Reclaiming George Christensen

George Christensen has been a Queensland Nationals apparatchik all of his "life". He was a staffer for former Dawson MP DeAnne Kelly, then set up "community newspapers" that were designed to raise funds first and distribute news second. In 2010 he won Dawson, knocking off the Labor MP who had replaced Kelly. Christensen's racist, sexist and antisemitic student jottings had come to media attention in the campaign, but Abbott shrugged them off and therefore so did our fearless media.

It's a mistake to assume, as many commentators have, that Christensen is some out-of-control maverick who is addressing the racist Reclaim Australia rally and that there's not a damn thing Tony Abbott can do about it.

Whenever the media narrative has gone against the government, Christensen runs interference. He comes out with a wacky idea that garners media attention, allows him to bag Labor, and then shrug off government deniability because hey, he's just a backbencher:

• While the government was micromanaging ABC TV and approving coalmines in prime agricultural land, George wanted to cane ice dealers. He doesn't know or care whether the measure works, but he's keen for some spanking because it draws attention away from whatever ails the government.
• When the government was being caned over the TPP, Christensen pretended to stand up for sugar farmers. The Australia-US Free Trade Agreement of 2006 explicitly excluded sugar, and so will the TPP, but Christensen looks like he's doing something by kicking against a closed door.
• The proposed coal loader at Abbot Point is in his electorate. The jobs created in building and operating it will be for his constituents - or at least he hopes so, which is why he's so against FIFO agreements that have done little for the economy in his electorate. As demand for coal declines, Christensen blames environmentalists for killing his dream rather than question whether it was a dog of an idea in the first place.
• His electorate contains little of the pretty and accessible parts of the Great Barrier Reef - except for the Whitsunday Islands, which are tightly held and cater to a select market that mostly lives far from Dawson. This is why he's not going into bat for tourism jobs over coal; tourism providers are few and small and less generous to Christensen's campaigns than coal people.
• Christensen is desperately holding the line that same-sex marriage must be a matter of Coalition policy - and that policy must be to oppose it - rather than allow a conscience vote, which would see it get up.
• He was a vocal supporter of stripping Australian citizenship from those accused of terrorism.

Christensen is a government whip, which means he helps develop parliamentary tactics and enforce Coalition unity on the floor of the House. Mavericks don't get or keep jobs like that. He is not some freewheeling dude from the far north who goes where the northern winds take him: he is a careerist suck who does what he's told.

By standing with violent racists, and being careless about the effect this has on his community, Christensen displays a low regard for the people he represents. This isn't the first time he's done this. During the 2015 Queensland state election his most significant contribution was to bandy about a cartoon of now-Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk naked, on a wrecking ball, similar to Miley Cyrus' video for her song of the same name. Labor won the state seat of Mackay at January's election, and in the other state seats within Dawson there was enough of a swing to rattle poor George. Again, he hopes that the votes he attracts from boofheads will exceed those he turns off.

He is more than happy to win ugly. After the next election he will almost certainly become a Coalition frontbencher, whether the Coalition wins or loses, provided he keeps his seat. No other Coalition MP is as effective in diverting attention away from the beleaguered Speaker right now. Christensen is not a diversion, he is Abbott's main game. When he and I were in the NSW Young Liberals, Irfan Yusuf was regularly wrong, but this piece is a mixed bag.

Yusuf is right here:

Brisbane's Courier Mail reports Christensen declaring he will defy even the PM's orders and attend the rally.

Reading through the 24 pillars of the Reclaim Australia manifesto, I couldn't help but wonder why Abbott would object. There is a call for "[t]he right to exile or deport traitors", which I guess is akin to Abbott's original call for people engaging in terror-like activities to be stripped of their Australian citizenship even if it was their only one ...

The ideology of Reclaim has a distinctly supremacist feel to it. But in case you thought it was fringe, the reclaimers are singing from virtually the same rhetorical and policy songbook as the federal Coalition on cultural and security matters. Despite trumpeting separation of religion and state, Reclaim's manifesto mentions Christian values and rights numerous more times. How often have we heard Abbott and his ministers lecture us on how Australia has a Christian heritage?

You'll note that there has been no order from Abbott to Christensen not to attend. Christensen is not defying any instruction, nor would he ever do so.

Yusuf is wrong here:

... Tony Abbott held the opposite view. He regarded multiculturalism as a fundamentally sound and inherently conservative social policy. Abbott was one of the few frontbenchers who refused to join the chorus of Muslim-phobic and migrant-phobic hysteria around issues of citizenship and national security. In addresses to various audiences, Abbott recalled what it was like for him and fellow Catholics during previous decades when Catholics were demonised.

Abbott has never known what it was like for Catholics to be demonised. He was risking nothing by spouting what conservatives like Bronwyn Bishop regarded then and now as wishy-washy ecumenical kumbaya nonsense. He was reaching out to a broader base in the Liberal Party that enabled him to knock off both Malcolm Turnbull and Joe Hockey, and have people declare before the 2013 election that he's actually quite a decent and sensible fellow who will be moderated by the demands of office.

He was, in short, gulling people like Irfan Yusuf: too dumb to realise they've been had, too proud to admit it. The entire press gallery is in the same boat, realising that Abbott is doing a lousy job as PM but not daring to admit he was never up to it - and that their assertions to the contrary were simply wrong.

Abbott is a victim of the far-right.

Oh, please.

A former staffer of his walked out to join Pauline Hanson.

David Oldfield was the last man in Australia to regard Tony Abbott as insufficiently right-wing. Even people who like Oldfield regard him as a special case.

Abbott and his allies worked hard to ensure One Nation was made accountable for financial irregularities.

They went beyond the law, Hanson and Ettridge were pardoned. Yusuf is a lawyer and knows not to confuse a quashed conviction with one that remains in force. That case should have informed those who profess to be shocked, shocked at Abbott's lack of respect for legal processes and common-law rights.

... Abbott's quite brilliant manifesto Battlelines ...

Let it go, Irfan. It was navel lint rendered into words.

If it helps, I thought Phillip Ruddock was a decent and principled person. You just have to admit you were wrong and move on.

If Abbott does give the order to the federal member for Dawson not to attend this rally, it will sound almost hypocritical.

Yes it would. Abbott is the dog that is not barking. It's part of the pattern, established with those entitlement rorts referred to earlier, where this government does what it pleases and is accountable to no-one.

... discussions (or lack thereof) on national security in Australia are rarely conducted in a sensible manner. Phillip Adams recently wrote in the Weekend Australian: "The current liturgy chanted in unison by ministers prime and junior in the Gregorian manner, including Stop the Boats and Death Cult. They are not designed to encourage discussion but to end it. To drown out doubt, debate, calibration, nuance and context."

This takes us back to George Christensen. He started out doing PR for a backbench MP, merely passing on decisions that had already been made without his input. He did not get where he is today through Socratic dialogues or pondering deeply the changing nature of society. He got where he is by managing how the media report on decisions that have already been taken, decisions that are irrevocable, decisions that need not be explained persuasively and with an emphasis on shut up and do as you're bloody well told. He got where he is by pandering to boofheads, and by being one.

Christensen may be right in thinking that sexist, racist crap plays well in his electorate. Abbott, as Prime Minister of the nation, has wider responsibilities. To focus on Christensen is to let Abbott off the hook, once again, which is how he got there and why he gives great hope and succour to worms like Christensen.

Christensen is a generation younger from Abbott but cut from much the same cloth. They were never fearless investigative journalists, but could be relied upon to pad out an already established conclusion, or create a diversion as required. Abbott is playing a double game and Christensen is happy to play along. Calls for Abbott to rein in Christensen are calls to a sense of decency that the current Prime Minister lacks, and did not ever have (no, Irfan, never). You can't persuade such people, but you can vote them out and stop assuming they might have anything useful or constructive to say. Vote for people who engage on important decisions that are yet to be taken rather than look-at-me stunts and diversions.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no

Social media sites do listicles, and while this article defends them they are only useful if they are any good.

This listicle on Australian politics is no good at all. It is published in Fairfax, a company whose record with social media is to produce low quality, at great cost, unfashionably late. There are no grounds to be impressed with the form of this listicle, so let's go to the substance.

It suggests ways that the Abbott government might improve its performance. None of them are possible. You may as well write '10 ways the Model T Ford can win Bathurst next year': it's one thing to be cheery, but there's no point being a damn fool about it.

The video at the top of the article is mislabelled. "Liberal Senator Scott Ryan joins Chris Hammer in the studio to discuss the political news of the day" makes it sound spontaneous, even promising. Ryan has been pumped full of Liberal talking points and Hammer is working his way through a prepared list to winkle them out. Standard political reporting I know, but the very kind of formulaic shit that is killing traditional journalism in this country.

Tony Abbott has told nervous Coalition MPs he plans to knock "one or two barnacles off the ship" before Christmas ... some Liberals and Nationals MPs believe changes must be made to clear the decks and start 2015 with a clean slate.

Mixed metaphors are a sign you're not really focused on what you're trying to get across. If you have barnacles on your deck it's too late for the boat anyway. And as for the slate - c'mon.

1) Act on climate change

Nope. Never mind the G20 and next year's targets, this is not a new thing.

Tony Abbott is only leader of the Liberal Party because he found a way of not acting on climate change while also winning over the press gallery. If you thought Julia Gillard lost credibility over carbon pricing, wait until Abbott starts 're-examining' the issue. In the same way that John Howard did not nationalise the means of production, distribution and exchange in the name of the proletariat, so too Tony Abbott won't act in any sort of credible way on climate change. I'm sorry, but people who say things like that should not diminish their battered employers further by opining such ignorant nonsense.

It isn't my fault that you don't understand politics. I'm just pointing it out.

2) Restore renewable energy policy

You can't be serious.

This government got where it is with the support of non-renewables, even gibbering in unguarded moments about nuclear power. It stands against renewable energy sources and cares not at all about the jobs lost in what should be a rapidly growing, labour-intensive sector of the economy. It can't just reverse that. Nobody would believe them.

The government should agree to a sensible compromise on renewable energy, having failed in its efforts to dramatically wind back the target after appointing known climate sceptic Dick Warburton to review it.

If you can deny overwhelming evidence from across the world about climate science, then you can (as this government does) deny the RET is sensible, deny efforts to wind it back have failed, deny that DickWarb is a denialist, etc.

The government could agree to a modest winding back of the target to a figure that is achievable for the industry and does not destroy it.

The RET is achievable. The absence of bipartisan support is the government's fault, and it's up to them to get over themselves. Any 'modest winding back' would be contingent and unsustainable.

3) Have a cabinet reshuffle

This government got where it is through stability. Members of the shadow ministry who didn't make it into government are still moaning about it. Reshuffles make winners quietly pleased while the losers become noisily disgruntled. Abbott knows this.

Promote some high achievers, demote under-performers ...

Easy to say - but who, exactly, are this government's "high achievers"? You see the problem here. You'd basically have to chuck the entire Cabinet and start again, which Labor did twice in 2013 and look where that got them.

... and, above all, address the appalling lack of women on the frontbench ...

It isn't as though half the members of the Coalition party room are female. Who would you promote, Lisa and Fergus? Karen McNamara, just in time to appear at ICAC? Kelly O'Dwyer, whose facility with talking points doesn't necessarily translate into policy depth? Michaelia Cash? The women who happily participated in that Mal Brough fundraiser? If you think the surface of the Liberal Party's problem with women is appalling, wait until you get down into the details.

4) Allow a conscience vote on same-sex marriage

Oh, please. See denialism above. Nobody believed Julia Gillard, a leftie lawyer, when she insisted on the current heterosexual definition of marriage. It is one of the few things you can define Abbott on, and you'll have to force him out in order to get it.

5) Abandon the deregulation of university fees

It's been trying to do that for 20 years, and will hammer away for the next 20 as well. Again, your lack of attention is not my fault. Time for you to catch up. Next.

6) Dump the paid parental leave scheme

Mr Abbott's flagship scheme continues to face an uncertain future.

No it doesn't. If Abbott was going to do it, he would have done it by now. Have a look at what the Whitlam government achieved in its first month in office, then realise Abbott has been in office 14 months now and can't even pass a budget. Public servants face going into Christmas without being paid, and you're worried about women who haven't even conceived yet?

A lack of support in the parliament, among the public and even inside the PM's own party have led to it being watered down and temporarily shelved.

No, it's been defeated. The rhetoric of defeat was splashed around pretty thick about the previous government, but with this government it's all wrung hands and euphemisms. Why is that? Do you reckon a listicle can expose the gutlessness and stupidity of the traditional media's approach to politics? Give it a crack. You have nothing better to do.

7) Revise the government's communications strategy

This government's communications strategy smashed the last government and got a bunch of no-hopers onto the commanding heights of the way this country is run. Again, see the denialism above. This government got where it is because the press gallery confused Coalition bluster with 'straight talk'.

8) Ditch the $7 GP co-payment

Done. Next. If you vote for this lot again you can't be sure that won't return.

9) Review the proposed welfare overhaul

It's not about the bottom line, it's about the culture war, which is all this government has ever been about. The real story here is that the government has reversed almost everything it has proposed in this area, offering a nanny-state solution while also insisting that people should be freer to make their own choices and not consider themselves entitled. Too long for a listicle I admit, but all I ever wanted was a nice bit of journalism on, y'know, public policy and stuff. The kind of thing Katharine Murphy has claimed for years that she'd love to do, but never quite gets around to because oooh, have you seen Julie's shoes today?

10) Reconsider budget cuts to the ABC and SBS

Again: culture wars, denialism, as above.

The way we are governed is important. If you get paid to write, you have an obligation to think about what you write. If it's bullshit, best not to write at all, and your editor can shove both his deadline and his mistaken belief he's doing anything positive by dabbling with listicles.

It's a bit like offering advice to an obtuse government, or to obtuse journalists - what even is the point?

National security theatre

Once again, the Australian media has been completely bluffed by national security theatre.

What the Prime Minister and the various police chiefs - even George Brandis - have said may be proven. They haven't been proven yet and their words are worth nothing. Nothing. All this would have much more credibility coming from a judge after fair and extensive trials, even with the law's palaver.

No government is entitled to be taken at its word, especially this one. A policeman's finding is the start of a trial, not the end.

In reporting the arrests and related events of the past 48 hours or so, the traditional media had no right to drop the 'allegedly' and other qualifiers, to be excused for failing in its duty to be sceptical at the show put on for their benefit: the staged photo ops, the idea that any question would be fobbed off with 'sub judice' or 'operational matters', the absence of any inkling that the story might be elsewhere than where the media wranglers indicated.

Remember how the Murdoch press' investigative skill cruelled last year's Boston Marathon bombing, as @FearsumEngine noted. Remember the shameful treatment of Dr Haneef, and the great lie linking asylum-seekers to terrorism on the Tampa which our politics and media is yet to call out. Remember how credulous the media were on all those occasions - and how they have learned nothing, cowering and passing on unqualified the lines fed to them.

When you see transcriptions from staged events, you are not looking at a triumph of journalism, but a failure of it. Any event that resists investigative journalism is not worth covering. Being forewarned of photo ops is no proof of journalistic competence or savvy.

These are the occasions that ratchet downwards trust in traditional media. No amount of browbeating or sneering by journalists (or wannabes) will recover the respect they are busy shedding.

The national security agencies are ramping up security in the lead-up to the G20 conferences, particularly the leaders' meeting in Brisbane in November; and rightly so. Experience from previous incidents suggests that it is this far out that perpetrators start to finalise their plans. None of this was explained to, or by, supposedly experienced journalists. None of this appears to have been even a factor in recent raids. Instead, they talked of how police actions (which necessarily involve suppressing debate) might work for a government that has demonstrably failed at everything else, including economic confidence.

This fool would reward a politician who has spent seven years beating up non-threats. The journalist would give the politician yet more powers that he is demonstrably unable to execute effectively (even by his own standards - how many of those arrested arrived by boat? Well?). This shows why insiderdom is not worth journalists having, not worth people heeding, and why the story is not where the grizzled veterans (duped again by spinners) insist it is.

We are going into debt, financial and moral, for all this. Our public policy mechanisms appear exhausted of alternatives (and if this were not the case, the traditional media lacks the skill and wit to detect it). There is no small-o opposition offered by the official Opposition, only the most timid echo. It would be pathetic were there not so much more at stake than 'w(h)ither Labor?' witterings. Should this whole operation turn out to be the sort of sham for which I gave precedents above, they give no sign that they might anticipate or even learn anything from it.

Good analysis requires perspective

Solid, intelligent analysis of how we are governed is possible. It is just not possible from within the press gallery.

This is what proper analysis looks like. Read it all, see you when you get back.

Westacott says that "never before has the public sector faced a more complex set of challenges". It's as if she's not heard of the "challenges" of: setting up the Federation, World War I and its long, severe, economic aftermath in Australia; the 1930s Depression; World War II and postwar reconstruction; the existential threats of the Cold War; the seemingly intractable difficulties of "stagflation" in the 1970s; and so on. Beside these "challenges", those of the present, for all their difficulty, are not nearly so complex.

It's not just that Westacott is talking historical nonsense. She has based her recipes on a false premise and she neglects the history and current circumstances of the Australian Public Service as well as the fundamental differences between the public and private sectors.

That's a takedown: it's about something other than attacking the person directly, but about the national context that the target here (BCA CEO Jennifer Westacott) sought and failed to address. It isn't ad hominem (e.g. Keating at his most caustic), and unlike most parliamentary insults it doesn't come from some stale catalogue of cliches (e.g. "depriving some village of its idiot"). This is why people despise parliamentary banter: it isn't half as well-considered as this.

So what is her game?

That simple question elevates this above most political commentary. When you're an experienced observer of politics you can look beyond what is said to the longer game of what the speaker is hoping to achieve. Again, the press gallery took Abbott on face value, and failed to ask what his real game was: had they done so the current shambles would have been more apparent when we went to vote last September.

Of course, these are not so much "insights" as modern management aphorisms; they're about as useful as such things usually are. Their consideration is not helped by the number of blunders Westacott makes in elaborating them.

Again, the intolerance for nonsense that obviates the ad hominem attack, followed with a point-by-point rebuttal.

The point Westacott overlooks is that the boundaries of innovation and risk for public servants should be defined by their ministers. There's no point in urging an "innovation mindset" on officials if that's not what their political masters want.

This is what it means to have the real understanding of politics which the press gallery, and those who employ them, insist they have but do not.

If the utterings and witterings of Tony Abbott and his frontbench had been subjected to that level of scrutiny there would not be a Coalition government now. If the last Labor government had been subject to that quality of scrutiny it would have lifted its game. By defying the instruction to not write crap and adopt and adolescent pose of sneering scepticism, the press gallery ensured that the Gillard and Rudd governments merely survived and that excellent policy was tossed out with a great deal of policy bathwater - not that the press gallery could tell the difference.

Let's contrast the above piece of analysis with the sort of thing you get from the press gallery - and not just from some poor newbie, or your bog-standard drone, but from someone who (by press gallery standards) produces reflective, thinky-thoughty pieces. Over to you, Katharine Murphy:

As a rule of thumb, politics would prefer to deliver voters steadiness and certainty, but increasingly this [sic] is a commodity in short supply.

So if you can’t deliver certainty, then uncertainty will have to do. And uncertainty has its own potent rhetorical currency.

It was the press gallery, of which Murphy was then (and strangely, remains) a senior member, who heard and reported Abbott promising to deliver certainty, without really questioning whether he had the capacity or even the inclination to do so.

The current uncertainty frame in national affairs isn’t actually a construction, or a complete invention delivered to us by a manifestly cynical political class.

Well, largely they are.

The current government, when in opposition, declared that the government had a debt crisis. It doesn't, but people like Murphy either simply reported that it did, or pretended there were two valid sides to such a question. They assumed, but did not check, that there was a real strategy for reducing debt rather than the same hopin' and wishin' that we saw from the previous government. They did not bother to do some basic checking on what Liberals do in government; namely, that when they do pay down debt it's a historical accident.

The current government, when in opposition, declared that it had a plan to deliver economic growth and jobs, and that key to this was the abolition of taxes paid by only a few big companies. The taxes went in their own good time but the jobs growth (and economic growth more broadly) hasn't materialised. This was foreseeable by anyone not so gullible as to take Tony Abbott at his word - someone like Katharine Murphy.

Reasons to feel bloody terrified are many. In no particular order, there’s Russian aggression, there’s Chinese regional ambition, there’s the consequences of the decline of American exceptionalism and the perceived vacuum of leadership in the White House, and there’s that sectarian violence in the Middle East and its deeply unpleasant consequences for all western liberal democracies.

Knocks "stop the boats" into a cocked hat, doesn't it? Doesn't it? What do you mean, simply reporting those words was all that was necessary? This geopolitical gibbering context is the sort of thing you develop from too much exposure to Peter Hartcher.

See the quote above on other points in history which had their own challenges, and see Murphy's global impressions for the shallow affair it is.

There’s concern about the direction of the economy, about job security and cost of living pressures. It doesn’t matter, apparently, if the data tells us we are travelling well enough and certainly a great deal better than elsewhere – the concern persists and wafts.

The data doesn't tell us that.

The data tells us everything is slowing down, and that there is no countervailing narrative that (or how) things will get better and that here are ways of joining the upward trajectory. As Paddy Gourley points out, sources of future growth from research and innovation are being cut back, not boosted. It's not that we're innumerate - we read things all too well, better than those in close proximity to the decision-makers who feel it's their job to make allowances and excuses.

Tony Abbott made a really big promise before the last election – he promised to end the chaotic cycle of the 43rd parliament and put the adults back in charge. He held out a chimera of certainty. Then he manifestly failed to deliver it.

He was never in a position to deliver it. This isn't being wise after the event it was starkly evident long before September '13 to anyone without a vested interest in the outcome. Everyone who reported to the contrary was wrong to do so, and has committed the most terrible fraud upon this country.

The press gallery put all of its credibility in Abbott's basket, and it has blown the lot.

This parliament has opened much like the last one, only it’s actually more lacking in a basic organising principle.

Yep. this was obvious just after the last parliament was elected, when you consider what might have happened if Windsor, Oakeshott et al had made a different decision. The idea that Abbott had to be taken at his word, and that the only way to assess an Abbott government was to have one, was both the unanimous press gallery position and deeply, deeply stupid and wrong.

Surprises emerge from back pockets.

Only if you're not paying attention, and if you have learned nothing.

The Coalition has been unable to communicate clearly what it stands for.

This has been the case since 2007, when Howard lost office. It was clear since Abbott became leader. He was clear about nothing other than the last Labor government was 'bad', which was all Murphy and the press gallery wanted to hear, all they reported. Murphy's failure to identify her own agency, and those of her colleagues, impedes any credibility she may bring to analysis of our politics.

That, and her childlike unquestioning belief in Mark Textor:

Textor noted soft perceptions about the economy. After years of economic growth in Australia “there is now a distinct possibility that easy prosperity may not continue”.

Again, the failure of agency here. This isn't a matter of disclosure, it's a matter of Murphy's ability to perceive what's going on and report on it accurately.

Mark Textor is largely to blame for making the silk purse of a Prime Minister out of the sow's ear that is Tony Abbott. Textor gamed Murphy and her colleagues for years and years, and they never picked it. He's still doing it. It was always the case that the Coalition did not have the answers for this country; Textor helped frame Abbott so that Murphy and her equally ovine colleagues didn't bother asking the questions that might damage the chances of Textor's client. Textor plays the press gallery for mugs and they love him for it.

I’d rate Textor’s assessment of our collective state of being bang on the money.

You would, wouldn't you.

Tony Abbott has moved into a discussion about national security and the steps the government is taking to keep us all safe. In so doing, the prime minister has defined an enemy which is both abstract and “other” and ephemeral – and very real.

Yes, yes but the idea of journalists covering politicians is not merely to quote, or even summarise, what they said. It is to check those words against other objective sources of reality, and to evaluate questions of how well we are governed, whether the priorities of the government are those of the nation, and so on.

In 1981, Robert Trimbole left Australia despite the highest level of police border alerts by changing his date of birth on his departure card. 32 years later, Khaled Sharrouf also slipped travel restrictions by using his brother's passport. Journalists should be alert to the idea that calls for greater powers are distractions from the ineffective use, rather than inadequacy, of existing powers. Instead, journalists like Murphy take Abbott at his word by accepting his word that he's "keep[ing] us all safe".

To put the current public posture at its simplest, Abbott is countering an abstract uncertainty with the imperative of moral crusade.

That's what he always did. The case against Gillard and Rudd was pretty abstract, but Abbott made up in fervour what he lacked in detail. Murphy and the press gallery fell for it then and here they fall for it again.

Prime ministers do what is right and what is necessary. Listen to him. He’s saying that every time he’s in front of a microphone. He wants to assure us that the adults, or in his case, the adult, has finally turned up.

Murphy and her colleagues quote him unquestioningly, giving him the benefit of the doubt, reinforcing him and Textor and the rest of them in the positions in which they are most comfortable.

The basic, reductionist, construction suits. So this is a key transition for him. If he can achieve the balance, Abbott has a good prospect of not only facing and dealing with a bunch of practical threats and problems but of stabilising his government and rebooting its political fortunes.

Murphy and her colleagues do reductionism really well, so they'll do their best to help Abbott. Were they to focus on subtleties and nuances and other points of view, they would serve their readers better but set Abbott adrift.

Shorten is also working himself up into a nationalistic lather about the intrinsic sacredness of Australian jobs and about defending “our industries” ... (in this case high tech Japanese submarine manufacturers, apparently creeping covertly around the Adelaide shipyards) who would make products more cheaply overseas and send them back here.

The Japanese submarines are designed for short-range operations, over a couple of hundred kilometres at most. Australian submarines need to operate over thousands of kilometres. Murphy could have found that (and other issues) out with a bit of basic journalism. Instead, operational issues like that are sneeringly referred to as "Australian conditions" or wedged into a half-baked narrative, and dismissed.

...understand that we are now locked in a process where we essentially hold mirrors up to each other.

We've always understood that, and journalists and politicians have both suffered as a result. The idea that Textor and others accurately capture our thinking about politics and what we want/need from it is risible.

Only when you understand the press gallery as a mirror in which Abbott loves to gaze, rather than as a 'fourth estate' for evaluating and checking state power, does this aimless wittering make any sense.

... it’s this abundance of reflective surfaces that exacerbates the disconcerting feeling that nothing in national affairs is ever quite real – and nothing ever quite penetrates.

And do you think Murphy will get off her backside and question any of the images crafted for her benefit? Never. Does this diminish Murphy and her press gallery colleagues? Yes. Abbott has hocked the credibility of his party and that of the press gallery; he demands still more credit, and Murphy and the gang will give it freely until he and they inevitably run out. They'll be all surprised at that, too.

Nobody should be surprised at the sheer obsequiousness from this blog's very own bunny, Mark Kenny:

Abbott has been using this neat bit of self deprecation for years now, trotting it out on those occasions when prime ministers are required, by tradition and format, to be funny.

It got a solid laugh from an audience of journalists, lobbyists, and corporates, at the National Press Club's 50th anniversary dinner in Canberra on Wednesday night - even if many had heard the punch-line before.

Jokes rely on their power for being unexpected. What Kenny heard there was a roar of appreciation for a politician who has always made a point of making journalists feel important, and feel competent by reinforcing their predictive power.

When Abbott promised a government of no surprises, it was a promise made to journalists. He promised that they would not have to deal with nuance and subtlety and different points of view. They love him for that. Having to run around and gather different opinions is hard work! Because press gallery journalists are morons, they failed to realise that differing opinions is normal for politics, and that any promise of 'slowing down the news cycle' was always nonsense.

A politician promising to slow down the news cycle is up to no good, doesn't know what they're talking about, or both. Nobody in the press gallery is awake to this.

Privately, Abbott has a wicked sense of humour and loves to laugh, but witty pre-written speech-making has never been his long suit.

Privately, Abbott's humour is petty, mean, and inane. Publicly, his speeches (particularly the ones he writes himself) are petty, mean, and inane.

Kenny dares not point this out. Kenny spent years chasing down the chimera that Julia Gillard had someone else pay for her bathroom and found nothing. Here he is applying his chimera-chasing skills again, seeking to achieve solidity from pure wind, with the idea that Tony Abbott is a good bloke who likes to laugh. There's nothing faux-reflective about Kenny, it isn't his fault he has an enlarged bullshit gland.

Yet, there is a sense about Abbott that despite his considerable intellectual power - foolishly overlooked by those who would want it to be otherwise - he is more at home in parliamentary attack mode, or at least when defending a serious position or argument.

The idea that there are great hordes who think Abbott is stupid is a straw man. However, the case that Kenny is an intellectual fizzer is strong. Abbott is good for a blast of bluster and not much good beyond that. Nobody who has observed Abbott up close for years and years, like Kenny has, should be puzzled by this. Kenny goes the straw man on a daily basis, a sure sign his analytical skills are non-existent.

That said, there is still something impressive about a prime minister who despite his time constraints and legions of staff, insists on crafting most of his own speeches. This is Abbott the writer and thinker.

Abbott is wasting time by ploughing away at something he's not good at, while other issues that need his time and attention go begging. This is something poor leaders do.

There's little impressive about the speeches themselves. School captains across the country blow the Prime Minister off the stage in terms of writing and giving speeches, which is why Abbott never goes to schools.

Even back in his day, Menzies had lamented the drift in political coverage of Canberra, criticising reporters for relying on mere pieces of paper provided to them by politicians – press releases – while the oratory and theatre, or "cut and thrust" of parliamentary contest went less reported.

Neither side of politics has shied from making similar criticisms since. Who can forget Julia Gillard's admirably economical plea to the Canberra gallery delivered from the same podium: "don't write crap".

Well you did, because you wrote nothing but. The coverage of parliamentary theatre has increased, without improving our understanding of how we are governed. This says a lot about the media, which neither Kenny nor Murphy are prepared to face (remember, Kenny and Murphy are both experienced members of the press gallery).

"The best contribution, if I may say so, the media could make right now is not to be more right wing, or more left wing, but to be more ready to give credit where it's due and to acknowledge the strengths as well as the weaknesses in our country and its people," [Abbott] said.

A government is evaluated against the strengths and weaknesses of the country. A government that simply trumpets the strengths of the country is being vacuous. A government that neglects or exacerbates the weaknesses of the country deserves criticism. Kenny, Murphy and the gang can't and won't do that.

In any event, Abbott's complaint suggests he believes he has not been given sufficient credit for his successes in ending deaths at sea from people smuggling, concluding free trade agreements and for his deftness on the world stage. This is not so.

Cute use of "deaths at sea" - a man shot in the head or who dies from a preventable condition in an internment camp is no less dead than those who drown.

Abbott hasn't "concluded" free trade deals. The Korean deal contains sovereignty-wrecking measures to invalidate our laws, and it is [$] not a high priority for the fractious KNA. He hasn't been deft at all in diplomacy. He's pre-empted the US and been oafish toward everyone else. Prime Ministers in trouble get their spinners to claim they're diplomatic geniuses, but Kenny is so "in tune" with Abbott that he overlooks actual practice in that regard.

Perhaps more substantively, Abbott also used the opportunity of the speech to remark on his own journey over some 30 years in public life and 20 in parliament, putting it up it as a model of how change can be embraced even against the necessary inertia of conservatism.

"I will admit to two significant policy areas where I am now different," he ventured, nominating multiculturalism, and paid parental leave. "In other words, there were good conservative reasons – liberal conservative reasons – for changing a traditional position."

The weakness of conservatism is that it can't distinguish between a passing fad and a permanent shift. Inertia, in itself, is not "necessary".

Abbott's supposed shift on 'multiculturalism' has to be assessed against his treatment of Muslim Australians regarding terrorism (compared with the treatment of other faiths with the terror of child abuse, for example), and the abandonment of his pledges to Aborigines. Abbott is not entitled to be taken at his word. No politician is. Kenny's insistence that he must, a Crabb-like bit of theatre review, shows that he fundamentally does not get what his job is.

In all, what we learned from Abbott's press club speech was that he remains firmly convinced of his own conservative position with minimal exceptions, and, that he thinks he gets a hard time from the media.

No Prime Minister in my lifetime (I've been an avid consumer of press gallery output since Fraser was PM) has gotten an easier ride from the press gallery than Abbott.

There was one final reason Abbott agreed to address the press club's black tie affair rather than its regular lunch-time series, and it was apparent in his final line: "I have to say, tonight, is my vision for the National Press Club – a speech with no questions afterwards."

Witty after all.

Abbott just wants to be taken at face value, and the press gallery has shown - and continues to show - that it is happy to oblige. Kenny can't distinguish wit from shit.

Penetrating but not personal analysis helps us think about what our leaders are doing, and how they might do it better. Paddy Gourley, who is not a member of the press gallery, is far more perceptive than senior press gallery members Katharine Murphy and Mark Kenny, who are heavily invested in this government and the way it relates to the traditional media.

We need better analysis of what our leaders are up to. We are never going to get it from the press gallery. It's one thing for Mark Textor and Tony Abbott to write their own pieces - but despite their limbo-dance under the low bar set for them we should expect more from those whose job it is to analyse them.

"Yeah, what he said" is not journalism.

Media consumers do not simply have to accept to accept their self-serving, badly constructed (but engaging! You had to be there!) framings. We need more than unquestioning agreement or minor, set-piece quibbles from those whose job it is to work out how we are governed. Good analysis requires perspective that the press gallery beats out of capable journalists.

Don't blame Amanda Vanstone

Amanda Vanstone tried to defend Joe Hockey in his attempts to implement the policies of the Audit Commission, of which Vanstone was part. She only demonstrated her own intellectual poverty and that of the politico-media environment which sustained her career.

Sometimes the banal aspects of life are just too much to ignore.

What a great opening! Dear reader, this column will be banal: aren't you glad you buy the paper?

When the gods conspire to load them up into a short time frame and throw them at you, it can seem overwhelming. I feel that way now about so much of our media coverage of politics.

The first two sentences could apply to anyone, anywhere. Stop someone in a supermarket or waiting for an elevator and they would probably say something like that to make polite conversation.

As to the last sentence - why now? Did this not happen regularly during her time in politics, or even before that?

There can't be a crisis next week, my schedule is already full.
- Henry Kissinger

The next four paragraphs of her article were a pathetic attempt to say that, well, a Liberal smoked a cigar but then a Labor person smoked a cigar too. This is the sort of childish tu quoque that denigrates politics and democracy as a whole, and then people like Amanda Vanstone then write articles saying what a pity it is that politicians are held in such low esteem.

Here's the significance of the cigar: it denotes a man who is out of touch with most others, and who does not care. For a retiree, the symbolism is less significant than for someone in a position to know better. Hockey has brought down a budget that shows him (and the government that approved it) to be out of touch with ordinary people, and who maintain entitlements for those who are already wealthy and powerful. Vanstone has tried Dr Freud's line that "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" and it just makes her look like she doesn't get it.

If you think I am kidding myself, consider a reversal of the stereotyping on others. How about users of illegal drugs as an example. If someone were to stereotype them all as useless losers who sponge off society on welfare, break into our homes and steal from us, there would be an outcry. You see, apparently it is OK to engage in stereotyping of a senior conservative politician, but not of others.

I still think she's kidding herself. On one hand, we have a guy who has 20 years' experience dealing with the media, and who employs people who deal with the media on his behalf. On the other we have people so deluded they think drugs and other criminal activities are what their life is all about - people who can't defend themselves from themselves, let alone others.

Mind you, the actions of drug addicts is only illegal because of the way our laws are drafted.

If Vanstone has a point I can't tell what it is, and she can't either.

There’s a free kick on offer, and plenty of the lazy journalists take it. Hollow infotainment tries to get away with looking like sensible media comment. Stereotyping and ridicule pass as substitutes for informed debate. It adds nothing to the substantive political discourse.

Valid points in some general sense, but it doesn't fit the situation here. Keep in mind Vanstone has been both victim and beneficiary of such laziness. Hockey did not get where is with media engaged in constant Socratic dialogue; nobody does, not even the media themselves.

Another example is the media reaction to Joe’s recent comment to the effect that people with lower incomes don’t drive as far and thus would not be affected as much by a small increase in the fuel excise. In many cases, in an absolute sense, that would be true, although there would of course be exceptions. It would be equally true to say that, in some cases, lower-income earners would be affected more in a relative sense. Yet again, amid all the information we could be looking at, one remark is brought to the surface and has a spotlight trained on it.

In the discussion on this from so many journalists we see little about the overall merit or otherwise of raising the excise on fuel. Do we want fuel to get relatively cheaper and cheaper so the so-called rich, who in absolute terms may well consume more petrol, get a bigger benefit? Even that is not the question.

Clearly, if you want a serious discussion of issues, you're wasting your time dealing with the press gallery. Vanstone is not the first to make this complaint, and it's not even the first time she has made it. Over the last half-century at least, the political parties that govern us have come to rely more and more upon the press gallery to maintain their relationship with voters. By using a demonstrably inadequate means of connecting with people they compromise their position. Either find a way of going around the press gallery, or stop bellyaching, and no there is no third option.

The real issue we face is: Can we keep going as as we are? Can we keep spending at current rates and have a sustainable economy? Do we just hope things will pick up, or do we start to put our house in order? If we don’t want to collect more money one way, how would we like to collect it?

There are several questions there. I'd add questions of spending versus investment, too, among others, but then I've not seen a lot of evidence that Amanda Vanstone is open to engagement with new ideas, or that a newspaper column is the forum for such a debate. Like most major party politicians, Vanstone's idea of a debate is to talk past an idea rather than engage with it or modify behaviour in any way.

Much of the difficulties Joe faces are a consequence of the Senate with which he has to deal.

(I would have said "many" rather than "much"; in any case multiple things can't be "a consequence". This, from an expensively-educated person whose entire professional life has been about communication, in a newspaper that is supposedly authoritative on such matters. Anyway.)

Joe Hockey has been dealing with the Senate for two decades. During this period it has faced seven half-Senate elections and numerous turnovers on account of resignation etc. He is not the first Treasurer do deal with a difficult Senate. It's part of the job.

We elected some people who in their wildest dreams never expected to get elected. We didn’t expect it either. They had no coherent set of principles that would guide their decision making. These senators seem very much focused on simple political posturing and bargaining.

Amanda Vanstone was Education Minister in the Howard government. She once hired Chris Pyne on her staff. Today, Chris Pyne is Education Minister and trying similar 'reforms' to universities that Vanstone tried and failed to get through. What principles are at work there?

Amanda Vanstone was Immigration Minister in the Howard government. What principles guided her decisions? Keep quiet, do as you're told, don't rock the boat and we'll give you an embassy.

What are Joe Hockey's principles? I've known him for as long as Vanstone has, and unlike her I confess freely that I do not know.

Now Joe has to deal with [Senators] in order to get some common sense. Making sense of that isn’t easy.

Nobody said it would be. Malcolm Fraser said it wouldn't be, back when Joe was in short pants. I've found that if you want to get some common sense, you have to bring some: could that be the issue with the budget?

What do the independents and Palmer United Party members want for the long term in Australia? Do they think we should future-proof the economy against another global financial crisis, or not?

What does it mean to "future-proof the economy"? It used to mean protectionism and keeping out non-whites. I think it's a nonsense to say that the economy can be future-proofed, and a lie to say that the way this government is going about it is the only/best way to do it. Maybe we could've had some journalist ask the before the last election.

Just how did Clive Palmer achieve such prominence? He’s a rich man, but so what. There have been and still are rich people in Parliament. That alone is no claim to fame.

Every time a wealthy man has entered Parliament, they have attracted media attention. Every time. Never once has Mr Moneybags rolled into Parliament and rolled out without troubling the scorers. I can feel a straw man coming on ...

First, his party always had a prospect, even likelihood, of holding the balance of power in the Senate. That alone makes you of interest. Some in the media actively built his profile.

Imagine a dark and stormy night, with a black-clad old woman hunched over the horoscope of baby Clive. Her bony fingers reach into his cot and she feels the bumps on his skull. "This boy is destined to hold the balance of power in the Senate!", she cackles.

Nope, doesn't work for me either. Why, pray tell, was it so likely? Did you wager a yellow note on such an outcome Amanda? How did some LNP Queensland tiff lead to this scenario, or predicament? Perhaps it is a Queensland thing, given that in recent years Queenslanders such as Andrew Bartlett, Cheryl Kernot, Mal Colston, and Vince Gair have held the balance of power in the Senate.

I have no idea why a cruel electorate would taunt Joe so, and fail to elect as many Coalition Senators as possible.

Second, sadly there was precious little scrutiny of what he stood for.

Oh, that's rich. Joe Hockey and the rest of this government coasted into office on the back of this "precious little scrutiny". He is now under a great deal of scrutiny, as is Palmer, but one is handling it with more equanimity than the other.

Being a potential thorn in Tony Abbott’s side made him the darling of good portions of the media.

Julia Gillard was a thorn in Abbott's side and large portions of the media of varying quality treated her very badly. Nobody becomes a 'media darling' by criticising Abbott. Even his successor as Leader of the Opposition doesn't qualify for such a title. The idea that the media is out to get Tony Abbott reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the media that constitutes the press gallery. They've observed him up close for many years and they don't get him at all.

Third, Clive is a master at manipulating the media, at getting the spotlight – and like moths to the flame, they fly.

The same can be said for Tony Abbott, and it's a shame it can't be said for Hockey. They said lots of nice things about him when dull policy wonk Wayne Swan (another Queenslander! Was he a likely prospect too?) held the job he holds now. You'd think Hockey would have learned media manipulation skills after all this time.

All of this contributes to coverage of the froth and bubble of politics, not the substance of policy.

Of course, in the great conversation of life that is politics there is room for discussion about people, their personalities, attitudes and quirks. How we say things can matter as much as what we say; it can unintentionally cause offence and it can affect what people think about us and our ideas. That’s no doubt why Joe has apologised for any offence caused. We just need to remember that these things are about the game of politics but they are not the main game, not the substance of government.

It was the substance of government that is making life hard for poor people. It was the substance of government that doesn't know or care enough to find out about how they live, or leave them alone, or perhaps even help them a little bit.

One does not apologise for offence caused; one apologises for one's actions, and let the apology go the way of the action itself. There has been no change to that substance, which is more offensive than a thousand word-games of this type (see previous post). Or not apologise, as the case may be.

The Hockey budget seeks to put Australia’s house back in order. It seeks to do that in a measured way over quite a few years. Sure there are, as there always will be, some tough decisions. Personally, I am in favour of future-proofing us from the next GFC, and very much in favour of stopping the selfish "spend now, make our kids pay" policies.

It seems to have made the house more disorderly, not less so, even without having been passed. Hockey seems to want the same tenure that Swan had, but unlike Swan not promising a surplus at the end of it, nor making any innovation on the revenue side. Amanda Vanstone was a Cabinet Minister in the Howard government and she sure as hell did nothing to protect Australia from the global financial crisis of 2008 (the one Hockey denied we had).

I still don't know what it means to future-proof anything, let alone a national economy, and it would appear Hockey is making our kids pay with fewer opportunities in what should be a brighter future for our country.

Some will pillory Joe over his cigars or something he said. I think we should offer him some praise for recognising that we need to clean up Labor’s mess.

These are not the only two choices. He overstated "Labor's mess" and is doing too little to address it, and other important aspects of our future. At the first sign of the scrutiny he should have faced in last year's budget - if not earlier - he has resorted to self-pity and a mutually embarrassing intervention from Aunty Mandy.

Vanstone is understandably upset that someone she's known and liked for many years is being pilloried. She is wrong to expect better from the media, wrong to expect policy debate when she can't even ask the right questions, and wrong to assume that whatever the government is doing must be right. The idea that she's succeeded at anything when muddying the waters over the cigar imagery is just sad. Politics is changing around her in ways she doesn't understand, and all she offers is her befuddlement - which is what she offered when in office. Why Fairfax are strapping themselves to both her irrelevance and the things she rails at is unclear.

Up for negotiation

The main problem with the Abbott government is that it cannot persuade. It can't negotiate with Senators, it can't bring people with them.

It could never bring people with them. Peter Hartcher is wrong to represent, yet again, this incapacity as something that has only happened in recent days or weeks, or that it could not have been foreseen before the polls handed this story to him. This country has been sold a dog of a government, and Peter Hartcher bears more responsibility than he will bear for that. Hartcher is attempting to scuttle back to a pose of even-handedness that he regards as his turf, but having spent too long in The Hockey Camp and previously The Rudd Camp, what might be called The Middle Ground is turf which Hartcher has never occupied.

It is time to write Abbott off as a persuasive leader. He has failed all the 'tests' and has learned nothing. It is time to write him off as a sustainable leader. Liberals might declare that they have learned the lesson from dumping Rudd before the end of his first term, but they forget how much credibility Rudd had lost by then, how frightened his party was (and is?) of actual voters. Rudd had lost a lot of faith with the public by mid-2010 but he had lost even more with a party that had closed ranks behind him until that point. The Coalition has closed ranks behind Abbott to a similar extent, and the loss of public face is also apparent at this point: after he goes you can expect an orgy of I Never Liked Peta Anyway pieces, many of them to be written by Peter Hartcher.

I was in the NSW Young Liberals with Joe Hockey in the early 1990s, and I understand why people who work with him in politics and media regard him as a nice bloke (I'll have more to say about that in a future blogpost after I've finished Madonna King's book). The idea that Hockey might yet build a public persona based on that niceness and carry the Liberal Party to victory on that basis is a Canberra fantasy, with neither Liberal hard-heads nor journos any wiser on this. Hockey will not be able to contrast himself as a kinder, gentler Abbott. Hockey is finished after that budget, and all the journos and other Canberra denizens who doubt this are fools.

At the very least it will take him years to rebuild his image as a leader in his own right rather than as a supplicant who does the dirty jobs others won't do, in the same way John Howard took years to shake off the punchline of having been Malcolm Fraser's Treasurer. When Hockey delivered the budget in May he looked rattled, while Abbott looked smug; Abbott was nobbling a political rival on that night and he knew it. The Liberals thought they had built their future on the rock by choosing Abbott now with Hockey in reserve, but both captain and reserve have the same flaw exposed.

When Howard lost in 2007 and Peter Costello refused the leadership, Julie Bishop was considered an outside chance for the leadership. When Brendan Nelson stumbled the following year, Bishop was again floated as a compromise to Turnbull, and when he in turn stumbled Bishop was floated again (under the perfectly fair assumption that Abbott was unelectable). Now she's being floated again. The press gallery simply note this without looking at the pattern:

I am not saying there is likely to be any leadership change in Tony Abbott's first term ... it's not unreasonable to suggest ... anything could happen.

If your idea of political commentary consists of as many weasel words as possible, it's hard to go past Peter Reith.

Reith was himself floated as a potential leader in the late 1990s, believe it or not. This was leadership speculation as its most idle. He neither posed much of a contrast to the then incumbent (Howard) nor did he trouble the then heir-apparent (Costello), but this sort of fluff has kept Peter Hartcher employed. Reith imploded in a piss-blizzard of dishonesty in 2001. Virginia Trioli won a Walkley for asking Reith the sorts of questions that should be standard fare in political interviews. Trioli's employer, the ABC, and the Fairfax press have resuscitated Reith without any contrition or discernible improvement in credibility on his part, which has the effect of diminishing those outlets as reliable sources of information.

The Coalition has not yet elected a female parliamentary leader but the day will come and it would not surprise me if it were Julie Bishop. But it would not be because she is female, nor because someone has written a book of her life story, but because she is a class act.

Peter Reith used to give those sort of tepid, lame endorsements to former Liberal leaders like Andrew Peacock or Alexander Downer. That he would damn future leaders in a similar way is boring, and the whole idea of being a senior political commentator is to call this out. Simply reporting this development as though it were significant is an act of professional failure by the press gallery and the editors who keep them there.

Needless to say, Tony Abbott has set the right tone and provided the leadership that was so needed given the reluctance in Europe and elsewhere.

That kind of crap might play well in the Murdoch rags but it is nonsense. Later in his article Reith praises Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans. Can you imagine Reith finding out that the Netherlands is, in fact, part of Europe?

What is now evident is that Bishop is a totally professional and assured foreign minister. She is already on par internationally with Gareth Evans and, more recently, Alexander Downer.

Not really. Evans dealt with the end of the Cold War. Downer dealt with the tricky diplomacy surrounding the downfall of Suharto in Indonesia and the rise of Timor Leste. Bishop has not dealt with anything on that scale.

The first thing to say is that she has not put a foot wrong from day one.

Garbage. The Chinese have said that she's an idiot. Our relationship with China is terribly important and has been damaged to an extent that she can't fix. It took a lot of work from professional diplomats at the UN to stop them vetoing Bishop's motion. As it happens, the Ukrainians seem to be using the anti-Russian thrust of that motion to push their advantage; it does not quite mean that Bishop's much-vaunted efforts have been in vain, but let's stop going overboard (as it were) by lauding mere competence.

Much of the purple prose about Bishop, Abbott and MH17 has arisen from embarrassment that commentators overestimated how capable this government would be. There was about 48 hours where the government did the job they are paid to do, and that time has passed without any momentum, for the nation or its current government.

She started with more than her fair share of tricky problems but she did a good job managing Australian relations with Indonesia

The second clause in that sentence is flatly untrue.

My spies tell me that it was not the only time she has been forthright in her views. She also has clear views on key topics.

That's nice.

Look, never mind Reith - what Bishop has and what Abbott and Hockey don't is that she can negotiate. This government lacks negotiation skills and it needs them if it is to survive. Bishop demonstrated these as a corporate lawyer. She might not be [$] the wheeler-dealer that Guy Rundle's paywalled article makes Clive Palmer out to be, but she could play that game if Abbott had the wit to put her where she's needed. Palmer takes credit for the government's achievements while avoiding blame and responsibility. Bishop would have dealt with plenty of people like Palmer in Perth. Abbott and Hockey don't know where to start with Palmer, and drastically overestimate their abilities (in one another, and themselves) to cut a deal.

According to Rundle:

Yet somehow, by the end of this sitting fortnight, the only two major multipart pieces of legislation – the carbon tax repeal omnibus and the Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) regulation bill – had gone through in the form [Palmer] wanted.

That isn't quite true. The minister who has handled Palmer best, and granted him fewest concessions, was the minister in charge of FOFA: Matthias Cormann. Like Bishop, Cormann is a Perthling who achieved national prominence by wheeling and dealing with the best of them. The Senate is where this government lives or dies, yet Cormann must defer to two clowns (Senate Leader Eric Abetz and Deputy Senate Leader George Brandis) who are rubbish at negotiating and clear failures at their portfolios.

Cormann's in the wrong house, he has the wrong accent, and he is up to his neck in WA Liberal intra-party shenanigans in ways that Bishop isn't. When the Barnett government implodes Cormann will be trapped in the wreckage, while long-time observers of WA politics will remember how that state's Liberals proposed to draft Julie Bishop from Canberra instead of the exhausted Barnett and flawed Buswell.

Despite the ringing endorsement of the commentators, Bishop, too, is in the wrong place:

• No Australian minister seems to have met with newly-elected Indonesian President Widodo nor any senior member of his team. Same goes for the newly-elected government of India.
• It is unclear why the hell the Australian Education Minister, with a major review of his portfolio due last month, is in Israel - and what this means for our foreign policy.
• Thailand is in political meltdown, a country with tens of thousands of Australians at any one time and the location of one of this country's largest embassies; Australia's position, and its interests, have not been articulated.
• Speaking of political meltdown: Egypt, Peter Greste - and other Australians beside him, no doubt.
  
• The Treasurer has gone to Fiji, a dictatorship which is due to have elections this year - again, Australia's foreign policy is unclear.
• Why our entire foreign policy can only be administered from some dingy hotel in Donetsk or a morgue in Eindhoven is unclear.

Is Julie Bishop really doing a good job as Foreign Minister, or even a competent one? Who would tell us, how would we know? Who else in this government, or in politics outside this government, would do a better job?

Having stumbled into foreign policy, humour me as I blunder into feminism: Bishop is every bit as "deliberately barren" as Julia Gillard was. Much has been made of the heartlessness of Bishop when acting as a lawyer for asbestos companies, playing hardball with plaintiffs dying of asbestos-related illness who were seeking compensation from her client; Turnbull has done that sort of thing all of his life, and people love him for it in ways that don't accrue to Bishop. Qualities of hers will be overlooked and flaws will be emphasised in comparison to Abbott and other men who seek to lead the Liberals, by those (men) who make those decisions. Liberals are still setting up and knocking down the straw figure of quotas - the day when a woman will lead the Liberals is farther off than Reith's glib prediction might indicate.

One of Bishop's flaws/qualities is that she is not now on a plane home vowing to sort out the government, and frightening Hockey, Pyne and others into doing likewise. If she can sort out the UN Security Council then can't she knock some heads together in Cabinet? Can't she tell Abbott to fix things (like the budget, the education and health systems, the upward creep of unemployment and fact that relations with big business are starting to sour despite their success in getting what they wanted, among others) - and that if he doesn't, then she bloody well will? She was there when Turnbull did that to Nelson, and Abbott in turn to Turnbull. Reith gave examples of where she can deliver a kick in the pants, but to be leadership material she needs to kick a few people in the teeth. Reith could only do that to asylum seekers, and couldn't even pull that off.

The coming of the 2016 election will focus a lot of dull Coalition minds who disdained policy content and consistency before the election. Those people don't, and can't, understand that the government's problems now result directly from that disdain, that lack of preparation - as though Textor and the PR dollies knew anything, as though they are any help now. If Bishop walks down the street of a marginal seat with a nervous candidate and people warm to her in ways they don't to Abbott, Hockey, Pyne or the rest of them, perhaps their minds may change ...

... but still, the pattern is clear. Liberals turn to Bishop only when male leaders (Barnett, Howard, Costello, Nelson, Turnbull, and now Abbott) fail. She is the stalking horse, not the thoroughbred; the bridesmaid and never the bride. Reith, Hartcher, and the rest of the press gallery are wrong to tell us to keep our eyes on a dead but shiny lure - the government spends millions on PR dollies but somehow washed-up space-fillers like them distract attention most successfully. The Coalition need Bishop's negotiation skills, desperately, but they are also desperate to hide just how great that need is. The Coalition do not do far-reaching re-thinking while in office, and in any case Bishop is a transactional politician rather than a far-reaching re-thinker. Like Jim Cairns after Cyclone Tracy, she has her moment but then has nowhere to go but down.

Julie Bishop represents a lost opportunity for this government, and that will remain the case after the government loses office. The Liberals, and Bishop, will never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. The first woman to lead the Liberals and become Prime Minister must learn which qualities of Julie Bishop's she is to emulate, which to leave behind.

Not Tony Abbott

Tony Abbott is not widely trusted, except by Liberals and press gallery journalists. Given the extent and frequency of promises broken it's a mistake for him to frame all his messages around trust and keeping promises. People are looking for an alternative to Tony Abbott but, as wasn't the case with Rudd or Gillard, there isn't one.

Joe Hockey isn't an alternative to Abbott. He is the lynchpin of this government. He needs to get across both the ideas that a) the economy really is in crisis and b) he's the Treasurer to address said crisis with such tools as are available to the Treasurer. Any credit for consistency and good government that will become due to this government will accrue to Hockey, not Abbott. If he fails at either or both, both men and their government will go down. Even if he succeeds it may put him in a position where he takes on Abbott and shunts him out, but that won't happen soon if at all.

Malcolm Turnbull isn't an alternative to Abbott. The Liberals know how to play him and he hasn't learnt any new tricks.

In the republic debate in the late '90s, Howard and Abbott backed Turnbull into a republican model that was unpopular, limited in scope, and focused on changing as little as possible about the way our political architecture works. Turnbull could have worked with those who supported a republic but not the model that was excreted from the convention - many in number but relatively powerless - but he chose to pooh-pooh them all. With a broader base he might have won one or two states in the 1999 referendum and maintained momentum for an eventual republic which would now be realised.

As Opposition Leader in 2008 Turnbull was unpopular, limited in scope, and focused on changing as little as possible about the way the Liberal Party worked. He was played for a fool by Eric Abetz over Godwin Grech, and Howard legatees like Nick Minchin nibbled away from the sidelines at any attempt to move the Liberal Party on from the reasons why it lost in 2007, even given the gift of Howard being removed from Parliament. Turnbull could have worked with those who supported anyone but Abbott (especially the Victorians; Turnbull would have won more seats in that state than Abbott has or can) - they were many in number but relatively powerless - but he pooh-poohed the idea that Abbott would beat him. He could have been the beneficiary of the Rudd meltdown and Gillard's fumbles. Even though he lost by a single vote in 2009, he may as well have lost by fifty.

As Communications Minister today, Murdoch and Abbott have backed Turnbull into a telecommunications model that is unpopular, limited in scope (both in terms of Labor's NBN and those operating in other countries), and focused on changing as little as possible about the way our media and ICT architectures work. Turnbull could reach out to those who are interested in ICT as a facilitator of growth - many in number but relatively powerless - but again, he chose to pooh-pooh them all.

There's a pattern here. Malcolm Turnbull is not about greatness and the leadership to get us to a bright new future. Those of us who thought he might have been were wrong about that, too. He can't build and maintain fractious coalitions, more a marquee man than a big tent guy. He tosses babies out with bathwater. His one tangible political legacy, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, should be coming into its own now with the drought but it is as one with Nineveh and Tyre. Turnbull will puddle along in Communications and may well take on another portfolio, but like Kevin Andrews or David Johnston his past is more substantial than his future.

A government is not obliged to be fractious and divided.

Paul Fletcher is Turnbull's parliamentary secretary. When Fletcher talks about the private sector, not the federal government, determining the future economic benefits Australia can draw from digital technologies, he isn't interested in hearing from some apps developer who lives with his parents. By 'the private sector', Fletcher means Telstra, Optus, and Foxtel. They will determine what we shall have and what we shall not have in line with their pre-existing plans.

Several countries around the world have determined specific goals for their digital sector.

In 2011, Brazil set its sights on raising its ranking from seventh to fifth world's largest economy by 2022 largely on the back of its exploitation of digital technologies enabled by fibre broadband ... South Korea and Sweden are constantly hailed for their digital vision

That's nice.

Countries that don't want to change their global position leave it to the private sector. The US is the biggest economy in the world, it leaves its ICT infrastructure to the private sector (it does have a significant military capacity, whose innovations - including the internet itself - occasionally spill over into the private sector). Countries that want to improve their economic position require government intervention: Brazil, South Korea, and Sweden are examples of this, as are China and India. Australia's economic position relative to other countries is one of stagnation or decline in most metrics, so by default the Abbott government has committed us to a low-growth future that it does not fully understand. The government is deaf to rallying cries like this; companies that don't exist yet have no clout.

Google Australia managing director Mailie Carnegie told Fairfax Media in October, the company wanted the change the tune of the public discussion ... "I look at the energy around the NBN. At the moment it's focused around cost. I'd love to talk about the benefits and how we can change the rhetoric, from cost to disruption," she said at the time.

Neither Fletcher, nor Turnbull, nor anyone in this government will have any truck with this communist notion of 'disruption', thank you very much. Australia being 'open for business' means that unions and asylum seekers are up for disruption, not large and somnolent businesses. There was never any indication that any other outcome would apply.

This brings us to the man who should be more not-Abbott than anyone else: Bill Shorten.

Do not underestimate the determination of a quiet man.

- Iain Duncan Smith, UK Conservative Opposition Leader 2001-03

Nobody wants to hear from a party that has just been defeated. Even though Rudd and Gillard have since departed Parliament, there were good reasons why the previous government was re-elected. Shorten was right not to come out too hard too early.

A successful opposition needs a few points of difference and With education funding (including childcare) and environmental issues (fracturing the water table for the sake of gas, dumping the Barrier Reef), are plenty in themselves. Simple statements of principle - that education is important, in itself and economically, and likewise for the environment - could sharply limit this government and help voters work out what post-Rudd/Gillard Labor stand for.

This government wants to act on behalf of stratified education and of those who casually pollute as a by-product of other gains, but it wants to be seen to act on behalf of all Australians. An opposition that is about maximising educational opportunity, and which points out there are more jobs with a burgeoning reef (e.g. in tourism) than there are in a depleted one (e.g. in mining), leaves the government exposed as facilitators of those who would constrict the country for their own purposes.

Communications is another potential issue: the government's "reviews" and "consultations" will leave it too long to develop a strong and coherent policy; Labor will be able to offer more and better than whatever we might get from Abbott | Turnbull | Fletcher | Partners (limited liability). This is a good start.

Shorten has given Abbott enough rope. He is in a strong position to say: I've had enough of this government, and make some declarative statements that ring true with people, and which help define him and what a potential Labor government might offer.

As to unions: targeting dodgy unions and unionists should help them, and Shorten by extention, more than it hurts them/him. It's just what Coalition governments do. What they tend not to realise is that it relies upon unemployment going lower than it is and staying that way. You can't get stuck into unions when unemployment is high or rising, unless you have carefully made the case that they (rather than global economic conditions) are directly responsible for it. If the economy turns down and unemployment rises, there will almost certainly be high-profile corporate failures that will make union malfeasance look small-scale. That's why I disagree with this paywalled article by Laura Tingle: the idea that Abbott looks purposeful while talking workplace relations is not that significant, a matter of parliamentary theatre rather than wider analysis.

Workchoices failed because it had plenty of detractors and few die-in-a-ditch supporters. The Heydon Royal Commission will come under pressure to be wrapped up early if it turns on employers as the Costigan Royal Commission did. Labor has 120 years of dealing with unions. Shorten should be able to draw on that.

As it stands, Shorten has made few such declarative statements. He's surrounded by sand, and the few lines drawn in it have genrally been put there by others. This might have been designed to bipartisanly protect both Burke and Hunt, but it looks like the government has bent Labor to its will and blunts its criticism of Hunt. If he won't come out swinging in favour of the national disability scheme or education or the Great Barrier Reef, and if he won't be goaded over having been a union official, will he stand up for anything?

Greg Jericho pointed out that this government was elected despite popular support for Labor policies. If Shorten can establish that Labor is able to fulfill those policies it is a long way toward returning to government - especially as it becomes clear that Coalition promises of bipartisan support for school funding, disability care, and telecommunications were never real, and that those who were taken in by the 'Seinfeld politics' idea were mugs. As Hawke and Keating did with Whitlam, it is possible to retrieve legacy issues from a government that has been emphatically dispatched.

Shorten is only the third federal leader in ALP history to have spent more of his parliamentary career in government rather than opposition: the other two were H V Evatt and Kim Beazley. Evatt was a champion of human rights but couldn't carry that through to a coherent narrative of government. Faced with multifaceted challenges to national security and human rights in 2001, Beazley couldn't establish a coherent narrative for government. Shorten might be able to establish a coherent narrative for government, or he might not. His union background is much benefit to him as it was for Frank Tudor or Simon Crean, if not more so.

Now is the time for Shorten to start drawing lines in the sand, to start defining himself that he might govern others. Rudd and Gillard have gone. This government has stuffed up and isn't great at explaining itself, or explaining away its shortcomings. Soon it will go to ground to put together the Budget. Shorten should fill that vacuum so that his criticisms of the Budget have a framework, or he will end up like Iain Duncan Smith - in office but not in power.

Tony Abbott is in power, and without meaningful opposition he is cementing himself there. Last September I thought it was better to perpetuate the fiasco rather than submit to this darkening ecliptic, but others voted differently and, well, here it is.

Grand or compact

Australians who believe in the union movement believe that if you're worried about losing your job, or working harder for lesser pay and conditions, then you should join your union. If you have to join the union which Paul Howes is operating under the Ludwig franchise, then all he wants is a bit of shoosh from the likes of you and to enjoy the kind of all-care-no-responsibility status union leaders had a generation ago.

This speech makes little sense unless you see it as a precursor for the royal commission into trade union governance and corruption. It signifies little thought on the part of the individual from whose mouth it comes, little sense that he understands the nation into whose politics he thrusts himself, and little sense that he has sought to bring others with him - odd for an avowed unionist.

After a week-and-a-half of front page allegations of corruption in some unions there are things that need to be said - and said in the strongest possible terms.

Any union official proven to be engaged in corrupt or criminal behaviour is a traitor.

The fact that he started his speech with this is puzzling. He opened by talking about vision, and rather than making such a vision rooted in his movement's long history he instead switched to headlines from the preceding two weeks. Union corruption has been going on for more than a week-and-a-half, and the fact that it has hit the media is the least of it. The CFMEU, target of recent allegations, are factional opponents of Howes'. How he expected to rise above the muck with a few factional jabs is unclear.

Howes could have referred to the Health Services Union, whose complicated affairs are playing out in an interesting way. Howes himself referred later to corruption and clean-ups in the AWU, matters which were dealt with by others before he became involved. Making Howes out to be Abbott's patsy doesn't make you a conspiracy theorist: it means you understand how politics works, and how people like Howes operate.

Factional goading, then invoking his own irrelevance: a peculiar model of leadership.

In doing this we should be under no illusion – those who act dishonestly from within the union movement are worse than any crook boss.

I would have been impressed with Paul Howes had he gone to Maules Creek and said to John Maitland, Ian Macdonald and/or Eddie Obeid that, even though their proposals would have employed plenty of AWU members, it was all done dishonestly and he and his union weren't going to be part of it. That didn't happen.

I would have been impressed with Paul Howes had he leant across the luncheon table to Michael Williamson and said: this bullshit has to stop. It has to stop today, and if you dare cry "what do you mean?", I'm going to smack you. That didn't happen, so the idea of Howes as white knight, the guy with the answers has to be seen in that light.

There is no place for you in any corner of our movement.

Clearly though, there has been and there is. Howes, a senior official in both the ALP and ACTU, did very little - too little - to set and enforce standards within the union movement. Why such a person might be considered a great leader in such a movement is unclear. Why he would cheer on a wide-ranging inquiry from a hostile government, and do so a matter of days before a crucial by-election, is unclear - especially if you regard Howes highly as a savvy political operative.

The truth is, today we are facing a real jobs crisis.

This country has shed 130,000 jobs in manufacturing alone since the GFC. Tens of thousands more lie just around the corner.

Indeed, 3000 more lie down the road in Shepparton.

Over my seven years as National Secretary I've travelled to many good factories in deep strife.

People trying to work out a solution at SPC Ardmona would have to look at those words and say: thanks for nothing, Howes. Tooling around the country, casting an eye over closing factories, Howes looks at their labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.

Some will tell you that our industrial relations system is dragging us down.

And I won't be popular amongst my friends in the labour movement for saying this - but I agree.

When so few employees are members of unions, this is absurd.

Productivity decisions are matters for management. Holden, Ford and Toyota built cars that too few wanted to buy at the price. Healthy little human beans got their sustenance from sources other than SPC. Department stores don't engage their staff, staff don't engage customers, customers shun the stores, while Paul Howes hovers above, understanding little of what he sees. Labour market decisions, and big old-school negotiations of the type Howes identifies as his desired model, are irrelevant to the dopey decisions that have seen productivity stagnate and decline.

Labour market policy is a core pillar of the national economy. It's as critical as monetary policy and trade policy ...

Yet can you imagine what would happen if other key pillars of economic policy were being knocked down and rebuilt so often?

Imagine re-regulating the interest rates regime on a three-year election cycle. Can you picture what that would do to business and household confidence?

It would create disastrous instability. We'd all be crying for it to end.

Wait until Howes finds out that the Reserve Bank board actually reviews interest rates every month. Wait until he finds out that the exchange rate for the Australian dollar against other countries goes up and down several times a second. The idea that he should be puzzled at workplace relations being subject to political debate is the sign of someone who doesn't understand politics, or is trying to misrepresent it.

Business senses an opportunity whenever the Coalition takes office to shift all the rules in its favour.

Unions do the same when Labor gets in. And ultimately no one gets anywhere.

No one? Anywhere? This country has enjoyed almost 23 years of continuous economic growth, during which the federal government has changed four times. Unemployment is less than six percent. Most tellingly for Howes and his warmed-over Resolution of Conflict, industrial disputes are fewer and shorter than they have been since the Accord.

It's become very fashionable of late to praise the Accord of thirty years ago.

Even those who railed against it at the time, now acknowledge it as the critical turning point in the nation's economic history.

What was right for a previous time is not necessarily right for today. Crucially, Howes never makes the case, invoking nothing beyond the kind of hippie-style can't-we-all-get-along sentiment that he decries in the Greens.

Given that he wants a system that transcends what's "fashionable", does he think that description commends the Accord to serious consideration?

A Grand Compact in which business, unions and government all work out a deal that we all agree to live with for the long haul.

Which businesses? Why unions, given their failure to appeal to workers (not to mention their governance issues)? Which government?

On top of this, the government's criticisms of workplace relations practices at the car manufacturers and SPC Ardmona - which Howes is reinforcing - fails for two reasons:

• No matter what arrangement employers and workers (union-represented or not) hammer out, some smart-alec from Canberra is going to pick out some detail and make all concerned look like they don't know what they're doing. No agreement, no compact, can survive wise-after-the-event posturings from those who weren't involved and who have no real stake in the success or failure of that workplace.
• This government has a trust issue over the question of jobs. It says it wants high-paying, secure jobs for Australian workers. In practice it seems unconcerned and disinterested when such jobs are abolished. Its members complain that existing jobs pay "too much" when they often fail to sustain their occupants at a level commensurate with this country's social norms and expectations. Howes is stupid to buy into that dilemma while talking about solutions.

Howes is part of the problem.

A Grand Compact that generates certainty and thus confidence.

This would breed the very kind of anti-competitive environment that the Accord existed to resolve, the mutual complacency that mired Australia in the 1970s at the end of another long boom.

That establishes investing in a workforce as a virtue and not a cost.

Where productivity is a shared responsibility not someone else's job.

Where on the job training and development and career planning are the norm.

Now this is a fine sentiment, well articulated but not at all well considered. This is where Howes needed to engage with ideas about the future of work, the very value of human labour in the twenty-first century. Instead, someone like Kate Carruthers can genuinely be said to have thought more carefully and intelligently about such issues than someone who is supposedly a national leader for Australia's working people. It's no surprise that Howes got more publicity than Carruthers, but journalists - people who have faced the very questions of human work and its value that Carruthers raises - have no excuse for giving Howes a free pass for his banalities.

Howes is right to say that these are big and important issues; he is wrong to advance non-ideas that mention but fail to address them. He is wrong to be lauded by journalists as though he had succeeded in grappling with big and important issues, when he has so clearly failed.

We naively believed that everyone being a little bit unhappy with the outcome, delivered the compromise that was sought.

It turns out we were wrong.

So how could things be different with a Grand Compact? Well, obviously, we have a different climate now.

Yes, and the political 'climate' changes all the time, which means that any kind of compact is going to be a product of 'climate' and will inevitably change when the climate changes again. The government has the desire to keep itself in office but does not have what it takes to maintain policy stability. Business does not have what it takes to maintain its market position in a globally competitive market, let alone grow it. Unions represent few workers, and fewer still well or convincingly. All we have is the climate, and the ability to deal with it as best we can.

The idea of a "Grand Compact" is now revealed as a hollow fraud, a gobbet of windbaggery, an admission that it does not and cannot work in any reality beyond the walls of the National Press Club. Did the wait staff and cleaners share a laugh at these contradictory and vapid ideas? Did the journalists not ask them, or fail to consider what such a Grand Compact might mean to what remains of their own industry?

The absence of social capital in our industrial relations system is something of an Australian anomaly – because strong social capital is actually what drives our success in most other areas.

Precisely because unrepresentative swill like Howes seek to abrogate the rights of the system to themselves, I would suggest. A clubby, behind-closed-doors approach of the type Howes would like would diminish social capital rather than raise it.

We need to talk more about 'why Labor', rather than 'how Labor'

This implies that Labor needs to justify its own existence rather than assume a place at the table as of right. It goes against and undermines the rest of the guff about the Grand Compact.

Labor's sole purpose is not to claw back the Lodge in the most expedient way and then jealously guard it for as long as possible.

It wasn't right for the last six years – and it is not right now for an Opposition to death ride the Government of Australia.

Wait, but you said it was. What changed? Are you a weathervane too, like Tony Abbott?

They should understand a lurch back to WorkChoices-style conditions – is nothing but a get-rich-quick scheme.

But a Grand Compact is a golden long-term investment.

Workchoices failed because nobody was making any money from it. As to Howes' proposal for "a golden long-term investment", it is far from clear who (beyond the few participants) would reap the dividends.

But the point is we can't force people into this - we need to take them with us. A Grand Compact can only be driven through the art of persuasion.

Given the inability of Howes and other members of the political class to take people with them, and build political capital, this key phrase is why this proposal is dead in the water. It's why Jonathan Green is wrong to insist on hope that such pie-in-the-sky might afford any kind of sustenance to anyone other than Howes; he may as well ask Tony Abbott to wait at Cheviot Beach until Harold Holt finally emerges from the surf. Green might criticise the form of the criticism against Howes, but the idea that Howes is pulling a stunt in his own interests with indifference to those of others is sound - more soundly based than Green's insistence on good manners to foster what is at best an ill-considered and impracticable proposal, at worst a feeble and much-hyped con.

Howes' political base does not consist of the AWU's membership. It consists of Bill Ludwig and the journalists who report on politics. For instance, Howes well and truly pulled the wool over the eyes of these monkeys:

Union boss Paul Howes has dramatically undermined Bill Shorten's depiction of the Abbott government as anti-worker, proposing unions enter into a new partnership with the Coalition and business to rein in high wages and lift productivity.

Has there ever been an instance where Shorten and Howes disagreed, and Howes prevailed? No. Therefore this lightweight cannot be said to have undermined anyone or anything. When Shorten says:

Mr Shorten on Thursday again declined to directly criticise Mr Howes, but suggested that it was entertaining a "fantasy" if he thought a Bob Hawke-style Accord could be struct between unions and the Abbott government.

"I am not going to engage in some fantasy that Tony Abbott is going to change his spots," Mr Shorten told ABC radio.

Mr Shorten said that he supported consensus on workplace relations.

"It's what I've done for 25 years," the former union leader said. "Do you seriously believe that Tony Abbott is interested in working with trade unions?"

No, but Howes does:

I don't believe for a second that the Abbott Government is un-turnable on industrial relations.

Despite the more cartoonish portrayals, the Prime Minister is far more a politician than he is an ideologue.

I don't believe that the All Blacks are unbeatable in rugby, but I concede that I'm not the guy to beat them. Howes' stated beliefs are one thing, but his confidence in his ability to turn this government is absolutely misplaced. Shorten knows Abbott better than Howes does. Shorten knows workplace relations better than Howes does. Hell, Shorten knows Howes' job and his union better than Howes does. Memo to Kenny and Massola: whenever Shorten disagrees with Howes, Howes is wrong.

It's a standard trick from the US Republicans to attack your opponent on their strongest suit. The Liberals in Australia tend to attack Labor where they feel most insecure. When Pyne accuses Shorten of dancing to the unions' tune, we see that Shorten is a more substantial figure in the union movement than Pyne or Abbott are with business.

Those who keep faith with Howes will be further dismayed once they realise that his statements are not positions of principle, but contrarian look-at-me poses. Howes' speech is Labor's version of Cory Bernardi's book. If Howes is so powerful, why can't he bring other leading unionists with him? Where is the Labor politician who agrees with Howes' promise to the extent that Howes does, who can cultivate the loyalty that Michael O'Brien showed to Don Farrell? At least Bernardi knows how to win a Senate seat.

To talk Howes up is to fail to understand politics, and if you don't understand politics then what are you doing in the press gallery?

To his credit, Mark Skulley isn't a press gallery journalist but here he demonstrates some of the weaknesses of that debased form of journalism. First, the straw man of McTernan was a weak hook for that article. Second, if you're going to talk about "conspiracy theorists", let's look at this:

Howes wrote an inside account of the 2010 election, Confessions of a Faceless Man, which gives an insight into his preparedness to shake things up, even on his own side. As prime minister, Rudd was asked by the Liberal, Christopher Pyne, to comment on criticism of Labor’s asylum seeker policies by Howes.

The book recounts how Howes was affronted that Rudd told parliament that he had not read the comments: “It was a humiliating blow. I hadn’t been expecting him to agree with me, but to dismiss my views out of hand because they didn’t suit his own thinking was typical of Rudd’s attitude to those around him in the wider labour movement.”

Pyne was shadow minister for education. It's entirely possible that Howes put Pyne up to that question - and before you start, see Kerry-Anne Walsh's The Stalking of Julia Gillard for an example of the Opposition asking Rudd, as Foreign Minister, to bag Prime Minister Gillard under the guise of a cross-party Dorothy Dixer. Howes' profession at being shocked, shocked at Rudd's disloyalty ought not be taken at face value.

Saying Howes is the sort of person who'd set up a Liberal to make a Labor PM look bad, and that said PM could see through it and give Howes a taste of his own treatment, doesn't make you a conspiracy theorist; it shows you understand how politics works. If you understand how politics works you are better able to comment on it than someone who gets starry-eyed about a set-piece confection at the National Press Club.

But the boss of Australia’s biggest union, Joe de Bruyn, has rejected Howes’s idea of a grand compact as “fanciful and naïve”.

Such an assessment must surely colour Howes' speech, Howes' judgment, and Howes himself.

But Hawke built consensus, while Howes strikes out on his own in often dramatic ways.

It's a basic political skill to bring others along with you. Any fool can strike out on his own in often dramatic ways. Building consensus and bringing people with you is essential to the realisation of a 'Grand Compact'; striking out on your own less so.

But some of the points Howes made in the speech this week were praised by commentators as varied as Alan Kohler, Jonathan Green and former Liberal strongman Peter Reith, who reckoned he was setting himself up as a potential Labor leader “with backbone”.

None of those people will help Howes win a seat or raise a cent to help any campaign he might run. When he was as old as Howes is now, Bob Hawke was an endorsed Labor candidate for Parliament. Howes is no closer to realising any dreams he might have in that direction, no closer to learning the lessons that Hawke learned at that unsuccessful tilt, and it is unlikely that the Liberals would fear Howes anything like as much as their forebears did Hawke.

[Howes] still evidently enjoys the occasional speech – and has really stirred the possum this time.

He has done nothing of any lasting value. Howes' speech can be dismissed in three words: wanker's gonna wank. A really significant speech would have seen union, business and government leaders consulted beforehand and offer real support, evidence of real heft on Howes' part that is clearly lacking. Plenty of big news (e.g. the Toyota shutdown, the failure of the dire budget predictions last year, this government's palpable fear of regional electorates) went begging because journos got sucked into this bullshit by someone with a big mouth but little actual clout.

Is Australia's future grand or compact? It can't be both because Howes, like his brother-from-another-mother Tony Abbott, hasn't thought through the issues. He can't help us with the policies and the social capital necessary to realise a bright and prosperous future. He can't have a bright and prosperous future at our expense, like Tony Abbott has. When journalist foist a media tart upon the rest of us they foster resentment of not only the tart, but the media. Get your hand off it Howes, wake up to yourselves journalists, tell us what politics is really about and enough with the half-baked sideshows.