Hockey's entitlement

For some reason this old post has been getting a lot of traffic this week (more rubbish predictions on my part, but I was right about Joe), timely I suppose in light of this.

What Hockey is doing in London is seeing what a successful conservative government looks like. This has become standard practice for Australian political parties, and is separate from the government-to-government relationships of statecraft:

• The Liberals have done this since the early 1950s, when they saw Rosser Reeves' advertising techniques applied to Eisenhower's Republicans.
• Labor did not do this until the late 1960s, when Whitlam encouraged party officials to learn from the US Democrats and UK Labour.
• As Opposition Leader in the 1980s Howard sought and received lectures from Thatcher, but on going to Washington did not receive the same face-time from Reagan; instead, he learned how to make conservative culture-war and creating the appearance of economic rationalism as increased opportunity from the backroom boys who had taken Reagan from a perception as a lightweight and an extremist all the way to the White House. By the time of Bush II these acquaintances had become unbreakable bonds.
• Kim Beazley swapped notes with Tony Blair, to the mutual edification of neither man.

Since 2007 backroom boys have maintained their links with US counterparts but politicians have stayed away from Washington for fear of catching loser-germs. Before then, as a Howard government minister, Abbott visited Washington where he struck a rapport with Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, a high-profile conservative Catholic. Abbott cannot failed to have seen how Santorum did unexpectedly well before losing to the US equivalent of Malcolm Turnbull, who is widely held to be doomed in his contest with Obama this November. The fact that US conservatives are so disconnected from government is the reason why Australian conservatives can do the crocodile-tears routine over Afghanistan.

Abbott went to London in 2010 to attend a Conservative conference, where he famously declined the opportunity to visit Afghanistan. Less well reported here was his encounter with UK conservatives over climate change. There are two propositions with climate change: a) that global temperatures have increased and b) that this has been caused by human activity. US conservatives, from whom Australian Liberals have learned most, accept neither proposition (someone like Monckton is closer to the US than his fellow Poms in that regard). UK conservatives have to accept a), because the case has been made more conclusively by scientists and the non-Murdoch media to the point where denialism is not appropriate for mainstream parties of government; they quibble over b), but they are still well ahead of US conservatives in that regard (and hence of Australians). Abbott looked like a goose when he turned up bagging the very idea of global warming, and was firmly put in his place by leading UK conservatives.

Abbott has learned about as much as he can from conservatives in the US and UK. Hockey, however, has further to go. Like Abbott he is staying away from the madness in the US. Unlike Abbott he does not regard the UK experience as so strange that nothing useful can be learned from it.

The UK Conservatives had the classic problem of an exhausted party: nobody wanted Thatcherite hectoring nor Majorite dithering, but their supporters of whatever degree of commitment never wanted them to completely abandon everything they stood for either. After years of lurching this way and that, David Cameron found a way to represent Conservatives as having kept up with and pulled ahead of Blair while still remaining true to what we might call the essentials of their brand recognition. That eludes the Liberals at the moment, and if I was a senior Liberal I'd want to see it up close too.

Part of what Cameron does in linking back to Thatcher, and further back into the myths of UK history, is that rhetoric about self-reliance, pulling your socks up, getting to work and not complaining, etc. Hockey can and does use the same rhetoric to hark back to Australian conservatives past, too. In Hockey's case, it helps him reach beyond his moderate base and show conservatives that he's not some wet hand-wringer who might go soft under pressure.

From a purely tactical point of view, you can see why one or two Labor people want to interpret Hockey's speech as foreshadowing cuts to health and welfare. It's interesting that any appeal to economic rationalism must mean a reduction in those things: not to incentives given to other industries that can't seem to make a go of all those stated aims of employment and innovation, but which keep getting the largesse anyway. It was a bad look to question welfare so soon after describing his own income as "meagre", and had his relationship with he press gallery not been as good as it is they'd have gone him over it.

As Treasurer for his side Hockey has to be the bastard who says no to politically appealing but economically costly ideas. In doing so he needs a higher framework to appeal to, he just can't say no, no, no like Abbott does. That's why Hockey can stand against donations to the vehicle industry. Another reason why he can do so is his understanding of Australian business, which is probably the best of any current member of Federal Parliament.

Hockey is the man to question the assumption that the car industry is somehow politically vital. The 1981 Lynch Plan did little to save the Fraser government, and the much-vaunted Button car plan of 1985 did little to keep Labor in office. Yet, he did not prevail amongst his colleagues with his views: not with his economic rationality, nor with the accumulated favours and personal goodwill with which he is regarded, nor for having spent a decade in various ministerial roles regulating business in one form or another. His tackling of then-AMP chairman Ian Burgess, a lion of the Sydney business community and close to Howard, showed both his courage and his grasp of his facts to take on someone like Burgess. If there is a way to wean the vehicle industry off the public teat - using many of the same arguments you'd use against welfare to single mums and/or Aborigines - Hockey is the one to find it.

In one sense it is surprising that Hockey has not become the darling of libertarians. His record in this area is stronger than any Australian politician since Bert Kelly, who was never a minister. Hockey's record in cutting red tape and spending is stronger than Howard's; when Howard voted against the Lynch car plan in the Fraser Cabinet in 1981, he was hailed as a saviour and messiah by the economic rationalists and libertarians of the day. They gave him a free pass and continue to do so: despite Labor delivering lower tax-to-GDP ratios and more than matching the Coalition for deregulation and privatisations, the IPA cleaves to the party of Howard over that of Hawke, Keating and Swan. This is partly because Labor has its own quasi-intelligentsia and the IPA would find itself one voice among many in Labor ranks; given the state of the Coalition parties today the IPA is pretty much the nearest thing they have to a brains trust. In the land of the blind the one-eyed men have a singularity of focus that the binocular cannot match.

Like the libertarians though, the fact is that Hockey cannot carry the day among his colleagues. Just because he could cut corporate welfare doesn't mean he will, even if he had the chance. What that means is that when he says something, it can't be interpreted as likely Liberal policy despite his seniority and his supposed responsibility for Coalition economic policy. Soon after Hockey's speech and Lateline appearance, Arthur Sinodinos was hosing it down. Andrew Robb has the same problem, but is more constrained politically than Hockey; Robb might have a clearer macroeconomic perspective but Hockey has a base in the party that Robb lacks. Turnbull also lacks a powerbase but the mix of knowledge, courage and perspective he offers provides a depth that Hockey and Robb both lack, particularly in providing something on which to develop a post-Howard legacy.

The efforts of Turnbull, Hockey and Robb in meeting with people and throwing ideas around (not something other shadow ministers do), and the resulting backlash among "senior Coalition sources" means that the Coalition aren't clear about what ideas they want to take to government, or indeed why they should replace the incumbents. Abbott can't reconcile strong ideas; the pointlessness of favourable media coverage is shown here, where Samantha Maiden tried to make Abbott look like a victim of circumstances but only makes him look like a weak leader. I don't care what the polls say; this will come back to bite them when people are seriously considering who to actually vote for, as opposed to the idle chatter with which they engage pollsters.

That was Michelle Grattan's message in this article I linked to already; she likes it when each party sings from the same songsheet, and frowns upon one member of one party saying one thing while another says something different. Conveying debate and nuance isn't her thing, she wants to tell us that everything in Canberra is in its proper place and don't you worry about a thing; but when people speak out of turn, or do things like issuing press releases after 4pm on Fridays, then dear oh dear it makes life difficult and don't you know how we run things around here? Never mind the implications of those debates for readers and the citizenry at large, provided pro-forma appearances in Canberra are as neat as a pin and all the protocols are observed, then the nation cannot be anything but in tip-top shape.

Hockey protests that his speech was intended for a European audience, but why would they wish to hear from him? He voted against the measures that gave Australia its world-best economy, and in government backed policies that gave away windfall gains so that they would fuel a bubble rather than build infrastructure and social investments. For Australians, his speech is a nostalgia act for a lucky government rather than an action plan for a responsible one. Given recent bipartisan noises over the inadequacy of unemployment benefits, Liberal policies like the Great Big New Paid Parental Leave Tax, and certain political and economic realities pointed out by Peter Brent, you have to be sure that Hockey's tough talk is sheer wind, and given his failure at winning over his current set of colleagues it will not translate into policy any time soon.

There is one aspect of the speech, though, that Hockey probably didn't think about too much before launching into it:

I wish to thank my friends at the Institute of Economic Affairs for the opportunity to discuss an issue that has been the source of much debate in this forum for sometime - that is, the end of an era of popular universal entitlement ... It is ironic that the entitlement system seems to be most obvious and prevalent in some of the most democratic societies. Most undemocratic nations are simply unable to afford the largesse of universal entitlement systems ... Let me put it to you this way: The Age of Entitlement is over.

This echoes Bill Clinton's insistence of fifteen years ago about the end of big government, but doesn't add to it or explain what's gone on in the meantime. Again, more wind on Hockey's part, but in the European context - and specifically the UK context - this statement reveals just another politician hungering for a perception of boldness over good sense.

It's not "ironic" (except, perhaps, in a Morrisettian sense) that entitlements developed in prosperous democracies. This arose as a direct experience from the Second World War. Wars have always been about blood, soil and honour: defending our families and ways of life from the Dreaded Foreigner. Hitler and Mussolini pretty much illustrated where that line of thinking goes. The whole idea of creating entitlements was to provide citizens a stake in the state that did not involve xenophobia, or land ownership (in the mid-twentieth century land was not the guarantor of wealth and status that it had been), or the sort of political power that threatened those who had it antebellum: there isn't much clout in being a mendicant, and people like Orwell and Hayek were clear about how disempowering welfare could be. By declaring an end to entitlements, and to any debate over same, Hockey doesn't offer any sustainable vision of what should take its place as far as a stake in the nation-state is concerned.

Hockey's talk about families taking back responsibility in caring for children and the elderly (and, one might add, the disabled) is galling in an age where costs of care are rising faster than incomes, and people's increasingly insecure work hours do not allow for time to provide that care; there needs to be a way for government to support people in providing that care that doesn't break the economy. He cites Asian countries as models for what he proposes, countries where citizens regard their governments as capricious and disengaged from their interests to an extent that would appall common-law countries like the UK and Australia. If Hockey can't find it - worse, if he isn't looking for it - then he's just another windbag offering non-solutions, not to Australian voters or Institutionalised Poms or anyone else really.

That speech will help Hockey reach out to people within the Liberal Party who wouldn't otherwise support him. It is a shallow and ignorant speech in many regards, the kind that might go over well to a well fed and watered foreign audience but which is of no help to the sober people who'd have to get up the following day and make it work. It might be the sort of thing that Barton or Menzies may have made to appreciative London audiences earlier in their careers, which weren't transcribed but described glowingly nonetheless. It should be regarded as intellectual mulch from which a future Coalition government may yet reap, not any sort of directions statement in itself.

When Abbott goes down the current front bench is going to look pretty stupid for going along with whatever he wanted; only Hockey, Turnbull and Robb have given any indication about what the Liberal Party might do eighteen months from now, win or lose. Hockey has set out his position but not how he will bring people with him, inside the Liberal Party or out, which is why this is so much journosphere nonsense. Complaints that those men do not toe the line only shows how poor is the process of setting that line, and therefore how inadequate is all that Malcolm Tucker bollocks about enforcing a common line, however stupid or misplaced.

Hockey likes the idea of having ideas; see how he basked in the aftermath of his most recent speech and his previous efforts on corporate law reform. There are payoffs in having a perception as an economically rationalist thinker, as Howard showed. However, Hockey should rightly be concerned that his ideas might make life harder for him than it is already - unless he gets a drastically different set of colleagues.

The National Pikers' Club

Mirrors on the ceiling
The pink champagne on ice
And she said "We are all just prisoners here, of our own device"
And in the master's chambers
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives
But they just can't kill the beast

- Eagles Hotel California

Tony Abbott made a speech at the National Press Club yesterday.

The more gullible members of the journosphere claimed yesterday morning that this would be the speech where Abbott went positive rather than just gainsaying Gillard. They had no basis for reporting that, as Abbott wouldn't have shown them the speech beforehand, so they made this claim on the basis of Liberal spin, which they passed on without thinking whether or not it might be true. Why would Tony Abbott want to "go positive", given his success as a nark? On what basis could he do so, given his record? This sort of scrutiny is what adds value in journalism; in today's reporting from the Canberra press gallery it is almost entirely absent.

Abbott has achieved what generations of politicians have only dreamed of: the media take him at his word. His speeches are reported verbatim and accorded a merit they do not deserve. Where his words differ from those of others (particularly the Prime Minister and members of the incumbent government), he is assumed to be right and they wrong. This veneration of Abbott by the press gallery (always "Mr Abbott" from the press gallery; he is rarely addressed as "Tony" while the Prime Minister is addressed regularly as "Julia") is unprecedented in a democracy. Stalin achieved this state of absolute credibility at some point in the 1930s; so too did Mao 20 or 30 years after that. It's unnatural, and in a country like Australia - not only a robust democracy but a place that prides itself on taking the piss - this uncritical approach to a politician is unheard of.

References to appalling dictators aside, the reason why the Australian media give Abbott the free pass that they do is not from any sinister intent, or even a consistent ideology. Abbott is the anti-Gillard. You can't make the case that Gillard is a hopeless cretin who should be chucked from office at the first opportunity if you believe that Abbott would be worse. So, they pretend that Abbott wouldn't be worse, and that when he says he loves his country and wants to help the unfortunate, such statements treated as though the unfortunate are being helped by his very words - if only that damned incumbent government would just rack off out of his way.

What follows is a very long post which takes Abbott's speech, and some of the media commentary that followed it, seriously. The speech shows up Abbott's weaknesses and why he can't lead an effective government (and reinforces my long-held view that the guy will never lead the Liberals to victory).

The headline of the speech is "My Plan for a Stronger Economy and a Stronger Australia". It's mostly a "greatest hits" of attack lines, combined with a wishlist about how he'd like his government to go if everything went as well as it possibly could all the time. There's no plan, only a dream.

It's nice that he wishes things were different and better, we all do. Abbott has only showed that he doesn't have what it takes to get our country to that better place. He's been Opposition Leader for more than two years now, head of a party with a long and proud record in government, and the best he and his people can come up with is a wishlist with a few punchlines embedded in it.

It is a testament to the stupidity of the Australian media that they regard it as a "fresh start", "promising", or other descriptions which belie a keening urge to believe in Abbott so long as he remains a potent threat to Gillard. Don't let me colour your perceptions though, heavens no. Here, read it:

The government often cites the fragile international economic situation but fails to propose any new policies to respond to it.

Nowhere in this speech are any new policies for the Coalition.

Labor’s economic strategy is to hope that China’s strength will keep our economy growing. It’s lazy, complacent economic management ...

It sure is, and it's the very economic policy that the Howard government pursued since about 2003. Those assumptions are baked into Abbott's assumptions too, as we'll see.

The Eurozone crisis is a terrible verdict on governments that spend too much, borrow too much and tax too much yet our prime minister is lecturing the Europeans while copying their failures.

You only say something like this if you know you're talking to mugs. Europe's in debt, Australia's in debt, therefore Australia must be down the economic toilet like Europe is (the UK is outside "the Eurozone" but it is still in economic trouble, far worse than Australia's). Only if you are sure that you'd get away with it would you even make such sloppy linkage.

At the heart of Labor’s failure is the assumption that bigger government and higher taxes are the answer to every problem.

That assumption doesn't support the fact that government is smaller as a share of GDP and the tax take is smaller in real terms than it was under Howard and Costello. It was true that Labor loved big-government solutions, but not in the past 30 years or so: strangely, toward the end of his speech Abbott cites Ben Chifley with approval, but never once mentioned Menzies or any other Liberal other than Howard.

Gambling is a problem so let’s force every club to redesign every poker machine.

The government has completely failed to appreciate the iron law of economics that no country has ever taxed its way to prosperity.

That's as dishonest a non-sequitur as anything we've seen from the gambling lobby, the government or anyone else. Measures to help gambling addicts are not taxes, they actually depress government revenue.

To anyone who thought Wilkie's proposals were flawed, and that Gillard's offhand sop to him was worse, note this speech: an Abbott government will do nothing to help gambling addicts. They don't see it as a public policy problem, and will therefore propose no public policy solutions. It's no good asserting that you feel great sympathy for gambling victims and their families, or throwing some money at counselling. There was a time when gambling reform was possible, the time has passed; and those who wanted change and were clear about what they wanted have to wonder whether they did as much as they could. Abbott wasn't obliged to go into detail about this issue in this particular speech, but he also wasn't obliged to be quite so naked about the sheer absence of any motivation to consider whether pokie addiction is a problem, let alone whether or not there are appropriate and cost-effective public policy responses open to a Coalition government.

The only foundation for a successful country is a strong economy. The only way to take the pressure off family budgets, to increase job opportunities, and to have the better services and infrastructure that every Australian wants is to build a stronger economy.

That’s why my plan for a stronger economy is to scrap unnecessary taxes, cut government spending and reduce the red tape burden on business.

This is the heart of the speech: a gobbet of banality. He doesn't understand, here or anywhere else in the speech, that in order to "have the better services and infrastructure that every Australian wants" is to increase taxes; conversely, that to reduce taxes means some of those services and infrastructure will have to wait. It's dishonest to pretend that you can have better services/infrastructure while cutting taxes.

Again, you can only get away with saying stuff like that if you know your audience are credulous mugs.

My plan to reduce the cost of living pressures on families is to take the carbon tax off their power and transport and make government live within its means. That way, there can be lower taxes and less upward pressure on interest rates.

No: power and transport costs will increase anyway, and Australians will miss out on trade opportunities from international commercial action on climate change. Some plan.

Australians can be confident that the Liberal and National parties will provide good economic management in the future because that’s what we’ve always done in the past.

We’ve done it before and we will do it again. After all, 16 members of the current shadow cabinet were ministers in the Howard government which now looks like a lost golden age of reform and prosperity.

Australia was a stronger society because we had a stronger economy. Between 1996 and 2007, real wages increased more than 20 per cent, real household wealth per person more than doubled, and there were more than two million new jobs.

Not only were the latter achievements due to the "lazy" policy of relying on Chinese growth, but also on the crazy asset-and-debt manipulation which has reaped the whirlwind of the Great Recession/Global Financial Crisis. Only Liberals, aching for the perks of office, regard the Howard government as "a lost golden age of reform and prosperity"; it is flatly dishonest to imply, let alone state, that a Coalition government could or would Restore The Good Old Days.

Besides, Abbott has promised to abolish the carbon pricing mechanism before. Nowhere in this speech is a new initiative. He's also being sneaky in implying that such abolition won't impose costs on the economy (and yes, on household budgets) in the same way that interest on borrowings is a cost.

What Australia most needs now is a competent, trustworthy, adult government with achievable plans for a better economy and a stronger society.

Abbott and his crew can't offer that - neither absolutely, nor relative to the flawed Gillard government. Aspirational statements just don't count - not after two election losses, and two years as leader. There's the usual snark about whether Abbott can be described as "competent, trustworthy, adult" in himself, or that his team can be described as such - both in themselves and in comparison with the incumbents.

My vision for Australia is to restore hope, reward and opportunity by delivering lower taxes, better services, more opportunities for work and stronger borders.

The government I lead will do fewer things but do them better so that the Australian people, individually and in community, will be best placed to realise the visions that each of us has for a better life.

In the above quote, "vision" should be replaced with "wish". People will have their wishes but they can only be realised if we drop the pretense that Abbott can or will run a government that delivers better services and infrastructure (I'll get to his terrible cant about disabled people presently).

At the heart of our plan for a stronger economy is getting government spending down and productivity up so that borrowing reduces, the pressure on interest rates comes off, and taxes can responsibly come down ... Australians can have tax cuts without a carbon tax but only if we get government spending down by eliminating wasteful and unnecessary programmes and permanently reducing the size of government.

What Abbott is proposing is to return the tax base to what it was under Howard and Costello. That tax base was headed for a structural deficit over time, with an ageing population - and without skewing taxes toward economic growth areas and away from taxing small business and personal incomes. There's nothing strong about a structural deficit, quite the opposite in fact.

Abbott has no right to be believed that he would cut the size of government. Nowhere in his background is there even a single event, like Howard standing against car industry donations in 1981, in Abbott's background. Abbott is all about spending more money with less accountability over time. Small government fans have set their cap at the wrong man; he is not entitled to be taken at these words. Geoff Kitney does so in The Australian Financial Review today - it's a junior-reporter error and every greybeard who made it should be sacked at once.

... pink batts ... school halls ... Victorian brown coal power stations ... Telstra’s copper wires ... a National Broadband Network that people don’t need ... The last coalition government turned an inherited $10 billion budget black hole ...

Blah blah - he's happy to talk about infrastructure and stimulus in general but he decries it in the particular. He's decided that people don't need NBN, a quote that will haunt him throughout history and wreck any claims he may have to being a visionary, or understanding the serendipitous effect that infrastructure generally (and communications in particular) has on economic growth and development over time.

At the last election, the coalition identified $50 billion in responsible savings ...

No you didn't, and all the little mice who've been in the press gallery for two years or more should have called bullshit on that.

Finding savings is a big task but we’re up for it and will release all our costings in good time for the next election.

What patronising drivel - "in good time"! Abbott's costings are vague and sloppy at the best of times an they seem to have learned nothing from the last election, other than to blame the accountancy firm that gave the cover (if you're running a consultancy, and the Federal Opposition approaches you wanting some work done - run for your life!). He has no right to be taken on face value. Such assertions should simply be regarded as "uncosted" or "unsupported" until proven otherwise.

The starting point will be programmes that have become bywords for waste. Discontinuing the computers in schools programme, which parents are now having to pay for anyway, could save over half a billion dollars.

Why has it become "a byword for waste" and are there no benefits to investing in young people in this manner? None at all?

Not proceeding with the extra bureaucracies associated with hospital changes that no one will notice could save over half a billion dollars. Not proceeding with the so-called GP super clinics which are delivering new buildings not more doctors could save about $200 million.

Reversing bureaucratic changes is not cost-free. How much could be saved by not proceeding with a new layer of bureaucracy supporting local busybodies who can hold up efficient healthcare delivery without improving it? Oh wait, that's actually a Coalition proposal.

Big savings could be made in the government’s $350 a throw set top box programme since Gerry Harvey can supply and install them for half the price.

How much would you expect to pay, Tony? How much would you expect to pay? Harvey has been blindsided by e-commerce, what do you think he knows about set-top boxes? Are you seriously going to base public policy reform on an idle comment?

Vastly reducing the number of consultancies (which have cost over $2 billion over the past four years) would produce significant savings.

Sure - but then all oppositions say that, don't they. No consultancies would wan to work for the Coalition after their disgraceful treatment of Horwaths.

Not proceeding with the carbon tax would deliver $31 billion in savings over the forward estimates period with a net improvement of $4 billion in the budget bottom line. Not proceeding with the mining tax would deliver $14 billion in savings over the forward estimates period with a net improvement of $6 billion in the budget bottom line.

All of those figures are bullshit. This isn't my fault, I'm just pointing it out; and journalists should do so too.

There are many problems with the government’s so-called Fair Work Act: there’s a flexibility problem, a militancy problem but above all else a productivity problem which is hardly surprising when workplace negotiations are always meant to involve outside union bosses rather than the employees of a business.

A serious review of the Act would have been given to the Productivity Commission rather than to departmental officials even under the auspices of a distinguished committee.

That would be the same Productivity Commission that proposed mandatory limits on pokies, and the disability care scheme that will be axed (more on that below); you'd think that the Coalition would have done its own review and come up with a few ideas of its own, surely.

The coalition will save business $1 billion a year in red tape expenses by requiring each department and agency to quantify the costs of its regulations and to set targets to reduce them.

Garbage. What self-serving nonsense that would be on the bureaucrats' part, and hardly cost-free.

We’ll give people the chance to show what they can do – not what they can’t – by offering employers incentives to take on young people and seniors who might otherwise become trapped in the welfare system.

There will be tough love too. Why should fit young people be able to take the dole when unskilled work is readily available? Why should middle aged people with bad backs or a bout of mental illness be semi-permanently parked on the disability pension because it’s easier than helping them to experience once more the fulfilment of work?

Why haven't any of those half-arsed incentive schemes worked? Why would they work just because Abbott hopes they might?

We’re going to work with the states to make public hospitals and public schools more accountable to their communities with local boards and councils choosing leaders, employing staff and controlling budgets.

Nowhere is there any evidence that this will improve health an education outcomes: quite the opposite, especially when you consider just how skewed the board members will be if the US experience is any guide. The US provides a warning, not a model, for Australian health and education services, and this should receive greater scrutiny than it has.

And we’re going to deliver a fair-dinkum paid parental leave scheme, not the government’s re-badged baby bonus.

I want to change Australia for the better. That means change which reflects our best work and family values and our deepest instincts. That’s why paid parental leave is best understood as a conservative reform that makes it more achievable for women to have combine larger families with better careers, if that’s their choice.

That's the nearest there is to a tangible "plan"; it was announced already, and the funding model was bogus (a "special levy" rather than a Great Big New Tax That Will Be Passed Onto Us All).

As far as I’m concerned, there should never be first and second class Australians based on where they were born, how they worship, or the length of time their forbears have been here.

Fine words. The leaders who believed that sentiment, like Malcolm Fraser, jumped on splitters like Cor Bernardi with both feet when they attempted to play up community divisions. Next time a Liberal does this, watch for Abbott to do absolutely bugger-all or come out with some weaselly Howardism like asserting their right to free speech.

Now, I want to end forever any lingering suspicion that the coalition has a good head but a cold heart for dealing with Aboriginal people.

Yes, let's. No evidence-based policy, arbitrary shifting of goalposts every few years, and a refusal to consult anyone other than Pearson makes Aboriginal policy an absolute shambles. Abbott turns up to Aboriginal communities in order to patronise,not to learn.

Should I become prime minister, I will spend at least a week every year in a remote indigenous community because if these places are good enough for Australians to live in they should be good enough for a prime minister and senior officials to stay in.

Imagine the expensive facilities used for once a year by Prime Minister Abbott and a squad of bureaucrats, and know that they'll be better than the facilities of people who live there every day - and that little Potemkin Village will be better than the standard, and not much else will change.

After all, the measure of a decent society is how it looks after its most vulnerable members ... The coalition strongly supports the Productivity Commission’s recommendation for a disability insurance scheme but, with an estimated price tag of $6 billion a year (roughly equal to the Commonwealth’s current interest bill) this important and necessary reform can’t fully be implemented until the budget returns to strong surplus.

The whole idea of the national disability insurance scheme is to improve independence and outcomes for people while joining up expensive programs that are currently disjointed. It is a revenue-saving, intelligent-spending measure, not some expensive nice-to-have that is forever on the never-never.

One of my final acts as health minister was to establish the Medicare dental scheme to give people on chronic disease care plans access to up to $4000 worth of dental treatment every two years: not check-ups but treatment.

I always envisaged that this would be the precursor to putting dental services more generally on Medicare ... The big problem with Medicare, as it stands, is that it supports treatment for every part of the body except the mouth. People sometimes spend years on Medicare-funded antibiotics because they can’t get Medicare-funded dentistry. One in three Australians say that they’ve avoided dental treatment because they can’t afford it.

I stress that Medicare funded dentistry is an aspiration not a commitment.

The whole reason why politicians get elected to government is to solve problems. Pissant quibbling over "an aspiration not a commitment" undermines any benefit gained from talking about this issue in a considered way, and completely negates any digs at the incumbents for not acting. There was all this build-up, addressing a real issue, and then - pfft, it's not a commitment, I'm not promising anything, blah blah weasel weasel.

It’s the kind of initiative that can’t responsibly be implemented until the budget returns to strong surplus but it’s the kind of social dividend that should motivate the economic changes that Australia needs.

In other words: it will be put on the never-never forever and a day by the Coalition, if you really want it you'll have to vote Labor.

Politicians have to address issues as they arise. It isn't good enough to say (as Abbott does) that you'll only deliver when everything's absolutely perfect, when there's plenty of money and the sun is shining and the wind's in your hair and your footy team is winning and ... no. Politics is the art of what's possible under the circumstances. Abbott is vague about the circumstances in the hope that nobody will notice the fact that he's vague about what he'll do. Because he's talking to a bunch of people who are desperate for him to succeed, they overlook the fact that he's a fair-weather sailor and would be hopeless if circumstances turned against Australia.

No one should be fooled by Labor’s carbon tax which is socialism masquerading as environmentalism and won’t actually start to reduce domestic emissions until the carbon tax is well over $100 a tonne. The best way to reduce emissions is to invest intelligently in the changes that cost-conscious enterprises are already making to become more energy efficient.

That’s what our $10 billion emissions reduction fund is for: reducing domestic emissions by 5 per cent by 2020 by reinforcing what businesses are already doing.

This point has been made before but it bears repeating: Abbott believes Labor's market-based solution is socialism, whereas his plan for splashing around billions of dollars of taxpayer money "by 2020 by reinforcing what businesses are already doing" shows that he really doesn't understand the business of politics, he doesn't understand what words mean; politics and words, the very business he's in.

That’s why the Green Army providing a reliable, substantial workforce to support the land care efforts of local councils, farmers and volunteers should turn out to be one of the next coalition government’s signature policies.

There's going to be a layer of bureaucracy over volunteers doing what farmers should be doing themselves - sounds pretty nanny-state socialistic to me.

A Plan for Strong Borders

You've heard this shit before: next.

Finally, the coalition’s plan for a more prosperous future will try to ensure that our children and grandchildren look back appreciatively on the big decisions this generation has made.

We have a responsibility to ensure that our land is as productive as possible, that’s why we are looking at new dam sites especially in northern Australia which could become a food bowl to Asia.

He negates himself once he gets down to details. Sic 'im, Grog!

With abundant coal and iron ore, Australia should have a natural advantage in making steel.

Should, but doesn't. Graham Bradley imperiously led Bluescope as it ignored the possibility that China might become a net steel exporter, and now that it has done so (China, that is) it appears that Bluescope has been wagered on the wrong outcome. If Bluescope's taxes were cut to $1 and all its employees worked for free, it would still be unable to exploit this "natural advantage" because there is no defence against dopey management. What's Abbott going to do about it anyway? Keen and rend his garments for the people who first labelled Menzies "Pig Iron Bob"?

With abundant bauxite and cheap power, Australia should have a natural advantage in making aluminium.

Cheap power? Really? I thought it was hellishly expensive, especially when you consider how far apart where the bauxite is and where the power stations are. Oh well.

With greater export orientation to drive higher production volumes, there’s no reason why Australia can’t sustain a viable motor industry.

There's sixty years of reasons why Australia can't have such an export industry, if only you'd face up to it. Here's why a domestic car market can't justify itself either.

The demands of the resources sector should help to sustain a sophisticated heavy engineering capacity in Australia. In this case, the tyranny of distance should actually be working for us, not against us.

Yes but it fucking doesn't, you stupid man. Engineering shops in WA are hitting the wall because mining operations are importing their heavy engineering ready-made rather than have Australians make it: high dollar, high wages, it's been going on for years. If you're going to strap on the fluro gear an the hard hat I wish you'd go to those places and find out why.

The ministers in the next Liberal National government will be responsible reformers.

No, they'll be people like Kevin Andrews, who had no idea, and Sophie Mirabella or Barnaby Joyce, who have no idea.

... we also understand that Australians are an optimistic people who want a government that sees potential rather than just problems.

And you will piss away that potential on dams with aluminium walls up in buffalo country, which is why you mus never become Prime Minister.

By the close of the next coalition government’s first term, I am confident that waste, mismanagement and reckless spending will have been brought under control; more tax cuts will be in prospect; there will be community controlled public schools and hospitals; and just about every fit working age person will be in work, preferably for a wage but if not for the dole.

Based on what?

What economic forecasting is going to claim that the economy will be strong enough to sustain full employment in five years? What does "in prospect" mean, and how is it different from "in your dreams"?

Better broadband will once more be delivered through market competition freeing more money to tackle traffic gridlock.

I've already called bullshit on that, and will do so again.

Instead, as the new parliamentary year dawns ...

Yes? Is this the bit where he gets all positive and gives us a glimpse of the sunlit uplands?

... Fair Work Australia ... Craig Thomson ...

No.

The best way to help the country right now would be to change the government and the best way to change the government would be to give the people their choice at an election. Changing the government, of course, is but a means to an end: to bring out the best in our people and in our nation.

Depends who you mean by "our", really.

In his famous “light on the hill” speech, Ben Chifley said that the purpose of public life ...

Famous what? Fucking who?

It's a good thing I wasn't at the National Pikers' Club for this, because this would have been the point when my skull exploded from bullshit overload, and a whirring sound would have emanated from a simple plot in the Bathurst Cemetery.

Chifley was talking about the purpose of the labour movement, not some airy notion of public life. Abbott diminishes himself by misrepresenting Chifley in this manner, a bum note toward the end of what was supposedly a major speech. Chifley lost because he was deaf to fundamental shifts in the nation's development in his time, too.

But cheer up, it gets worse:

People should be in public life for the right reasons. Mine are to serve our country, to stand up for the things I believe in, to do the right thing by my fellow Australians as best I can, to build a nation that will inspire us more and to lead a government that will disappoint us less.

With ideals like that you might make a useful backbencher, but never a Prime Minister. A "government that will disappoint us less", well hooray for low expectations!

Members of the National Pikers' Club could have saved themselves time and embarrassment by reading this, but instead they lined up to take Abbott at his word:

• Lenore Taylor adopted a Grattanesque more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone, declaring that however bad Abbott's speech was it was better than anything Gillard could offer. She made no case for such a claim. Abbott was so vacuous and slippery that he ought to have no standing other than the formal title of his office to criticise Gillard for anything.
• Peter Hartcher said it was "a new start". The guy's been in office for two years and there was nothing new in that speech at all. It's not new and it isn't a start. It's bullshit, Abbott is bullshit and so too is Hartcher's hit-and-miss reputation as a commentator.
• Phillip Coorey said the Coalition have a plan. There was no plan, there is no evidence that there ever was a plan, more bullshit.
• Lanai Vasek tiptoes gingerly around the idea that, you know, it's possible that Abbott could be talking bullshit but other Liberals are talking bullshit too, so at least they're being consistent.

You don't have to go after Abbott in detail like I have here (thanks for making it this far). What you have to do to inform yourself about the alternative government and relate what they say - insofar as they say anything, "aspiration not commitment" - to observable reality. Maybe we could have some journalists unimpressed by puffed-up office-bearers who might do this. Instead, we have supposedly major speeches given by a piker to pikers, who congratulate him on squibbing the major issues of our time and claim this is better than struggling to address them.

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on the National Press Club. Come, Mrs Reinhart, and sack the press gallery space-fillers over whom you will have influence or managerial control. Realise how little would be lost, and how well politics could be reported on from the communities affected by it.

That car won't start

In this article, Misha Schubert takes Brian Loughnane on face value. She dutifully reports what he says and concludes that he's defining the Gillard Government. Brian Loughnane doesn't control the Gillard Government. Brian Loughnane is Director of the Liberal Party of Australia. That's the organisation over which he has some degree of control, and he's exerting that control to tell its members to shut up.

Consider Loughnane's audience: Young Liberals, full of energy and ideas amongst other things. Bri-Bri thinks he's helping them by showing them how modern politics works, and it works in the way that people like Bri-Bri like it to work. He and Peta Credlin*, Abbott's chief of staff, started out as junior staffers who weren't responsible for making policy decisions, but who took decisions that had been made and foisted them onto journalists and minor-party Senators. Along the way they picked up no experience whatsoever in analysing the strengths and weaknesses of policy options from the point of view of those affected by the policy (as opposed to "how it plays" in the media, or with particular interest groups), or projected into the future beyond the following election. Now they are in positions where they can and do stymie the process by which policy is developed, insisting that any and all such activity be suborned to a) media and interest groups and b) their predilections above all. They must be seen to "win", and if a good idea must die for the sake of that then it's a sacrifice the Liberal Party must - and does - make.

Over the past week we have seen a much-needed debate on donations to the vehicle industry (and because there is no link to performance by the industry, and no penalties for sixty years of underperformance, let us call them for what they are: donations). Joe Hockey is against further donations; Sophie Mirabella, Eric Abetz and Barnaby Joyce are for more donations, as is the Gillard government.

This is a bizarre situation: usually Abetz and Mirabella bristle at any attempt at bipartisanship. These are people who have spent their political careers emphasising that the Liberals should be a choice and not an echo of Labor. Whenever there is bipartisanship they shake their heads and claim they don't know what the Liberal Party stands for. If you think that pink batts or school halls are salient examples of government waste, wait until you see the sheer epic scale of nation-building opportunities this country has pissed away after years and years of donations to the shareholders of Detroit and Tokyo.

As I've said earlier there might be two seats up for grabs if you don't think about it too much, and I can understand Mirabella et al focusing on that; but everybody in either Corangamite or Wakefield who is really concerned for Australian vehicle manufacturing is going to vote Labor, because they believe in vehicle industry donations wholeheartedly. The right pride themselves on being hard-hearted realists when it comes to winning votes, but on this issue they are kidding themselves.

Peta and Bri-Bri don't care what the policy is, as long as there is one - not several, one - and that all the Coalition gets 100% behind it, whatever it might be. They don't understand the process of policy development and they certainly don't want any of your broad-based input that theoretically comes with democracy, thank you very much. Bri-Bri thinks he's tough and clever by screwing down the lid on a simmering pot.

Geoff Kitney in The Australian Financial Review gave important historical context to the debate over public support for the Australian car industry in this article (you'll need to be a subscriber). He points out how the Fraser government in 1981 proposed a round of donations and the lone voice in Cabinet against them was the then Treasurer, John Howard. The then-nascent economic rationalist MPs in the Liberal Party hailed Howard and would form the core of his support during the 1980s, until they all gave up in about 1990 and were not replaced.

Kitney says that Abbott might follow in Howard's footsteps, but he has the analogy wrong. Abbott is leader of the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party, a position held in 1981 not by Howard but Malcolm Fraser. Howard was Treasurer then; today the Liberal equivalent is Shadow Treasurer is Joe Hockey. Hockey is arguing against car industry donations in 2012, just as Howard did in 1981 (and as he never did when Prime Minister).

Economists like to mock Hockey for his apparent lack of knowledge of their profession, but he's no worse than any other Shadow Treasurer (Swan included, and yes Keating for the month or so he held that job) in that regard. Where Hockey is good value is in the old-fashioned political skill of building a consensus, and sticking it to old-timers who think they can fudge away reforms whose time has come. In the late 1990s Hockey's work on corporate law reform got up the nose of the then Chairman of AMP, Ian Burgess, who went over Hockey's head direct to Howard. When Howard stood by his minister Burgess got the shock of his life and shuffled into retirement, leaving AMP far better off for his absence.

Hockey is right on vehicle industry donations, and chances are when it comes to Liberal decision-making forums he'll have done his homework and be armed with a strong case against an industry that's only holding this country back. He'd be an iconoclastic economic reformer if he got the chance; he has already achieved more in politics than Mirabella and Abetz have or will. I would have expected the IPA to come out as strongly for Hockey as they did for race-baiter Andrew Bolt; nothing so far, nor has the CIS (whose offices are in Hockey's electorate) rallied to his side.

There is absolutely no chance at all that the Coalition will come out against donations to the car industry. Abbott always dances with those who brung him, and the right want vehicle industry donations to continue. If you read Battlelines, and if you see Abbott's performance before he became leader, you'll see him sighing and eye-rolling at every instance of bipartisanship that supposedly played into Rudd's hands. He brought down Turnbull over the bipartisanship over the ETS; the passage on the carbon price in the very teeth of his most determined opposition shows the limits of his "choice not echo" position.

Now that he has to appear less confrontational to round out his image, it will be hilarious watching him try to justify falling into line behind Labor while at the same time burning his Shadow Treasurer's attempts to "cut the waste". You can expect those half-hearted statements by Judith Sloan, Hugh Morgan et al in favour of increasing unemployment benefits to vanish overnight if the right keep on insisting Hockey cut the budget while going into bat for their pet programs.

Kitney further disgraced himself in his second article in the weekend's AFR with this idle and defenceless throwaway:

... [in 2012] Abbott can be expected to prosper.

He'll get away with murder if the more obtuse members of the press gallery continue to give him a free pass, and that's most of them. Kitney runs the risk of becoming a nostalgia act like Tony Wright if he doesn't improve in relating the landscape before him to the way things were.

After the latter part of last year's parliamentary sittings, with vast amounts of legislation passed and Abbott reduced to a frothing mess (negating Bri-Bri's insistence that the Gillard Government doesn't have a record to run on). It could go either way: either they will take Abbott seriously and call him to account for inconsistencies and evasions, or they will indulge him as he hangs his elbow out of a Holden ute and rhapsodises about how he loved to watch Brocko beat Dick Moffatt on The Mountain.

If the MSM do the latter Peta and Bri-Bri will consider their job done, and take no more interest in all that palaver about budget expenditure than most of us do - just so long as it doesn't blow up, so long as there is no public controversy over the expenditure of billions of dollars of public money. You hear that, Young Liberals? As long as everyone just shuts up, everything will be fine.


* The fact that Credlin and Loughnane are married is neither here nor there. A lot of people obsess over it but I'm not going there. The fact that they act as a team to stamp out what they don't understand and can't control, regardless of its merits, is what gets me. It can't last and within two years I expect both to be deposed.

Wait for the rest of your life

In this article, Amanda Vanstone is pretending to a wisdom she clearly lacks. She has somehow become less knowledgeable about how government works for the country and the economy than she did in Opposition.

Schools, research and health will have to wait till we pay off our debt.

We've been here before. When the debt gets paid off, people like Amanda Vanstone regard education and health as fripperies and call for tax cuts, which means that schools, research and health get cut no matter what.

In 1996, Amanda Vanstone became Education Minister in the newly elected Federal government. She came and spoke to a NSW Young Liberal thing which I attended. Moderate liberals of my generation regarded her as Good Old Mandy, whose Heart was in the Right Place and whose abrasiveness when riled was entertaining; she was one of the few moderates who'd get up on her hind legs and give as good as she got rather than smirk her way to irrelevance. Young Libs five, ten years younger than me who were at uni saw her as the psycho bitch who shredded the education budget and made it impossible for Liberal students to get elected to student organisations. The tension in that room was palpable and something of an ambush for the organisers, who started off sanguine and moved to alarm through the course of the night. It was like those eastern European leaders a few years earlier who had addressed crowds of sullen workers for years only to be suddenly confronted with boos and abuse.

Education and healthcare are major generators of internal demand and of our economic future, you dingbat! They are not optional extras.

When the global financial crisis hit, governments stepped into action to keep their economies turning over. That was a good thing.

It sure was. Strange that the Liberals opposed it though.

But the money did not come out of thin air. Governments went into more debt.

As opposed to what, higher taxes? If you don't support economic stimulus, have the guts to do what Turnbull and Abbott did and say that you oppose it no matter how it comes. The idea that economic stimulus should be "a good thing" but any measure to bring it about is 'bad' is a sorry attempt to box clever.

Many believe that our government spent far more than it needed to and spent it unwisely. We now pay $5 billion a year, or $20 billion in a four-year budget cycle, in interest alone. If we start to climb out of the problem and pay back the same each year in principal, it becomes $10 billion a year and $40 billion over the budget cycle. That's billions our economy is generating that we can't spend on medical research, schools and other things.

I doubt that every cent the Howard government spent could be accused of being carefully targeted, Amanda. The economy wouldn't have the ability to generate debt repayments if it had hit the wall, which it would have if it hadn't been fiscally stimulated in 2008.

But some governments still seem addicted to spending beyond their means ... In Europe, the problem with the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) debt has been understood for some time.

Actually, that acronym is PIIGS - the other "I" stands for Italy, to which Vanstone was Australian Ambassador for some years. If she's going to give us some insight into the European financial crisis you'd think she'd be in a position to do so. Alternatively, if she's going to pull her punches - well, that would be a first for Amanda Vanstone, but basically the idea that she should be so strident about Greece or Portugal being "addicted to spending beyond their means" while skating around Italy - a much bigger economy and a much bigger problem, in both financial and regulatory terms.

The PIIGS countries had levied relatively low taxes. Each of those countries had established tax-avoidance mechanisms for people who had both great capacity to pay and much to be grateful to government for, gratitude for which was expressed not as tax but as political donations or bribes. To say that lower taxes are an answer to our current predicament is less valid than it was four years ago. When Vanstone does turn her attention to Italy, she fails to note that it has a populist conservative government with little in the way of core economic policy. Cheer up Australia, it could be worse.

Note a recurring theme of this article:

The problems facing the world economy are not new. They have just been getting more attention of late ... In Europe, the problem with the ... debt has been understood for some time ... I know firsthand how little Australians care for being told they are no longer getting something for nothing, or as cheaply as they did in the past.

This is designed to create the impression that Vanstone knows what she's talking about, which she doesn't. If they're so well understood, you'd hope that the responses would be smarter than they are. Vanstone might have copped some disappointment from those who'd done well, but what made people really angry was that she cut things that were important and productive. If you're going to make this narrative All About Amanda, however, then one angry person is the same as any other and they could all rack off.

Cuts are easier to take if there's a unifying narrative: from the PIIGS, and the Howard government, we learn that if there are just swingeing cuts then it just builds resentments which play out in all sorts of unexpected and unmanageable ways.

I was part of a government that did the hard yards of finding savings to put our budget back into the black after Labor last had its hand in the till. And then we paid off debt, and set up the Future Fund.

But you didn't restore funding to health or education, did you?

This is an idle exercise. It assumes that nobody who has never been a government minister is allowed to criticise the actions of government, or that any and all such examination of public issues must necessarily be vacuous (a wish list? Really?). I left out the "barbie and a good red" because it reinforces the idleness and indulgence Vanstone is trying to convey, and definitely not because Vanstone herself can pack away the red when she chose to do so.

... in the last budget, Treasurer Wayne Swan was asking to borrow another $50 billion. With that spending record, what will we do if GFC2 breaks out? What if Asia stumbles and we have a few years of lower commodity prices?

Luckily we had the stimulus in 2008 otherwise we'd be stuffed, eh Amanda?

We could all help by avoiding the indulgence shown by Europeans who keep demanding more.

In particular, billion-dollar bludges like this have to be knocked on the head. Education and health aren't bludges or indulgences, they're central to the present and future of the nation - in a way that, say, The Situation isn't.

The government should have the strength to restrict spending and the capacity to stop wasting money ... Swan recognises the need for tweaking.

To that end, the government must not be run by Tony Abbott, Andrew Robb, Barnaby Joyce and Joe Hockey, and must include Swan.

Also, it could get on with helping to boost productivity by recognising its industrial relations overkill.

Part of boosting productivity involves having the clowns who ran Foster's and Bluescope into the ground sent to Christmas Island, or somewhere other than in positions of power over Australian workplaces. If there are industrial relations changes to be made (see my article coming soon elsewhere on this), chances are Swan and his people will make a better fist of it than the clueless and risk-averse Liberals.

Vanstone started the article attempting to create a fug of certainty, and ends it with a shriek of a question. In between she wants to create a narrative of her own wisdom, and that of the Howard government, versus the stumblebum incumbents. It doesn't work and shows the government in a more favourable light than she might have intended. When you consider that there have been more developments in health and education in the past year (despite the budgetary position and the hung parliament) than there was in eleven years with Amanda looking on - it seems that Good Old Mandy's bark and bite are not what they were.

Blogger does journalist's work (or, why Paul Daley is a wanker)

Paul Daley is a wanker because he allowed this article to go out under his name.

A STRANGE thing happened last week. A federal shadow minister actually came up with something that seemed kind of almost a bit like a policy.

Remember policies? Oppositions used to have to come up with them if they wanted to become governments. It was all about creating a genuine point of intellectual and ideological contrast between the incumbent government and the administration-in-waiting so voters might actually weigh up differences on an issue-by-issue basis, thereby enabling them to make a reasoned decision about who they wanted to govern this place. It involved an element of creativity and risk taking. Novel, I know.

It isn't novel because it actually happened. Daley here is implying that he has some respect for policy, policymaking and intellectual points of difference. Firstly, if he did then the case he cites, Senator David Johnston's interview, isn't worth the fuss. Secondly, Daley doesn't assess what Johnston says in policy terms.

Daley doesn't appreciate the policy, he wants to play the same game that created the zero-sum politics that we all despise, and that he wants to pretend he too shares our opinion. That's why he's a wanker.

The shadow defence minister, senator David Johnston, cogently outlined in an interview with The Australian critical elements of the Coalition's supposed plans in a portfolio that is as notorious for wasting billions of taxpayer dollars as it is for ending the careers of ministers who oversee it.

Defence policy, strategy and funding is a minefield for both ministers and their opposites. Oppositions usually approach it with cautious bipartisanship; they like to own the successes but quickly deny any responsibility for the failures.

Spending overruns in defence often go into the billions, rather than millions, of dollars.

You can really only judge waste when you have a clear idea of what your priorities are, and it isn't clear what Johnston's priorities are. He proposes a grab-bag of cost savings. Johnston does not offer a cogent view of what it means to defend Australia in a meaningful and practical sense in the world we live in, and the world that is foreseeable.

What Johnston is proposing isn't a policy, it's a shopping list. It's an indictment of Daley that he can't pick the difference. It's an insult to the rest of us that he, and his editor, thinks his ignorance is good enough for us.

First, let's look at what Johnston said in the Brendan Nicholson article, and assess that against the country's defence needs. Second, let's look at Daley's respect for and treatment of policy and see whether he's right to wonder why there isn't more of it.

The changes outlined by Johnston include considering cutting by half the planned purchase of 100 Joint Strike Fighters for the RAAF ...

Why half? Is this purely a cost-saving measure? Given that the JSF is such a crock, why not cut it by 100% and buy the best fighter plane on the market: the Sukhoi S-37. For Australia to buy that aircraft would nullify the threat posed by other air forces buying it.

Mind you, all that assumes some consideration of the role of fighter aircraft in the 21st century. It is significant that no Australian fighter aircraft are deployed in the operational theatres in which we have been involved over the past ten years: Solomon Islands, Afghanistan and Iraq. The aircraft used in East Timor were transport aircraft, helicopters - and the old faithful "pigs" (F111), which date from the 1960s. No evidence such thought is in evidence from Johnston's own site, which offers a shallow critique of the current government's actions rather than real in-depth thought into how you defend Australia.

It isn't necessary to spell out detailed alternative policies, pace Ross Cameron - but it is necessary to show some breadth and depth of thought that shows evidence of capacity. The Defence Ministers who've foundered in that role have lacked that breadth and depth. Any fool can quibble over receipts, and that is all that Johnston is doing. We can have no confidence that this guy will make a blind bit of difference in Defence.

... and urgently reassessing plans to build 12 big conventional submarines in Australia. A Coalition government would consider buying smaller and cheaper models off the shelf overseas instead.

They'd consider it. Imagine if Gillard announced that she was considering but not committing to something costing billions of dollars and with massive potential impact to the nation, and how The Australian would jump all over it.

This is a reference to the half-dozen or so German submarines often raised by people who think one submarine is as good as another.

Submarines are important to Australia's ability to protect shipping going through southeast Asian waters; Australian trade stops or becomes vastly more uneconomical with restrictions on that shipping. Submarines are hard to staff, being labour-intensive and more demanding of time and effort than most Australian workplaces.

This is not to say that one submarine is as good as another. The German submarines are designed for the cold, deep waters of the North Sea. They would be ideal if the main threat for which submarines were the most effective response came from Antarctica. They are far from ideal for moving through the warmer, more shallow waters to our country's north.

No evidence that Johnston has considered our country's need for submarines, or that "professional journalists" like Nicholson and Daley judge Johnston against what's right for the country.

Johnston promises a comprehensive review of progress of the plan to re-equip the ADF if the Coalition wins government.

Complete with shock-horror stories of budget blowouts, and no elucidation of what the country needs from Johnston, Nicholson or Daley.

Johnston says the multi-role and stealthy JSFJSF. Because of concerns that the JSF would arrive late, the Howard government ordered 24 Super Hornets, which are in the final stages of delivery.

Early this year The Australian revealed that because of further delays with the JSF it was likely the Gillard government would have to buy an additional 18 Super Hornets on top of the initial 24 to plug a looming capability gap.

That was vehemently denied the next day by the RAAF, which badly wants the JSF, but then confirmed weeks later by Defence Minister Stephen Smith, who said he was concerned about delays and that buying more Super Hornets was an option.

And Johnston's position on Super Hornets is ...?

Someone like Paul Daley might be fascinated by Johnston going back on what the Howard government did, but the broader question is what the country needs, followed by an assessment of how effectively Labor and the Coalition are meeting those needs. Nothing: Nicholson takes Johnston on faith and Daley is concerned only with clichés of COST BLOWOUT SHOCK.

Johnston quotes from a number of papers by experts in the field, and some cranky responses from incumbent minister Smith, but it's hard to tell what sides of the debates Johnston and the Liberals are taking. Finally, Nicholson admits:

Johnston has not so far suggested that the changes he wants are based on a different view of Australia's strategic future than that reached under Labor.

Well, what a waste of time that was. Johnston's going to quibble a bit with the accounting at the project level.

Daley says:

It was gratifying, then, to see Senator Johnston seemingly take such a strong stand. He was quoted as saying a Coalition government would: quickly "redo" the government's 2009 defence strategic and spending plan (or white paper)

The last white paper was delivered in 2009, with a revision due in five years (i.e. the next one is due in 2014). The next election is due in 2013. Whoever wins that election will have to "quickly redo" the white paper. This isn't newsworthy if you've been paying attention. Johnston is trying to present normal service as some big new development.

All are reasonable positions to argue ... So bring it on. Let's have the debate now.

Yes, let's. Let's have some information on defence priorities and spending to conduct that debate, Paul. We might need some journalism. Where might we get that, Paul?

... there are serious economic and diplomatic costs associated with undoing or dramatically altering defence programs and purchases.

Scrap or radically alter the local program and you create unemployment, not least in South Australia, where at least 2000 jobs could hang on the submarine project. Ditto with such a massive US-based program as the Joint Strike Fighter.

What unemployment would be created in South Australia if the JSF were canned? Is unemployment the biggest consideration with a defence program? Might employment be taken up by other projects, and if so what might they be? Nope, me neither.

Johnston has been shadow minister for three years now. He has seen off two Labor defence ministers in Joel Fitzgibbon and John Faulkner and he has effectively niggled a third, Stephen Smith, who is now experiencing the same frustration with his department on paralysing cost overruns and delays as his two immediate predecessors.

What a silly piece of writing that is. Johnston's contribution to the downfall of Fitzgibbon is zero. Faulkner announced that he was a placeholder on day one, despite and not because of the eagle-eye of David Johnston bearing down on him. Smith has been entirely self-motivated in reviewing Defence programs, and has been so transparent that Johnston has followed rather than led ministerial scrutiny of those programs.

Johnston has nothing to say in this article on asymmetrical warfare, or the sexism in the armed forces that leads to regular eruptions of sordid behaviour that puts the lie to regular assurances that the matter is a) a one-off and b) always the fault of junior parties, usually females. Also nothing about asylum-seekers as a Defence issue gets the shortest of shrift, rightly so and praise be.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott publicly reassured us he would "never make savings at the expense of the operational capabilities of our defence force … No one has said that we would tear up the defence white paper".

Not surprisingly, Defence Minister Smith highlighted these apparent differences.

"We've seen the shadow minister for defence tearing up the white paper, the Leader of the Opposition saying that won't happen and the manager of opposition business [Christopher Pyne] saying these were all musings," he said.

Having skated over substantive issues (Daley's summary might be summarised as: ooh, it's all so controversial, isn't it), he then goes to the stunning discovery that different politicians have different views. The Situation has refused to be pinned down on policy but insisted on his credibility as Prime Minister nonetheless (and not challenged by the media), and who gives a damn was Chris Pyne says? Fancy doing any sort of work - certainly not three years' worth, let alone the giant-killer reputation Daley falsely ascribes to him - only to have Pyne sprinkle it with piss.

Is this not further proof that the Liberals are unfit for government? The wannabe PM interprets questioning of cost overruns as cutting operational capacity. Three years in a position and you get slapped down by Pyne and Abbott. If Johnston had any dignity he'd quit; if Abbott had any sense he'd put someone else in the role.

Daley would confuse movement with progress in terms of policy development, but that's Paul Daley for you: starting off with the impression of policy but really focused on the very kind of Canberra insider goings-on that makes policy development impossible. Wake up to yourself Daley, and your own role in the impoverishment of our political debate, and stop being the sort of wanker who alienates us from our politics.

No refuge

I supported the Malaysian solution. Go ahead, laugh. Not being a journalist or a politician I'm free to admit when I'm wrong.

To inform myself on the High Court's recent decision on this matter I read both kinds of mainstream media articles about it: gloaty pieces from those who dislike everything this government does balanced with gloaty pieces from those who disapprove of inhumane treatment of asylum-seekers in particular. Hooray and whoop-de-do for balanced reportage: at least I paid for them as much as they were worth.

I supported the Malaysian solution because I thought it would form the start of some sort of regional co-operation across southeast Asia on the matter of stateless and displaced people. Nauru and Manus Island were designed to hide the problem, not as a basis to work with others to solve it. Proposals for East Timor and, yes, bloody Manus Island again show what happens when you focus your policy-making energies on announceables rather than longterm solutions.

No country in the region can or should have to deal with thousands of refugees by themselves. Countries adjacent to states like Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Burma or Vietnam from which asylum-seekers come have to sustain populations far in excess of Australia's on a fraction of our income: they can be cruel to asylum-seekers and refuse to recognise them legally because this is the only option they have to minimise the numbers of people they have to deal with.

Countries like Australia are attractive destinations for refuge-seekers, not just because of relative economic prosperity but also because we have a strong record of actually accepting those who seek asylum. For hundreds of years this country has been a place to which the wretched of the earth come to build a good life: it is true for Afghans and Somalis today, it was true of South Vietnamese and "Balts" and Greeks of previous generations, and my Scottish crofter ancestors in the 1830s. I can't believe that aspect of our history and our national character no longer applies.

Neighbouring countries resent being somehow responsible for those who use their territory as refuge from a dispute they have not provoked, or as a way-station for people en route to Australia. Rather than have countries feeling put-upon and resenting their neighbours for making their lives harder, we should co-operate so that we can all deal with asylum-seekers better than we do.

The good thing about the Malaysian solution, while it lasted (if such an apparition can be said to have 'lasted') was that there was more scrutiny over the last three months of the way Malaysia treats asylum-seekers than there ever was. I thought/hoped that a regional solution might lead to more of this sort of thing: watch it evaporate now.

With so many unemployed journalists in this country, with readily available media platforms and such cheap airfares to Asian countries, I'm surprised that more journalists aren't doing more freelance reporting from southeast Asia. Admired journalists like John Pilger cut their teeth by doing exactly that - but none of those who are Editors/News Directors today did, so young journalists demonstrating quality journalism under tough conditions would probably be lost on those people.

People who spend their lives standing up for human rights enjoy few rewards, but one of them can be a sense of righteousness that repulses more than it attracts. Observations of how asylum-seekers are treated in Malaysia have given rise to some talk about how Australia might guide Malaysia on human rights issues. This ignores the fact that relations between Australia and Malaysia have never been so fraught as when Australia decides to set itself up as an exemplar to Malaysia. There are 93,000 asylum-seekers in Malaysia and less than a tenth that number here: we aren't going to resolve anything or help anyone by putting ourselves in a position we can't sustain.

I thought that failing to conceive of a broader solution to the refugee issue was a weakness of Julian Burnside's piece, but you don't get to be a QC by being all pie-in-the-sky and taking your eye off real legal principles like we at the Politically Homeless Institute do. I agree with his criticism of the "Weird economics ... mandatory detention costs us about $1 billion a year", but I think here he is being disingenuous:

There is simply no merit in the idea of detaining people indefinitely just because they have arrived in Australia by boat. Asylum seekers also arrive by air: typically they arrive on short-term visas such as business, tourist or student visas.

Yes, but those who arrive by air have identity issues sorted. You don't get on an aeroplane unless you have a passport containing a visa. The issuing of both documents resolves the sorts of identity and background questions that are yet to be resolved for those who turn up with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

If Australia capped initial detention to just a month for health and security checks, overcrowding in detention would be solved instantly; the cost of operating the detention system would reduce dramatically; and the foreseeable mental harm which is caused by indefinite detention would stop.

It's not clear why a month would be sufficient to resolve security questions. Equally, it isn't clear why everybody should be held in detention in order to catch a few who might be doubtful. This, and the disturbing al-Kateb principle that Burnside cites, is one of the problems with extrapolating the general to the specific in public policy. Australia has a general right to exclude non-citizens from its territory and from many of its legal protections, but in exercising this right we impede the rights of human beings to whom we owe variously binding duties of care.

For all the wonders of the Australian legal system and its British heritage, &c., &c., the issue of national sovereignty versus universal principles is a serious design flaw. Again, it is a weakness of Burnside's piece that it does not examine that.

Speaking of assumptions that may prove unsustainable, it has been a mainstay of this blog that Annabel Crabb is a fool. This has come under considerable challenge with successive articles which appear to have come from beyond Parliament House: instead of wilting in such a strange environment she seems to have developed a sense of perspective, which we at the Politically Homeless Institute had long considered impossible for her to acquire convincingly or sustainably. This is still a dollop of conventional politico-media wisdom, but one of the better examples rather than among the worst. Some allowance, but not much, should be made for the fact that Crabb had to write this and post it within hours of a long and complex court case being decided.

Today's decision from the High Court is disastrous for the Government ... because the deterrent effect that was the redeeming feature of this harsh and - in terms of Labor's history in this policy area - hypocritical solution has now evaporated. Australia remains obliged to accept 4,000 new refugees from the Malaysian queues, and must now additionally expect a new influx of boat arrivals through the usual channels.

Burnside is sceptical of the deterrent effect and I am inclined to agree with him. In a world of push-factors for refugees, the pull factors have always been overstated by the Australian media (and by those wishing to pitch stories to the Australian media, such as the Coalition, which explains why the Coalition get such a good run from the media).

Crabb mentions push and pull factors briefly, but only from the government's perspective. She does not consider it from any position of whether or not it might be objectively valid in the case of the people concerned in seeking asylum. Yes, she had limited time, but raising the issue other than as a perception problem for government would prove some consideration of policy issues as they apply in the world beyond Canberra.

But the most egregious aspect of today's decision by the High Court is that it provides a new and crushing chapter in what has become a tale of rambling incompetence. Across both Rudd and Gillard governments, this policy area has played host to a most dispiriting display of opportunism, mendacity and half-arsedness. The Rudd government repealed some of the harshest elements of the Pacific Solution, but never acknowledged the plain-as-day reality that this decision would have some effects on the rate of boat arrivals. Busy denying the bleeding obvious, the Rudd government instead occupied itself with slogans about "tough and humane" policies while desperately casting about for regional assistance.

So: anything the government does - a program to build school facilities with a 97% success rate - is incompetent. Old-fashioned journalists used to chase stories: new-fashioned ones chase memes. I still think the search for a regional solution is more baby than bathwater but it looks like the media herd will trample it.

Do you recall the election campaign, in which the western Sydney MP David Bradbury materialised beside the PM on a patrol boat in Darwin Harbour, apparently monitoring the horizon for foreign wayfarers determined enough to invade his seat by means of the Parramatta River?

The Parramatta River trickles to a creek well before you get to the fabled electorate of Lindsay, but yes, I remember how both Gillard and Bradbury looked not like Defenders of the Commonwealth, but like a couple of dorks.

The confident assurance from the Immigration Minister just weeks ago that the High Court legal challenge had been anticipated and rigorously prepared-for was hit amidships early on by High Court Justice Hayne, who growled at the [Solicitor]-General that his submission was "half-baked". And now today's decision, in which the Government's Malaysia Solution is not crippled, not winged or crimped or slightly frustrated by our nation's highest court, but clean bowled.

Set aside the mixed metaphors and see that Chris Bowen has no credibility as Immigration Minister in pursuing or spruiking a policy that has been the polar opposite of what he has said and done for over a year. He should resign, and have sufficient faith in his political skills that his chances of becoming a minister again at some point are not yet gone.

For him to stay in his current office would put him in the same position as the ministers in the last unlamented Labor government in NSW. It would put him in the same position as the so-called moderates in the Liberal Party, whose clout is demonstrated by the utter lack of any moderate policies held or advanced by "their" Party (credit to @thewetmale for putting it so pithily).

Gillard needs a new Immigration Minister. Bowen may not warrant being removed from the ministry altogether so there may be scope to swap him. Possible alternative Immigration Ministers whose current portfolios could be entrusted to Chris Bowen:

• Greg Combet;
• Tanya Plibersek (nah, her activism for Palestine over Israel would make her unacceptable);
• Brendan O'Connor (he's outside Cabinet; but Bowen can take one for the team and come back, just like Amanda Vanstone did);
• Tony Burke (keeps the state and factional equilibrium; Immigration would make Burke or break him, while bushies would more easily relate to a minister who's been through tough times himself and who'd be more decisive than Burke).

Here we could play all sorts of games about reinvigorating the government, or rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic; either way the status quo is a non-option.

Nauru is the one reversal the Government has so far not permitted itself. Perhaps it will now. It hardly matters anymore; if anyone in the Government is still wondering why voters don't believe Julia Gillard when she says she has things under control, today should provide a devastating answer.

As the court has said nuh-uh to Nauru, there are two courses of action open to the government now. First and foremost is to process asylum applications in Australia. Plenty of people and even a few polls have called for this. People suspected of being dodgy or malicious should be dealt with in the standard manner: you have the right to remain silent ...

The second is to station more DIAC staff at embassies in countries from which asylum-seekers come. Phillip Ruddock recalled the Immigration official from the Australian embassy in Islamabad; this should be reversed. Embassies across the region should have staff capable of performing assessments and processing, and I'll bet the cost of doing so beats hands down the existing costs of detention.

The Coalition's preferred options of Nauru and Manus are shot every bit as much as the government's Malaysian solution. The idea that desperate people should form an orderly queue and not attempt to come here has no basis in fact, and should not be relied upon as the basis for policy.

And yet, imagine for a minute that the government were to take the first course in particular, when all other options have so clearly failed. The very process of going against a decade of practice in immigration policy, the sheer scope of destruction of all those hoary old themes and memes and half-baked assumptions, would be more than the press gallery could cope with, let alone communicate to the citizenry. It would take the sort of sell job that Paul Keating did during the 1980s across the gamut of economic reforms in order to effect such a transition. There is no way that the Australian media would or could adapt to the mental shift required in looking at refugees in such a new way.

The Coalition have their preferred options closed to them - with the exception of Temporary Protection Visas, and while they might appear as attractive as an ice-cream in a heatwave I would be fascinated if they lasted as long in the face of a High Court challenge. It can still complain about whatever the government does, with the expectation that the media will take its statements on face value. The Coalition does not, however, have any policy options to offer Australian voters:

• Nauru and Manus Island are off the table. Any attempt to establish that human rights protections exist at those sites would look weaselly and be negated by the next example of Abbott flakiness;
• The idea of a regional solution would not occur to anyone in the Coalition and they do not have the foreign-policy clout to pull it off;
• Immigration spokesthing Scott Morrison lives from press release to press release and represents The Shire in federal parliament. In policy-development terms he is a sillyhead. If any politician is stuck in the tough-on-asylum-seekers theme, it's him.
• The Situation would not survive any transition to a post-Howard immigration policy either. His job is to make people angry. Nauru and Manus have lost credibility, so a key aspect of his whole Howard Restoration theme is finished. It would be easy to simply agree with the government and have a moderate policy, perhaps with more of an emphasis on chasing the phantom of skilled migration; but Abbott is all about sharp and cutting differences with the government. Burying this policy difference would throw out his whole business model (if not his business case).

Asylum-seeker processing that was not only onshore but community-based would be the most radical departure Gillard ever did. Like Malcolm Fraser, her appetite for reform appears exhausted by the very means by which she ascended to the Prime Ministership. Yet, for all its political scope and risk, it is the only one with a clear advantage for the government.

Prime Ministers need to have gone through the wars a bit to get some respect, and Gillard has been there. Earlier this week she was starting to get on the front foot with News Ltd and even in Question Time. For her to keep trying to play the old game after the siren has sounded isn't committed or determined, it would be pathetic. A Prime Minister must never be pathetic: this is how the NSW Labor government ended up.

With its level of popular support, community processing with an increased offshore presence and cross-national co-operation is a winner. Well, in comparison to all the other loser policies it is. It has the capacity to rewrite the rules of the political game such that the Opposition as it is currently configured cannot compete. It would show that this is a government that does the right thing, however reluctantly; governments that do the right thing can be indulged in gaming the opposition. Those who don't demonstrably make that case look like they're just mucking about in sinking to the Opposition's level.

That said, I could be wrong about all this too.