The bottle and the damage done

Barry O'Farrell misled ICAC and had to resign. It's still a pity that he's gone from the Premiership, and it's taken me days to work out why.

He made his way up through the Liberal Party with the deft touch of getting along with everyone without being anyone's patsy. He spent time observing all of the players in the NSW Liberals up close, including their weaknesses and how to get around them. It's part of the reason why I both liked him and rated him as a real political operative, not just a player but a stayer, attaining a state to which most political-class dickheads can only aspire.

This slow-baked shrewdness is why O'Farrell could and did outplay Tony Abbott in internal NSW Liberal power games, and why until Wednesday he was a real countervailing force to Abbott. Dopey political journalists insist that Prime Ministers face real challenges from Premiers of the same party; this was true with Askin, Bolte, and Bjelke-Petersen against Gorton, and it was true with O'Farrell and Abbott, but in all other instances it is bullshit.

O'Farrell cut TAFE places and left disabled children without transport to school; he also slapped down Christopher Pyne's vandalism of NSW's school system. He initiated much-needed road and rail projects, but turned Barangaroo into just another third-rate billionaires' folly. His repeated denials a month or so ago that he'd ever met Nick di Girolamo has to be contrasted against the evidence that he seems to have given the man his home address.

You know who else has a mixed record like that? Julia Gillard. Supporters both fiercely defend certain aspects of their still-recent record and face-palm at other aspects, with jeers and even apoplexy from those who never supported them anyway. Each got their start in politics at university, each spent decades working between factions of their party to make it into parliament, and each lasted atop government about the same length of time.

O'Farrell's resignation brings to a head a number of issues that remain unnamed from the Nasty Parliament of 2003-07, issues that have barely been named. NSW politics a number of developments from that parliament which have been slow but inexorable, but which a capable and popular O'Farrell government has managed to hold off in the name of Getting Things Done, until now.

In the NSW Parliament of 1999-2003, Premier Bob Carr did two dumb things which were little noticed at the time, but which have had massive long-term consequences in NSW politics.

First, he made Eddie Obeid a minister, giving him both a taste of power and some experience in how to wield it via the networks that exist in NSW.

Second, he capped the amounts for which one can sue in tort law, not quite smashing the business model of personal injury lawyers (often cruelly called 'ambulance chasers') but limiting it considerably. This sounds fairly arcane, and because it affected the Liberals more than Labor you can imagine Carr congratulating himself for guaranteeing his party two more terms in office.

In the Nasty Parliament of 2003-07, the consequences of both those things started to play out.

First, Obeid ceased to be a minister. For over a century Labor has established protocols for dealing with those of its members who are granted preferment, and who react angrily when that preferment is withdrawn. The foreboding associated with the term 'rat' is usually enough to make most Labor people in that position shut up, thank the party, and depart quietly. Obeid's political genius was to pursue his revenge against the party and the government, and to shore of his post-parliamentary economic position, while co-opting the party to those ends. The NSW ALP didn't rat on Eddie Obeid, and nor did Obeid rat on it; the NSW ALP, including Obeid, ratted on itself. By ratting on itself, NSW Labor ratted on NSW and NSW ratted on it, which (along with O'Farrell, about whom more later) explains Labor's result in the 2011 NSW election.

The corollary of that genius is that the co-opted are widely and fairly regarded as mugs, if not crooks. Labor cannot un-rat on itself or on NSW, not even by expelling Obeid or whomever else - this is like the victim of a practical joke getting angry at the protagonist while the laughter is still ringing. Labor needs the processes set in train by ICAC to play themselves out, and it needs to keep losing elections until after those processes are complete. It cannot fix its own problems. This is an existential threat to its own integrity that nullifies all the well-meant suggestions from John Faulkner, and all the wry witticisms from Carr, and all the earnest insistence from others who persist as members that Labor still stands for something in NSW, put together.

Second, ambulance chaser personal injury lawyer David Clarke did what he swore he would never do: he entered Parliament.

Successful personal injury lawyers need to convince their clients to maintain the grievance for which they are seeking legal redress through expensive, protracted and hard-to-understand legal proceedings. David Clarke was a very successful personal injury lawyer, partly because he was very good at getting people to maintain burning grievances, often in the face of discouragement, over many years. Outside of work he convinced members of fringe Christian cults that they weren't just being ignored but actively persecuted by 'secularists' and moderate members of their own faith. He convinced migrants from eastern Europe that the ALP and moderate Liberals were ready to deport them to face the legal systems of Soviet bloc regimes. He built a substantial power base with little, if any, media coverage.

Moderates do not nurse grievances for years. Moderates start with a position and work toward a compromise. Moderates were flat out building a power base within the Liberal Party, and when it came time to build power bases beyond it they relied entirely upon the media. Moderates regarded David Clarke as a bit weird but basically yet another input to future compromises. David Clarke regarded moderates as foes to be scourged by fair means or foul; he was not interested in compromise, and in about 2002-05 reached his apogee power by securing himself, and a relatively large number of (as it were) fellow-travellers, as Liberal candidates for the 2003 State election and the 2004 Federal election.

Clarke entered Parliament to be led, however nominally, by a moderate young enough to be his son, a man with few economic and political means other than those the party had bestowed on him, a man wedged into the public eye in a way that Clarke could and did eschew. Barry O'Farrell had seen Clarke up close and had known him for years. In Clarke's black-and-white view of the world O'Farrell was as much a moderate as Brogden, but Clarke could never make the charge stick among those who weren't Clarke loyalists; moderates are better at winning people over, however temporarily, by argument. O'Farrell could match Clarke in the party's backrooms, Brogden couldn't. As leader, Brogden was expected to both rise above factional maneuvering and be untouched by it when his side lost, and he couldn't do either. Brogden's impact against his opponents was undermined by internal enemies, led by Clarke, just as Julia Gillard's impact against Abbott was undermined by members of her party nursing long-term grievances that resisted any resolution except destruction.

O'Farrell saw the destruction of John Brogden up close, and enjoyed the freedom to work the party's backrooms and avoid the media where required. He also saw the vacuous Peter Debnam sell his soul to the Liberal Right and get nothing whatsoever for it, which has retarded its recruitment efforts ever since. O'Farrell got off the fence without becoming a moderate. He wedged the Liberal Right into a corner and got most of their candidates out of state and federal parliament (moderates didn't help by alienating people like Chris Hartcher and Marie Ficarra, whose grievances were cultivated by the Right).

Outside the Liberal Party, O'Farrell as leader landed blow after blow on Labor without the internal undermining that Brogden faced, or the self-undermining that Debnam did by indulging the Right. He stopped Labor using the 'Uglies' (seriously, have you seen these people?) as a stick to beat the Coalition with, because Labor's claims that he was a major force in the Liberal Party was evidently false and hurt their waning credibility.

With the diminution of the weirdly religious, non-communicative Clarke as a powerbroker and the rise of O'Farrell as a plausible Premier, business began to take the NSW Liberals seriously again - inversely as Labor began to implode. Moderates took advantage of this situation, and at the same time solved their long-standing problem of creating power bases outside the Liberal Party, and the media - setting up lobbying outfits.

The NSW Liberals did not need all of those panhandlers and spivs who simply switched from Labor. They didn't need to raise that much money, given that Labor was digging its own grave for free. They denounced Obeid, yet they decided (as Thatcher said of Gorbachev) that he was a man with whom they could do business. Waleed Aly is right that the Liberals should have kept themselves nice, but that would have denied the moderates an income, and a way of re-inserting themselves back into the heart of the Liberal Party (what with Howard, Abbott, asylum seekers, and Murdoch, it's been a long time between drinks for the Liberals Formerly Known As Moderates).

The Nasty Parliament of 2003-07 was hardly a moment of Original Sin in NSW politics but from it came problems that are still being played out, and which are barely even being named let alone being classified and addressed in any real way. It showed what happens when the political class not only occupies but cements its hold on the high ground of politics.

Labor and Liberal people had started young in politics, mostly in campus ballots, and had ascended to high office with no incentive or reason to change the way they operate. The worst thing you can say about political-class people in high office is that they Don't Get Business. It's their Achilles heel, their kryptonite. Labor elected Nathan Rees (Premier 2008-09) and Kristina Keneally (2009-11) because of their lack of experience with Obeid and business (because Obeid = business for many NSW Labor people then, and still).

For Liberals, lobbyists offer to help with the lack of business experience - to help their mates in politics navigate the tricky world of business, and vice versa. Nobody helps Labor in that way because pfft, those losers.

Every business person who doesn't get what they want from government complains that government Doesn't Get It, blah blah Red Tape blah Stifling Business. Every political-class politician who is accused of this feels it keenly. Political-class operatives can't distinguish sore-loser spivs from businesses genuinely able to deliver, for them and the state.

The public authorities that used to build major roads and railways have been so stripped of capable managers and skilled professionals that in order to build a major road/railway in Sydney, the NSW government (regardless of who is in office) could not do it with in-house resources. It has no choice but to go to companies that actually employ managers and skilled professionals, and who charge a premium for doing so.

It is not true, however, that to build large-scale water and sewerage infrastructure in northwestern Sydney, that Sydney Water lacks the capacity to do this in a timely and cost-effective way. There is no evidence that Australian Water Holdings has the managers and skilled professionals necessary to do such a job. Yet, to baldly point this out would be one in the eye for Good Old Arthur and Good Old Nick, whose contributions to the Liberal Party's financial position have been redundant but which are not to be discouraged.

In 2003-07, the state parliamentary press gallery did not go much into the above issues. Their conventional wisdom was:

• The 'Terrigals' sub-faction (pro-Obeid Labor Right) were savvy and tough and the futue of Labor and the NSW government: Matt Brown, Reba Meagher, Eric Roozendaal.
• The anti-Obeid Right ('Trogs'), the Labor Left and the Liberals were all clowns - except Brogden who was nice, and then a victim, and then gone.

Kate McClymont of The Sydney Morning Herald used to be an investigative reporter. These days she simply transcribes what ICAC has uncovered, further evidence that investigative skills are atrophying among remaining journalists with fulltime jobs.

O'Farrell could mostly pick the difference between a private enterprise wanting a go from government, and a spiv on the make. Yet, his devotion to people like Reg Kermode and Max Moore-Wilton in the face of evidence that doing them out of their sinecures woould benefit the state enormously, is puzzling and not adequately captured by pecuniary interests or other transparency measures.

How did he get it so wrong, then, over di Girolamo and a bottle of wine? The explanation that works for me is a sport analogy - you can watch a top-level sporting contest and see a skilled and experienced player make the sort of error that a competent child playing that game might not have made, but with the massive consequences that apply in top-level sports which don't apply in schoolyard games. You can still rate that athlete highly while regretting the error, and bear the taunts from those who rate the error above the athlete. If you're not a sport fan, try Greek tragedy. This is why Liberals - and I - insist that O'Farrell is a good bloke who executed his duties honestly and effectively, even though he misled ICAC under oath. I think this is different to someone like Abbott, who will say anything to get himself out of difficulty and whose respect for the truth is considerably less than O'Farrell's.

Barry O'Farrell may resign from Parliament before the next election (due the last Saturday in March 2015). He may not recontest his seat of Kuring-gai at that election, which will be 20 years after he was first elected. He is unlikely to be re-elected in 2015 and serve a full term, as an ex-Premier and unpromotable backbencher: he's not a long-grievance guy. It will be interesting to see what sort of factional log-rolling will take place to elect the new Liberal candidate for Kuring-gai, and what competition that candidate will face from an electorate that has sent two Liberal Premiers and no Labor members to Macquarie Street.

The last preselection I voted in was for the state seat of Manly. Mike Baird was one of the candidates but I didn't vote for him. The candidate who won (and I didn't vote for him either) was a dickhead and deserved his loss at the following election. Funny how things turn out, really.

As Premier, Mike Baird is interesting for two reasons.

Firstly, Liberals talk about free enterprise but they tend to draw MPs from the smaller end of it. O'Farrell was a career political staffer before entering parliament. Debnam was in the navy and puddled around in small businesses before politics. Brogden was also a career staffer with a bit of lobbying. Chikarovski, Collins, and Fahey ran small law firms. Greiner had a Harvard MBA but ran a small family company. Baird had a genuinely successful corporate career, with staff and budgets and everything - and in banking, where throwing cash at spivs is often a career-limiting move, and being able to distinguish going concerns from rubbish gets you to the sorts of heights Baird achieved before entering politics.

Baird entered politics after the Nasty Parliament in 2007, playing no role in the Clarke-Brogden thing.

Secondly, Baird has promised to reform the regulation of political donations. O'Farrell tried that and was defeated in the High Court. It is possible that this will result in another redundant law - had O'Farrell declared that bottle of wine under existing pecuniary interest rules he would still be Premier.

Liam Hogan is right in saying that ICAC should sweat the small stuff, because (and this is what the state governments of Queensland and Victoria, and commentators such as Andrew Norton, overlook) you can't get to the big, seismic investigations into grand mal corruption unless you have dealt with petty and banal instances of the same phenomenon.

Will Baird really take on the lobbyists who comprise much of his party's elite, like Jesus outplacing financiers from the temple? If he does, the only beneficiaries will be these turkeys, Clarkoids who would be flat out running one of those Glenn Druery micro-parties let alone a party of government.

The NSW Liberal Right have bounced back from their low point in 2005 and made no contribution to victory in 2011, but here they are causing trouble:

"We've been ignored for the past three years," a senior right faction source said.

There is no reason why that should change - if it ain't broke, etc. The report is silent as to whether the journalist handed the source a tissue.

"Quite frankly, it's been advancement more based on the relationships with [O'Farrell] than merit selection. We have simply had enough. It's time the party was represented across the board."

The ability to impress someone and form a productive relationship with them is so alien, frightening, and unfathomable to members of the NSW Liberal Right. None of the people named would get preselected on merit, let alone promoted, with the possible exceptions of Elliott and Patterson.

This article says three things that Nicholls missed:

• The NSW Liberal Right can't win elections because they can't read the rules, and by the time they take their socks off to count into double digits the moderates have it all stitched up;
• Gladys Berejiklian is the next NSW Liberal Opposition Leader; and
• Never mind the pundits and the anonymous sources, Charlie Chaplin was right: there is nothing funnier than impotent rage. The NSW Liberal Right are in no position to demand anything from Baird and take comfort only in the fact that he's a church-going Christian.

O'Farrell had the NSW Liberal Right on the ropes. Greg Smith was on the way out and other Uglies were deftly outmaneuvered. Had he co-opted people like David Elliott, who has been attacked from the right himself in internal party battles, he might have squeezed them out altogether. Baird will appoint proselytising Christians into public schools and hospitals and be genuinely puzzled at 'secularists' who protest. You can expect a heated but inconsequential vote on abortion/ stem cells/ homosexuality/ euthanasia/the monarchy before the next election, but probably not to the extent that is happening in Victoria.

It's stupid to assume that what's bad for O'Farrell/Baird must be good for Labor and Robertson. A pox-on-both-houses approach will benefit independents and small parties as a dress rehearsal for the next federal election. This will mean that NSW will continue to see half-baked outcomes, whether stitched-up before they come to light or as the outcomes of horsetrading in public. It will be like the do-nothing excreted from the Nasty Parliament of 2003-07 - or the fast and loose coalition-building that stymied NSW in the late 19th century, and which saw Melbourne with its joined-up government become the biggest and wealthiest city on the continent. This will happen again, unless Baird has qualities that aren't obvious except to his most fervent admirers.

Baird is saying all the right things, and the named and unnamed members of the Liberal Right are saying the wrong things, but the press gallery is not obliged to simply transcribe them and take each at their word.

Liberals afraid of ideas

There was a time when people would join the Liberal Party as a way of making their concerns felt, and having a more direct, active and ongoing input into government decision-making than was the case merely by voting every few years. Under Tony Abbott, the party's policy-generation capacity has been exhausted. Liberals are actually afraid of ideas.

Earlier today Abbott announced a proposal for a Productivity Commission inquiry into childcare. This is not the same as announcing a policy on childcare. It is not the same as having a clear idea about what people need from childcare. Even if there was a bit of barrow-pushing from childcare providers, that would be a sign of life in policy terms.

Margie Abbott endorsed Abbott's statement but it was not clear what, in childcare policy terms or in actual outcomes, she was endorsing. It wasn't clear how her experience was being put to good use. Jeanette Howard or Therese Rein would have gleefully pointed out something that she had a hand in making happen, and then retreated back to the shadows; the expression on Margie Abbott's couldn't have been any more strained if she had a revolver jabbed between her shoulderblades.

I have two children aged under five: an announcement about childcare cuts through the static. In Abbott's announcement was, however, pretty much static. With "labour market flexibility", you need to be able to drop your kids off at childcare outside as and when required, rather than being locked in to a set number of days for a set number of weeks as per current policy. The childcare centre that Margie Abbott runs at St Ives opens no earlier than 8.30 am and closes at 3.30 pm - utterly useless for anyone who works full time. Even to speak of "labour market flexibility" would require Abbott to deal with workplace reform, the third rail of conservative politics. It's easier for him to hide behind the grey cardigan of the Productivity Commission than take such a stand.

At least Abbott's announcement knocked this into a cocked hat. As I said at the time - scroll down to the comments and search for my name - Josh and Alan are just another couple of Canberra elitist shinybums with no idea about childcare/early childhood education.

Other "announcements" of this type include:

• A Working Group to Grow Tasmania,comprised of people who have contributed nothing so far and offer little going forward, by contrast with specific and costed bandwagon-jumping measures for infrastructure in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne;
• A Working Group on Red Tape, featuring career public servants, which ignores the prospect of software overcoming "pages and pages of documents";
• On foreign language teaching, there is a bit of an imperative to "work urgently with the states to ensure", but nothing at the tertiary or primary levels;
• Simultaneously welcoming and discouraging foreign investment in agriculture;
• When it comes to marine park assessment, there is a lot of Canberra-shinybum activity; private member bills here and committees there, and referrals, as well as advice that is supposed to be "independent" (of what? of whom?), as though marine scientists grow on trees. As though an Abbott government would respect a scientific opinion he didn't like.

These committees have increased in number at the very time when doubts have been aired from within Coalition ranks as to the nature and quality of its leadership, and whether the incumbents are best placed to lead them to government. When you understand the imperative to create make-work schemes for restive Canberra shinybums, you understand how red tape grows and how hard it can be to cut it back. They aren't taking input from Liberal branches either.

Peter van Onselen decries formerly moderate Liberals for neither departing public life or making bigger targets for his employer. He starts with a bit of duff taxonomy:

The first barrier to moderate tendencies again securing a say within the Liberal Party is the rise of the non-ideological, marginal-seat MP. They are tribal warriors who know little about why they joined the Liberal Party, other than they dislike the ALP. Normally they are dissatisfied with the government of the day, or would not have been able to win preselection for the other side because they weren't in a trade union.

Really? Looking at this list of Liberal MPs, with the most marginal ones at the top of the list, few actually fit this bill. Most seem to have entered parliament when the Howard government was in office - so much for Labor dissatisfaction. Many newbie MPs on that list, such as Alan Tudge (Aston, V) or George Christensen (Dawson, Q), have long records of political activism that belie van Onselen's attempts to label them political blow-ins.

Perhaps having dabbled in small business, usually unsuccessfully (why else would they transition into politics)

Oh come on: Russell Broadbent (McMillan, V) ran a successful furniture business on Melbourne's outskirts. The three most marginal Coalition seats are held by former public servants. Liberal MPs with a background in small business have usually been successful for a long time and looking for a change in direction, not minding either the decline or steadiness of income. There are aberrations - the less said about Craig Kelly the better, and I disdain ex-staffers who go into lobbying as 'businesses' worth the name.

The Liberals have run out of new ideas. The central weakness of conservatism is that it cannot distinguish fads from lasting change. If the moribund party organisation is stuffed with lobbyists, whose agendas fill the space where local people's policy ideas used to be, then politicians will be less beholden to their communities than ever. Politics will become an apprenticeship for a career in lobbying, where representing general interests merely sharpens skills and builds contacts for representing small-scale interests. Nobody will be able to say "Thanks, Liberal Party!" for future policies with which they agree, because it has become a hollowed-out vehicle loaded by others rather than a political force in itself.

Now that the Gillard government looks less likely to lose by default, the Liberals will have to redouble their focus on state governments or else start the hard work of rebuilding for 2016. There are questions about the extent to which the straw men named by van Onselen can or will be part of that, as they all share the dread of repeating the ideological brawls of the 1980s and '90s.

Policies show that a party is listening and thinking, that it is comprised of people who are citizens before they are partisans. The Liberals sneered at Rudd in 2007 for promising to "hit the ground reviewing". Abbott is promising much the same except he isn't a kinder-gentler version of anything or anyone. At the 2013 election he is on track to hit the wall, not the ground. The Coalition won't be reviewing - they'll be recoiling and recriminating.

A political party that does not generate and stick by its own ideas will go the way of the Democrats, unelected and unmissed, because there are real issues that demand the focus that they lack.

Tone deaf and defensive

At a time when Labor is supposedly bleeding internally over the leadership and the upheavals in the ministry that flowed from it, you would imagine that the Coalition - unafflicted by if not invulnerable to such ructions, apparently - would be making out like bandits with uncommitted voters. Instead, they are playing to their own base as though they, and not Labor, were in need of defending and rebuilding.

Tony Abbott's comments in defence of ADF culture (here, about three-quarters of the way down) are instructive. It's true that ADF personnel vote Coalition more than any other profession. It's also true that, while pride in the armed forces is not unique to conservatives, it is central to conservative conceptions of Australia, its (sorry, 'her') history and the purpose of government. You can understand why he'd want to represent any sort of criticism of the ADF as a swingeing assault of an institution at the core of the nation's life, one of great pride to almost all Australians, as a political maneuver to portray Labor as antithetical to the nation's values. Even so, it didn't work.

Every Federal MP who has been in office a while will have received complaints from those who had been dedicated members of the Australian Defence Force, but who had found themselves ensnared in some Kafkaesque nightmare and shunted out of what was not only their career but part of an attempt to fuse their identity with that of the nation. I would be very surprised if the office of the Member for Warringah is an exception to that.

Over many years, we have seen story after story after story about how the ADF is endemically unable to deal with the sorts of sexual harassment cases. The "rotten apple" thing becomes unconvincing after a while.

This was an opportunity for Abbott to start identifying his weaknesses and working on turning them around - particularly his standing with women, at a time when a female Prime Minister was supposedly so weak that she was a role model to nobody. By defending the ADF from any and all charges of misogyny and ineptitude, and linking such failure to "the ANZAC spirit", he has not won or retained a single vote. Nobody who is vaguely regretting having voted Labor in 2010 is convinced that they must vote Coalition at the next opportunity as a result of that effort. His whole position on that issue was not worth taking, and almost certainly did his cause some harm.

Abbott's claim that if there is no crime committed then there is no problem, and that a commander who has been clumsy is unworthy of censure, rings hollow. You don't want your leader ringing hollow. Especially not on International Women's Day: the whole idea that Peta Credlin, Julie Bishop, any female Coalition MP/Senator/candidate or even his own daughters provide civilising influences on Abbott's more Neanderthal tendencies is completely rubbished by his attempts to rally the lads to a dysfunctional status quo. Good, positive policy like this sank like a SIEV. It was dopey politics, squandering an opportunity to stick it to a supposedly vulnerable government.

Coalition supporters will tell you that Abbott is under no obligation to release his policies early, and they're right. Policy papers don't have the impact they once did, when journalists and voters would write to the offices of the respective parties requesting policy papers so that they could compare and discuss them. Policy papers these days are advertising copy made up of dot-points. They are not worth writing, let alone reading, and what little detail they have becomes non-core in the face of the inevitable post-election Budget Black Hole. The idea that All Will Be Revealed In Good Time when the policy documents are released is a joke. Every statement, every vote over the course of a term builds a picture of what a government or an opposition is like, a picture that even the most lavish ad campaign can't shake.

All that no, no, no has entered the soul of the Coalition, and has certainly coloured public perceptions of them even if they haven't quite hardened into voting intentions (more reasons why polls are crap). Policy papers promising love and sunshine from the Coalition can't and won't change that, not even with uncritical media coverage. The squandered opportunities to bring out the best in ADF personnel by casting out the worst is one example: if you're going to get rid of dud teachers, surely the task is all the more urgent with dud ADF personnel. ADF personnel don't get to choose the teams they are assigned to, they have to work with whomever they're assigned to work with: in that context harassment/bullying can be seen as insubordination. It is bullshit to assert that a creep who harasses subordinates is really a mighty warrior and must be respected as such. Tony Abbott has committed the Coalition to not improving but maintaining an ADF which is weakened by its failure to tackle the sorts of problems that have largely been addressed (if not entirely resolved) in wider Australian society. Be it on his own head, and on those who would stand with him.

The Australian is rarely more pathetic when it tries to put one over its own readers. It reports this, it reports that, but fails to link the two as part of a whole problem within the ADF, and adequately assess whether it is Abbott or Smith who is taking the most appropriate response. Nobody expects that august journal of record economically pitiful catalogue of Chris Mitchell's insecurities and failures to start shirtfronting Abbott, but it has a role in nudging him away from indefensibly dopey positions.

Abbott insists that the Defence Minister must have the confidence of the ADF, but I can't think of a single occupant of that office who was ever really beloved from the top brass to the lowest ranks for having personnel interest at heart. Peter Reith came closest to bending the ADF to his will when he defended the claim that asylum-seekers had thrown children into the Arafura Sea despite ADF personnel, respectfully and deferentially, disagreeing that any such thing had taken place. His career ended soon thereafter.

The fact that the Shadow Defence Minister is invisible and hasn't mixed it with Defence policy wonks is a concern because it gives no indicaton as to what we might expect in this area from a Coalition government. It's extraordinary for conservatives, who supposedly live and breathe Defence stuff. Contrast Johnston's small-target obscurity with Smith's up-front, almost Keatingesque, approach.

Smith deserves credit for taking on that culture, ending the last vestiges of gender-specific roles and giving the benefit of the doubt to complainants over ossified symbols of an unsustainable way of operating. Airing of those old assault cases, giving hope to the possibility of a military justice system that was destroyed by sticking up for the alco-loser in command of of HMAS Melbourne in the 1960s, is no small thing.

Apart from the essential purchase of transport vessels for the Navy, Smith has avoided being sucked in to the expensive, underperforming defence equipment purchases that have ruined the reputations of his predecessors back to Reith. Drones seem to have almost obviated the tank and perhaps the fighter jet, and it could be that drone submarines are the answer to the problem facing the Navy is staffing and equipping our underwater defences. Smith seems to believe that if he can get the right people and get rid of some dickheads, smarter decisions and recommendations will result. Stephanie Peatling's article on Smith's handling of disciplinary issues at ADFA is the best article on that topic.

Whether we're talking about the Defence needs of the nation, or the right of one person to feel like they're valued on their merits rather than their gender, you have to wish Smith good luck because at least he's trying. It's more than you can hope for from the Coalition under its current leadership.

Update: Hugh Riminton raises doubts for old Walkley's sake, but ends up vindicating Smith rather than condemning him. The differentiation between shaving foam and Jif made Riminton look absurd, rather than Smith being "wrong on every level". As an old scoophound he is no doubt grateful for a leaked document on which to hang a story, but he should have questioned the leaker's/s' motives more closely.

Test of character

Over the past few days we have seen Tony Abbott's character tested, and found wanting. He has cemented his reputation as one insensitive to the suffering of others, and of being unable to build any longterm policy agenda (one extending beyond the next episode of Insiders). It really is time to give up on the guy. Those who defend him look shrill and silly and miss the point.

First, Katharine Murphy once again instructs us on the attitude we are to take in order to maintain the increasingly unsustainable Canberra fantasy that Abbott is a credible PM.

Tony Abbott is serially scatological. It's a problem.

To have such a firm grasp of the wrong end of the stick does no favours in understanding this situation or presenting yourself as a credible reporter on Australian federal politics.

Firstly, the 2007 election campaign was a tough one for the Coalition, and you'd expect a highly-regarded senior minister to make things easier rather than harder. By swearing at Roxon and bungling health policy, it is a truly amazing feature of our political system that defeated Liberal MPs did not line up to wring his neck (and run for preselection for the subsequent byelection), let alone for Abbott lead the party to the following election. That's not just bad manners Katharine, it's bad judgment on his part, the Liberal Party's, and yours for talking him up.

Secondly, "shit happens" is an appropriate expression for anything other than the death of a human being (let alone a dangerous situation into which Abbott voted to commit people). As I said on Drag0nista's blog (of which more later), I'd thump anyone who said that. It wasn't a faux pas, it was a window into the guy's soul: of a piece with his cry-me-a-river response to the Brisbane floods or refusing to see the late Bernie Banton for being insufficiently pure.

Kevin Rudd could turn on the bad language and he was Prime Minister for almost three years: almost three year longer than Abbott will ever hold that office. But Rudd and Abbott aren't the issue here:

But it's not time for Abbott to become bland, to lose his texture, to speak only focus group and its associated dialects - otherwise we are looking at a rerun of 2010, when political discussion elected to give itself a lobotomy, the voters all switched off in disgust, and I nearly went mad and contemplated a second career as a sandwich artist to escape the shallow febrile horror of the landscape before me.

If political journalists keep playing "gotcha" - crucifying our elected representatives every time they appear before us in three dimensions - we will lead ourselves inexorably back to the vacuum of the past 12 months, and I for one do not want to go there.

Of course you do. It's The Narrative, and without it you'd be doing a different job. If everyone in the press gallery is writing the same story, Katharine Murphy will write it too. If you want someone to dissect some tendentious bullshit with Aesculapian skill, particularly where neither major party is better than the other, there is no reason to seek out the latest piece by Katharine Murphy ...

... well, that was my opinion until I read the last four paragraphs of her piece, starting with:

If we are intent on running a substantive ruler over Abbott, then here we can make a productive critique.

This is what the article should have been, it's the only bit of any value.

This piece by PvO can be dismissed out of hand. Abbott has been his own press secretary before and during his whole time in public life. The idea that he should be ambushed by the media - and of all people, Mark bloody Riley, a prize pissant if ever there was one - is a joke. The idea that he should be ambushed with several hours' warning is nonsense.

Abbott did nothing to dispel the doubts of people who might vote Liberal, and embarrassed those who do. If there had been footage of Mark Latham breaking the taxi driver's arm, it would've been of a piece with Abbott's bobblehead routine. He's done this sort of thing once too often. Philip Coorey, however, is ignoring this and trying to present it as a one-off:

To accuse Abbott of deliberately making light of a trooper's death is absurd and no one has levelled this accusation.

If you can accuse Julia Gillard of faking tears over Queensland flood victims, why not?

However, a key factor that has so far been overlooked is that the Coalition did politicise MacKinney's death at the time.

Indeed he did. He has sowed the wind of Canberra's media storms for two decades, and now he has reaped the shitstorm.

Several weeks ago, Abbott's senior minder, Claire Kimball left the office. It's a safe bet that, had she been around, she would not have let that happen.

As stated earlier, if Claire Kimball is all that stood between this clown and the Prime Ministership, then good riddance to Claire Kimball. It's an untenable position for a media advisor to save someone with Abbott's experience from themselves.

Former Liberal staffer Drag0nista had a go at constructive criticism of Abbott. My first reaction should have been: good on you for trying. That said, I stand by my comment on that blog, and regard her piece as showing the limits of media advice. If you found a cold, decaying and beheaded corpse it would not do to plot strategies for chest compressions, crepe bandages or mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

One journalist who couldn't help himself is Greg Sheridan. Sheridan is right to disdain Bishop, but wrong to do so on an issue where she is clearly right.

The Coalition front bench could do a lot worse than read The White Man's Burden - Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by William Easterly, a former senior economist at the World Bank.

Later, he says:

It is right that our aid emphasises the Asia-Pacific while European aid emphasises Africa.

But Greg, Easterley's book slams European aid in Africa: isn't Australia's practical, community based aid far better than that dished out by the EU? Did you not share the Wikileaked US criticism of Australia as ineffective against Mugabe?

A hundred million dollars will generally buy you a smile and a warm handshake in most parts of the world, especially when so much of the money will inevitably be skimmed off in corruption.

If we want to help Africa, we'd be much better off opening embassies there and promoting trade, which might actually help.

... or get skimmed off in corruption, Greg. Damned if we do, etc.

Everything [Bishop] touches she gets wrong, in both the politics and the substance.

Here she knocks Abbott into a cocked hat. Never mind Gillard, it's Julie Bishop playing Judith to Abbott's Holofernes.

Sheridan is dead right here, if clumsily expressed:

Building schools in Indonesia is about the best possible use Australian aid money could be put to.

But not here:

Also, if Abbott looks as though he can't handle Indonesia, it will threaten his credentials to be prime minister.

We've never had a Prime Minister elected to the office on the basis of appearing to "handle Indonesia". None of them have spoken Bahasa Indonesia - is there anyone who can speak that language in Federal Parliament? Howard came closest: even he took some convincing that we could do it without the Americans, and for all his experience his analysis of the place and its politics is pretty rudimentary.

Finally, Abbott's other mistake was to recommit to the Millennium aid goal for 2015. This clunky, dumb formula allows for no proper evaluation of aid levels, as every other part of government spending is subject to. It is just part of the nonsense consensus of the international relations class.

Clunky and dumb goes for much of Bush-Blair policy, but because Greg wets himself over that he refers to that consensus as "the Anglosphere" rather than "the international relations class".

It's also true that the Millennium goals represent something of a last gasp by the US and Western Europe in exerting themselves in world affairs. China and India are increasing their use of aid as part of their 'soft power', which has real implications for Australia. Stick the Easterley book Greg, and investigate that.

A cosmopolitan, sophisticated, liberal opposition with any intellectual firepower on foreign affairs might challenge this consensus. Alas, there is no sign of that in this opposition. Abbott can't do everything himself, and he is poorly served by his front bench in this area.

Abbott's whole career has seen him work against a Liberal Party (much less its parliamentary party) consisting of "cosmopolitan, sophisticated, liberal" people. Given his experience and job title, Sheridan is wrong to lament what Abbott would consider success.

Abbott's front bench can only work within the parameters their leader sets. While Abbott may not be able to be his own foreign affairs spokesman as Rudd, Beazley or Peacock were, he has to be able to set some sort of direction. Bishop's floundering is not her responsibility alone.

Tony Abbott is showing us that he can't be Prime Minister. That's the story, press gallery people. Don't wait for "anonymous rumblings", because Abetz et al are following you and not the other way around. Show us what the job of Prime Minister should involve, and then assess Abbott - and Gillard, and whomever else - against that.

The reason why the press gallery is so protective of Abbott is not that he was once a journalist back in the day. It's because he plays the politico-media game that Gillard can't and won't play. He butters up journos, he picks his favourites and treats them like they are important. They can't believe that the last true believer in old-school media relations won't restore the Whitlam-to-Rudd situation where the press gallery hold the keys to the Lodge. If Tony Abbott goes down, the press gallery would be as irrelevant as it is to voters/media consumers. Never mind Riley's riles: the efforts to prop Abbott up are starting to look silly.

More power to Hodgman

This is fantastic! For the first time in ten years I feel anything like getting involved in Liberal Party activities. Go hard, Will Hodgman, and drive Abetzoids from Tasmania like St Patrick apparently did to Irish snakes. You have nothing to lose and the Tasmania (and a yet-to-be-grateful nation!) has everything to gain.

How I voted 2010

I voted in Bennelong, using the following thought processes to complete my ballot paper:

• First, who did I hate? Communists, fascists, racists-who-don't-want-to-appear-racist? One Nation fitted that bill so they got no. 11.
• No communists, so the next on my list was the climate septics, polluting the political atmosphere with nonsense so that any proposal for cleaner industry or a functioning economy in an environment under pressure gets pooh-poohed. That fool got number 10.
• There were twoo lots of Christian zealots, Family First and the Fred Nile Failure Squad. I can't remember which got 8 and 9, but that's where I put them.
• By this time I was all negatived out. I was determined to make the majors wait for my vote. So, who's nice? No Democrats ran in Bennelong. The Carers' Alliance were nice, and much overlooked. I have been impressed by the activism of mental health advocates in this campaign so I put them at no. 1.
• I liked Building Australia, so I put them at no. 2.
• I would have put the Greens higher up had I not lived in NSW, where the party is run by communists who are all either either mugs, control freaks or both. I put them at 7.
• Having dealt with everyone I hated, the challenge now was to deal with those who I regarded as stupid rather than actually noxious, so the libertarians (Terje Petersen and the Sex Party) went at 5 and 6 (wish I had the foresight to put them at sixes and sevens).
• This left the majors. I voted for a future where some sort of innovation would be possible and where simple facts about the economy, the environment and refugees were recognised rather than trampled by desperadoes hankering for offices they lost, and who still don't fully appreciate why they lost them. I voted for Maxine McKew (Labor) ahead of John Alexander (Liberal).
• McKew's campaign was non-existent even before her laryngitis. It is an indictment on Labor and on McKew and Hogg that they ran such a non-campaign.
• Alexander deserves credit for putting in the hard yards in the campaign - a bit like Francesca Schiavone's victory at this year's French Open against the better player, alliterative, more fancied but rattled Samantha Stosur. Had McKew matched him she'd be back in. However, if race-based campaigns and demonising asylum-seekers was the political gold that the Liberals and others seem to believe, you can be sure Labor would have done it first: imagine if the Liberal candidate for Bennelong had been portrayed as John Al-Iksandar, playing to that louche image of the man with the all-year suntan. It would have been grossly unfair but it would have served the buggers right. As an MP, Alexander is unlikely to have any real idea of the steady and often unrewarding grind associated with helping constituents, and he'd make bugger-all contribution to policy debates (except, perhaps, sport - and that would consist of telling young fat people to get off their backsides and go play some tennis).

We'll see what happens.

Cracks appear

If Peter Hartcher is right and people have stopped listening to Abbott, and if these sorts of numbers are reliable enough by now to translate into results at the ballot box, let's consider what that means for the Federal Parliamentary Labor and Liberal Parties.

Victoria is the pivotal state here. For Labor, there will be an increase in numbers of those who owe their positions to Billy, Steve & Jules. If that state saves this election for Labor, and if NSW and Queensland decrease relative to the rising Victorians, the whole power dynamic within the Labor Party will change profoundly (but, as Glenn Milne says, more on that later).

For the Liberals, the Kroger-Costello generation will be all but wiped out: Bruce Billson and the overrated Chris Pearce are gone. Tony Smith exposed the policy laziness in the Coalition (thanks for nothing!). In the party's safest seats, we'll see two men in their 60s (Andrew Robb and Kevin Andrews), a dud and a flake (Josh Frydenberg), a harpy without the poise and brains of either Bishop (Sophie Mirabella) and, carrying them all, Kelly O'Dwyer. This is where the jewel-in-the-crown attitude of Victorian Liberals needs to be rethought.

You can't have Mitch Fifield careening around bumping off Jason Wood: the Victorian Liberals need the latter much more than the former. My guess is that, through state politics, Wood has a rosier future than the smarmy non-entity from Albury. Parasites like Julian McGauran and Brian Loughnane can no longer be sustained.

In NSW, Labor stands to lose a number of seats to the Liberals:

• One (Robertson) was held by the wife of a former State Secretary of the NSW Right.


• Macquarie and Gilmore are contested by candidates imposed by Sussex Street under the N40 rule - dud candidates.

This bodes ill for the whole mechanism of Sussex Street dropping in on local Laborites with the N40. Labor candidates preselected when Rudd was riding high find themselves in tight if not impossible races today. There was a time when the NSW State Secretary and his Right myrmidons could sweep aside such disgruntlement - not this time. Mark Arbib is in blood so far steep'd that he doesn't know if he's Arthur or Martha, and his homeboys Bitar and Dastyari aren't much better off. In Canberra, it is the ShortCons who will have the whip hand and the Sussex Street gang have few favours if any to call in from the resurgent Vics. Chris Bowen and Tony Burke will have to do some actual work in an environment where enemies are many and friends are few.

For the Liberals, winning candidates include the candidate for Robertson, who'd want to be a corker to counterbalance the two lightweights of a certain age in Louise Markus and Joanna Gash. These aren't quite Pyrrhic victories but they don't portend well for a party needing to rebuild.

The Liberals could have won Bennelong had they not chosen a candidate who, like Arnie Vinick, winces when he has to shake hands with common folk. He just doesn't like people, and it's not my fault that it falls to me to point it out. Just as lovely spring weather comes to Bennelong, a wintry blast in the form an Alexander smile (let's give that rictus some credit and call it a smile) reminds you of a time you don't want to revert to anytime soon. If the public housing thing at Ryde doesn't work for him, one-note Johnny Alexander runs a real risk of being seen as a lightweight.

Where are you hiding, Maxine McKew? Bob Hogg, have you ever won an election by hiding the candidate? Why would you two - and the geniuses at Sussex Street - make a tight race tighter by working a great candidate at less than full throttle?

As to Queensland, Wayne Swan has spoken no truer words than these:

WAYNE Swan has declared emphatically he does not want to lead the Labor Party.

Best not to want something that's already gone, fella. When four to six members of your support base fall away due to your most cunning plans, it's hard to make the case that you're the man to fix things. Those candidates who don't make it back to Canberra are yet more candidates who won't have a vote in caucus to counterbalance the resurgent Vics.

It will be a shame to see Senator Russell Trood not become Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, and even more pitiful to see that tired old buffalo Warren Entsch saunter back to Canberra.

OK, so there are other states and territories but it's one seat here and two seats there and doh-si-doh and take away the number you first thought of. The balance of power of both parties will be settled in the three eastern states.

This is interesting in that it represents a bit of pre-emptive arse covering by those who would reshape the Liberals in Opposition:

Senior Coalition frontbenchers have attacked Mr Loughnane for his strategy, saying he has left Tony Abbott vulnerable with an overly safe advertising campaign. They say that if Mr Abbott wins, it will be "despite Loughnane, not because of him".

I'd be fascinated to see whether the Victorian Libs turn on one of their own and sacrifice him, or whether they stand by him to the very death. I suspect it will be the former. It would be an act of foolishness to run anything but a buttoned-down, low-risk campaign with Tony Abbott as leader - even that hasn't worked, as seen by his "no means no" and the flop of his launch. The next Federal Director of the Liberal Party of Australia will probably be from Queensland or NSW. The only real candidate would be Mark Neeham, the NSW State Director who would have to dump Barry O'Farrell just as the party gears up to crush State Labor (a dark horse would be Mal Brough, who can't do the king-o'er-the-water thing indefinitely and will have to go into a role where he doesn't threaten Abbott).

The Federal Directorship would, however, be the least of Abbott's worries. Grog spoke true when he said:

For Tony Abbott ... Sure he wants to win. But if he loses I don’t think he loses any where near as much as does Gillard. The expectations for Abbott were so low, that even getting to this stage is a win for him. If he loses does he stay around? I can’t see him wanting to hand over the leadership – for a start the pay is good. Unless things go bad and it does become a big win for the ALP, he’ll have strong support in the party. That said if he loses I can’t see him leading them to the next election.

The Liberal Party does not do low expectations. The Liberal Party does victory, it does government. Abbott will not deliver that in 2010.

He'll face a resurgent Gillard with the wind at her back. Given that he hasn't beat her when she's vulnerable how much better will he do when she's in her pomp and he's cruelly exposed (no, this isn't a budgie-smuggler reference)? Hopefully she'll use this for good instead of faffing, particularly if she can kick the NSW Right hard and often while reshaping the entire ALP for its post-communist, war-on-two-fronts future (not a big ask, surely? :p). Abbott will do the attack-dog thing but there is a real risk that Labor will wake up to him, and that the old mutt will lose some fangs.

By 2012 the no-vision thing will be a real liability and Abbott will have to be replaced. Coalition MPs elected from NSW, Queensland and possibly WA for the first time, will be the first Liberal MPs not to have served in any capacity under the Howard government: they are too few and not necessarily promising. By 2012 these newbies will have found their feet and will start getting toey if Abbott's poll numbers continue to suck as hard as they do.

Hockey will have to challenge Abbott in 2011; hell, he should challenge Julie Bishop for deputy at the end of this month. Playing the loyal deputy will not help Hockey against a proven, irredeemable loser: it didn't help Costello against Howard.

Let's hope the Gillard government does good work with infrastructure and health reform, and possibly education as well. A non-optional extra is a carbon mechanism, preferably a bloody good world-beater that creates lots of jobs and debate. To hope for water reforms and tax reforms is probably to hope for too much, but you've got to do what you can.

The (self-)destruction of Tony Abbott begins

Over many years, Abbott has constructed an appearance of strength in his intellect and sense of self, with touchstones such as conservatism, the monarchy, the Liberal Party as revealed by John Howard and Bronwyn Bishop, and Catholicism as revealed by B A Santamaria and George Pell. The swagger, the insistence that you have to take him as you find him (i.e. that you have to assume the image he projects at face value is the same as the substance at the core of who he is) is all part of this.

The requirements of leadership of a major party, and the idea that you might become Prime Minister, require from you more than just indulgence of the self. That's why Bob Hawke had to give up the grog, why Paul Keating had to retreat from the limelight and hope that people would miss him, why John Howard had to finally embrace Medicare and be nice to moderates. Kevin Rudd had it easy in that he didn't have a public persona to give up in pursuit of the Prime Ministership: what he did in pursuit of that office was assumed to be who he really was, in the absence of any information to the contrary.

Tony Abbott, however, has form. That whole take-me-as-I-am thing was never going to work. Everyone who becomes Prime Minister has to change to some extent in order to adapt to the office. Abbott can't let go of certain issues without losing sense of who he is. Worse, he has a parliamentary party behind him who will take any signs of personal growth as shilly-shallying and betrayal.

First there was the kind words about Malcolm Fraser: a man who had already left the Liberal Party, an act to placate people Abbott never had much time for and who never voted for him, who apparently aren't important to the Liberal Party's strategy in the coming election and nor to the party's future generally. Now there's this crap about the environment, and the sulky going-to-ground that followed. There's more of this sort of stuff to come, that whole idea of being a conservative but moving with the times - who does he think he is, a moderate?

Moderate liberals know that you have to pry ideas away from Labor in order to make the case for government, but to make the case within the Liberal Party makes you an easy mark for accusations of 'weakness' from the hidebound reactionaries who are Abbott's base. Preparing Liberals for change can actually make change harder to achieve, and has the effect where changes are made without reference to ordinary party members, which alienates them further, etc.

Tony Abbott has to wonder just how badly he wants to be Prime Minister. He was always going to have to soften the edges of the modern Liberal Party to appeal to voters who are alienated from Rudd, but skeptical of Abbott and for whom the 2007 election was not a clerical error but a determination to be rid of Howard. Policies like parental leave aren't game-changers, they so lack credibility that they erode the credibility of Abbott himself. Abbott's base hates Malcolm Fraser. They hate greenies and carbon-climate-blah-blah-blah. They don't have the devotion to Israel that the American right does (with its large base of Christian fundamentalists and Jews), so Julie Bishop looks more like a goose in defending Israel (and trashing Australia's passport system) than some champion of the Holy Land. They have their man in place and they won't tolerate any backsliding on his part.

Abbott's base believe that the solution to the success of the unions in opposing WorkChoices is to bring back WorkChoices, under the assumption that the unions can't be bothered opposing it again (or something). They are totally ready to sacrifice anyone who stands in the way of that assumption, including Tony Abbott.

There's only so much he can get out of old faves like the announcement on boat people. "We need to stop the boats", he said. It isn't a national policy imperative as overstayers are a worse problem. No, the "we" is Abbott and Morrison themselves, the scaremongers battling relevance-deprivation syndrome.

It was true that Abbott has rattled Rudd. Another appearance like his press club "debate" on health, another random good poll, and Rudd will rally. More to the point, the Labor front bench is not ready to die in a ditch wringing their hands like Howard's cabinet did this time three years ago, where they agreed the leader was preventing them from winning but couldn't bring themselves to move against him. Already, Gillard and Swan and Tanner and other ministers are using their experience and status in office, standing up on policy in a way that exposes the Coalition as unready (show me someone who's been savaged by Stephen Smith and I'll show you someone unfit to be Deputy Leader of anything). Labor isn't ready to leave office and the Coalition aren't ready to take it. Rudd will win despite himself and Abbott will lose because of himself.

This leaves Tony Abbott selling himself down the river on a hopeless mission and unable to come back once the inevitable defeat occurs - defeat electorally, defeat within the Liberal Party, and defeat psychologically. I wonder how many of Abbott's base, not strong people united in common cause but patsies waiting to be mugged and let down, will be there for Abbott once he confronts the unravelling of what he might call his integrity, others his superego. Maybe his family will be there for him, maybe a priest or two, and perhaps one or two faithful retainers, but no more.

With that will come the collapse of the whole Howard restoration idea - what will happen then is a matter for the Liberal Party, and those who claim they support Tony Abbott will be torn between their party and its current leader, who is on a hiding-to-nothing politically and personally. It won't be pretty and it can't be avoided.

Update 30 May: Stories like this and this, revealing Abbott as a flake, are long overdue. It's good that they haven't waited until after the election but they could've exposed him during his time as shadow minister for families families and dilettantes.

Entitled to your opinion

When it lost the 1983 election, the Liberal Party made a unseemly rush to distance itself from Malcolm Fraser. Moderates thought he'd gone too far; right-whingers thought he didn't go far enough. By the early 1990s those Liberals who thought Malcolm Fraser went too far were pretty much gone. Andrew Peacock and Ian Macphee fell as chaff before the Kroger putsch, replicated in NSW by Bronwyn Bishop. The right whinge pretty much had the Howard government to themselves, with the only signs of moderate liberal life were confined to one issue (refugees) and to a small bunch of members who were then in their sixties, and whose careers must surely end soon (where they haven't already) in the pursuit of that party's renewal. But that was many years ago, and we've all moved on since then.

There has been some generational change but not by people who will or can disrupt the right-whinge status quo. There isn't a critical mass of such people and nor will there be, because no reserve of moderate preselectors exists within the Liberal Party and no deep pools of liberal candidates exist to draw upon. They can't effect any change because there is no evidence they have thought about the challenges confronting Australia and what liberal measures might be brought to bear on these. Moderate liberals tend to be trainee lobbyists rather than fully engaged with the policy process, which makes them little different from right-whingers really; only those right-whingers unsuitable for a lobbying career, mostly fanatics, tend to be fully engaged with public policy as such.

Much of this has been said before, particularly in The Australian, and it is a testament to Samantha Maiden that she can make old news seem relevant. That ad where Iraqis invade Perth and Indonesians sail up the Normanton River really is a crock and I hope it represents a low point for the Liberals, from which the only way forward must be up: but something tells me it's going to get worse before it gets better for them.

What really incensed me was the mendacious, self-regarding and self-negating piffle gainsaying Fraser toward the end:

Mr Fraser, the prime minister from 1975 to 1983 said today that the party was no longer a liberal party but a conservative party.

In response, Liberal frontbencher Chris Pyne said Mr Fraser “was entitled to his view, but I think he’s wrong,".

Malcolm Fraser is entitled to his view. Not because of any inherent human right or Australia's long history of freedom of speech, not even because of a lifetime of achievement: he has to wait until Chris Pyne condescends to grant him an entitlement. I wish we lived in a country where you could have a view regardless of whether Chris Pyne would condescend to you in this manner, but Pyne has to be good for something.

Insofar as it matters, on what grounds does Pyne think Fraser is wrong?

“The Liberal Party is as much a party of both liberal and conservative traditions, as it has ever been. It contains in it a number of very prominent ‘small’ ['l'] liberals such as Malcolm Turnbull and George Brandis and others, and they are in senior roles," he said.

The Liberal Party has not been a party of both liberal and conservative traditions for a decade at least. The idea that there is any sort of equivalence between liberals and conservatives within the Liberal Party, as there was during and before Fraser's time, is bullshit. Pyne's exclusion from the Howard ministry for many years was one small element of proof of that; there are plenty of others, but chances are the only way one can explain anything to Chris Pyne is to make direct reference to Chris Pyne. You could never accuse Chris Pyne of doing anything to encourage moderate liberals to become active in the Liberal Party.

The Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party contains almost no moderate liberals to speak of, and those that are there have scant records of tangible achievement in promoting moderate liberal policy. True, Turnbull does; but he is a backbencher, occupying not a senior role but a very junior one, where any utterance he makes at odds with party policy is quickly disowned by the party leadership in word and deed. Brandis has no record to speak of: a couple of sound speeches perhaps, but still less than Fraser's output since 1983, and even less than Fraser's output as a backbencher. Brandis' position as a moderate is similar to those of Pyne, or Robert Hill: adopt an appearance of bemusement with maybe a few quips now and then, but when the right-whinge attack dogs come at you the only thing to do (apparently) is flinch, back down, and negotiate a few meaningless little perks to keep quiet. Nick Minchin established the pattern under wich moderates operate within the Liberal Party - crush them, and only then throw them meaningless concessions to shut them up - and now two generations of liberal moderates are confined within that nutshell and command the 'infinite space' allowed to liberal moderates. You don't get to have lunch with Glenn Milne if you're a moderate, he didn't get where he is today by lunching with losers. Brandis has only got to be Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate (you can see why Chris Pyne is so impressed, can't you) by stopping all that moderate liberal nonsense once and for all.

Why would Maiden quote Pyne anyway? The journosphere perceive Pyne as some sort of leader of moderate liberals, whereas a greater perspective would show that to have Chris Pyne in such a position is a nonsense of itself. Here is an article that is not unsympathetic to Pyne but is all the more damning for highlighting his inability to think about policy, to imagine some aspect of Australian life greater than himself and to develop liberal policies addressing people's needs in that area.

Opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb said: “Malcolm, for whatever reason, has been uncomfortable with lots of our positions for 20 years, 25 years."

“I don’t know what’s going through his head. We’ve become used to Malcolm disagreeing with our positions on many issues for nearly a quarter of a century," he said.

That would be the same quarter-century in which the liberal and conservative traditions have been out of alignment: well done in negating Pyne, Andrew Robb, but no credit for drawing attention to yourself with a comment like “I don’t know what’s going through his head". Fraser has given long and lucid explanations of why he believes as he does, and I can't believe you haven't examined those in detail. If you still don't know what's going through the head of a voluble public figure then what does that say about your own?

Funniest yet, though, is this: Abbott tells Libs what? As if Abbott is some post-Howard leader. As if he is going to address the liberal-conservative imbalance, with his mealy-mouthed praise of Malcolm Fraser and his great big taxes. He's entitled to his opinion, he's even entitled to kid himself as Chris Pyne is; but he's not entitled to think that he can be believed that their party has the balance required to govern the nation.

Who is he?

He replaced his party's long-suffering dauphin as leader, in a party-room ballot nobody expected him to win, and became Prime Minister. His gesture toward Aborigines was a mile wide and an inch deep, but its heart was in the right place: it extended the fair go, a respect for the humanity of a marginalised people, a recognition that they have a better of a place in the life of the nation than we often recognise. He tapped into public goodwill at a time of intractable war, a mining boom, high immigration, and an opposition with more vigour than well-thought-out policy ... but his own policy development left much to be desired. Too much responsibility was placed on his own office, on young staff thrust into senior roles. At one point, all the Premiers were from his side of politics.

(I was referring to John Gorton, who did you think I was referring to?)

The analogy falls flat with Gorton's carefree spirit versus Rudd's buttoned-down uxoriousness - and the Opposition, though. A vote for Abbott is a vote against 2007, in which Howard and the Coalition were so tired they could not get out of their own way. In 2010, The Coalition are like dogs chasing a car: full of sound and fury but are they seriously going to jump in the driver's seat and seize the controls? They need to have more of a clue than "now, where were we?", and they just don't. I wanted these right wing losers thrashed and thrashed and trashed again until they began to look as inadequate as they are. I wanted them to be so exposed that even the timorous moderates might have some heart.

It's stupid that Labor are content to give a head start to such poor opposition. They're not doing them slowly, they're not doing them at all. I thought Labor was a broad-based party. And if it was such a broad-based party, and if a leader could choose any of its Orders* to gather around him, why would he choose the hapless NSW Right?

In Gorton's day, the DLP took middle-aged moderate votes from Labor and channelled them to the Coalition via preferences. Today, it is the Greens who are taking disappointed younger voters who might have been moderates if only, if only there was something to show for eleven fucking years of Liberal-in-name-only government and funnelling their preferences to Labor. It's a funny old world.

* The freudenbergism of equating Labor wrigglings with religious activity is deliberate. While Freudenberg sought to portray Labor as divinely inspired, it's more accurate to compare modern Labor to the flatulent and complacent bunch of reactionaries who run both the Anglican and Catholic churches in Australia.

Down but not out

I'm pleased that Malcolm Turnbull is staying in politics. Not giddy, but pleased (is that the reverse of "alert but not alarmed"?). Nobody else has the ability to eclipse Howard's legacy in the Liberal Party as completely as he did to Malcolm Fraser's.

I had to laugh at the idea of Abbott holding out on Turnbull's return to the frontbench while he supports an ETS. Firstly, Joyce crossed the floor 29 times and got Finance handed to him. Secondly, where does a bear sleep? Anywhere it wants to, anywhere it wants. Abbott is the Ghost of Liberal Governments Past and will be cut down once the Liberal Party finally moves on from Howard.

What would a Turnbull Second Coming look like? Christopher Joye has some thoughts and he's known Turnbull all his life. Let's look at Joye's opinions from a position of sheer ignorance and see if they stand up:

• Decision-making - Joye's right, and j'accuse Minchin and Abetz in particular. He can only build that reputation for effective decision-making after a long march through the branches, getting the parliamentary party he needs rather than the fag end of Howard's lot. If people owe their position to Turnbull they are more likely to trust his judgment. Whether or not he can remake the Liberal Party in his image is the operative question.


• Assimilation - Turnbull lost votes by the truckload when he came over all smarmy. The reason why he could not position the Liberals as an alternative government is that he had a policy-lazy frontbench, which put too much responsibility on the rapid-fire pronouncements coming out of his own office.


• Risk-taking - Here Joye is spot on. "The visionary Malcolm Turnbull as policy-making maven is by far your best lever. You are never going to progress on the basis of a jocular, man-in-the-street appeal like Joe Hockey. When all is said and done, your interneuronal connections still remain your most effective calling card. The risk, of course, is that you once again fail. So be it. That is life. Risk-taking is the single most important explanation for success."

Before he can go on his long march though, Turnbull needs to keep breathing and registering a pulse. Today, he's lifted himself off the slab. You can be "thrilled" or not, but Turnbull's back - let's just hope Minchin doesn't reverse his decision.

Appeasement

As soon as David Clarke threw a tantrum at the prospect of not getting preselected again, the NSW Liberals should have called his bluff and dumped the ungrateful little bastard straight away. He has contributed much less to the State and the Liberal Party than acknowledged wasters like Jeremy Kinross or Terry Griffiths.

The moderates, led by Michael Photios for old time's sake, have shown their strategic and intellectual poverty by cutting a deal with that toothless old devil. This was their chance to render him roadkill on the path to victory, and to ensure that no trace of his appalling ideas - special breaks for weird and oppressive religious cults, and culture wars all the time instead of sound policy - ever made it into government. Their candidates are strong enough to beat off the creatures Clarke would have sooled upon them, and to contend otherwise is sheer bluff.

The Liberals cringed before Clarke, and they will pay a high price. No mad lefties remain in the ALP's parliamentary ranks to make a case for moral equivalence. Any agreement Clarke made to secure this preselection will be broken whenever he feels like it, whatever the consequences: Clarke repels ten votes for every one he attracts. He doesn't understand government, or the society which is being governed, which is why he throws the switch to culture war whenever he feels neglected. It was stupid politics for those controlling blocks of votes to chain themselves to his carcass. Clarke is 66 and will be 73 by the time this upper house term is up. David Elliott, by contrast, is not yet 40, and by the time this term is up he could have been a minister.

By voting for the status quo against the hope for change - and even the most committed Clarke fans have trouble painting Elliott as some sort of radical - the moderates have underlined the stupidity and poverty of conserving their party's status quo against the hope for change. The generation that tried to purge the NSW Liberals of the Ustasha feared that they would come to be seen as part of the Liberal furniture: thus the reason why a once-in-a-generation opportunity to get rid of them has again gone begging.

If the loss of Clarke had meant a setback for the current generation of moderates, this need not have been a bad thing. The moderates have never had so little clue about what to do, nor so little support, in the face of such poor opposition, as they have now (how did Howard become any sort of rival to Menzies? Why is Abbott the titular federal leader, and Minchin the actual one? Clarke's survival underlines moderate failure rather than negating it). They could at least have gotten back on Clarke for what he did to Brogden, Forsythe and Ryan (a couldabeen Premier and two future frontbenchers): but Photios has always been about "looking forward", which in this case means maintaining the status quo. The position they are now in, where any attack on David Clarke is an attack on moderate liberals, is truly absurd. Their fate is to be used as Clarke's human shields because they have neither the sense nor the skill to do anything else.

Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal leader

I had high hopes for Malcolm Turnbull as a circuit-breaker for the Liberal Party, the only leader capable of getting the party over and past John Howard. I still think his spinelessness over Grech shows that he's no leader. That's been confirmed by a number of recent articles that illustrate the gap between his political capabilities and the hopes that others have for him.

First, there's the issue of policy. It's true that an issue like foreign policy rarely resonates with voters, much less swings votes; yet credibility in foreign policy is key to being regarded as a serious alternative government by the broadsheet media. The idea that a party can have a contradictory or badly thoughout out foreign policy, while pretending to business that they have a sensible and serious trade policy is a trap for all Federal Oppositions. Howard learned this when his dog-whistling on Asian immigration saw corporate Australia distance themselves from him to protect their trading capacity. Labor learned this when dithering by Beazley and Crean, and outright stupidity by Latham, shot their credibility with the US (and hence trade, etc.).

Sean Carney said as much in The Age about foreign policy, and Julie Bishop's poor prosecution of it in particular. The problem here is that Turnbull's office has not taken charge of policy, set the broad outlines and let the team get on with it (not only the shadow, but any Opposition frontbencher who has a microphone stuck under their nose, so that they are putting out a message that is not only consistent but coherent). Turnbull's chief of staff spent a decade in Downer's office: doing what? The Liberals have no excuse for making such a dog's breakfast of this area. Chris Kenny, you're a numbskull.

Second, there's teamwork. Here's Christian Kerr going after Julie Bishop, and fair enough; but where were the supposed master tacticians of the Opposition? Where was Pyne as leader of Opposition Business? Where was the pretender, Abbott (Andrew Peacock with a broken nose)? Where were Hockey and Tony Costello Smith? Even Sophie Mirabella or Bronwyn Bishop in their pomp would have fastened their teeth around Tanner's ankles.

Tanner is an old-school leftie who has had the old-school leftie economics beaten out of him. The whole secrecy thing of government planning must go against all his instincts, covering up for the coppers I ask you! His slip as described by Kerr was clearly an accident, one that a coherent Opposition should have turned into an ashes-and-sackcloth moment for the boy from Brunswick. It would have given the Opposition fresh encouragement, and enabled them to rally against Tuckey and his wasters, the only Liberal in Parliament who has spent more time in Opposition than government.

Third, there's people. Turnbull's roots in the Liberal Party are fairly thin and predicated on his ability to shake down donations into Liberal coffers. He has no ability, and probably no willingness, to engage in internecine warfare to get rid of people who stand between him and the Prime Ministership: this is a mistake made by all political newbies, Hewson thought he was above it all too.

I've commented previously on the appalling duds in the Liberal Parliamentary party, and Turnbull should have enough momentum to attract the sort of person who could not only replace them but make more of a contribution to community and country than said duds. Turnbull would just look mean if he replaced one numpty with another. That's why this article is misplaced.

True, Turnbull needs to cultivate pro-environment Liberals like Whitlam did post-communist Labor people. True, Turnbull is clever and arrogant like Whitlam was. True, our friend Dyrenfurth set up a thicket of Nazi metaphors and took two paragraphs to get over it (two pointless paragraphs - that article could have started "Some Liberals are ..." without any loss). The fact is that anti-ETS Liberals have placed themselves on the wrong side of history, and that the carbon lobby won't be nearly as generous with the funding and support as they might wish. Turnbull can win any number of debates with them on that issue - what he can't do is put real political pressure on them. He can't make the case that it's his way or the highway out of Canberra.

You can't make a statement like this ...

It is increasingly clear that Turnbull will never become prime minister.

... and then suggest ways that he might become Prime Minister.

There are too many Liberal MPs with no future at all who'd fancy their chances of sticking around long after Turnbull has gone, too many who are quite capable of holding their own and bloodying Turnbull's nose if he moved onto their turf. They might be policy idiots, but they're not politically dumb: Turnbull would need Hausmann-style firepower to reshape the Liberal Party in his own image, and he just doesn't have it.

Turnbull is, in fact, capable of setting the Liberals on the path to recovery by driving a root and branch reform of the party, perhaps neutering the hardline right-wing elements who are increasingly making the party electorally unattractive.

No, Nick, it's not a fact and he doesn't. It was the far right who got him up at his preselection in 2003. If Turnbull wanted to stamp his authority on the NSW Liberal Party he'd have David Clark's severed head on a pikestaff outside his office in Bondi Junction by now. He'd be helping Barry O'Farrell shop for ministers (taking the better ones for himself and leaving Barry with the discards, of course), and would be doing something similar in other states. In Victoria, all those Costello nuf-nufs like Mitch Fifield and Tony Costello Smith should be under the gun from pro-Turnbull challengers. The WA MPs who walked out should have been lynched by Turnbull fanatics. Eric Abetz should have been sent back to Hobart in a box on the back of a ute and replaced by someone who's Mad For Mal. Just not happening I'm afraid.

John Howard did this: he had cultivated people like Nick Minchin and Tony Abbott for decades, and when Howard called they stepped up for him. That's why the Liberal Party is still, despite everything, the John Howard Party; you show me a non-Howard Liberal and I'll show you someone who's kidding themselves. There is simply not a critical mass of Turnbull Liberals, and I doubt there will ever be. The hand that mocked them is there, the heart that fed is not.

As a political scientist, Peter van Onselen is focused on process and it is touching how readily he believes those who background him, especially where such views provide some support for his own.

Preselections are what usher talent into the parliament, and that talent decides on each and every policy position the conservative side will take in the decades ahead.

No, Peter, it doesn't. Decisions are often not put to the party room (what you call "talent") until after it has been decided. On the rare occasions that the Liberal Party debates, let alone overturns, policy positions by the leadership - this is done retroactively, and usually outside the party room (e.g. mandatory detention).

After all, history tells us the Coalition is at its most fractious while in opposition.

After all, opposition parties are always fractious. Labor was pretty damn fractious in opposition, and when it goes into opposition again it will be fractious again. Some of us are looking forward to the NSW ALP going into opposition and the multitude of told-ya-so raining down like rocks in an avalanche.

This week the NSW Liberal Party state executive voted to give itself the power to overturn local preselections and install an alternative candidate instead, but only in exceptional circumstances. Who or what determines what meets the test of "exceptional circumstances"? Why, the state executive of course. Not too many checks and balances there.

This move has come about because the Right of the Liberal Party in NSW has split ... the newly aligned soft Right and moderate Centre of the Liberal Party, known as the New Group, are concerned about the preselection havoc the hard Right could exercise in some electorates ahead of the next state election.

Not "could exercise" Peter, has exercised and will continue to exercise unless those particular boils are lanced for the overall health of the body politic. There were checks and there were balances, but all that happened was that Labor checkmated the Liberals.

You may think I've done van Onselen a disservice with that ellipsis in the quote above:

I wrote about this months ago and in the subsequent weeks was informed by some of the main players that I was wrong. Now the media is widely reporting the split and even the main players aren't denying it when questioned by journalists.

Look out Glenn Milne, Pete da playa is after you!

But NSW is just one state with one set of examples.

No, NSW is the nation's largest state, with more seats in the House of Representatives than other states, more marginals to win, and the state with the best prospect of a majority state government.

In Western Australia the recently deposed federal member for Tangney, Dennis Jensen, lost his preselection to a relative unknown, Glen Piggott ... Each time a local electoral conference throws up a candidate with limited credentials, senior Liberals wonder what they can do to address the talent slide.

Jensen is best known for being a climate change moron - could Piggott really be any worse? If I was a political scientist (particularly if I was championing local grassroots membership) I'd question the assumption that state/federal head office represent quality candidates while local branches are self-interested fiefdoms. Not saying he's wrong - just questioning the assumption.

Yet it is in the Victorian division that the party is becoming more grassroots oriented in its preselection approach, giving all party members an equal input at the preselection level. The hope is that this will encourage membership and ensure the small fiefdoms that traditionally develop in the Liberal Party will no longer be able to control preselection contests.

How realistic is that hope, Peter? Discuss, using examples. What you'll end up with is situations like this (you'll need to be a Crikey subscriber), where everyone's against duds in principle but nobody can bear to confront them in particular, like our man Murray T. At least factions could be relied upon to shake him up to the point where a "third man" comes through.

Another irony about Victoria reforming its approach to give members a greater say in preselections is that the state director is former Howard right-hand man and chief of staff Tony Nutt. As Howard's enforcer he was focused on ensuring the central wing of the party got what it wanted to maximise electoral prospects; that was his job.

But now that he is state director in Victoria he is overseeing a revival of the party's grassroots membership. He wants the party's decline in membership to be arrested and even reversed. It shows that Nutt knows what needs to be done and when.

Rubbish. What it shows is that Nutt is the cat and that Victorian Liberals are so many mice, who will preselect a slew of duds for state parliament and be utterly bereft federally without Costello. By the start of 2011 Nutt will then centralise power and nominate candidates who'll do what he tells them. That's how it works, Peter, and more importantly that's how people like Nutt work. He's playing the long game. The very idea that Tony Nutt is a born-again new-age democrat is laughable.

Which brings us back to the Nationals. They have been in decline for many years as their membership has faded away and their parliamentary representation has been eroded. Something had to be done and in NSW state leader Andrew Stoner took the bold step of endorsing a primaries system for one key seat at the next election.

Ah yes, the old syllogism:

1. We must do something.


2. This is something.


3. Let's do this.

Who'll vote in these primaries? Will a primary-vote winner owe anything to the party organisation whose primary he/she has won? If I were a political scientist I'd investigate questions like these, but if I was a playa I'd just recite the press release and leave it there.

Malcolm Turnbull has no ability to remake the Liberal Party in his image, he has no ability to set an agenda for it and no ability to make people fulfil his agenda or get out of politics. He won't be Prime Minister. Yes, I'm sorry too, but there you go.