Taking the cake

In 2013 I was so convinced that Tony Abbott would screw up so badly that he wouldn't become Prime Minister at all. How I laughed at the polls. How I jeered at the press gallery groupthink that sought to convert that pig's ear of a man into a silk purse of a PM. I still remember how it felt, to be proven so wrong, so irrefutably, so publicly.

That's why I have some sympathy for political journalists who did in 2016 what I'd done in 2013: ignored the polls, ignored people with less exposure to traditional and social media than me (that is, pretty much everyone) who actually engaged with political issues and personalities from first principles, and insisted on having access to some secret cache of political knowledge inaccessible to mere mortals.

Some, but not much - most political journalists are simply reeling forward, claiming that a campaign which had them fooled and gibbering with excitement had somehow become 'lacklustre', assuming that their credibility remains intact. These people might think they're getting on with it, but they are trashing their credibility and that of their employers.

It was strange to see, of all people, Matthew Knott start to realise that he and his compadres had done the country a disservice simply by doing what they'd always done:

Those political reporters not too hubristic to engage in self doubt are asking: did we get it wrong? Did we, as a collective, miss the story?

Yes, you did. That subclause "as a collective" is the operative one here, because that stampede always leads the press gallery into bad and dumb stories, and always convinces them that if they all do it then it must somehow be less wrong.

Pretty much all political journalists in 2016 were covering the parliament of 2010-13. They should have told us what we could expect from such a parliament, which is the kind of parliament we are heading into now.

In 2010-13, the then government was spending so much time with crossbenchers in both houses that it didn't have time to coddle journalists, to drop self-serving little tidbits in their laps; they had a lot to do and focused on the doing, assuming (wrongly) that tough and clever journalists could work it out for themselves. It turns out that journalism doesn't cope well with nuance and compromise; most jobs involving nuance and compromise take place well away from journalists. The then opposition spent no time with crossbenchers but spent all the time coddling journalists, to the point where the journalists all said the government was hopeless while the opposition was the Best Opposition Evah.

Again, the "as a collective" was the problem. Nobody considered the well-flagged possibility that Tony Abbott might be a bull in the china shop of government, and not in a good way. He got fairer media headwinds before coming to government than John Howard had in 1995-96, and he still blew it. The press gallery were of one mind that Gillard and Rudd could do nothing right, and that Abbott could do nothing wrong. When Abbott screwed up the press gallery played it down, or made things up for 'balance', but the reality was irreconcilable with their Best Opposition Evah narrative. Today, the actual result of the election is irreconcilable with a tangle of narratives: that Turnbull is cruising to victory while Shorten is battling to hold his job, that everybody's home and hosed in Canberra under the second term of the Turnbull government and it's your shout mate.

The consensus, speaking to colleagues in the Canberra press gallery, is a reluctant yes.

Why even ask them? Does journalism exist for its own sake?

Some insist they got it spot on.

Fuck all of those people. All of them. Any responsible organisation confronted with egregious professional failure by their staff would make them show cause why they should not be dismissed.

Imagine if AFL journalists insisted at this stage of the season that Carlton, Collingwood, and Essendon were the teams to beat this year because they had been back in the day, and the journos couldn't imagine how things might change. Imagine the currency traders who went long on sterling before Brexit. This is the degree of professional failure involved with dickheads who misreported the national mood a week before an election, and who insisted their failure not be called out. Something beyond mere dismissal is warranted here: chucking them into the most algae-infested bit of Lake Burley Griffin, for a start.

But many admit they expected a more decisive Coalition victory than occurred.

Or not occurred, as the case may be.

And they concede this influenced the way the media covered the campaign.

Every time a journalist lapses into the passive voice they are up to no good, and here's yet another example. 'They' (journalists who cover politics) concede that 'the way the media covered the campaign' was somehow affected by their herd mentality and how it differed from the clear pattern indicating the election could go either way. This might be someone's idea of a big concession: it isn't mine.

This election campaign rained polls. Week after week, media outlets published national polls showing a 50-50 tie or at best a 51-49 Coalition lead.

The results barely shifted from week one to eight. Yet, as the campaign progressed, a view solidified that the Coalition was on track for a relatively comfortable victory.

So "a view solidified", "on track", "relatively comfortable victory" - what weasel words, what worthless piffle that all is. The solidification of pure wind was bad enough - but the fact that it was so all-pervasive is just so stupid, and unforgivably so among people their defenders still insist are competitive, diverse, and intelligent people. The numbing collective aspect is what's so stupid, and Knott is trying to use it to hide what's wrong with political reporting and build a future for it.

Go back to that quote from Knott above - a quote that is not intended to make him look foolish, but which would have succeeded had that intention been there. Let's take out that indictment of a last sentence and run the sentence before it into the one that followed:

The results barely shifted from week one to eight ... Yet the Coalition suffered a sizeable swing against it on election night and is struggling to hit the 76 seats needed to govern in its own right.

It follows that consistent polls indicated a hung parliament, and this is exactly the result that was foretold. That "yet" is jarring - it shows that the jibber-jabber of campaign commentary had absolutely no effect on the result at all. It shows that the media would have been better served simply by printing poll results and filling pages/airwaves with almost anything but the hectares of blather chuntered forth by Knott and his disgraced colleagues.

"The commentariat fell into a bubble and were reflecting what each other thought.

"A narrative caught hold and everyone started reporting it."

With hindsight, there's much to support this.

There was much to support that conclusion at the time, but the only support available to journalists was in delusion, and in reporting the wrong stories. Knott was too haughty to realise it, too wrapped up in his and others' bullshit and lacking the tools and wit to snap out of a collective delusion that impeded understanding.

Knott began his career covering inside-media gossip for Crikey. A young fogey, Knott disdained social media (despite Crikey being more like a blog than established traditional media) and Fairfax decided that personalities and gossip provided the necessary depth of skills to cover federal politics in all its complexities. Despite being one of over two hundred press gallery journalists, there was no way Knott had any sort of ability to work things out from first principles and chart his own course through the nation's public life. Those who wrangle journos for a living from the major parties were dead right in assuming Knott could be stuffed with junk food and shuffled off to picfacs and would love every minute of it, offering nary a challenge to the desired narrative nor any departure from the collective.

Several ideas took hold quickly in the gallery's collective brain. That Australians don't kick out a first term government (despite this happening recently at a state level). And that Malcolm Turnbull's personal popularity was a decisive advantage against the less prime ministerial Shorten.

During the campaign, several events became seen as "turning points" for the Coalition despite the polls never really budging. Labor's admission it would increase the budget deficit over the next four years was one. So was the UK's departure from the European Union.

It's one thing for some to hold to conventional wisdom. But for all of them, without exception, to stick to an opinion that could be trumpeted but not justified can barely be believed, let alone respected.

Many had picked up a "vibe" in the community that voters were disappointed in Turnbull, but not sufficiently angry to remove him. There was also the confidence exuded by Turnbull and his advisers.

Many of us even convinced ourselves that the low-energy, small-target campaign was a clever way of "boring" voters into backing the Coalition.

"You got the impression they were confident and confident for a reason," former Media Watch host Jonathan Holmes says of the coverage. "There was very little scepticism of what was behind that".

Very little scepticism by whom - hardbitten, can't-fool-me journalists, trusted experts in the hall of mirrors that is politics.

Confident Labor - delusional. All journos agreed.

Confident Libs - confident for a reason. Again, all journos agreed (baa!).

Who's best place to judge why these people have failed? Why, the noddies themselves. They'd know. You can trust them - well, our hero does.

But if the media were wrong they were hardly alone. Two days before election day the bookmakers - often hailed as more accurate than pollsters ...

Often hailed by whom - hardbitten, can't-fool-me journalists, trusted etc ... you can see where this is going. First you fool people, then you snuggle down with those you've fooled so that you can be wrong together. The difference is that bookmakers incur real and direct penalties for getting their odds wrong - not so journalists.

So, as Insiders host Barrie Cassidy asked, were journalists shown to be "gullible"? Or were they being lied to?

False dichotomy there. Being lied to is a given in politics. If you're experienced and credible, you can pick your way through the lies and show us what's going on. If you're not, then you're no better than Knott and his arse-covering mates. Right toward the end, and doubtless under duress, Knott dove into social media:

In preparing this piece, I asked readers on Twitter and on Facebook for their views of the coverage.

Some dominant criticisms emerged ...

And excellent criticisms they were, too good for our protagonist it seems. Most journalists use social media to follow other journalists, and get all upset when randoms barge into their carefully curated circle-jerks; I imagine Knott's is no better, but he has blocked me. I have given deeper thought to political journalism than he has; Knott wakes up every day and does the same thing over and over, waiting for drops or chewing over press releases, assuming that he's vindicated by following the herd. Knott flinches before criticism and can't evaluate it, spluttering instead from the ill-considered perspective that only journalists can judge journalists:

Journalists may quibble with some points.

So?

If the campaign is light on policy, blame the politicians' and not us.

No. Politicians bear their own penalties from a disengaged electorate, penalties no journalist bears (not even those made redundant, and too few of those come from the press gallery/campaign trail). Political campaign staffers know what journos like: they like it lite, brite and trite. In my previous post I gave two solid examples of political journalism from the small beer and weak tea that was this campaign. Journos and editors are responsible for what journos write/say. If you'd been right, you'd want credit; you aren't, so cop this.

Others might argue that, despite what readers say they want to read, many more will click on a story about a "fake" tradie than a plan to save the Murray Darling Basin.

The declining fortunes of the media demonstrate that they have no clue what people do or don't want to read. That fatuous and ill-considered quote assumes erroneously that any piece on a substantive policy issue is as good as any other, and that a piece that is both badly written and badly received should discourage any attempt at better journalism.

Still, that doesn't mean those in the media shouldn't listen - and reflect.

It does, if you're simply going to dismiss some very good feedback out of hand, or cast those pearls before the swine of the campaign bus/press gallery.

Six years ago, Greg Jericho expressed frustration that he couldn't find any reporting on disability policy because the press gallery were busy making the very mistakes to which Knott referred and tried so feebly to dismiss. Journos at the time were less dismissive than Knott and some expressed a wish to do better. Millions of news cycles later we know that none did, of course. Knott could have studied that and become a better journalist. As Margaret Simons didn't say, but I will: Matthew Knott has much to be humble about, with no inclination or ability to lift his game.

James Jeffrey doesn't pretend to be anything but a writer of colour pieces. Unlike the more precious and dismissive Knott or Annabel Crabb, he doesn't claim his gentle vignettes have a serious journalistic purpose, and he gets upset when others think they should. This is fair enough (and this writer may well have taken easy shots in the past at pieces of this sort), but the bit where his piece doesn't quite work is the bit where his larky tone turns to snark:

For some, I suspect it stems from the disappointment that the paper isn’t, say, wall to wall Paul Kelly — an understandable disappointment. But Kelly isn’t stingy with his words and there’s plenty to go around.

Following my latest “And this passes for journalism?”, I’ll confess to feeling a bit fed up. I thanked my commenter for checking in, but suggested such a comment was a bit like going to a cake shop and getting grumpy because you can’t get a steak.

Kelly mightn't be stingy with words, but since about the mid-'90s he has sacrificed quality for quantity. And this leaves lighter pieces bearing more weight than they were designed for, like ivy straining to hold together a crumbling wall. Or, to return to Jeffrey's analogy, if someone's sold you disappointing steak after disappointing steak, they can never appreciate cakes for what they are.

I’m still in love with the idea of a newspaper being a banquet with plenty of courses. Hard news, breaking news, solid analysis — all of that is important. But it’s not the only reason readers turn up.

For a start, I only read that story because Jeffrey's employer placed it outside their firewall. Like a potplant outside a toilet block, it leavens the overall effect but does not make me any more likely to go in.

Jeffrey might be holding up his side of things with his personable arrangements of bons mots, but his assumptions about the heavier lifting done by others simply do not hold. If you're an urban denizen, as Jeffrey is, where are you most likely to find a delicious cake: in some hole-in-the-wall patisserie, or in some tacky run-down supermarket full of verbose but customer-unfriendly staff and a reputation for crap steak?

Knott's attempt to raise journalistic failure and then dismiss it without proper examination calls to mind the heartfelt but ultimately misdirected lamentations for journalism by Paul Barry earlier this year, and by Jonathan Holmes late last year in The Age. We live in an information age, and information providers should be making out like bandits. Limiting yourself to mere journalism seems to be its own reward. Yes, proper information costs money, but if you don't take a chance on it then you can never make money anyway. Those who are neither informative nor engaging while taking up space once occupied by those committed to being both waste everyone's time and resources. We needed to be told the truth about how we are being governed, and (at a time of election) what other options we have. At a time where the election was so boring that doing some policy-based research actually made the coverage less boring, rather than more so as Knott and his dull-witted herd did, the fortunes of our struggling media could have turned around. A bit of independent thought might have snapped Knott and some others out of the mass exercise of professional self-harm he and his colleagues perpetrated upon us all. It would have helped us form better judgments about how we are governed (and on what Knott and Jeffrey report), because that matters more than the combined delusions of journalists.

Update 8/7: Different/better takes on Knott from:

• Russell Marks
• Mr Denmore
• Preston Towers

Same-same

Tony Abbott will never, ever pass same-sex marriage into law while he is Prime Minister. He will support those who resist it so long as he lives. All the Canberra-insider hints that he might accommodate it are just bullshit, beating up a story that does not exist.

When John Howard became Prime Minister, Australia's political momentum toward a republic was growing. Howard shored up his monarchist base and invoked his authority as leader by pretty much declaring that Liberals who supported this cause were not Liberals at all. Liberals lose office when they're seen to be on the wrong side of history, and nothing is truer to the Liberal tradition than wanting to win elections: Howard divided republicans and saw off any threat a united anti-monarchy movement might have made to the political structure which he had come to master.

Same-sex marriage advocates have done everything you would hope in a democracy to promote their cause. They have written letters to and met with local MPs. They have raised money and organised peacefully. Any demonstrations have been polite affairs: nobody has been arrested, no conflagrational symbolism as with draft cards and brassieres in a bygone era. No same-sex marriage opponent has suffered personally for their views as Stephanie McCarthy has suffered for being who she is. Proponents may even believe that Abbott is giving them some sort of tacit support, and some Liberal MPs may be under a similar misapprehension.

They have been clever in framing the issue as being about equal rights. But Abbott can frame as well as anyone, and the press gallery are helpless as kittens before his framing (even especially the 'experienced' ones).

It is not reasonable to expect that a Prime Minister will sit back and allow legislation to which they're fundamentally opposed to just slip past into law. It has never happened. Again, when Howard was PM the press gallery mused how ironic it would be that lifelong monarchist Howard would usher in a republic: there was no republic, and hence no irony. Now the same people muse how ironic it might be for Christianist homophobe Abbott to usher in same-sex marriage:

• Have they learned nothing?
• Are they stupid?
• Why listen to them?

There are many in the Coalition who feel as Abbott feels about this issue. There are those in the ALP, and on the crossbenches, who oppose same-sex marriage too, and they will cast their votes as they see fit. Like any politician, Abbott shores up his base when his overall position is weak. Any credit Abbott gets from rock-ribbed conservatives on terrorism and the ensuing loss of civil liberties (inside or beyond the Liberal Party) would be wasted were he to let same-sex marriage pass.

Just four months ago, Abbott faced down a leadership challenge. Nobody believes that he might sit back and allow a piece of legislation to pass to which he was fundamentally opposed, and that such passage would not reflect negatively on his leadership. This is where we get to Abbott's framing, and why that framing counters the equal-rights framing by same-sex marriage proponents.

Abbott was being too smart by half when he insisted that the only same-sex marriage bill that would pass was one he would move himself, and that any other bill (initiated by Shorten or Leyonhjelm or anyone else) was just 'posturing'. He will never move such a bill himself. The idea that he might is itself just posturing. So too are the timid announcements from Coalition MPs who say they'll vote for same-sex marriage if there's a free vote: there won't be a free vote, so the promise is hollow.

Let's use a sporting analogy to illustrate Abbott's yeah-nah position. Let's assume that former Carlton coach Mick Malthouse could and would have insisted that his team would only take the field if they played with a ball that he owned. Let's also assume there was no penalty for forfeiting games. Malthouse would refuse to let any of his balls onto the field, Carlton players would declare themselves undefeated, other teams would play to their supporters by expressing a willingness to play (one or two Carlton players might do the same). Assuming AFL journalists are as bad as the press gallery, they'd hail him as a wily genius. Nothing would change - and to leave the analogy, that's what Abbott wants, to change nothing. Happy to have the charade of change, happy to frame any and all change as a charade really - but nothing will change so long as Abbott has his way.

Same-sex marriage is not a 'distraction'. Given that Australia is exposed to the ebbs and swells (and reefs) of the global economy, given that the government can't do much about interest rates or property prices or even tax, pretty much everything the federal government does is symbolic. They don't accept that their opponents can do symbolic politics that resonates with people. This is a government that lives or dies by culture war. They love a bit of symbolism. They just don't like having its most potent weapons turned against them.

Many Liberals are as opposed to same-sex marriage as Abbott is; many, if not most, are not. Surely these are the people who will join with most of the ALP, a few crossbenchers and all* the Greens and pass same-sex marriage into law? No.

Those Liberals can take or leave same-sex marriage. Let's face it, nobody who was truly concerned about same-sex marriage voted for the Coalition in 2013. There are no votes to be lost for not voting for same-sex marriage, or engaging in parliamentary shenanigans so that the vote doesn't come up.

Liberals are primarily concerned about looking like a leaderless rabble. They are in government because they framed Labor for acting like that (and the press gallery love a bit of framing). Any same-sex marriage talk makes Abbott look weak. By toeing the party line on same-sex marriage they are protecting their leader, and nobody expects any more or less of any Liberal. If anyone breaks the party line, or if there is no line to toe (i.e. a conscience vote), you put Liberal MPs in a position where their personal moral positions are exposed and have to be justified.

While previous generations of Liberals were more than happy to do develop and justify their own positions on broad social issues, today's line-toeing Liberals regard personal beliefs as an indulgence. Individual-freedom-to-the-max Liberals like Amanda Vanstone get nowhere in today's Liberal Party - just ask John "Third Preference" Roskam. On the rare occasions when the government allows voices from the backbench into the media, it puts up careerist sucks like George Christensen or Andrew Nikolic rather than randoms like Andrew Laming or Dennis Jensen.

Broad philosophical positioning used to be core business for a political party, now it is outsourced to consultants. If you want to know what it means to be a Liberal in 2015, don't ask Tony Abbott or Julie Bishop or Mike Baird: ask Mark Textor.

Don't believe Peter Reith either. Reith opposed four binding referenda in 1988 because they would limit the scope of professional politicians like himself. He spent more than twenty years in politics doing nothing to advance the cause of direct democracy; the nearest he came was to use high office to pollute democracy by lying about asylum seekers.

If the marriage reform is not dealt with this year, political backroom advisers will encourage politicians to focus on bread-and-butter issues, which do not include same-sex marriage.

Rubbish. In his budget reply speech Bill Shorten talked a lot about science and technology, which also lies outside what Reith would consider "bread-and-butter issues". The reason why he did that was to frame Abbott as unprepared for the future, of not being open to or equipped for its challenges. Same-sex marriage fits that narrative perfectly.

Consider the past three Labor victories over Coalition governments (2007, 1983, 1972) - in no case did Labor win on "bread-and-butter issues". In every case Labor won on the perception that it was more flexible and credible than the obstinate incumbents in dealing with an uncertain future.

For supporters of reform, waiting for politicians to give the public the right to have a say is a mistake.

It's begging the question to claim a popular vote is the only way the Marriage Act can be changed.

To ensure reform the best approach is to demand a plebiscite.

A plebiscite is a non-binding vote. Proponents of same-sex marriage want real legislative change, which won't be achieved with a plebiscite. Strangely, those who want a plebiscite on same-sex marriage are dead against the same measure for a republic.

If the reform or its timing is left in the hands of politicians, there is no guarantee.

Yes there is: you replace the politicians. It's called democracy. Then again, Eleanor Robertson has a good point about learned helplessness, and if not this what? Here we start getting all Letter-from-Birmingham-Jail about the very question of effecting political change.

... both sides are struggling with the issue.

Rubbish. Labor's leader and deputy leader made their position clear. Senior Labor figures who might have opposed same-sex marriage, like Tony Burke, declare themselves supporters while none are going the other way.

During the republic debate in the late '90s, people like Reith insisted that Labor was riven over that issue; I am yet to meet a monarchist Labor voter, and I suspect Reith is happy for such a bunyip to stay out of his sight too.

There is no government bill. Tony Abbott has not said if there will be a party room discussion on the issue. The Coalition party room has not yet decided to allow a conscience vote. They may stick to their current position.

This is Scott Morrison's position: the Liberal Party will not be rushed, and if it does not get around to same-sex marriage then it will not happen, and you'll just have to accept that.

Understandably, the Prime Minister wants to keep Bill Shorten at bay and Shorten is desperate to get the kudos of allegedly having championed the issue.

One of those guys is desperate: the one trailing in the polls, the one with more to lose, would be the more desperate.

That would work for Abbott in the same way as when John Howard opposed the 1999 referendum. Howard ensured a fair process which empowered the Australian people to decide whether Australia should become a republic. Howard was widely respected for allowing the vote.

Howard started from a position of opposing a republic and framed it so that it couldn't win. Reith and Abbott saw that up close. Abbott is playing a similar game with same-sex marriage and Reith is happy to play along.

Reith is dishonest here, as he was in the Irish example, for conflating binding referenda with non-binding plebiscites.

Australia runs a pretty good democracy. We enjoy telling our politicians what we think of them but we have a lot of quality people in the political elite in Canberra, including the media as well as the MPs.

Reith's idea of democracy is to minimise real public input, to frame it as something flaky, while the politicians make the real decisions. His idea that there might be "quality people" in the press gallery is almost entirely wrong, until you realise he spent most of his parliamentary career in the press gallery leaking against every Liberal leader who wasn't John Howard.

Tony Abbott's breach of faith with the electorate is every bit as great and irrevocable as that of Julia Gillard in the middle of her term as Prime Minister. Reith is right when he says "Abbott could not switch from his long-standing and principled opposition", because that would be like Kevin Rudd abandoning climate change.

Christine Forster is a bonnet ornament on the same-sex marriage cause, not a driver and not part of the engine. Abbott has been happy to use his wife and daughters and props to create the impression of being more awake to women's issues than he is. Opponents can't simply brush his sister off, but nor is she much use in making the case.

Mind you, this is the site that predicted Abbott would never become Prime Minister at all, and Reith has forgotten more about politics than I've learned; there's your grain of salt. Doesn't mean that Abbott will pass same-sex marriage though. The press gallery can't bear to report on Abbott as he is, as they know him to be. They cling to their fantasy that he might change, that Tony 2.0 is real and just around the corner, and this fantasy prevents us realising properly how we are governed.


* I can't think of a single Green politician who's opposed to same-sex marriage, not even from the perspective that marriage is a patriarchal construct. Is it even possible to be a member of the Greens while opposing same-sex marriage?

Barrie Cassidy queers the pitch

Barrie Cassidy is one of the longest-serving members of the press gallery and the host of the ABC TV show Insiders. His analysis doesn't quite work because, like Michelle Grattan, he takes political developments as they happen without any real long-term perspective.

Take this. The first questions are: what is "Plibersek's gay marriage pitch"? At what will it fail?

No matter how fatigued and cynical seasoned political journalists become, they line up enthusiastically to hear debates in the Parliament set aside for a conscience vote.

Such debates are refreshingly honest and passionate, allowing members of Parliament on all sides to shed stringent party allegiances and follow their heartfelt convictions.

That the issue is not just restricted to religious beliefs make the debates even more compelling.

There are MPs who vote like this all the time. They're called independents. Cassidy regards them as freaks and ferals and wishes that the electoral system could be re-jigged to stop such people getting elected.

The reason why Cassidy starts the article like this is because he wants to make it clear that parliamentary debates should be conducted for the entertainment of journalists. He then goes on to explain why, and how much, Tanya Plibersek has let him down.

Now Labor's Deputy Leader, Tanya Plibersek, wants to bind MPs to a party position on gay marriage, rather than allow a free vote based on personal beliefs.

Plibersek has been accused of raising the issue only because her electorate has a high proportion of gay people, and the Greens, as a party committed, driven and united behind marriage equality, present as the only danger to her re-election.

Plibersek has represented the electorate of Sydney since 1998. I haven't been back through her record but it's fair to say she would not have won that seat, and kept doing so, had she not been deeply involved in issues affecting the LGBTIQ community.

If you understand politics enough to comment on her seat, you'd understand that and seek to convey it as part of your analysis. The idea that Plibersek woke up one morning to be confronted by marauding gay gangs wanting to get married is silly.

Note the passive voice "has been accused" - by whom, with what motives? Why did it not occur to an experienced political journalist to ask those questions? Whenever journalists lapse into the passive voice they are up to no good.

Cassidy wrote a book called The Party Thieves in which he claimed that ambitious politicians had somehow 'stolen' each of the major parties from their membership bases. Let's apply his thesis to Plibersek: a long-serving member of a political party (and a major one, none of your minor-party riff-raff), Plibersek worked within party forums to get same-sex marriage adopted to her party's platform. It's notable that the issue did not cause powerful opponents to flounce out of the party, as the ALP split in the 1950s.

The Deputy Leader of the Labor Party is seeking to get the Labor caucus to vote according to the already settled Labor platform: this is not quite the bolt-from-the-blue Cassidy is trying to make it appear.

More than that, her motives have been linked with the leadership, especially because Bill Shorten went on the record last year in a speech to the Australian Christian Lobby, locking himself into a conscience vote.

Again with the passive voice. If Plibersek is the tactical doofus Cassidy makes her out to be, Shorten is safe.

Sounds like the start of a LABOR LEADERSHIP SHOCK beat-up. It's on the record that Cassidy doesn't take kindly to ambitious Labor deputies. He didn't take kindly to Gillard, Crean, or Keating, deputies who turned on their leaders. He revered Lionel Bowen and Brian Howe, who each no more wanted to become Prime Minister than fly to the moon. He was quite fond of Kim Beazley, who waited until the leadership was dropped in his lap. As for upstarts like Hawke, Latham or Rudd - hey, that's just politics.

However, beyond that, her frustration is understandable. Despite a succession of opinion polls showing majority support for the move, the issue has been allowed to drift for years. Plibersek obviously believes that locking in Labor's numbers will guarantee change.

Not necessarily. Labor is in opposition. If there was a vote in parliament on same-sex marriage it would not pass because Labor doesn't have the numbers.

So, what does Cassidy mean by 'change'? Labor's platform won't change. Plibersek might be seeking to make a statement about Labor's intent when in government. She might be seeking to progress an issue she's been working on for years.

In politics, it's possible to lose a vote in the short term but win eventually. Look at Tony Abbott's repeated no-confidence motions in the Gillard government (Cassidy has): Abbott lost every one of those votes. Did this make him a loser? Eventually, Abbott convinced the public to share his lack of confidence in the last Labor government.

It is possible that Plibersek is playing a long game with same-sex marriage - indeed, it's likely - but in his lunge for PLIBERSEK FAIL Cassidy cannot even examine the possibility.

What's the point of doing all that work to change the Labor platform if you can't enforce it? Should this issue be on Labor's platform at all? Cassidy should engage those issues, but can't.

But the party's national conference will resist the call for a host of sound reasons.

Undeniably the community wants change, but a conscience vote on both sides would be the best expression - and endorsement - of that attitude; an opinion freely expressed rather than one driven by party discipline.

Tanya Plibersek isn't deputy leader of 'both sides'. Like any practical politician she is doing what she can with what she has, and what she has is some influence within the ALP.

The tactics are wrong as well; and that was best underlined by openly gay Liberal Senator, Dean Smith, who supports gay marriage.

So a Liberal backbencher has greater tactical sense than the Deputy Leader of the ALP? Smith has more directly at stake with this issue than Plibersek, a straight married woman, but Plibersek has the record on this issue that he lacks. Cassidy is only quoting him because he needs some support in opposing Plibersek.

He recently said that "if the ALP was to adopt a binding vote ... then the issue of a conscience vote in the Liberal Party is dead".

He is right. Such a move by Labor would release the pressure on Tony Abbott to grant his side a conscience vote.

No it wouldn't, and no he's not.

First of all, same-sex marriage is dead within the Liberal Party so long as Tony Abbott is leading it. Smith, Cassidy, and everyone else with any political experience at all knows this.

Abbott and same-sex marriage is like John Howard and the republic - he's just not going to support it, and everyone who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves. He'll go around stomping out debate, saying that Liberals who support it aren't really Liberals at all - until community pressure builds and a vote must be held, whereupon he will frame the vote in such a way that it can't succeed. If same-sex marriage came to a vote while Abbott is Prime Minister he would put up a travesty: Smith and other prominent same-sex-marriage advocates would vote it down, proponents would be split, and Abbott would declare the issue as dead as the republic. People like Barrie Cassidy would praise his deft political skills.

Abbott's opposition to same-sex marriage isn't tactics, it's strategy. Cassidy should be able to tell the difference.

What pressure is there on Tony Abbott to hold a vote on same-sex marriage? Tony Abbott is under pressure over a number of issues, but same-sex marriage isn't one of them. How can you ease pressure that is barely felt?

Smith did not win a Senate seat for the WA Liberals by being a passionate advocate for gay marriage. They voted for him despite, not because of, his position on this issue. What he is trying to do here is not introduce same-sex marriage, but keep alive the idea of the Liberal Party as the natural party of government - the Liberal Party disposes in its own good time and not a minute sooner.

Progressives often criticise conservatives for being against any and all social change. Not only is this not fair, it's inaccurate: just as there are plenty of eminently conservative positions brought in by Labor governments, so too there are progressive positions that were brought in by Coalition governments. Conservatives almost never dismiss social reform out of hand: "now's not the right time" or "there are other priorities" deflect and bog down progressive momentum, whereas outright opposition can rile it up.

Smith would rather there were no same-sex marriage for the next fifty years rather than have the ALP or any member of it get some credit. That's how conservatives work. Barrie Cassidy has no excuse for not knowing that, and failing to convey it to his readers.

Neither would it be a good look for the Opposition to impose a binding vote, and then suffer the humiliation of MPs voting against it anyway, as some surely would.

Labor has established mechanisms for dealing with its members who vote against their party's platform, and Cassidy knows that - but more on that later.

And already merely raising the issue has shown how divisive it can be. The ALP's national conference is a singular opportunity for its leader, Bill Shorten, to take centre stage with a developed plan for the future built around economic management. The issue of Palestine threatens to distract from that. Loading up the agenda with an unnecessary brawl around gay marriage is a further impediment.

Labor has an established lead over the government in the polls, just as Kim Beazley did a decade-and-a-half ago. Shorten led it into that position by being risk-averse, by only opposing the government where it was proposing something unpopular. Say what you will about Plibersek and same-sex marriage, or recognition of Palestine - it isn't risk-averse. Cassidy should acknowledge that, but he can't because it goes against his narrative.

Why does Labor have to focus on economic management? The Coalition promised to be econocrats first and last but most of their energy has been dissipated in cultural stances like abolishing Medicare bulk-billing, or enforcing Anzac Correctness. Why can't Labor's future include same-sex marriage and a Palestinian state?

For most of its first 60 or 70 years, Labor insisted on tight discipline. New members had to take "the pledge", allowing for internal debate initially, but absolute adherence to the party platform in the end.

They wanted to resist factions going off on a frolic of their own, splitting the party into disparate groups.

But times have changed, and dramatically so.

Across the country, there is nothing like the support for the main parties that existed even 20 years ago. As voting patterns change, parties need to be more diverse. The broad church imperative grows, not diminishes.

That means, at times, foregoing discipline for flexibility; being more open to conscience votes, not less so.

But wouldn't that be embarrassing? Cassidy said it would be embarrassing if some Labor people voted one way and others another. Now he's saying there should be more of it. Why were Labor splitters of old "on a frolic of their own", while those who want to vote against today's platform are just being broad-church? When Plibersek opposes her leader on this issue, a matter of party platform, is she being broad-church or frolicsome?

Cassidy has not made the case that flexibility of the type he advocates is the answer, or even an answer, to declining support and participation in traditional politics. Maybe no such case can be made. Does political debate really end with the bemusement of journalists?

Barrie Cassidy is entitled to engage in political analysis, too; his employer pays him to do so. His analysis just isn't very good. He trashes his own experience, even the thesis of his Party Thieves, to make what looks like a self-defeating point. He flails a successful politician in pursuit of a long-term social reform goal whose popularity bears no relationship to the numbers of people directly affected. This year's Labor Conference is less significant than you might expect; it is certainly not that significant to a journalist who's seen plenty such conferences come and go.

Cassidy's political experience should be worth a lot more than he makes of it, and not just to himself. The Drum should do a better job of editing what is submitted to it. Cassidy can't even have a meaningful debate with a blank piece of paper - no wonder he can't handle political debates among other people.

Bad reporting, bad decisions

If you believe that Anna Bligh led Labor to defeat with a huge swing in 2012 over asset sales, then you must also believe that Campbell Newman led the LNP to defeat last night for the same reason.

Policy matters in political analysis. Only the analysis about what state government is actually for, the focus on schools and hospitals and law-and-order, makes any sense of why Queenslanders voted as they did.

The people of Queensland have permanent interests, rather than permanent friends or enemies in politics. Once you understand that - if you can understand it - you can get past the idea that it is the political class that is fickle and obtuse, and not the electorate.

Queensland's optional preferential system, combined with the significance of parties outside the LNP and ALP, makes a mockery of polling in other jurisdictions. On the ABC election coverage Antony Green once again fought a brave but losing battle with his own software. I was half expecting it to rise up, like Frankenstein's monster, and proclaim Aidan McLindon the next Premier. Green's on-screen troubles pointed to a wider problem in the quasi-profession of political punditry.

Polls predicting Queensland elections have always been crap. Nobody predicted Goss would lose in 1996 (and nobody looked at Kevin Rudd's role in that government to assess how he'd go as Prime Minister, but don't even get me started on that). Nobody predicted Beattie would scrape back in so soon afterward, and everybody was astonished when he was re-elected in successive landslides. They were amazed by 2012, and amazed last night, and the same people will be amazed in 2018 (whatever the result then) too.

Queensland should be the place were political punditry goes to die. Yet there are actually members of the federal parliamentary press gallery who actually tout their experience from one of the worst black holes in Australian journalism. Go here, download the Fitzgerald Commission report and go to section 3.9, and understand why I expect more of political journalism than press gallery denizens can deliver. Those people are as guilty as anyone of treating political game-changing phenomena coming out of that state - Rudd, Palmer to name but two - as a freak show, rather than a predictable phenomenon with strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

All the poll-jockey journalism about Queensland was bullshit. All of it. This is not the worst example of it, but it will stand in for the rest:

Naive people with way too much hope and way too little knowledge of politics looked on in awe as their Great Leader gave his interviews. One of those interviews was conducted by me ...

Richardson has always believed members of his own party to be mugs, and he has the backroom boy's contempt for the public mouthpiece. That said, Bob Katter is basically offering economic protectionism without the nasty racist edge of Hanson, and that has no future - but nobody expects yer man Richardson to go into policy detail. He's engaging in after-the-event wisdom against Katter, which is why I have no compunction about doing so here.

Katter’s bad luck didn’t end there. At the last federal election the Palmer United Party appeared out of nowhere and dashed his chances of picking up a Senate spot.

The limelight shifted to the new Saviour when, once again, it seemed that many voters were looking for an alternative to the major parties.

Palmer was more successful than Katter because Palmer seemed to have a better understanding of the economic factors shaping Queensland than Katter, who even wears three-piece suits in homage to Ted Theodore and T J Ryan. When Palmer referred to the Chinese as "bastards" on Q and A, the veneer of the sophisticated businessman disappeared, and he became another populist clown. His accommodations with Abbott government policy made it look as though there were no ideas other than the deeply unpopular and half-baked ones put up by the government. Palmer looked like Abbott's dupe, even though Abbott was supposed to be led by the nose by wealthy people like Palmer ... which made the whole show seem like a bit of a circle-jerk really.

Within a few years the PUP will be little more than an unpleasant memory as this Queensland state election campaign is showing.

OK, so PUP didn't win any seats - not even serial loser John Bjelke-Petersen, who has been running unsuccessfully for three decades, has been in more parties than Paris Hilton (one of the few hackneyed old jokes about politics that's actually funny), who always gets a welter of free publicity - and whose community just does not want him to represent them. At all. Ever.

PUP did win about 8% of the vote in their enfeebled state. There are Labor MPs heading to George St to replace LNP members as a result of that vote, which is Palmer's main motivation and the main thing most reporting on Queensland missed. The whole idea of creating the LNP was to focus the right-of-centre vote in Queensland. Far from being united, the anti-Labor vote fragmented under Newman - even Pauline Hanson got in for her chop. By contrast Labor's vote did not fragment; there was no big stoush like Farrell-Weatherill in South Australia, nor the bitter warfare that often takes hold in Victoria.

As Mark Bahnisch points out, Queensland has a different political history. The Liberal-National Coalition might unite liberals and conservatives closely but not too tightly in other states, but in Queensland the two-party thing just looked muddled. Goss and Beattie brought a generation of educated people who might normally have been small-l Liberals into the ALP. Now that the unity thing hasn't worked and the LNP brand is essentially one of mendacity, and it complicates things in Canberra, what even is the point of keeping it going?

But Richo isn't on to deal with the big questions. Eventually, he gets over how wacky Queensland politics is. Sort of.

Meanwhile the Labor leader, Annastacia Palaszczuk has an enormous task to restore electoral credibility to her party. Aided by the arrogance of and immense dislike for Premier Campbell Newman, she has had some by-election wins and has several times reached 50/50 in the two party preferred category in Newspoll.

Talk about being damned with faint praise, more than half way down the article. At least he resisted the temptation that other commentators often lapse into when discussing Palaszczuk:

• raking over her marital and pregnancy history
• treating her like a placeholder for male alternatives who weren't in the last parliament, or
• whoa, isn't her surname hard to spell!

Before the LNP was formed there were eight Liberals in an earlier Queensland parliament, and they split 4-4 in a leadership ballot. Visiting comedian Eric Idle offered himself as a candidate. It was not beyond possibility for Palaszczuk's small band to suffer a similar fate, and be mucked about by extra-parliamentary players.

Labor dropped two or three points the moment Newman announced this snap poll and this was to be expected. Even with two by-election wins, Labor holds only nine of the 89 seats in the Queensland parliament. With a uniform swing of 11 per cent, a result which is well nigh impossible, Labor would win 31 seats and Newman would still be Premier.

The idea of a political pendulum was an attempt to order a process that can resist easy definitions, and usually works best when swings are small. The higher the swing, and the greater the fragmentation of the vote beyond two parties (big swings and fragmentation being key features of Queensland politics), the less useful the whole 'uniform swing' construct is. Richo is clearly not the guy to ask about Queensland politics.

Palaszczuk has to climb Everest and then some.

Hundreds of people have summited [sic] Mt Everest since an Auckland apiarist first did it in 1953. It's time for another metaphor to describe the impossible.

Imagine the advantages of incumbency the LNP has. In 74 electorates across the state they have staff to burn. Every ministerial office has even more and none of them are doing constituency duties right now — they are all flat out on the election.

The LNP stuffed their parliamentary ranks with numpties. If you're going to do that your staff need to be very sharp: a hundred Credlins. Anyone with half a brain went to Canberra in September 2013 or made it to a ministerial office - and even they are having second thoughts by now, and overestimating how valuable their skills are in a flatlining economy.

The LNP coffers are full and Labor’s are near empty. Not too many businessmen will donate to a Labor Party which has no hope of victory with a vindictive Newman ready to pounce on them post the election.

Newman can be as vindictive as he likes, if you're running a business in Queensland which relies on state government (in terms of contracts, compliance, or both) and you have no ties to or contacts in the new government, more fool you.

If Labor can achieve a 7 per cent swing they can win eighteen seats. That would do real credit to Palaszczuk and any more would be a tremendous result.

Not being in Queensland last night, I watched the coverage from ABC24. Successful Labor candidates like Kate Jones, Jennifer Howard, and Palaszczuk herself talked about low-cost community campaigns rather than the big-money and smart-staffer assaults Richo is used to. Political journos can't imagine elections any other way. They got the standard big-politics treatment of being flown around the state in Newman's jet or transcribing Tim Nicholls' paeans to the economy. They patronised Labor candidates in shopping centres and public parks, forgetting that lo-fi grass-roots campaigns won key seats for Labor in Victoria, too.

Piping Shrike is right in saying that both parties have lost their social base. However thin it might be, Labor are (re)building one, which will make for a patronising and risk-averse politics to replace the fits-and-starts that the Coalition are playing out.

Labor will have its renaissance, but I suspect it is a few years off yet.

Yairs.

Much has been made of Jane Prentice's comments on Abbott for their federal implications, and while that angle is more than fair the contrast with state Labor is important, and could not have been more stark. Prentice talked messaging and swings and other political-class abstractions; Kate Jones talked about being approached about politics while walking her dog, or Palaszczuk discussing issues with her father. The contrast was telling and will remain so.

If Shorten starts running campaigns like that the federal press gallery won't be able to use its small array of blunt tools to describe his campaign either. The traditional media will run the whole of the next federal election campaign like this particular example of political journalism failure, where they simply will not be able to describe political events, or what they mean.

Brisbane has one major newspaper, The Courier-Mail, a Murdoch tabloid which went as hard for Newman as it had for Abbott. Its credibility is trashed. Since colonial times, newspaper proprietors have swayed elections and politicians have had to manage them: no more. After Victoria, where both The Age and The Herald-Sun supported the re-election of the Napthine Coalition government, we can now declare the age of the influential newspaper proprietor - and the press gallery doyen - over. Political careers stunted by fear of Murdoch are a thing of the past, there is no excuse for that now.

Grass-roots campaigns like Labor ran in Victoria, and now Queensland, only work against incumbent conservative governments. Volunteers are fired up and can wax lyrical about how things will be better under Labor. Once the Andrews and Palaszczuk governments have become a little shopsoiled, making some hard decisions/blunders, volunteer numbers will dry up and they will have fewer answers to growing concerns.

There are other limits to this approach as well, in terms of the utility of unions. Volunteers descended on Bundaberg and won for Labor a seat that - you guessed it - the pundits hadn't anticipated falling to Labor (even though Leanne Donaldson had been a strong and active campaigner for years and the seat had a long Labor history. One out of the box. Who would have guessed. Back to you in the studio, Richo). Bundaberg is a manual-labour town and union volunteers seemed to receive warmer welcomes than those most Queenslanders extend to blow-ins. In the lightly-unionised Gold Coast there was no grass-roots campaign of this type, against much weaker opposition, so five seats went begging for Labor.

Maybe the grass-roots union campaigns are overstated. The only other conclusion you can draw from traditional media is that there are more bikies in Queensland than one might imagine. See how bad political reporting in this country is? Bad reporting leads to bad political decisions, by politicians and voters alike.

What looks like a good result for the LNP on the Gold Coast, and an overall result where a majority is tantalisingly close, has to be weighed against the fact that their potential front bench is neither that clever nor that cohesive. They have no idea where or how they went wrong. What were the LNP thinking when they complained about unionists backing the ALP? That relationship has been established for over 120 years; while it hasn't always been smooth or even constructive, whinging about it makes you look like you don't understand politics.

With all due respect to everyone sweating on the wording and presentation as I write, so what if Tony Abbott pulls off a ripper speech tomorrow? The only truly great speech he ever made was at his preselection more than twenty years ago, when he beat off people like Kevin McCann and Concetta Fierravanti-Wells. Gillard's speech three years ago was quite good, but the press gallery couldn't get past her glasses or her nomination of an election date. Admit it, he's finished. Admit it, he never was any good - at speechmaking or anything else. Liberals like Prentice are, like the press gallery, thrashing about for a plausible reason why they overestimated someone they observed so closely but examined so little.

What the Liberals want is someone with the appeal of Turnbull but who won't do anything to interfere with the policy settings. The policies aren't just unpopular, they haven't been thought through, and those who point this out aren't just patsies to be dismissed lightly. If you think Tony Abbott is high-handed and doesn't consult, wait until you let Turnbull off the leash. But, more on that in the next post.

Leadership as distraction

I don't care how many prima donnas there are so long as I am prima donna assoluta.

- Gough Whitlam (1916-2014)

The press gallery bristles at any idea that it is biased for or against either Labor or the Coalition. The bristling becomes positively furious when you back it up with solid examples. Journalists lash out at social media with the same accusations others level at them: lazy, formulaic, ill-informed, stupid, biased etc.

This coming week, you will see the proof of their sheer utter lack of bias. This week, no matter what the government announces - in defence, health, sport, you name it - press gallery journalists will try and frame it through leadership manoeuvring. There will be talk of 'the Bishop camp' here or 'an unnamed Abbott supporter' there. Talk of Bishop looking fresh and energetic will be contrasted against the current Prime Minister being described as 'beleaguered'.

This is not to suggest that a leadership change is afoot.

Oh, poppycock Peter Hartcher, and what would you know anyway?

• Hartcher, like the rest of the press gallery, failed to pick the transition from Kevin Rudd to Julia Gillard in 2010.
• Every week for the following three years, Hartcher predicted that Rudd would return to lead the ALP. The fact that he was proven right eventually should be balanced against the idea that a stopped clock shows the right time once every twelve hours, or thousands of times in a three-year period.
• To be fair to Hartcher, he correctly identified the second change to Labor's leadership in 2013. This was because Rudd vacated the leadership by means beyond an EXCLUSIVE interview with Peter Hartcher, and the ALP openly publicised the fact that Bill Shorten and Anthony Albanese were running for the leadership over an extended period.

Imagine the shrieking from the press gallery if Malcolm Turnbull had changed the way he dressed and lined up slavering puff-pieces like Bishop has. Contrast Bishop's free pass with the savaging Joe Hockey received over Madonna King's biography.

Bishop emphatically resists any suggestion she wants the leadership, or even the treasurership.

She would say that, wouldn't she. Full support for Abbott too, no doubt.

She's found her meter [sic], and she's loving it, she says.

Word to Fairfax subs: you left a key letter out of 'metier', and if the word is new to you look it up; assume that every word Hartcher writes contains 'I'.

If you look at Bishop's Twitter feed it is the Twitter feed you see from inoffensive but ubiquitous celebrities, put on for show, but without the gnawing insecurity that comes from someone who puts their heart and soul on the line each day: this is someone secure in the fact that they are never going to be seriously questioned. Prime example:

One wonders by what means the tweet was sent if the iPhone had actually been wrested away from her, if the Foreign Minister does not have some secret stash of device(s) to tweet beyond the control of advisors. This and other recent tweets are both playful and nerdy, like Kevin Rudd's were. She's all about the work - but she doesn't worry too much about looking cool, oh good heavens no.

Solid doses of hoke and disingenuousness form the basis for Bishop's affinity with Rudd. It is hard to see what other basis there is in this for such a comparison:

• Rudd is not some sort of titan in foreign affairs, like Metternich or Kissinger or even Percy Spender;
• In a policy area that is fairly intangible, Rudd has few achievements in foreign policy and many other areas of government, owing to a dithery and chaotic administrative style that careened across other areas of policy. Bourke saw that at close quarters but chose not to mention it;
• No mention is made of any foreign-policy basis on which Rudd or Bishop (or Plibersek, or anyone else) might be judged in the role of Minister for Foreign Affairs;
• Rudd's friendship with Bishop is significant in the context of the last government - Kerry-Anne Walsh calls it out in her book The Stalking of Julia Gillard, but Bourke lets it slide;
• The Labor government of 2007-13 had three Foreign Ministers: Stephen Smith, Kevin Rudd, and Bob Carr. None of those men are in Parliament now. Nobody in the Labor caucus has a strong foreign policy record. This means Labor's foreign affairs spokesperson, whether Plibersek or anyone else, must necessarily be a foreign affairs neophyte. This doesn't occur to Bourke either; so
• It isn't clear what Bishop and Bourke mean when they say Plibersek is no Kevin Rudd; other than in the simple sense that neither of them are Kevin Rudd, I'm definitely not Kevin Rudd and you almost certainly aren't either, dear reader.

An article that obscures understanding rather than facilitating it has failed as journalism. An article on how we are and might be governed that obscures understanding is undemocratic. Journalism is valuable when it seeks to go beyond set-piece events and manipulative one-on-ones, whereas someone like Bourke (and before her, Annabel Crabb) reckon the tinsel and bluster is not a distraction but the essence of government itself.

But Ms Bishop hit back at Ms Plibersek and said her opponent was only interested in playing politics with foreign policy rather than taking a bipartisan approach where appropriate.

"She doesn't seek briefings from me whereas I actually sought them from the foreign minister, both Kevin Rudd and Bob Carr," she said.

"I have invited her to a couple of briefings to hear from me and I've also suggested other briefings, security and intelligence briefings and the like," she said.

A spokesman for Ms Plibersek said she is "regularly briefed by the heads of our intelligence and security agencies directly".

It is understood Labor requests most briefings through the Prime Minister's office not the Foreign Minister's.

Think about that: why would the opposition spokesperson on foreign affairs subject herself to lectures from her political opponent? What exactly did Bishop get out of cosy chats briefings from Rudd and Carr? Rudd didn't seek much from Alexander Downer, and didn't need to. Plibersek would be derelict in not going to agency heads, observing all the protocols etc., rather than accepting morsels doled out by Bishop.

Usually, Latika Bourke is the leading example of a journalist who is fully replaceable with an algorithm:

[start]
[insert]dinkus_lbourke[/insert]

Tony Abbott said today "[insert]*Coalition_press_release*[/insert]".
[end]

She really thinks her job begins and ends at press conferences, never doubting the utility of merely quoting a government that says one thing one day and something contradictory the next. Failure to replace her with an algorithm looks increasingly like negligence on the part of those who employ her. She is not an honest trier having a go, but the world's most expensive microphone stand.

This is typical of Bourke, and it's utter shit:

[Bishop] chats the entire jog and doesn't puff once while updating me about her week's three priorities – foreign fighters, UN peacekeeping and Ebola.

She's not chatting with you for the sake of chatting, she's a public figure communicating through a journalist to the public. The minister's priorities on policy, the three dot points, would be the story for a more capable journalist. Instead, Bourke goes the handbag story, the female equivalent of blokes talking sport as a way of bonding, and a desperate attempt to equate star power with foreign policy gravitas: some random barflies, and a Hollywood reporter who makes Bourke look like Bob Woodward.

Then again, it's a neat trick to brief a journalist under circumstances when she can't function as a microphone stand. That article shows Bishop playing Bourke like a trout. Quite why Fairfax needs to smooth the Liberals' leadership transition in this way, and diminish an expensive employee in the process, is unclear. When you buy the mastheads in which Bourke is printed, you encourage her and her employers in this drivel.

The structural weakness of conservatism is that they can't distinguish between an emerging trend and a passing fad. A party that thinks it is boxing clever on climate change will totally underestimate the growing impact of asbestos, and will overestimate its ability to spin Bishop's defence of Wittenoom against its victims.

Bishop demonstrated the sort of coldness that Liberals tried to foist onto Gillard with her empty fruitbowl and "deliberately barren"; they overestimate their ability to spin Bishop away from that stuff, too. Bishop will drop a clanger that reveals her lack of understanding about raising children and it will come to define her.

As a senior lawyer in Perth, Bishop learned how to schmooze: whom to suck up to, whom to elbow aside, dealing with larger-than-life characters such as Noel Crichton-Browne. She became Minister for Ageing in 2003, injecting a professional approach to the aged care sector missing under her two provider-focused predecessors, Bronwyn Bishop and Kevin Andrews. When Brendan Nelson left the Education portfolio for Defence in 2006 she replaced him, achieving little until losing office the following year.

She became Deputy Leader because she wasn't threatening. The Liberals had an unfortunate habit of putting the leader's most potent threat as deputy, who would use the office to undermine the leader. Costello wasn't strong enough to knock Howard off and win the victory Howard couldn't, but could not play loyal deputy indefinitely. Bishop had no ideas above her station and no clue how to protect the leaders under which she served.

Soon after she became Deputy Leader, Perth-based variety-show host Peter van Onselen asked Bishop to write a book chapter on Liberal philosophy. She got a staffer to write it. Why van Onselen sought her to do a task that was manifestly outside her capabilities is unclear. Van Onselen still keens for Bishop to become Prime Minister, which shows you her ability to put one over people like him and Latika Bourke.

The nearest thing the Coalition got to a coherent policy position when in opposition was the "new Colombo Plan", a hazy but promising scheme where students from Australia would work and study in Asian countries, and vice versa. It is hard to find any particular passion for such a policy in her output before 2007. It isn't as though she's imposing her will on government now to make it happen, like Keating did under the Hawke government.

Her mismanagement of this country's relationship with Indonesia is appalling. An irrelevance like Francois Hollande received better treatment than the newly elected Joko Widodo. Yet again, the distorted prism of refugee policy defines what should be a broad-ranging and increasingly deep relationship. There is no sign Labor are doing much better but it is doubtful they could be worse.

Her mismanagement of this country's relationship with the United States is weird. Truckling to Murdoch is one thing, but Bishop and others in the national and Queensland governments are pathetic. No Australian politician is regarded so highly as Obama is here, and one who declares - as though expecting to be taken seriously - that the Great Barrier Reef is fine only opens up the kind of dissonance that cracks open promising careers in politics.

This piece fails to account for the Coalition's close relationship with the US Democrat administrations of Kennedy and Johnson (and Nixon's dastardly treatment of Gorton and McMahon), but otherwise its point is well made - and it's on Bishop's head. She wouldn't improve much as leader, either.

There are 226 members of federal parliament: name one who could write a more thoughtful and well written critique of trade and foreign policy - including Julie Bishop (and her staff) - than this.

The qualities Bishop offers the Liberal leadership are essentially those Abbott had: physical stamina and a capacity to talk obvious, provable nonsense with a straight face. She brings little to fill the void Tim Dunlop describes; again, like Rudd in that regard. Bishop would be less overbearing and abrasive than Abbott - but really, so what?

The whole idea of leadership is to show us the way forward, to engage with the issues of the day and to have us engage too, to show what our future might look like if only we would trust in something bigger than ourselves.

Journalists describe the major issues of our time but they can't engage with them, because the people they cover don't engage with them. They have no ability to engage with big issues either, which is why their coverage is miniaturised and personalised (e.g. the ill person who can't get hospital treatment, the ADF personnel who are abused but not the culture of abuse, the farmer facing drought yet again) but not rendered powerful enough to compel resolution.

The press gallery brought Senator Lambie under what they thought was intense scrutiny. You'd think such scrutiny would have picked up her role in reversing financial planning regulation - but sadly, no. We're all supposed to gnash our teeth and wail when journalists get sacked, but hey.

People like Latika Bourke and Peter van Onselen regard leadership not as engagement with, but distractions from, the issues of the day - gaffes, handbags, Labor-blaming, pic-facs. Julie Bishop can do that stuff standing on her head. That's why a silly press gallery brings out silly politics, and vice versa, and the cycle can only be broken one way. We will always need politicians but we will not always need a press gallery.

Politicians will go around the press gallery to establish a relationship with the public when they are elected with a connection that does not depend on the press gallery. The utter absence of value in and from the press gallery will then be exposed. We can get distraction from anywhere these days; neither oligopoly politics nor oligopoly media are that appealing. Engagement with the challenges of our time is the thing, and again oligopoly politics and oligopoly media aren't cutting it there, either.

As good as it gets

I can see clearly now the rain is gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It’s gonna be a bright, bright, sunshine-y day

Jimmy Cliff I can see clearly now

Australia needs to be an open society, tolerant of personal differences among people and communities, and innovative in terms of the business practices of government and the economy more broadly.

The question before the last election was, can Tony Abbott deliver a government that meets the needs of the country?

I said no, repeatedly on this blog and elsewhere, and voted accordingly. Mark Kenny disagrees. He believes that the election results invalidates any opposition and, in line with the editorial position of his employer, insists that Abbott must be taken at his word.

The first thing to be said about "Labor's case against Tony Abbott" is: well, they would say bad things about him, wouldn't they. His descriptions of them were reductive and exaggerating, and Kenny has no right to be surprised that he copped a little bit of his own medicine back.

The opposites of rash, aggressive, impulsive, and frenetic are probably things like calm, consultative, methodical and steady. Unsurprisingly, these latter words are the ones Tony Abbott wants you to attach to his new government. Abbott is building a public relations case for his administration against the negative backdrop of the "chaos" he replaced.

Well, he would, wouldn't he. Just as we need a thesaurus to work out synonyms and antonyms, so too we need journalism to decide whether or not that's valid. Journalists have to decide the extent to which they want to play along with the PR strategy of the government of the day, and the trade-offs in credibility they make in doing that.

Clearly, the Rudd and Gillard incarnations of Labor were notable not just for their poisonous divisions but for their desperate attempts to rev up the news cycle. In their adolescent plea for friendship, they were prepared to backflip on just about anything. Be just about anything.

This paragraph clearly isn't meant to be informative, the product of an experienced political journalist.

In getting through carbon pricing, restrictions on tobacco sales, reforms to education and disability services, and many other things besides, the Gillard government was required to be calm, consultative, methodical and steady. It lasted for the standard parliamentary term of three years on that basis.

I admit to underestimating how important the "poisonous divisions" were to people outside the ALP. The rest of that paragraph may fairly be regarded as bullshit, and an attempt by Kenny to curry favour with the new government. The Gillard government appeared to care very little for the 'news cycle' and indeed its disdain for it has a level of maturity that Abbott, with his stunts and inability to deliver nuanced messages to intelligent adults, now seems to aspire. It was the press gallery whose need for affection and respect was so great, and when it was not reciprocated they simply blackballed the government and insisted, with or without proof, that everything they did was hopeless.

Now that government, baby and bathwater, has been tossed. We have a new government now.

No surprises then that the idyll of an "adult government" was mentioned a few hundred times in the campaign - straight from the focus groups that one.

That maybe so, but the question is whether or not Abbott is capable of delivering on that. He's certainly capable of putting up a front, I don't really need a journalist to tell me that - what I need from a journalist is whether there's any substance behind that front, and no a simple assertion to that effect will not do. Maybe the focus groups should be reconstituted and sworn in instead of the recent shadow cabinet.

Tony Abbott seems to have put up a series of propositions which he cannot reasonably fulfil.

The petty partisan round of appointments and disappointments that follows every newly-elected government will disrupt the idea of "adult government". The first time a Coalition MP is chucked from Parliament for being rowdy, or a minister is dumped for some eminently human flaw or impropriety, that aspiration will be further diminished. The iron discipline that Abbott has imposed upon himself, and which Kenny takes as given, may well slip. Consider the Coalition's monkey-house antics in Parliament and its vacuous stunts beyond it, and wonder whether - if "adult government" is what you want - Tony Abbott is yer man to deliver it. Some of us considered that before the election - oh well.

Then, there's the speech on election night where Abbott actually affirmed the pie-in-the-sky propositions he had put during the campaign. He made promises about the budget that depend on both a hard-to-discern global economic outlook and a sheer absence of any action on his team's part to bring about outcomes on debt and surplus. He actually promised that the boats would be stopped, when the only way to do that is to both engineer a highly unlikely global environment where push factors are absent, and to make Australia every bit as bad as the societies from which people are fleeing. This highly partisan man even promised to reach out to those who never voted for him.

It's one thing to campaign on that stuff: but the more you reiterate it without having what it takes to back it up, the bigger the disappointment you are setting up for those who hoped for better from you. Kenny should be alert for differences between rhetoric and reality, and he isn't.

For Abbott to be successful, he needs to turn around a persistent view of him as a jaw-jutting political bovver boy ... So much for all the emergencies on the borders, in the budget, in the economy.

Yep. I always thought that rhetoric was bullshit, and it's a real shame no journalist was awake to that possibility.

Then again, he and his team have done so little policy work that they need to get on board that Clue Train, and leave the baggage on their party platform if need be (it's too late to do to all of them what was done to Sophie Mirabella, and rip up the ticket in their faces). Public servants have to do the work that the party membership can no longer do, in terms of setting a policy platform.

This would be reassuring if Abbott was slowly and methodically putting in place well-considered policy positions and personnel, but I don't think that's the case. Prove me wrong, Canberra insiders (don't just tell me I'm wrong, prove me wrong).

Playing down that 'emergency' rhetoric will make it hard for Abbott to rev it up again when he needs to get things moving. Denying funding to some worthy cause because of "budget/debt emergency" will start to look like a cop-out. If I was an experienced political journalist I'd know that, and would point it out to my readers.

He even wants politics off the front pages in favour of sport.

Yeah, so did Malcolm Fraser after 1975, so did Hawke and Howard; and if I was an experienced political journalist I'd know that and share it with readers. It's another way of saying: shut up and do what you're told, stop questioning us all the time. Mind you, what with drugs and sex scandals in AFL, and a palpable lack of success in a range of sports played against other countries, perhaps it is not quite the opiate of the masses that politicians might hope.

Abbott had actually been standing on the brake pedal before he won, such was his momentum towards office. The signs were there if you looked. Softening the rhetoric, toning down the outrage, winding back the expectations. Witness his surplus promise, which does not even match Labor's four-year path.

That fluff about the surplus actually looks like a dodge. Two years from now a journalist will accuse them of breaking a promise, and the word-games will begin (see "adult government" above). As for "The signs were there if you looked" - that's your job, Mark. You look and report on what you see.

The story of Abbott's stunning success is inseparable from his political maturation.

Abbott's stunning success is the result of an appearance of maturation (or perhaps 'maturity'? I thought only yoghurt underwent 'maturation'). Whether he really has matured is an open question.

Yet the case against him has been set in aspic. The political left's fascination at his surprising one-vote victory over Malcolm Turnbull in 2009, the oft-cited proof of his shaky internal mandate and his capacity to divide his own MPs.

Not necessarily. This is straw-man work on Kenny's part.

The one-vote thing was always a dead letter after the Coalition party-room changed so significantly after 2010. Abbott does divide his own MPs, but the slow media doesn't really report this. From the mid-1980s to the mid '90s, Liberal turmoil was a regular feature of political reporting, even though they were in Opposition at the time. Since Howard took over the curtain has come down on Liberal turmoil; there was a recurring non-story about Costello supposedly challenging for the leadership, but not to the point where he'd set out to upset anybody in any way. The Liberal leadership changed twice in a single term of parliament, just like the Labor Premiership of NSW - but according to the media this was never proof of turmoil, oh good heavens no.

One reason why disagreements with Abbott were never proof of 'turmoil' is because those who put Abbott into the leadership controlled preselection outcomes in party executives and at branch level across the country. Politicians are loath to criticise their leader because the ramifications for their careers in doing so are real. They tend to do so only if their political base is absolutely secure. When Peta Credlin went around dressing down those who even looked like shirtfronting Abbott, part of her arsenal is a direct or implied threat against her target's very political future - a vulnerability she, and other unelected staffers, lack.

Yet as George Brandis points out, Abbott's internal support is unrivalled. It is not that he won by a single vote that's important, it is that he turned that tiny edge into genuine authority, unifying his team to a greater degree than thought possible and forming a spearhead aimed right at Labor's belly.

The first six words in that paragraph cause a sinking feeling that only comes about when genuine authority is required, but is absent.

Kenny, and Brandis, confuse momentum and victory with authority. What Abbott had was momentum, and he kept Liberals in line by appealing to them not to disrupt that. As a result, they have indeed secured victory. Authority is more elusive, it won't come with being sworn in or with blue ties or suspensions of standing orders. Congratulations George and Mark for knocking down a straw man and confusing what words mean.

Those clinging to the view that the country's new prime minister is some kind of one-dimensional throwback to the 1950s simply haven't been paying attention.

Labor's case against Abbott suffered from this very misconception, which goes a long way to explaining why it has serially underestimated him.

I've been paying attention. Tony Abbott is a multi-dimensional throwback to the 1950s. Wanting sport on the front pages rather than politics is part of that. Now, where is that latter-day Frank Sedgeman?

It may be one of the larger ironies of Australian politics that on the socially divisive issue of marriage equality, for example, it is the Catholic conservative Abbott, rather than the atheist progressive Julia Gillard, who eventually delivers, by allowing an unfettered conscience vote among his MPs and, perhaps even, by dropping his previous objections.

I've read that paragraph over and over and I still can't make sense of it. Will Abbott introduce legislation to allow gays and lesbians to marry, or won't he? What's this "perhaps even" crap? Opponents of gay marriage have every right to expect Abbott will maintain his shared opposition, and they will be furious if he doesn't. There may even be division, if not turmoil.

Abbott should be taken at his word when he says he's against same-sex marriage. It might be sad if supporters refuse to do so, but it wouldn't be ironic.

The left's answer to the Abbott challenge so far has been to assume deceit.

Whenever he moderates his position to the point where his backers can't stomach it, this is a fair assumption.

To posit that Abbott remains every bit the right-wing ideologue but has hidden his real desire to fully deregulate the workplace ...

Let's see about that.

There was a Coalition workplace relations policy released in July that looked pretty moderate. Then-shadow workplace relations minister Eric Abetz refused to defend it in a debate with Bill Shorten at the National Press Club. Then, during the campaign, he and John Alexander disowned it. Amount of slow-media focus on this key issue, which was fairly decisive in the previous two elections: negligible.

This may not reflect Abbott's "real desire" (what does?), but it is evidence of the disunity that is supposedly always fatal. It does give rise to confusion as to what will actually happen and one's ability to plan for that over the longer term: decisions far more complex and difficult than what goes into tomorrow's paper. The paucity of media focus on this has been disappointing.

... wind back advances for women, re-oppress Aborigines and hand over the environment to big oil and big coal.

I don't think he'll have the guts to do any of those things to any real extent. Aborigines will end up mucked about rather than "re-oppressed" per se. In general terms it's doubtful that women or the environment will be better off at the end of an Abbott government than they are at the start of it.

This is more straw man work: even the smallest action, the tiniest trade-off for a major loss in those or other areas, will see Liberals shrieking that they get no credit from ingrates and why do they even bother. This is what happened under Howard and, again, Kenny should be awake to this pantomime.

The idea that the Abbott offered in 2013 was not the "real Tony" was not merely soft thinking, it informed various overreaches of the Labor case - from the working assumption that, in the end, Abbott was unelectable to the embarrassing claim in the penultimate week of the campaign that Abbott had enacted a $10 billion fraud on voters.

People who opposed the Coalition in 1996 always believed that John Howard would bring in workplace relations legislation similar to WorkChoices. The fact that such a scare campaign didn't work at that election, and was not vindicated for almost a decade, does not invalidate it. The signs were there if you looked.

Yes, Labor sure did lose the election last week. To what extent are "the left" and "Labor" interchangeable? Is Bill Shorten "left"? I'd ask whether such a tag applies to Bruce Hawker but he'd probably sue. Journalists need not worry about taxonomy to the extent that political science academics do, but given their reliance on words they should consider what they mean in the current context, if anything.

A tweet during the ABC's Q&A program on Monday summed up the confusion on the political left as people try to reconcile long-held views of Abbott as a hardliner with the reality they see before them.

Abbott, it was asserted, was economically dry and socially wet.

Business worries that the reverse is true, pointing to his taxpayer-funded direct action plan to replace Labor's market-based emissions trading scheme and his taxpayer-funded, gold-plated paid parental leave scheme.

It is scarcely surprising that different (unnamed) people should have different opinions.

This is where some of that consideration of who or what is politically "left" might be useful, if nothing else to stop silly pieces like this. We have little real idea what an Abbott government might or might not do. Poor political journalism is largely, if not entirely, to blame for this. Rather than admit this, Mark Kenny dribbles bullshit like this:

Neither could be described as "dry". Rather, they are entirely political, showing Abbott's propensity to shape-shift and go beyond his programming to hold the centre.

What twaddle that is. The sheer embarrassment in having to write that can only be outdone by that of being partly culpable for such a shameful phenomenon.

Having spent years observing Abbott up close, and claiming the ability to clearly perceive reality, Kenny is reduced to admitting the key player in Australian politics right now is hard to define even for an experienced political journalist who's kept a close eye on him for years. That, dear reader, is professional failure pure and simple.

The truth is, Abbott in government is likely to be populist, political and pragmatic, rather than right-wing, reactionary and regressive.

But then again, Abbott is this unknowable shape-shifter ...? It's too hard to follow your line of thinking Mark. Howard was the three Ps, and also the 3Rs, and he still lost. Hell, so was/did Rudd.

It would be a real pity if Mark Kenny thought that he has seriously made the case in this article that Tony Abbott isn't, and won't be, right-wing, reactionary and regressive. Even so, it's touching that he still finds time in his busy schedule to look out for others:

And the longer the left takes to understand this, the longer it will take it to come to terms with its own failings.

Yeah, that left. It can only dream of ascending to a clear high plane where it has no failings. Mark Kenny and George Brandis live there, and so does Tony Abbott (except where he doesn't - he's such a shape-shifter!). It's a pity for all concerned that actually doing stuff in government can only be a comedown from that clear, high plane. It may even impact the polls, and as everyone knows that's where the real stories are.

We will all pay dearly for our refusal to take Tony Abbott at his word - mark Kenny's words.

When Rudd disappears

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

"I don't much care where -" said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.

"- so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.

"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question.

- Lewis Carroll Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Kevin Rudd will leave politics when the media stop listening to him en masse. He will not go when this or that commentator says he must. He would not go if a clear or even overwhelming majority of the refashioned Labor caucus begs him to go. When the Canberra press gallery stops listening to him, he will have to find other avenues to get his message out, and that will involve him leaving politics.

All any politician wants is to be quoted in the media (except Jaymes Diaz, perhaps, which is why he hasn't been elected as a politician). Over the past three years Rudd and Tony Abbott achieved that without having much to say. There was the Gillard government, churning out detailed policies over, well, everything across the gamut of federal government really; Rudd and Abbott ignored them and insisted that they could do better. They didn't need to offer any proof because the press gallery took them at their word.

Imagine what it must have been like in the press gallery just a few weeks ago: see the poor beleaguered scribes staggering under a weight of detailed policy documents issued by a reforming government. All of a sudden one looks up and squeals: "Look everyone, it's Joel Fitzgibbon!". Nek minnit poor Joel is running away, professing his loyalty to the ALP and its leader, while the press gallery pursues him like the opening scene from A Hard Day's Night. Hysteria and ill-considered blather in the politico-media complex makes Rudd possible. Once that dies away, or changes focus, the environment that nurtures Rudd becomes hostile to him.

What's changed? Today's slow-media assault suggests that anyone from the ALP who wants to go on about their party's leadership for old time's sake will still get a good run. I was astonished at how cliche-stonkered and generally badly written this was, and it was by no means the worst of the commentary on this subject. So long as this continues, the idea that Rudd might simply opt out is the product of people who don't understand politics and have no business commentating on it.

Labor people have no more control over the press gallery now than they did when in office: they can't force them to ignore Rudd. People who follow politics closely can stop reading stories about Rudd, but press gallery journos care nothing for what people actually pick up on (this is poorly measured by clickthrough rates). One day the press gallery will decide that Rudd is no longer a story.

You won't see them run stories like that because they have no capacity for self-reflection: banal campaigns are the parties' fault, or even your fault; never than that of journalists, toward whom campaigning is tailored. Rudd was elected leader last June at the very point when the press gallery had started to 'play down' the prospect that he might challenge at all.

Leaving aside recent history (post-Keating) in the federal ALP, and final years of the Democrats (where, befitting a party of ex-teachers, Everyone Must Have A Turn), most leaders depart when defeated. Malcolm Fraser was the last party leader to have a problem with ex-leaders hanging around. In the late 1970s he gave John Gorton and Billy McMahon GCMG knighthoods. Gorton took the hint and was gone within weeks. McMahon didn't, leaving at the worst possible time (the 1982 by-election for McMahon's seat of Lowe was a harbinger of defeat for Fraser's government).

Rudd won't leave because his party want him to, and nor would his timing be influenced by his party's best interests. Labor have to consider whether a by-election loss would be worse than having Rudd stick around.

When and if the press gallery brush aside Rudd and his minions, and run stories that relate in no way to what they say, do, think, or want, then he will be extinguished politically and, in a way perhaps, personally.

When Rudd leaves politics it will take the press gallery by surprise. Even Peter Hartcher has deserted him and is unconvincingly currying favour with a new government that doesn't need him. The gallery will have no right to be surprised, and they will lose credibility for being caught out on a matter which is eminently forseeable and which 'insiders' exist to get across; there will be the usual excuses about "24 hour news cycle" (which rarely affects the press gallery anyway) or whatever. Basically insider journalism is little more than a make-work scheme for 'insiders' and not nearly as valuable (or even as valid) as they would like to believe.