hates the Liberal Party, and a New South Welshman) will have to do the heavy lifting for Dutton themselves.

If Dutton were to work his guts out in Dickson and squeak home, he'll be a legend. There is no Labor candidate and the Labor state government is on the nose. Dutton should not be jumping at Labor shadows and polling stats, and Milney has no excuse not to consider the possibility of Dutton winning, however narrowly - if you've been around politics as long as he has, you know that (to use the words of Lyndon Johnson) chicken shit can become chicken salad.

Alternatively, if Dutton had shirtfronted dead wood like Andrew Lame-ing and Michael Johnson, he'd reveal himself to have political toughness and strategic deftness of a front-rank politician. He lacks these qualities, and so Milney's puffery rings hollow.

Which brings us to Andrews. She's the McPherson divisional council chairwoman, has no name ID and was waiting for May to retire after another term.

Dutton has been beaten fair and square by a better candidate, he and his supporters should have the good grace to accept that and get behind the duly preselected candidate. Andrews has not sought to upstage the sitting member (is this what Milney could mean by "name ID"? That, and the fact she's not an ex-staffer?).

[Karen Andrews would] probably be better off looking at the next Senate vacancy.

Would you write a puff piece for her if she did, Milney? Probably not - in the next half-Senate election there are four incumbent Liberal Senators up for re-election, and if the pattern of re-appointing former MPs and staffers is anything to go by, Andrews has no chance. At least this is a tacit admission that she has the makings of a useful politician, which is probably why the Liberal preselectors of McPherson chose her. In his backhanded, even unconscious way, Milney has been more generous to Andrews than this peanut from her local rag:

Another Palm Springs female booked for backbench oblivion in Canberra at the expense of Peter Dutton is not the LNP answer, according to some key Liberals. Sorry, LNP members.

Booked by whom, Peter? Are only men capable of building real political clout in Canberra? If Dutton were to get an easy ride into McPherson by overriding the locals, why would he owe anything to the community at all? What would the Gold Coast do with such clout, anyway?

Dutton should put his shoulder to the wheel of a LNP government in Queensland - a term or two of actually running a health system, and he might have the makings of a Federal Health Minister (besides, by then the Federal Libs might be electable again, and he wouldn't be that old). Alternatively, he might just be a fair-weather sailor: all very well against the disgraced Cheryl Kernot with a incumbent Coalition government, and can gather support from top brass, but no good in the close-order fighting and low-resource scrapping of opposition.

Dutton hasn't impressed anyone outside the media-political complex so he's probably not the person to shake it up. It is true that some institutional memory of government is useful, but it is not sufficient - besides, there are already so many old dogs of government in the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party that one could be forgiven for thinking they have no capacity for learning new tricks. Institutional memory of government in 1996 was pretty much limited to Howard himself.

A spell on the sidelines could be the making of Peter Dutton - or even Karen Andrews. The defeat of Dutton is not just a victory for localism over head office, and it's not necessarily one in the eye for Turnbull - it's a victory over the idea that the next Liberal government must be a continuation of the last one.

Darling Downs Quixote

The Nationals have taken what they think is a historic change of course by rededicating itself to its grass roots. What it has actually done is voted for its own irrelevance - instead of shuffling toward oblivion, it is hurtling toward it Bolt-like (I meant Usain, but you can throw in Andrew too), clicking its heels and whooping. Barnaby Joyce is doing what Bob Katter did, except Katter left the Nationals to their own devices while Joyce doesn't want the structure to survive him.

The Australian can't believe it's really over, still taking them seriously despite everything. This article shows the weakness of "even-handed" reporting. Joyce has seized on an idea that isn't original or well thought out. The reasons he chose nuclear power are:

• it will make him look like a visionary nation-builder to yokels (visionary nation-builders of old used to go on and on about nuclear power, and the reasons why it didn't come through for us isn't clear to them); and


• No nuclear facilities will be built in National electorates. You'd only build a nuclear reactor near a major city, because that's where baseload power is required and it's where nuclear technicians would live.

The quotes from Minchin on why nuclear power is a non-starter are surprisingly lucid. Subsequent quotes by Isobel Redmond and Malcolm Turnbull make them look like Minchin's sock-puppets. Minchin also leaves aside the fact that there is no skilled nuclear workforce big enough to build an industry upon. And yet ...

... the fact is that Australia's existing coal-fired power stations are wearing out. South Australia needs a new way of generating power: could a nuclear power station somewhere between Woomera and Adelaide be an answer? To ask this is to play down (through sheer ignorance on my part) the possibilities of LNG, CSG and other gases, as well as the very quest for that nineteenth-century notion of remotely-located piped-in bulk baseload power rather than smaller-scale power that is generated and consumed locally. Solar power does not need to generate industrial quantities of power - if it can take lots of individual households off the grid (except, perhaps, during usage spikes), this will be a contribution equal to several new power stations - coal, nuclear or whatever.

Akerman and Franklin also ignore the possibility of Labor being divided over nuclear power. Minchin says that there's no bipartisan consensus on nuclear power but Martin Ferguson seems pretty clear, and nobody's put out a press release to the contrary so everything's tickety-boo with them.

All this is to give Joyce and the Nationals more credit than they warrant.

Noting the ALP had campaigned in 2007 by saying a returned Howard government would build nuclear reactors in people's backyards, Senator Joyce said people deserved more information about the potential benefits and the chance to vote in a referendum on the issue.

Consumers might accept nuclear reactors in their neighbourhoods if they were told it would cut their power bills in half, he said.

The Queensland senator also said that while it might sound noble to say that the world's energy problems could be solved by more windmills and solar panels, this was simply unrealistic.

"I'm putting the (nuclear) agenda out there," he said.

Little care, no responsibility. Would it really cut power bills in half? Why are windmills and solar power inherently unrealistic, and doomed ever to be so? A bit of journalism here would have been nice, either making Joyce earn his free publicity or cross-checking with someone who'd actually know about electricity generation and distribution.

But for true silliness piled on the silliness of Joyce's own, we need to go stark raving Milney:

QUEENSLAND, as they once used to say somewhat disparagingly, is different. Well here's some mail: politically at least, that remains the case. And in ways that may well shape the final outcome of the electoral contest between Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull. If Malcolm manages to last that long.

He's hoisted himself up onto two crutches of cliché (Queensland is different, here's some mail) and is hobbling through his article. If you're going to invoke Queensland you should at least examine the idea that Joyce and Rudd have clearly chosen not to shirtfront one another: each understands the other only too well, and both fancy their chances with the Sydney silvertail. Every time I read a Milney piece I see the half-dozen or so stories he should have written.

... at the historic Hyatt Hotel, the Nationals yesterday wound up their peak federal council meeting.

And very successful it was too.

Successful at what, Milney? Successful for whom?

In the words of the party's federal director Brad Henderson, in his report to conference: "A new treatment of our logo, new website, in our annual report and with a new visual identity our contemporary new look tells Australians that we are changing."

What that "changing" meant became clear as the weekend progressed. In danger of dying a demographic death the Nationals have decided to rededicate themselves to their base.

Again in Henderson's words: "The nub of the changes that we are making is about more assertively advocating the interests of regional Australia."

Words fail me. They're going the way of the Democrats and they're focused on their fucking logo. It's questionable that the base will be as enamoured of the visual identity as our man Brad.

Asked by Laurie Oakes whether the Nationals at the conference had decided they wouldn't vote for an emissions trading system under any circumstances, Joyce replied: "That is correct."

Translated, that is a one-finger salute to Turnbull. In other words, no matter what amendments or concessions he manages to negotiate with the Rudd government before the ETS comes back before the Senate in November, the Nationals won't be having a bar of it.

Hardly a surprise, but look at the numbers. There are 76 seats in the Senate; less the President, 38 votes are needed to pass a vote there. Labor has 32 Senators and the Liberals another 32: let the five Nats/CLP fall where they may, who needs 'em? If the Nationals don't want to be taken for granted by the city slickers, that's up to them - but small parties depend on either:

• being part of a larger entity (e.g. a Coalition with a major party); or


• playing a spoiler role, the deft use of the balance of power (e.g. like the Democrats used to do, and like the Greens are trying to do, in the Senate).

Which role is Joyce playing? Neither, and that's why he's stupid. Stupid as the Joh Nationals, who thought they were a major party and ended up going from nowhere to oblivion with nothing to show for it south of Coolangatta. Stupid as Hanson, who got a million votes but no seat. Milney should be calling Joyce on his stupidity and is failing his readers and his employer by not doing so.

It's all very well to compare yourself to Cortés, but burning your boats is the easy bit. Conquest and dispossession is the hard bit. A small number of Spaniards with steel, gunpowder and immunities to certain diseases prevailing over an ancient civilisation without the means for its own survival is a different matter to taking on those multitudes Joyce appears to regard as his opponents. He doesn't have Spanish gold or the Papacy behind him, it isn't apparent that he leads much of a popular movement beyond Brad and his website. The Nationals might be inconvenient or disrespectful to Turnbull but they don't seem inclined to imprison him in his Point Piper home; the comparison is so silly and grandiose it calls Joyce's mental balance into question.

All of which must lead students of history to wonder if it will be Turnbull who ends up playing Montezuma to Joyce's Cortes.

Not just Joyce's.

With the Nats now cast as regional conquistadors how will the Barnaby Party's policy differences be reconciled with the Liberals under a common banner, let alone under a loose Coalition agreement? Will the Liberals in Brisbane run a different campaign on climate change in the city to the Nationals in the bush? Whose position will prevail in government?

Answer: the Liberals, all the more so if they distance themselves from ratbags like Joyce. Where are the regional seats to be won by climate change denialism? Are there more of them than seats to be lost by this retreat from the world (similar to that of the Aztecs - another reason why the analogy doesn't work, Milney).

"Nationals voters will want to vote National, particularly those who identify with Barnaby. The advantage of a coalition is that it allows you to target different messages to different constituencies.

"The case for product differentiation is stronger in Queensland than anywhere else in the country. All that would be lost. We would be asking people to vote for the Coalition, yet running in the name of a party which isn't even a member of the Coalition, which doesn't even exist in Canberra. It would be a total fiasco."

If the Nationals want a fiasco, they can have a fiasco - but if they want power they'll have to stick with the Coalition. Joyce won't do what it takes to secure power for the Nationals, so the idea that they would make him their leader in all but name is a death-wish on their part. Why didn't Laurie Oakes use his memory and ask what was different between Joyce now and the Nats of the '80s who set the party on the road to oblivion.

Milney has been looking to play Sancho Panza to Don Quixote ever since Peter Costello squibbed the Liberal leadership (and did so without tipping off Milney, all that suckholing wasted). It looks like Joyce is that figure, colourful but doomed.

Look up the tale. For Montezuma the ending is not pretty.

Nor for Cortés, according to Wikipedia:

Having spent a great deal of his own money to finance expeditions, he was now heavily in debt. In February 1544 he made a claim on the royal treasury, but was given a royal runaround for the next three years. Disgusted, he decided to return to Mexico in 1547. When he reached Seville, he was stricken with dysentery. He died in Castilleja de la Cuesta, Seville province, on December 2, 1547, from a case of pleurisy at age 62.

After Cortés died his children were disinherited and his bones were regularly shifted about. Something to look forward to, eh Barnaby - but that's what you get for getting ahead of yourself and mixing with the likes of silly Glenn Milne. Joyce calls to mind another conquístador, with a very different role for the wannabe Sancho Panza:

Conquistador your stallion stands
In need of company
And like some angel's hallowed brow
You reek of purity
I see your armour-plated breast
Has long since lost its sheen
And in your death mask face
There are no signs which can be seen

And though I hoped for something to find
I could see no maze to unwind

Conquistador a vulture sits
Upon your silver shield
And in your rusty scabbard now
The sand has taken seed
And though your jewel-encrusted blade
Has not been plundered still
The sea has washed across your face
And taken of its fill

And though I hoped for something to find
I could see no maze to unwind

Conquistador there is no time
I must pay my respect
And though I came to jeer at you
I leave now with regret
And as the gloom begins to fall
I see there is no, only all
And though you came with sword held high
You did not conquer, only die

And though I hoped for something to find
I could see no maze to unwind

And though I hoped for something to find
I could see no maze to unwind

(repeat, fade)

- Procul Harum Conquistador (Brooker/ Reid)

No wonder Brad is busying himself with logos and websites: what else can you do?

Bonfire of the dead wood

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

This article by Milney shows both of the tricks that his fans know and love: the anonymous source inflated to titanic proportions, and the absurd extrapolations.

As Liberal preselections begin to open, you'd expect it would be open season on the halt and the lame within the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party, but you'd be wrong because the Liberals hang onto their failures. NSW has a tradition - neither something of which to be proud nor ashamed, just a tradition - of putting dud MPs into safe seats for many years, which had caused other states to disdain NSW and shut it out of senior leadership roles. This changed with the rise of John Howard, where he invoked the dud rule after Stephen Mutch proved harder to get rid of than to keep in 1998.

There is a horror in taking on an MP who doesn't want to go, which is combined with a wonder that "fresh blood" is neither attracted to nor retained within the Liberal Party. Because the Liberal Party is still convinced “we wuz robbed”, and that all they need is some better PR, it will not have a spring clean – the only Liberal MPs who’ll go this side of 2010 are those who want to quit, or those who lose their seats.

There is no way that said donor is one of the donors powerful enough to drive Coalition policy, to set out their wish lists on Liberal/National letterhead and call it policy: the carbon denialists. Half those people are stalwart carbon-denialist loyalists, particularly the one whom the old stager left to three paragraphs before the end:

In the interest of completeness I should say there was one other intriguing name on the list being circulated, that of former senate leader and Howard cabinet minister, Nick Minchin.

Ha! I just thought you named 13 people because you can't count, Milney. Minchin has run out of ideas and is actively suppressing those that crop up, and the idea that he's the only one left with any policy experience is just sad.

Most of Milney's column is just plain bitchy, and I was thinking about at least 14 others he (or his "informer") chose not to name. Then I had a look at the entire membership of the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party - at a time when employers are drawing up lists of employees to be cut, let us help the Liberal Party on the road to recovery - Dump or Keep?

• Abbott, The Hon Tony, Member for Warringah: Dump. See below for reasons why Strutting Hamlet has had his day.


• Andrews, The Hon Kevin, Member for Menzies: Dump. Offered nothing in government, is a wet blanket on new ideas in opposition, and will offer nothing to the next Liberal government.


• Bailey, The Hon Fran, Member for McEwen: Keep this election as she is doing a solid job for bushfire victims, then in the next term ask her to step aside as she's had her day, again think of the next Liberal government and she did get to be the "bloody" Tourism Minister you know.


• Baldwin, The Hon Bob, Member for Paterson: Keep, as the only one capable of winning Paterson and is taking Defence personnel issues seriously. It's no mean thing to put a Cabinet minister on the ropes, if not quite on the canvas; hard-working local MP.


• Billson, The Hon Bruce, Member for Dunkley: Keep for the sake of ministerial experience.


• Bishop, The Hon Bronwyn, Member for Mackellar: Dump. 22 years and no ability to convert the heat of self-publicity into the energy of public policy. Go have a kero bath.


• Bishop, The Hon Julie, Member for Curtin: Dump. Go and do something else, you've done the politics thing and been a minister but now your credibility is shot.


• Briggs, Mr Jamie, Member for Mayo: Dump. Garden-variety hack, plenty more where you came from.


• Broadbent, Mr Russell, Member for McMillan: Keep for now, see Fran Bailey above.


• Ciobo, Mr Steven, Member for Moncrieff: Dump. Garden-variety hack, plenty more where you came from.


• Costello, The Hon Peter, Member for Higgins: Dump! Dump! Dump! Had nothing to offer when Howard was around, has nothing to offer now that Howard's gone. Makes Kim Beazley look like a titan, Mark Latham a paragon of reflection and self-discipline, Simon Crean a fearless and visionary reformer.


• Dutton, The Hon Peter, Member for Dickson: Dump. Garden-variety hack, plenty more where you came from.


• Farmer, The Hon Pat, Member for Macarthur: Dump. Don't want to be on the team, get off the field.


• Gash, Mrs Joanna, Member for Gilmore: Dump. Been around too long, contributed nothing, no future.


• Georgiou, Mr Petro, Member for Kooyong: Going, and more's the pity that the former Prime Minister wasn't big enough to bring him on board.


• Haase, Mr Barry, Member for Kalgoorlie: Dump. See Joanna Gash.


• Hawke, Mr Alex, Member for Mitchell: the original RWDB, can make no positive contribution to Australian society. See Wilson Tuckey below for appropriate disposal.


• Hawker, The Hon David, Member for Wannon: Dump. See Joanna Gash.


• Hockey, The Hon Joe, Member for North Sydney: Keep.


• Hunt, The Hon Greg, Member for Flinders: Keep. May yet do something worthwhile on environmental issues.


• Irons, Mr Steve, Member for Swan: Keep.


• Jensen, Dr Dennis, Member for Tangney: Dump. Defence science credentials having no effect, climate denialism increasingly shrill and silly. Nothing to offer the future of party or nation.


• Johnson, Mr Michael, Member for Ryan: Dump. Embarrassment of hack-ness, cannot get over self long enough to contribute to debate or community.


• Keenan, Mr Michael, Member for Stirling: Keep.


• Laming, Mr Andrew, Member for Bowman: Dump. See Michael Johnson above.


• Ley, The Hon Sussan, Member for Farrer: Keep.


• Lindsay, The Hon Peter, Member for Herbert: Dump. No future, has to be a better alternative.


• Macfarlane, The Hon Ian, Member for Groom: Dump. Has-been who never was.


• Marino, Ms Nola, Member for Forrest: Keep, benefit of doubt.


• Markus, Mrs Louise, Member for Greenway: Whatever.


• May, Mrs Margaret, Member for McPherson: Dump. See Joanna Gash.


• Mirabella, Mrs Sophie, Member for Indi: Dump. Should never have been there in the first place. Bronwyn Bishop without the wit or intellect. The only person in Australia who could make people feel sorry for Belinda Neal.


• Morrison, Mr Scott, Member for Cook: Keep, and serves him right. His branch members are toxic dickheads and he's a hack who can't handle anything other than steady-as-she-goes. Would almost certainly be replaced by someone worse. If Labor win this seat they are in for a decade, because the local branches will only put up the kind of candidate you wouldn't use for burley.


• Moylan, The Hon Judi, Member for Pearce: Keep, make her Shadow Minister for Immigration.


• Nelson, The Hon Dr Brendan, Member for Bradfield: Dumped self, a chancer who's had his chance. Bye bye.


• Pearce, The Hon Chris, Member for Aston: Whatever. A sales manager promoted out of his depth. Keep him if the alternative is worse, dump if better.


• Pyne, The Hon Christopher, Member for Sturt: Dump. Slightly less bad than Bronny as Aged Care minister, but not Cabinet material either - mind you he's as tough as Abbott would like to be and anyone who sticks it to Minchin can't be all bad.


• Ramsey, Mr Rowan, Member for Grey: Keep, benefit of doubt.


• Randall, Mr Don, Member for Canning: Dump. The junkyard dog, the go-to man for the bludgeon that Tony Abbott is too weak to use himself, dumping him would be a poetic justice.


• Robb, The Hon Andrew, Member for Goldstein: Keep.


• Robert, Mr Stuart, Member for Fadden: Keep, benefit of doubt.


• Ruddock, The Hon Philip, Member for Berowra: Dump. Not a Liberal, actions too far from any semblance of humanity let alone Liberal policy, no capacity to be inspirational other than to time-servers.


• Schultz, Mr Alby, Member for Hume: Dump. A chancer who's had his chance, no capacity to contribute to future of country or party.


• Secker, Mr Patrick, Member for Barker: Dump. Get your off-farm income somewhere else, Patrick.


• Simpkins, Mr Luke, Member for Cowan: Keep, benefit of doubt.


• Slipper, The Hon Peter, Member for Fisher: Dump. See Joanna Gash.


• Smith, The Hon Tony, Member for Casey: Dump. Costello's mini-me. A spell outside the pollysphere might give him the chance to work out who he is, if anyone.


• Somlyay, The Hon Alexander, Member for Fairfax: Dump. See Joanna Gash.


• Southcott, Dr Andrew, Member for Boothby: Dump. Human pabulum. Alexander Downer without the gravitas.


• Stone, The Hon Dr Sharman, Member for Murray: Dump. Was prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt until her effort on boat people recently.


• Tuckey, The Hon Wilson, Member for O'Connor: Dump, and bury in a lead-lined casket several kilometres underground, with cloves of garlic and tonnes of carbon-capture sludge just to be sure.


• Turnbull, The Hon Malcolm, Member for Wentworth: Keep.


• Vaile, The Hon Danna, Member for Hughes: Dump. Be brave and true somewhere else.


• Washer, Dr Mal, Member for Moore: Keep. Occasionally says sensible things on healthcare issues, most successful at maintaining non-Canberra mindset.


• Wood, Mr Jason, Member for La Trobe: Keep. A hard-working marginal seat MP who deserves the benefit of the doubt.

There's your balance between experience and freshness. Watch the Liberal Party stuff it up.

The Senators are even worse. There was a time when the Liberal Party machine would throw up tough, competent and sensible politicians like Bob Cotton, John Carrick, Ivy Wedgwood and Margaret Guilfoyle, and dedicated public servants like Don Jessup and Alan Missen. Today, they're still party hacks but very much the backwash from what happens after a political party loses its mass membership. It's quicker to list those Senators that have earned their keep and have something to offer the future:

• Birmingham, Simon - Senator for South Australia


• Boyce, Sue - Senator for Queensland


• Trood, Russell - Senator for Queensland

I was going to do the same for the Nationals, but the good folk of regional Australia will do that for us. Barnaby will probably replace Bruce Scott and the Nats will go down to about 5 MHRs and three Senators (one each from NSW, Queensland, NT).

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

Milney's emissions

Glenn Milne has lost the ability to communicate with people about politics because he has missed the point about what politics is. Maybe he's got Oscars fever and wishes he was in LA rather than Manuka, as you can see from drivel like this:

the Government was actually undergoing a real crisis over whether the global financial meltdown would give it the cover it needs to dump its Emissions Trading Scheme in its present form. Which would have been important had voters actually noticed.

I blame the lousy, self-indulgent press gallery, Milney. Your employer, your whole profession is going down the tubes - and there's you, with your long and distinguished record of bringing environmental issues to the attention of the wider public and their elected representatives, you're whinging about attention deficit disorder (the fact that others aren't paying you the attention you'd like). Your confusion is obvious:

And who could blame the public for being transfixed? The Liberal script was compelling. Curtain Up: Helpless blonde heroine tied to Ghan railway track by erstwhile friends and supporters. Climax: Train approaches relentlessly en route to Perth.

Milney, little milney, the Ghan runs north-south between Adelaide and Darwin. A train going west to Perth would miss anyone tied to that track. Junior journos get chipped for howlers like that. Senior Press Gallery Doyens should know better.

What makes you think "the public" is "transfixed" by a hoary old cliche that didn't even survive the era of talking pictures, which was obsolete by the time Federal Parliament first met in Canberra? Just because you're a hoary old cliche doesn't mean we all are.

The truth is the opportunity cost of having missed the chance to nail the Government over its ETS dilemma is only one of many going by as the Liberals fail spectacularly to resolve their doubts about Malcolm Turnbull and their yearnings for Peter Costello.

The fun ain't done, as you know: the Liberal-Green committee investigation in the Senate is the most interesting political story since the election - and of course you've missed it. The very idea that the Rudd government might be playing the hare against the Liberals' tortoise is a prospect that haunts all progressives.

Whose yearnings, by the way? Have you noticed that those who once, um, pined for Costello no longer do, and vice versa? Isn't that interesting? Would you call them yearnings, or is Costello becoming more like William Hughes Mearns' man upon the stair? What are our chances of getting a (frightfully well-connected) press gallery doyen to write about that?

Rather than draw on that experience, though, you've been sucked into flattery:

... in the middle of last week a senior member of Labor's NSW Right emailed me with their analysis of what's really going on with Kevin Rudd. What was truly surprising though was their request that I publish it. I can only guess on the assumption that a crippled Opposition lacks the wit to shine lights where they need to be shone.

What follows is a fascinating account of how Rudd has gone about shoring up his power base inside the Government.

How easy it is to draw this little man away from any issues of the day: load on the flattery and dangle un harengs rouge, and he's anyone's.

So eloquent is my emailer I'll let them take up the tale: "When Rudd came to power in late 2006 it was on the back of a strange grouping," they write. "Essentially it was recognised by Rudd and his supporters that the only way that he could get the numbers to execute Beazley was through a deal with Julia Gillard, that she got Deputy Leader and on that basis would deliver her supporters and a majority of the Victorian Left through (Victorian powerbroker) Kim Carr.

"This was an unholy alliance.

That's it? Hot news from three years ago, all publicly available at the time? Pretty sad idea of eloquence, Milney - though I guess if you hungered for eloquence Canberra isn't where you'd go.

... upon coming to power Rudd has moved quickly to consolidate what every leader before him has had at some time: the firm following of the NSW Right.

"The former NSW premier Bob Carr is a close confidant of Rudd and has been instrumental in persuading him of the necessity to form this base.

"Carr (was) horrified to see the control that Gillard (had) in deciding the ministry (witness Joel Fitzgibbon, Simon Crean, Kim Carr, Warren Snowdon, Brendan O'Connor: all Gillard supporters). A key player in the Rudd leadership battle and also the restoration of the NSW Right has been Mark Arbib, first as secretary of the NSW Party and now as a senator.

In other words, the NSW Right has made as much of a hash of Canberra as they have of Macquarie Street. If Arbib weaves his special magic then Gillard might be stepping up sooner than she might think.

"Rudd ordered support for Arbib's efforts and has encouraged the rise in profile of his lieutenants. As everybody knows Rudd's media office ruthlessly centralises and controls the media appearances of ministers. With this control they have been able to ensure that Arbib, Chris Bowen (a trusted Arbib and Rudd loyalist) and Jason Clare (seen as a future talent) have been awarded regular media appearances to aid their profile.

Bowen comes across like a hack in his column in the Herald, a poor choice on their part and ultimately not doing Bowen many favours. Jason Clare could, if he works hard and keeps his nose clean, become the next Alan Cadman or Gary Nairn. Something to look forward to, eh Milney?

(Arbib has his own column in The Sunday Telegraph in Sydney).

Yeah, but so do you and nobody reads that either. Arbib is the next Stephen Looseley, but without the charisma or the FDR Fun Facts.

"Second, Steve Hutchins has been told he is to go as he has been a vocal critic within the party over Rudd's leadership and largely is seen as an unreliable waste of space.

Apart from his criticisms of Rudd, though, you'd hardly call Hutchins a waste of space because, um, because, oh I can't fight it - Milney, your interlocutor is just as much a political doyen as you. Now that Alan Ramsey has retired, nobody else can wield the extensive blockquote quite so well as your own self. This paragraph is proof that this is not a hatchet job, enjoy it while it lasts.

Graeme Wedderburn['s] ... job is to control Rees and ensure that (the) NSW Government does not hurt Rudd at (the) next election.

Great, another reason not to vote Labor. The Euthanasia Man can best represent New South Wales in dealing with the crucial issues of our time? Let's hope he gets nowhere near any infrastructure spending (I mean real infrastructure, not fixing the toilets at Marginal Heights Primary), every toll road in Sydney can be blamed in part on this clown. C'mon Milney, do I have to do your job for you?

"Arbib's targets are: Joel Fitzgibbon, seen as closer to the Victorian Hard Left (especially Kim Carr and Gillard) due to his support of (former Labor Leader Mark) Latham and Gillard.

"Robert McClelland, seen as a real gentleman but plays no active role in the Right.

What a political matador this Arbib is: first he targets a minister who is more than holding his own, at a particularly crucial time for the nation. Then he targets a nuf-nuf who's tired and ready to go anyway. The idea that McClelland is both "a real gentleman" and "plays no active role in the Right" is, of course, a tautology: the conjunctive "but" is misplaced.

At a time when our legal system must confront:

• the adequacy of corporate and prudential regulations;


• federal-state relations;


• privacy and the accessibility of toxic content on the internet;


• our changed and changing relationship with Aborigines;


• the reach of foreign treaties; and even


• basic human rights (remember them?)

Why have such a weak link in the key position of Attorney General? Is this not an indictment of Rudd? I couldn't have imagined an Attorney General who'd make Ruddock look good. Never mind scoops from three years ago Milney, that is the story to be written. You could even force Rudd's hand - goodness knows George Brandis won't do it.

... there are those who ... stress that Fitzgibbon is a favourite of Rudd's who's performed extremely well in Defence, and who Arbib supports.

So does our Defence Minister, in a time of war, have the Prime Minister's full support - or merely his "full support"? That's another story - with all its implications - that a grown-up political correspondent like Paul Kelly would have written.

Apart from a spot in Cabinet, and the scalps of big game like Mr Stroganoff and Tired Bob on his belt, what does Arbib want and why?

Milney's latest would have been an appalling article had it not been so typical of this stunted, ridiculous little man. So many important issues left begging, a career utterly wasted and what should be a fatal inability to tell eloquence from flatulence. Don't anyone dare ask for public support for newspapers so long as ink is wasted upon this twerp.

Nasty, brutish and short

Federal Liberal MPs are seeking shelter from the storm in which they can only be blamed for the shortcomings of the Howard government, without receiving the credit that they feel is due them. Brendan Nelson can't offer them that shelter. Malcolm Turnbull offers a storm in himself. And some in the Aussie Rules states still pine for Peter Costello, apparently.

"The real answer is to have the natural leader of the party come back, and that is Peter Costello."

Ah yes, the king o'er the water. Technically, he can't "come back" to a post he never held, nor a parliament he hasn't departed. Won't go, won't muck in and fight.

It's said that one of the reasons why Labor stayed out of office for so long was their reluctance to embrace the Keating record of economic reform. Rudd didn't hide from Keating like Latham and Beazley, but nor did he embrace further far-reaching economic reform. WorkChoices seemed to be a high-water mark of hairy-chested reform for its own sake, and if the Rudd government does much in the way of economic policy it will be something that has come up since the election. Does this apply to the Liberals?

Peter Costello did leave a lot of economic reform undone. Labour market reform was not a high priority and died because it was too far ahead of employer (and employee) needs. He could have adjusted the tax system, and built more infrastructure, and invested in skills and education: it's these omissions that stand between Costello and greatness.

Costello could bring together the competing factions, and negate both Abbott and Turnbull. However, he won't. He would be Labor's dartboard for interest rate rises and bottlenecks in both skills and infrastructure.

The yearning for Costello is the same as Labor's comfort with Kim Beazley, and the fear of taking the risks necessary for victory. If Costello becomes leader of the Liberal Party it would not be able to shift the debate and leave Rudd looking flat-footed, like Rudd did to Howard.

One clear indication that Costello doesn't really want the Liberal leadership is that his erstwhile courtier doesn't rate him.

Abbott has been miffed at what he sees as his demotion to the families portfolio.

This is a man who bangs on about families, families, families in the absence of any real clue about how the country should be governed. As with everyone who's gotten in over their heads in the Sydney real estate market, Abbott should downshift or just cop it on the chin. It's interesting that his real estate woes have not resulted in him coming up with any sensible ideas about how to alleviate the situation facing those less secure financially than he: now that would be an audition for the Treasury (never mind the Shadow Treasury), and a challenge to Turnbull.

Abbott's reticence reflects his fundamental decency as a human being.

No, it reflects his intellectual laziness and gutlessness at not being able to admit a mistake. Deigning to speak to Milney and make him feel less irrelevant is nobody's idea of "fundamental decency".

... Minchin, Nelson's anchor in the present storm.

And the message, as of today, is that Minchin will continue to play that role. And as long as he does, Nelson will probably survive.

What should happen, given the rest of this article, is that Nelson should be the albatross around Minchin's neck and that both of them should piss off back to Adelaide.

Minchin's message is: hold your nerve in the same way Labor did after its 1996 defeat, when Kim Beazley arguably laid down the ultimate matrix for a Rudd victory, the maintenance of a veneer of a cohesive party that did not tear itself to pieces over core values.

In other words, just faff for a decade or so and arguably something will pop up. Hasn't exactly worked for the liberals, has it. Flip-flopper Beazley the exemplar of nerve? What a poor model for a party wanting to get out of opposition. What a poor piece of analysis by Milney, he should have laughed in Minchin's face. Minchin monstered Beazley and he fancies his chances of monstering anyone content to follow the lazy and complacent Beazley model.

The successes of the Rudd government have put the core values of the Liberal Party under strain. Neither Howard nor any other Liberal could have achieved the foreign policy success in China that Rudd did, another example of him shifting the debate beyond the tactical grasp and intellectual resources of the Liberals.

The fact that the Stolen Generations apology was not a damp squib and that economic hardship looms to early to fully blame Labor has put Liberal values under strain - all the more with lack of support from any Liberal government outside municipal Brisbane (and not much there, as Campbell Newman has hardly stepped up onto the national stage).

The next Liberal government will be as different from Howard's as Howard's was from Fraser's government. To get ready for the next Liberal government, the challenge is to start working out what policy approaches should be retained, what junked, and what replaces the elements that get junked.

The storm will get worse. Once sturdy edifices will be blown away. Delicate buds being nurtured to sturdy oaks will be drowned and uprooted. The Minchin vision of the Liberals just sitting there with an umbrella waiting for the bus to stop by and take them gently back to government is beyond ridiculous, it harms the Liberals' chances of winning government again.

There's also the issue of Joel Fitzgibbon getting off scot-free in Defence - if Minchin was the political lion he fancies himself as, Fitzgibbon should be in dire trouble rather than just busy. Same with the hapless Jenny Macklin: Tony Abbott has been monstered by two Labor women already in Gillard and Roxon, do we have to wait until Kate Ellis starts climbing all over him to realise he's a loser?

To realise this is to say to Minchin and Abbott what they did not, could not say to Howard: go, go now, the Liberal Party is better off without you. The fact that these turkeys are good for nothing else need not be the Liberal Party's problem.

The way to dusty death

Like the Liberals putting Scott Morrison in charge of silencing dissent over the election loss, the Nationals have put John Anderson in charge of burying their survivors. They probably thought they were being clever in spoon-feeding Milney, who has lapsed back into his louche ways now that actual investigative journalism appears to have given him a migraine.

The Nationals know exactly who to blame for their party's net two-seat loss at the election which reduced them to a near rump of 10 MPs in the House of Representatives: it was all John Howard's fault.

Well, either that, or it was the fault of people like John Anderson not standing up to Howard. Even the yokels at NSW central executive know they're wasting their time doing that. Anderson and all the other Nationals MPs and Senators voted for WorkChoices. It's gutless of the Nationals to blame Howard for their own choices.

The Liberals didn't need the Nationals in 1996-98 to form a majority in the House of Representatives, nor in 2001-04; having them on board was an act of charity on their part, and for once the Nationals should be grateful. The reason why the Nationals in Victoria have teamed up with the Liberals is because the Nationals are secure enough in themselves to know they offer a different product while recognising the importance of the Coalition. They know they don't have to go stark raving Barnaby.

It isn't John Howard's or Brendan Nelson's or anyone else's responsibility to define a distinct image for the Nationals: it's the Nationals' responsibility. Milney should have been clearer about this, interpreting the information he received and reflecting the self-delusion of these people back on them, rather than marvelling at his own cleverness at having documentation fall into his lap.

The document later expands on this point: "The core problem for the Nationals has been its declining independent identity.

"For almost 20 years, no federal leader has adequately reinforced the party's independent identity, to the point where, today, the words 'Coalition' or 'government' to the vast majority of voters, simply equal 'Liberal'.

John Anderson bears a large part of the blame for this. The submission is a waste of time, like chooks squawking at the fox that's been sent to guard their henhouse.

The brutal truth in Queensland is this: while the Nationals are the senior conservative party in that state, they hold only 17 seats in an 89-seat parliament, compared to eight for the Liberals. But most of the Nat seats are either in the west of the state, where the population is declining, or in the coastal hinterland. They are shut out of the growth areas, the southeast corner and the Gold Coast.

Because they know they are in a demographic death dive, they are desperate to co-opt the Liberal brand name.

The brutal truth of the Coalition in Queensland is this: there are 12,000 Nationals and 4000 Liberals in Queensland. In the state parliament the Liberals inspire no confidence that they could manage the state better than Labor, however much Beattie or Bligh stuff up.

The Queensland Nationals express this frustration by running three-cornered contest against the hapless Liberals. No urban-dweller, especially someone relocated from outside Queensland, wants to vote for a party that exists to redistribute resources away from the growth areas. Nobody wants to vote for a bunch of clowns either; despite the busywork that all Liberal leaders since Llew Edwards have done to trash the Liberal name, it has a cachet that [insert name of any Queensland Liberal politician here, any one will do] cannot fully destroy.

The Queensland Liberals would regard the growth areas as their 'turf', yet they can't win any more than a bare minimum of seats there. Elbowing the Nationals aside is the least of their worries.

There should be a Queensland Party. It should deck itself out in maroon and work out some way of keeping its traditional supporters online while also attracting new supporters: this is hardly unique to the Queenslanders, all opposition parties have to do this. Lawrence Springborg could be a good Premier if only he could get some decent ministers. The Queensland Party could sit with the Liberals or Nationals or become a third Coalition partner.

"The party should, therefore, give a high priority to reviewing its policies for rural, regional and coastal electorates. Having identified key policy objectives for the future, the leadership must publicise these, as well as the party's achievements, relentlessly, at every opportunity."

And most ominously for the Liberal Party, under the heading "Funding", this observation: "For the party to build its parliamentary numbers, it is more than likely that it will have to prepare for an increased number of three-cornered contests."

Not a word about how you convince those who had voted Labor to vote National again; these people don't understand why anyone would vote Labor, National or any other way, so it's best they not be heard from in charting the future of any political party. This skittishness about brand image and a relentless determination to promote, promote, promote without thinking about what is being promoted is a sign of a party determined to run itself into the ground.

Amid all the hysteria and bungling by Coalition leaders should be one clear rule: any three-cornered contest that does not minimise the Labor vote should not be considered. The Nationals might horsetrade this or that seat with the Liberals, and run three-corners where Labor cops it from both sides - but the Nationals should have the sense to opt out where they cannot seriously beat Labor. This might mean that they curse their own weakness, and take it out on Nelson; it would be interesting to see who would be in the weaker position, but it has to happen.

Vale John Howard. Or perhaps in the context of the Nationals, Vaile John Howard.

Fnaar! At the next election Labor should win about six of the seats currently held by the Nationals, including Truss' own seat of Wide Bay. Independents should win a couple of others until the Queensland Party gets on its feet. Barnaby Joyce should run against Bruce Scott in Maranoa. They should go the way of the Democrats, and such energy that does not die could manifest itself in a different form. The Nationals should dribble away and never again back the ute up to any Parliament in the expectation of pelf for dying communities.