The ambulance at the bottom of the cliff

The ICAC investigation into the business dealings of the Obeid family and Ian Macdonald has been compelling and disturbing. Every day, TV runs the same footage: the witness of the hour waddling down that section of Castlereagh Street behind David Jones, then the day's revelations, cut to a bit of recreated back-and-forth between the Commissioner/Counsel Assisting and the witness, followed by a pack of journalists following the witness walking away and pursuing him with banalities like "Did you have a nice day?" or "Are you a crook?".

Inside the ICAC hearing room, there is an area set aside for journalists and an area set aside for members of the public to sit and watch proceedings. All the journalists have to do is listen to what is said, write it down, and then describe it in the format relevant to their employer. I wonder if any journalist attending that hearing scans the public gallery and realises that what they are doing is not beyond the competence of anyone else who walked in off the street to attend that hearing.

Ten years ago, Macdonald and Obeid were ministers in the Carr government. Ten years ago, there were plenty of journalists who were paid to cover NSW state politics. They all reported that the government was brilliant, capitalising on all those opportunities from the Olympics, chock-full of bright rising talent and so far ahead of the stumblebum opposition that they weren't even worth talking about. There was no sustained critical coverage of the Carr government by the media, not of Obeid or Macdonald or anyone else. Any criticism was occasional and jumped on with both feet by the then government; it was always the media who backed down whenever the government shrieked at them.

Where, I wonder, were all those top-notch Walkley-wining investigative journalists when the deeds under investigation were actually underway? What was stopping them putting all that stuff to air/on the front page when Macdonald and Obeid and all the hangers-on were up to whatever it was they were up to?

A quick trawl back to those days reveals exactly where they were: traipsing around north-western Sydney with Carl Scully. Twenty years ago, when the Coalition were last in government in NSW, there was a proposal to run a rail line between Parramatta and Chatswood via Epping, but nothing was done about it because a) Olympics and b) we don't do forward planning for infrastructure in Sydney, we do half-arsed compromises decades after the need becomes acute, if at all. Scully, who was Transport Minister and a Cabinet colleague of Obeid and Macdonald, announced and reannounced that proposal more than sixty times. Every time he did it, a bunch of journos would happily follow him and record their adventures. Some of the more daring ones would ask Scully if he wanted to be Premier.

Scully was a loyal member of the Terrigals, the Obeid sub-faction. He did a good job in dulling the senses of all those super-sleuths from the NSW Parliamentary Press Gallery. If you're going to get supposedly hard-headed and relentlessly questioning investigators away from a place where things are happening, a windswept vacant block of land by a dull but busy road in Carlingford is the place to do it.

Not one journalist from that era has realised just how badly they were duped by the formidable state government media machine of that time. Bob Carr, then Premier, used to ring state press gallery journalists and tell them where they got their stories "wrong", and what they should have done instead. You show me a NSW State politics journo who wasn't in tight with Macca and Eddie, and I'll show you someone who lacked the connections to get the sorts of stories the editors at the time considered good enough.

The then State political reporter from The Sydney Morning Herald was hopeless as state politics reporter, doing quick and unquestioning summaries of government press releases (well, I'm sure Bob Carr and other members of that government thought she was very good). Reading her articles showed me what a bludge journalism could be if you couldn't be bothered digging for stories. She was equally bad in Washington, doing quick and unquestioning summaries of The Washington Post and The New York Times, not realising that people who follow US politics read those papers too. She showed me that a poor journalist could not cruise into an important-sounding job but stay there, and then get promoted. I did a quick search for that journo, assuming she'd long since dropped out of journalism and/or been purged by rounds of Fairfax cost-cutting; imagine my surprise to find she is that masthead's Investigations Editor.

On discovering that I thought: the joke's on me, the journalistic ugly-duckling of Macquarie Street has transformed into this swan of investigative reporting. I remember the Bulldogs scandal (and would have read about it in the SMH) but had no idea Davies was involved in any way. If she and McClymont had devoted a fraction of the effort to Macdonald-Obeid that they devoted to the Bulldogs or the Bush Administration, who knows what they might have uncovered at the time? Who knows how things might have been different?

Let there be no nonsense about limited media resources or the dreaded social media. In 2003 the only facebooking going on was when people nodded off in the Parliamentary Library. Journalists could and did go about their jobs while ignoring media consumers, and their employers still surfed the 'rivers of gold'. Back then the Bylong Valley would have been full of small-t twittering, but it wouldn't have impeded Macdonald and the Obeids any more than the press gallery did.

I think about John Brogden, who was (along with Joe Hockey) the most promising Young Liberal of my generation; ten years ago he was Leader of the NSW Opposition. Imagine if he, or those he appointed to shadow Macdonald and Obeid, had dug for what has since come before ICAC. Imagine they had laid it all out in Question Time and called for their heads. How would Davies and the press gallery reported it - they would have waited for Carr's quip in response, something stale from Cactus Jack Garner or Boss Tweed perhaps, and run that. Brogden might have become Premier; Scully, Iemma, Rees and Keneally would still be promising and unsullied members of a viable alternative government. Maybe the Doggies would have fared better in the NRL.

When he was in student politics, Ian Macdonald stiff-armed the left. He entered NSW Parliament in 1988, forgiven and backed by the Labor left, in clear breach of one of the most binding laws in Labor politics: The If They'll Rat On You Once They'll Rat On You Twice Act. In his first speech he denounced the very idea of the ICAC when it was first proposed, without a scrap of irony. I still say he reached his parliamentary peak soon afterwards when he smuggled Kylie Minogue into a speech on superannuation, and made canine-related puns in a speech on the Dog Bill.

Labor Left people fancy themselves as salty, hard-to-impress types, utterly unmoved by NSW Right popinjays; yet Macdonald managed to herd them behind Obeid when required. The people who voted the way Macdonald told them to are the same people who think that the decline of the NSW Labor Right is good for Labor's left. I don't know how he persuaded left members like he did, and it probably won't come out in ICAC, so Walkley-winning investigative journalists and anyone else who was not a member of the ALP in NSW back then will never know how it was done.

Are Eddie Obeid and his scions more or less full of born-to-rule entitlement than, say, Tony Abbott? Does anyone doubt that Ian Macdonald, if challenged/asked nicely and pumped full of red wine, could stand on a chair and sing Solidarity Forever with the best of them? Do he and Obeid still bear the title "The Honourable"?

The media and what is now the main part of the government of NSW did nothing to stop the twists and turns of the Obeid-Macdonald juggernaut: no check, no balance, no investigation. Yet here they all are, providing the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff after it is all too late, and it has nowhere to take the damaged body politic anyway.

Labor and the Greens

There were two pieces today on recent chafing within the Greens-Labor relationship worth noting. The better-written one was the amateur blog, the second was a tendentious smear of bullshit wiped across a paper fit for no better purpose.

First, Drag0nista's long thin streak of conventional wisdom, where she shows the weakness of her case by being most insistent.

When one of the major parties is strong it draws votes from left and right, from its major-party opponent and from fringe parties. When a party is weak it loses votes left and right.

When Hawke and Keating were in office the Coalition lost votes to Labor and to far-right anti-immigration, anti-economic-rationalist parties. Under Howard, Labor lost votes not only to the Libs but also to the Greens. It's not an either/or proposition for Labor to win votes from the Libs and Greens; they must win votes from both.

The tensions between the Greens and Labor display the uneasy relationship within all parties between machine operatives responsible for fundraising and preference allocation, and the parliamentarians who have to cut deals. The Labor-Green machine operatives must work against one another but their parliamentary representatives need to do a better job of working together, because the alternative is that both lodge only symbolic objections to policies they cannot block.

The by-election for the Victorian state seat of Melbourne is one aspect of the trial run for the ALP’s Victorian campaign, not the Federal campaign. Victorian Labor was blindsided by the Libs last time and they have a chance to show what they have learned, if anything.

The ALP isn’t trying to win progressive votes from the Greens, they’re trying to win the middle class, middle income voters who are parked with the Libs but are uneasy about Abbott. They’re also trying to win progressive voters parked with the other/independent category who find the Greens too extreme.

These people sound exactly like the sort of people who had voted for Howard up to 2007. The idea that they could simply vote for middle-class welfare, then vote for an apology for Aborigines/measures against carbon pollution/[insert your progressive Kevin07 idea here] was appealing and - if Gillard offers something similar, but with the credibility that Rudd came to lack - it sounds like the best of all possible worlds for a Labor victory in 2013 (with the Greens continuing to hold balance of power in the Senate).

The idea that Greens-Labor are at one another's throats falls down on Drag0nista's home turf: the ACT. There are two House of Reps seats there (both held by Labor) and two Senate seats (one held by Labor, one by a Liberal). The Greens have a chance of picking up a seat in the ACT - but which Labor MP is most vulnerable? None of them - the Liberal Senator, Gary Humphries, is most vulnerable, because he goes to his constituents with the politically difficult message that a vote for him is a vote for at least 20,000 job losses in the capital.

Since the last federal election, votes take no path. They are cast, counted, some candidates become members of parliament while others do not, and then at some point another election is called and votes are cast, etc. To place too much credence in polls is to make the political equivalent of the mistake counselled against by Kenny Rogers: "You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table/ There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done".

Polls cannot and do not measure the twists and turns of politics. Nobody who has followed Australian politics for any more than a single term of Parliament has any excuse for getting carried away with polls, or with the occasional spat at moments of tension.

Then there's this half-witted effort in the Daily Telegraph, written by someone with no persuasive skills and no respect for those who read what he puts out.

Labor must turn on the Greens and destroy them

Backroom boys can turn on one another like so many snakes in a sack, but for the Prime Minister her deal with the Greens is what keeps her in power (and by extension, what keeps Howes on government boards and other lurks). The very headline contains the essence of the failure of judgment that undermines the credibility of the whole article, if not the credibility of Howes himself.

If the Greens had their way, I doubt NSW would ever win the State of Origin.

There probably wouldn't even be a State of Origin - we'd just sit around with Queenslanders and play pass the parcel.

If you ever wondered what Howes does at AWU executive meetings with Bill Ludwig, there's your answer. The State of Origin contest in rugby league began in 1980, when Malcolm Fraser was Prime Minister. Is Howes going to credit the Coalition for one of Australia's great sporting contests, or are we done with this silly attempt to link sport to politics?

They are able to use their political leverage to pursue extremist agendas, and to implement policies that are both socially and economically damaging.

Lots of lobby groups do that. Another example is that pig-nosed dill who wants to tie workers to non-jobs making stuff in factories that nobody wants to invest in, so that Australian manufacturing gets this reputation as some sort of sheltered workshop rather than taking the chance of a small, high-quality industry where people are open to joining the union but puzzled as to what it might offer them.

The Greens are most successful, and therefore the most dangerous of the fringe parties - the left-wing version of what Pauline Hanson's One Nation party did to the Nationals' vote. They have carefully built a political brand based on social conscience and concern for the environment. The benign, smiling face of Bob Brown convinced many that the Greens and Labor could co-exist as two sides of a harmonious progressive political movement.

This is wrong on so many levels.

First of all, Hanson came and went within the lifespan of the Howard government. The Greens came out of Tasmania, once (with NSW) the strongest state for Labor, and all the flatulent outrage we have seen from Howes has been done. Brown spent most of his career being demonised - he's only "benign" because successive generations of politician (many of them smarter than Howes, and with more substantial records of public service) looked stupid for doing so.

Why didn't Howes look at the failure of successive generations of Tasmanian politicians in taking on the Greens, and avoid the same lazy positions that led them to failure? Does he really think he's so special that he can ignore the lessons of history, simply because he wasn't part of it?

But beneath the marketing spin, the Greens are run by hardliners who believe they know better than anyone else.

... just like the scions of NSW Labor.

Political campaigning will become the domain of wealthy individuals. Naturally, this suits the Liberals. Surprisingly, it also suits the Greens.

NSW Labor spent a decade-and-a-half taking Joe Tripodi's mates out of Centrelink offices and seeing them through to significant property portfolios, done in such an overbearing and clumsy way that the Greens gained that indispensable quality for any political movement - a point. Surely Labor did that so they could call on them in their hour of need, no? And if not, how is this anyone else's problem?

Then he tries into invoke Labor history: I wish he'd learned some first.

The ALP has been down this path before. We dealt with Billy Hughes ...

No you didn't. Hughes became the longest-serving Federal MP and was the longest-serving PM when he died, spending most of his career outside the ALP.

We dealt with the divisive Jack Lang ...

No you didn't. Lang remained a force into the 1940s and Paul Keating brought him back into the Labor fold. Howes' dreams of Australian manufacturing as a series of sheltered workshops full of people unthinkingly renting their jobs from the AWU could not be more Langite.

We dealt with Joe Lyons and the United Australia Party in the 1930s ...

Wrong way around: Lyons and the UAP thrashed a one-term Labor government such that Curtin and Chifley lost their seats, and they stayed in office for the rest of Lyons' life.

And then we eventually saw off Bob Santamaria and the DLP in the 1950s.

Not in the 1950s, not in the '60s, and he was still a force in the 1970s; when Santamaria died he was given a state funeral by John Howard.

Thank goodness Howes and the others who run what's left of NSW Labor are such good haters - they're not that great at the actual politics.

The Greens do not support working people. They would rather we all squat in share houses in Newtown than work in real jobs that actually make things.

Make what? Coffees for Paul Howes and Sam Dastyari when they waddle up Sussex Street in search of a clue?

Newtown and other inner-city suburbs used to have lots of manufacturing jobs. It wasn't the Greens who forced them out, the Green vote rose in those areas as those jobs retreated. Those areas are full of Labor Left people who preselect Labor Left MPs who do factional battle with clowns like Howes and Dastyari, and who engage in subtle strategies to maintain Labor representation ahead of the Greens, except where Sussex Street cannot resist sticking their oars in and guaranteeing Green success.

... NSW Labor General Secretary Sam Dastyari's proposal to adopt a policy of not automatically preferencing the Greens ...

What a fence-sitting, two-bit, namby-pamby proposal that is. After all Howes bluster about State of Origin, Jack Lang etc., I was expecting a lead-up to a firm, strong statement of principle (or the principle-veneer you get from NSW Labor). Instead, there's a bit of hand-wringing - not so much a step in any particular direction but an embarrassed shuffle on the spot.

Labor has an obligation to stop extremists who threaten our democracy.

They can turn on that arseclown Howes for a start. Labor could and should get rid of him tomorrow, all without the need for a byelection. Either he'll wake up to himself or he'll walk away, talk about a win-win solution.

Labor and the Greens have to work together. They need to let off steam from time to time, but they must do substantial work together. The Coalition won't work with anyone for the greater good, so stuff them until they wake up to themselves. They have adults in both ranks, and together they can lift the debate (on refugees and so many other issues) in ways that other parties can only follow.

Policy against type

One of the amazing things about politics is that you'll have a picture in your mind about a former politician, and you'll have to admit something which goes against that image is nonetheless inextricably part of that politician's record. Whether it's John Howard picking up the long-held leftist cause of Timor Leste, or Gough Whitlam selling them out in the first place, politics can be a funny business. People are entitled to reap the benefits of a particular policy regardless of its political provenance.

Each of Abbott and Gillard face policy positions that go against public perceptions of who they are and what they're about. There are dangers for them in pursuing those positions. They illustrate the limits of political tactics, where it's assumed that putting out a press release with a position statement on it is to be taken seriously on that position.

For Gillard, this happens with gay marriage. Whether it's her student activism in favour of "homosexual rights" (doesn't the turgid prose reveal it as authentic?), or the persona of her adult life as a leftist lawyer, it is absolutely in keeping with the image of her that she would support gay marriage. Her protestations to the contrary look like a feint than a deeply-held conviction. There are three positions against gay marriage, and none of them fit Gillard:

1. Those who are in heterosexual marriages and who do not believe and/or cannot admit that gay/lesbian relationships are as valid as their relationships are;
2. Those who, for religious reasons, are celibate and have fixed ideas that marriage is for heterosexuals only (in support of 1. above); and
3. However unwittingly in support of 1 & 2 above, those gay/lesbian people like the eloquent and learned Sue-Ann Post, who believe that rejecting marriage is an essential part of being gay/lesbian.

At the ALP conference earlier this month, the Right claimed they were "protecting" the Prime Minister and the journosphere reported this without examining it. Protecting her from what, from whom? With the conscience vote on gay marriage, Gillard faces two options:

1. Gay marriage gets up, in which case Gillard can't claim credit for it. Supporters of gay marriage won't give her credit, opponents will resent her, and those who are ambivalent will rightly perceive the lack of leadership ahead of the rights and wrongs of the situation; or
2. Gay marriage does not get up, in which case we're back to the situation where Abbott looks strong and Gillard looks diffident and shifty. Gillard won't be believed when attempting to dismiss this as a big issue for her.

Neither option is within Labor's control and neither reflects well on Gillard. If you had more respect for Labor's Right than I have, you'd accuse them of setting her up. She's leader of the Labor Party, they feel strongly about this issue, so she should get over herself and lead them. The idea that Gillard looks like a strong leader for standing against gay marriage is beyond wrong, it's absurd.

Abbott's equivalent is a position he does not hold yet, but toward which he is being nudged (towed?) by those who back him: pulling out of Afghanistan. Abbott is no more interested in foreign policy than Gillard was, but he will always default to dance with those who brung him.

The US alliance was a given in Australian Cold War politics, regardless of who was in power in Washington or Canberra. Now it's a political plaything: With Keating and Clinton the US alliance was strong, but less so with Clinton and Howard. Things warmed up again with Howard and Bush II: the latter had the temerity to warn Australians against not re-electing Howard, who similarly disgraced himself by warning Americans against electing Obama. Both Rudd and Gillard enjoy good relations with Obama but it is clear that the bilateral relationship is no longer bipartisan.

People like Greg Sheridan and Tom Switzer are absolutely unconvincing with their hand-wringing pose that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won. Having failed to define victory in the first place they declare their political opponents incapable of achieving it. Such a position enables them to both jeer at them for further deaths and disasters arising from staying while also snarling at them for abandoning the Afghans and being reactive to terror threats should they withdraw. It's a despicable position for the right to take (compounded by their refusal to accept that those fleeing that war are legitimate refugees), and while utterly in line with Abbott's core of principle, it goes against the whole action-man persona.

When Abbott went to Afghanistan he insisted on being photographed in a bomb-disposal suit, denying its use to those who work in them. Before that he insisted on firing weapons and going on missions, despite his complete lack of training and discipline, which would mean the troops would spend all their time defending him rather than achieving the goals set for them. However stupid these were from a perspective of military operations in a dangerous environment, these actions were consistent with Abbott's action-oriented he-man image.

When you tell most people that Billy McMahon pulled almost all Australian troops out of Vietnam well before the 1972 election, they are puzzled: surely it was Whitlam who brought the troops home? For Abbott, wringing his hands and fretting over war dead goes completely against the whole persona. What's OK for gibberers like Switzer and Sheridan will not wash for would-be Prime Minister Abbott. Gillard can get away with staying or going, but not Abbott.

For the media, the fact that a politician makes a statement is the story. For everyone else, the fact that a politician makes a statement is neither here nor there. A politician who makes a statement out of character will be assumed to be a gibberer unless there is overwhelming proof to the contrary. Political tacticians who think it's smart for Abbott to call for withdrawal from Afghanistan, or for Gillard to stand like a bulwark for heterosexual marriage, measure their success only by press coverage.

There was no public clamour for Hawke and Keating to float the dollar. It was big and they made the case that it was right, so the public went along with it. Similarly, there was no public clamour for Howard to introduce a GST, bit it was big and they made the case that it was right, so the public went along with it. Gay marriage and withdrawal from Afghanistan are big and require leadership to get up; done badly these issues will damage leadership.

We saw this when Abbott proposed paid parental leave. You just knew that he would toss it straight into the maw of Labor's Budget Black Hole, so why vote for it? Just because gibberers in Canberra want to talk about it, and tell us "the policy is pitched at the mums and dads", doesn't mean that said target group have to behave as the strategists would wish. Abbott might call for Afghanistan withdrawal to "soften his image", but his lack of foreign policy knowledge would undermine any attempt at looking genuine and he'd just water down the appearance of toughness that it his one political asset. Gillard would get a lot of kudos for backing gay marriage, and it would expose the SDA (and thus exposed, diminish the ridiculous amount of power they appear to wield, leaving Gillard freer than she is and looking more powerful than she does).

Sometimes taking a contrary position is a sign of personal growth, a sign that you have to look at a politician in a new way (and thus think about the country and its politics in a new way). Mostly, though, it's the politician and their advisers attempting to look more clever than they are. Journalists don't look clever at all for failing to call them on it, or even know the difference between thought leadership and its absence. When policy goes against type it's the policy that suffers, and so does everyone who needs better policy from the politico-journalism complex.

Something to talk about

In the last month or so the incumbent government developed a reputation for doing things, rather than talking about proposing to form a committee to convene a gabfest based on focus groups that may or may not do something. People began to look on the government and its leader in a whole new light.

People also began to look upon the Coalition in a whole new light once its entire strategy - wait for the government to stuff up - seemed to fall apart. As with the ALP at its worst there was no Plan B. That absence of fallback options makes for poor government, and shows why political skill is indispensable to effective government. Nobody in the Coalition seemed to consider that there was a possibility that Labor could do a passable impression of a competent and proactive government. Scales started to fall from the eyes of previously sycophantic journos on what sort of alternative the Coalition actually offered.

It was a category error of a piece with Labor assumptions that The Situation could not maintain the discipline necessary to be a potent threat but would inevitably revert to being a boorish gobshite. Sometimes I despair of the self-limiting nature of the so-called professional political class.

Anyway, the point is that the government's good work was pretty much undone by the ALP conference on the weekend.

The idea of all those topics up for discussion was to give the government the impression of momentum over the summer break. All it did was push the government back to where it had never wanted to be: in the land of Gonna-Do. Gonna give gays and lesbians the right to marry, gonna sell uranium to India, gonna gonna gonna; no have-done and are-doing and will-be-doing-even-more-and-better.

Gay marriage is one area where the Liberals are not going to claim to be able to do better than Labor. Abbott will have no credibility doing anything other than damn-the-torpedoes opposition. Any attempt to leaven this position will be undone by retribution at those who dare cross the floor over the issue.

There is now no benefit in staying on Tony Abbott's front bench in terms of career advancement. If Turnbull and others were to leave the frontbench and cross the floor, Abbott would be looking over his shoulder every day until the end of his leadership. If they didn't, there'd be no point to them at all (and it wouldn't save Abbott anyway). There won't be a conscience vote because Old Nick won't allow it. It would mean Abbott was no better than Gillard. The disintegration of Abbott will be a marvelous thing to see, all the better for being protracted and at the hands of people he doesn't respect.

Howard's position on selling uranium to India was weak, shilly-shallying nonsense. Abbott needs a position other than going along with the government, not for the sake of policy but for his own reptilian kill-or-be-killed mind; his problem is there isn't one. His foreign affairs spokesperson is not exactly the Percy Spender of our age. For all the explosion in International Relations courses, this country sure has been beset by the most appalling failure in coherent foreign policy.

There should have been no mention of refugees. The regional solution is a matter for the diplomats now. The idea that the government can play both sides of that game - insist on limits and due process while increasing intake numbers - is way beyond wrong, and well into the realm of stupid. The proposal put by Chris Bowen was just another bet each way that pleases nobody and satisfies no need, it should have been scratched by the stewards. Labor should just shut up and come up with a regional solution rather than draw attention to the awful predicament that it, and the country, are in over this issue.

I expect that the ALP conference would be disappointing to people who care about the ALP, but the pantomime about party reform being shunted off to a room full of factional hacks is no longer tragic or even funny, just boring. It's like an alcoholic promising to swear off white wine: they might think it's a compromise but it is actually missing the whole point entirely, and you can't tell them. Others can wail and rend their garments, but the only thing to do is just turn and walk away and ignore attention-seeking behaviour.

The ALP conference was also notable for the fingering of Rudd as responsible for the leaks that damaged Labor's 2010 campaign. History, as William Faulkner said, isn't gone and it hasn't passed. Labor's presentation of its national conference showed that it still sees its core role as throwing up announceables, assuming that news editors have a better sense of what the public want and are interested in than elected politicians and supposed numbers-men. This was not an event to maintain the momentum that will see Abbott eating Labor dust (and worse) for the next year or so. It was an event to let The Situation catch up, by playing the only game he can play: calling the government out for being all talk, just like he is.

Lessons from the Qantas shutdown

Turn off all life support systems, I'm finished for the day
I'm on the midnight flyer and I've really got to get away
Shut down all your main engines, I'm going on reserve
There are things still undiscovered, oh I hope I've got the nerve

Shut down, turn off until the morning light
Slow down, splash down time to end the flight
Make way dream time, here comes another night
I wish I could remember where I've been

- Little River Band Shut Down, Turn Off

Qantas gave advance notice of their shutdown last week to the Coalition. Let the journos quibble about who knew what, when. The fact is when you get information like that you are meant to have an advantage: 'forewarned is forearmed' and all that.

What's also a fact is that the Coalition was no better off for having that information. Abbott just looked like a gibberer when he went on about how he expected the government to act under Section X of the Fair Work Act when he wanted them to have acted under Section Y. His whole modus operandi relies on him setting traps for the government who then falling into them, and when the government won't act to his initiative he's pretty much bereft.

The government seemed on top of the whole issue by mid-week. The person who should have alerted them to the Qantas shutdown was not only Qantas management but also the head of the Transport Workers Union, Tony Sheldon. Sheldon has been playing brinkmanship with Qantas management for weeks, warning of strikes then cancelling them at the last minute, causing uncertainty for Qantas passengers and management without looking like the bloody-minded union leader.

Old-school Qantas management would have kept the planes flying at all costs. The reason why Qantas employees have great job security and other perks can be credited to hardball unionists, but also to a management ethos that had the cash and would shovel it around to keep the business going. Sheldon thought he was dealing with old-school Qantas management, which is why he looked so rattled when management shut down the airline themselves.

Sheldon was dealing with Alan Joyce, a veteran of the shakeup of European airlines in the 1990s, and Leigh Clifford, who showed the mining unions that once management lift their game on pay and OHS the unions have little to offer prospective members. Old-school Qantas management took government protection for granted in a way that Joyce and Clifford clearly can't. He should have known that the game had changed. Sheldon was playing 1970s-style bash-and-barge rugby league in a game of Aussie Rules, where his opponent had sailed above him, taken the ball, booted a goal, and elbowed Sheldon in the eye for good measure; all without the ref seeing.

Sheldon did not look like a union leader who was outraged on behalf of his members. He wasn't doing the sort of confected bluster combined with lovin'-the-attention smugness you'd expect from Paul Howes in that position. He wasn't doing the quiet more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger determination thing that you might expect from the people currently running the ACTU. Sheldon had the sheepish look of a man who had been fucked and burned in a high-stakes game, and who then had to front the media and describe in detail just how badly he had been both, ah, fucked and, ahem, burnt, again and again.

Tony Sheldon is a big wheel in NSW Labor and is running for Federal President of the ALP. He may be the only union leader with a Chief Of Staff; a union leader needs a Chief Of Staff like your local mayor needs a goldie-lookin chain that makes them look like something from Gilbert & Sullivan. While Sheldon isn't entirely responsible for the predicament NSW Labor is currently in, it is there because he and a couple of others not only failed to stop the rot but even to identify it as such. This dispute with Qantas is not a case of teething problems, it is core business for a long-serving union leader.

The fact that he has failed to intervene effectively in his members' interests and warn a Labor government of a significant issue of policy and perception casts serious doubt over Sheldon's suitability for positions he holds now, never mind those to which he might aspire. Gillard and Albanese should refuse to have anything to do with him. What distinguished Labor powerbrokers of old from those of today is that they would have gently nudged Sheldon out of the running for the Labor Presidency, my members are priority number one, etc.

You can demonise Joyce all you like but he's given nothing away to Sheldon and the other unions involved, who are not reacting at all well to the situation Joyce and Clifford have put in front of them. Yes, Joyce and Clifford have played the game masterfully, but there's no grounds for CEO-worship there: if you are in a game and yours is the only team playing the game, how can you lose? Your opponent can shadow-box as much as they want but you only have to land a blow they're not expecting, and down they'll go. Joyce knew that, Clifford knew it - and now Sheldon's learnt the lesson good and hard, one he has no excuse for not knowing beforehand.

I wanna talk to the pilot, he's in charge of my dreams
But he insists on vanishing just as soon as he thinks he's been seen
I wanna recharge my batteries, leave me alone for awhile
We'll set off again in the morning on a wing and a prayer and a smile

But back to the Coalition (oh yes). They had the advance warning, and as usual they had a few snappy lines. What wasn't usual that it wasn't enough. The Qantas shutdown was a serious issue and in venturing comments on it, the Coalition invited serious comments. In the face of serious comments about a really important issue, the Coalition wilted.

The fact that CHOGM delegates were inconvenienced was a matter of significance for Australia, one they let slip by (showing that the Shadow Foreign Minister has little idea of the significance of such an event held in her home town, and/or little clout in Coalition strategy sessions).

They were wise to skate around the whole inconvenience to the Melbourne Cup - yes, racing is a multi-billion-dollar industry, but to most Australians it's a trifle and combined with the focus on pokies at the moment it would be a bad look for the Coalition to remind people how much they are in bed with the gambling industry.

This leaves them relying on policies on transport and industrial relations, which they don't have. It isn't good enough just to say that the details of those policies haven't been finalised, wait until the election etc. In the 1980s and '90s Liberal policies were constantly under review and when journo put John Howard on the spot he could come up with a coherent statement on most key issues, even if he was winging it, in general accordance with previously stated policy principles of the Liberal Party.

The difference now is that Tony Abbott has no principles to speak of, save the tattered DLP ones of his most callow youth. These included job security and perks for those in protected industries - the unions up against Qantas are fighting on much the same basis. They are fighting for qualities that retreated from much of the unionised workforce in the 1980s, and which the recession of the late '80s/early '90s pretty much finished off. By the late 1990s the only one gibbering about Aussie jobs for Aussies was Pauline Hanson.

Abbott could have gone for populism. I half expected to see him in an airport terminal egging on livid passengers stuck in Adelaide for four days, or strapping on the fluro to tell locked-out workers that he's the one who can guarantee cradle-to-grave job security. It is to his credit he did neither. What he needed to do was flick the switch to Prime Ministerial and show the nation what might have been, and what might be yet. He couldn't do that because he has no sense of what is in the nation's best interests, no reservoir of principle to contrast the present situation with the way it should be. This is where policy laziness bites you. Had this dispute taken place next November Abbott's position would be in question, if not in play.

There are still two years to go before an election (oh yes there are) which is plenty of time to develop some policies. If it's true that business is starting to take more of an interest in donating to the Liberal Party, then there's no reason why business can't donate time and resources to help develop some policies that go beyond dot-points. That's what a broad-based movement would do: a small, tightly-controlled outfit focused on the "news cycle" today and tomorrow won't, however. They see the Qantas dispute as an issue to be put behind them for the sake of unity and tomorrow's news cycle.

Shut down, turn off, until the morning light
Slow down, splash down, time to end the flight
Make way dream time here comes another night
I wish I could remember where I've been

Where have I been?

On a Qantas plane recently full of white-collar workers who are well and truly accustomed to contracting and outsourcing, it was at times quaint, funny and pathetic listening to pilots bleat about the perils of such an arrangement befalling them. You'll survive, guys.

The Qantas shutdown last week is the very sort of incident where people's perceptions become fixed in place: the very sorts of perceptions that are so hard to shift in election campaigns. Big industrial disputes usually go on for weeks, but this one was off the boil (if not fully resolved) within days. The whole idea that the incumbent government is incompetent is starting to look a little thin, while far from being comprehensively rebutted. The whole idea that the Coalition are no better, and may even be worse, is starting to take hold and the proof coming from this incident counts against the Coalition.

Qantas management knows what it is about and the unions up against them do not; the odd engine malfunction in some far-off place is having no impact on questions of safety, job security and engineering utility. The whole Aussie Jobs For Aussies thing is hard to distinguish from a toxic brew of self-interest and xenophobia. The only thing that will give that argument any currency at all will be the worst outcome possible, something that won't be dealt with by Fair Work Australia: a Qantas aircraft crashing to earth, with the sorts of people who were inconvenienced last week wedged among the wreckage.

Yes, Virginia, there are bigger issues at stake here than who might have phoned whom when.

Shutdown turn off until the morning light
Slow down, splash down time to end the flight
Make way dream time, here comes another night
Oh, I wish I could remember where I've been

Shutdown turn off until the morning light
Make way dream time, here comes another night

(Lyrics: Glenn Barrie Shorrock)

Bet against Mark Arbib

Mark Arbib could have made sure that the revolt by leading sports administrators over pokies never happened. A politician of his supposed calibre should have foreseen the political danger with Andrew Wilkie's demand, and should have been working on it every day for the past year.

Someone like Arbib would have heard Wilkie's high-minded position on pokies during last year's negotiations on government and known immediately that it was a dagger at the heart of two of Labor's major sources of funding: pubs and clubs. Aside from unions and property developers, NSW Labor's major funding sources are the alcohol industry and the outlets that sell it. NSW Labor have been extraordinarily generous in handing out pokie licenses to pubs and clubs, which have in turn donated millions of dollars to NSW Labor, and so on. The overlap between members of licensed clubs and those who vote Labor is significant, to say the least.

In the absence of a Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Imposing Limits on Poker Machine Gambling, someone like Arbib should have done the groundwork with pubs and clubs and the gambling treatment lobby, proving himself to be the sort of deft politician that he and others imagine him to be. He couldabeen someone who solves problems rather than someone who runs away from them shrieking "it wasn't me!". He couldabeen indispensable, the sort of power-behind-the-throne that Graham Richardson was after the 1990 election. All gone, and too late now.

Who else could have seen this policy through? All the other factional wide boys were busy with actual policy, in communications or financial planning or whatever. Arbib is the Minister for Sport, for goodness sake: what else does he have to do? The Minister for Sport doesn't re-engineer the economy or comfort the stricken. The Minister for Sport doles out cash to popular sports in the hope that the popularity of that sport might rub off onto the Minister and his party. It isn't like he was organising some nationwide effort to curb obesity or get people engaged in mutual community activities or something.

Arbib's political antennae should have been twitching overtime at an issue like this - if he had any.

Because Arbib has botched it - and he has - the government is bogged down yet again, in an issue that shouldn't be such a big deal. Yet again Arbib can project his political failure onto the leader silly enough to accept his backing. Just as he advised Rudd to drop the ETS, then blamed him for dropping the ETS. Now he can blame Gillard for botching the relationship with sporting clubs and take action against her because clubs are so important to NSW Labor, and mate you can't have a leader who goes against NSW Labor, come on.

It is an understatement to say that AFL identities like Eddie McGuire and Jeff Kennett are highly political. It is also true, both in the fact itself and the understatement, to say that of their counterparts in the NRL. Arbib is the first Federal Sports Minister these guys have openly and blatantly shirtfronted. He must be the first minister in that role to be so blatantly disrespected in living memory. He's finished.

Those sports take millions of dollars from the Federal government, and what does the government get for it? Gillard and Swan, as if they don't have enough to do, are going to have to sweet-talk and bribe a bunch of overstuffed sports administrators because Mark bloody Arbib couldn't execute the little responsibility with which he was entrusted.

Nobody blames the clubs administrators for trying it on, but club members know that's what they're doing: trying it on. Club culture, if you can call it that, is strongest in NSW and Queensland, where Eddie McGuire is just that guy on telly who hypes up an otherwise dull quiz show. In Victoria he has a far more all-pervasive presence, but north of the Murray he is seen as a grifter and if the government stands up to him then respect for the government can only increase.

And the man who helped install Julia Gillard as Prime Minister, former national ALP secretary Karl Bitar is now helping to coordinate the campaign in his new job as a Crown Casino lobbyist.

Up to 25 Labor MPs are also threatening to vote against the plan in Caucus.

Every last one of those 25 are morons. The clubs pump their propaganda into people's homes but only the truly gullible members really believe it. You have nothing to lose, you people: if ever you were ever a bit frustrated with Karl and Mark, this is your chance to grow some spine and save both yourselves and a Labor government (with nothing to lose but, well, Karl and Mark).

Club members tend to be older people, claiming a public space in their club after being slowly squeezed out of workplaces (through retirement, forced or otherwise) and shops (low income earners don't have much to spend, retail is geared toward younger people). The club nearest my place is dominated by Anglo-Saxon people in a way that the surrounding suburb was but is no longer. They look the other way when confronted with the idea that their club, and all its works, is subsidised by those with serious problems. If Mr Wilkie and the government step in with their loss-limit devices, these people will respect them for doing so.

While Kennett displayed rare gutlessness in allowing tobacco advertising for the Grand Prix, the politicians who banned tobacco sponsorship of sport ran rings around a lazy arseclown like Mark Arbib.

The fruits of Mark Arbib's career can be seen in Macquarie Street. State Labor Opposition Leader John Robertson has a smaller caucus than William Holman before World War I, and Holman left that. It's doubtful that anyone in State Parliament who was also a member of the ALP would buy Arbib a cup of coffee. Those who would stoop and build up NSW Labor with worn-out tools have nothing to thank Mark Arbib for, nothing. A bit like the thousands of members of the Green Jobs Corps, really.

People complain about NSW Labor, but if the Keating-Richardson era NSW Right were still running things Arbib would already be on his way to some remote embassy, a cold-eyed killer would be slotted into the Sport portfolio to rearrange things and warn anyone that one stray word about a policy not directly related to sport might be very, very costly in all sorts of ways, and a chastened non-entity would humbly assume the role of NSW Senator.

So-called savvy Canberra watchers didn't blame Gillard for inviting so few new names into the ministry after the last election, and there is an assumption that all Labor backbenchers are dills like John Murphy. Here are seven Labor federal backbenchers for whom I have no particular brief, but of whom each would be a better than Mark Arbib:

• Laurie Ferguson (in this list from sheer pity, admittedly, but still a superior candidate)
• Ed Husic
• Kirsten Livermore
• Senator Gavin Marshall
• Deb O'Neill
• Julie Owens
• Senator Glenn Sterle

Each one of those people would be a perfectly capable Minister for Sport (and as for Aboriginal Employment, and the grab-bag of other areas Arbib is mismanaging, don't get me started).

Journalists fail to realise that there is less likely to be a story in a politician who is shooting his mouth off than there is in one who's being very, very quiet. Mark Arbib is being very, very quiet. Journalists are leaving him alone because they are stupid, and they think that when a politician says 'no comment' then all possible avenues for a story are utterly closed, and oh look is that Chris Pyne turning cartwheels in order to draw attention to, um, himself? There was a time when one could simply say 'that's journalism'; but now the sheer slackness of the press gallery is nothing so much as an argument why at least 90% of them should be boiled in their own piss.

Mark Arbib has failed as a minister. He's had four years, longer than Morris Iemma got as Premier. His powers of quiet suasion no longer exist, if they ever did. He is a power vacuum and should be removed before others are sucked in and wedged fast. He should be removed and replaced with ... well, anyone really. The fact that he can't recognise that his own time is up is all the testament you need to the sheer political failure of Mark Arbib.

Fault lines

The more one of the most popular Prime Ministers in Australian history listened to Lachlan Harris, the less popular he became. This happened because Lachlan Harris' advice was rubbish. It's still rubbish, as you can see from this sorry shower of garbage (perhaps I shouldn't be so prejudicial in framing Harris' piece, but it's in a Murdoch rag so stuff it).

In politics cynicism isn't a pitfall, it's an aspiration. Politicians, journalists and staffers pride themselves on being an unsentimental lot.

That's why Labor people wheel out the Curtin-Chifley stuff, both when they make a public announcement and when they cry into their beer about why they wreck their personal lives in order to work for someone they often secretly despise. That's why Libs wax indignant about "the mums & dads" or gild the lily about Howard under the same conditions. Sentimentality takes the role that knowledge and empathy should play in underpinning the analysis, development and presentation of policy. It is a pitfall, Lachlan, and you're still falling.

The harsh reality is that in modern politics lasting popularity is a thing of the past. This reality doesn't just apply in Australia. It applies in almost every comparable democracy around the world.

Popular oppositions still exist, but there is no compelling evidence to suggest that this popularity can outlive a year or two in government.

The Howard government hit a peak in popularity in 2001, its fifth year in government. The Carr government in NSW was never so popular than in 1999 and 2003, its fourth and eighth years respectively in office. The Bracks government in Victoria was consistently popular throughout its seven years in office. In Britain, the Blair government was consistently popular from its election in 1997 until 2003 - its sixth year in government Lachlan.

There are more examples against your contention than for it, Lachlan. Like much of your work, your opinions only makes sense if you don't think about them too much.

There are a variety of reasons for the end of lasting popularity as a realistically attainable political goal. The timidity of modern politicians, and the complexity of the remaining national reform projects, can take some blame.

Timidity isn't restricted to the modern era: Cicero and Sallust blasted their lily-livered (but self-described "hard-headed") contemporaries for imperilling the Roman Republic, and they lived to see the downfall of not just a government but an entire political entity. John Curtin was a timid man and the Second World War was pretty damn complex. You should keep that sort of talk for when you're half cut at The Holy Grail, if taxpayers and voters hear you talk like that they'll think you a fool.

Another extremely important reason for the end of lasting popularity as a reasonably attainable goal is the rise of the opinion cycle.

The short version of the reasons for the rise of the opinion cycle is this; opinion is cheap to form, easy to broadcast and interesting to share.

There are two basic reasons why the opinion cycle makes lasting political popularity (not short term popularity blips) a near-structural impossibility.

Firstly in the news cycle basic straight down the line government-governing stories (like most of your typical budget yarns) are the filler that keeps the news cycle cycling between big events, big announcements and big stuff-ups.

This loses sight of the fact that "the opinion cycle" is a circle-jerk of which voters/media consumers give not a shit. Seriously, media loses circulation and politicians lose credibility when they descend into the opinion cycle.

What's in the budget is what's going to be done this year, and what's not there probably won't. It's not filler - the "opinion cycle" is the filler. If you're too dumb to make a good story out of improved mental health care, get Andrew Bolt wound up about whatever. Just because you don't understand what government is, doesn't mean it's filler.

My column on Tony Abbott last week was a clear example of this type of content. These opinion-based critiques are much more brutal than their fact-based predecessors.

They are critical, polarising, and usually impossible to disprove.

They're not polarising if you don't give a damn. Facts may be ignored by they are not redundant.

As to "impossible to disprove" - the idea that the BER was a failure (journosphere/"hard head" received wisdom) rather than a success (Orgill Report and thousands of school principals and P&Cs nationwide) is a great example of this. The idea that hard-heads construe a success as a failure is pretty soft-headed, and as Orgill demonstrated easy to disprove.

The news cycle just needs newness to keep on keeping on; the opinion cycle needs newness and new divisions in opinion as well.

Voters/Media consumers need only relevance - the circle-jerk in which you have been a long-term participant isn't polarising, it's just irrelevant.

Budget numbers rarely divide opinion, which is why community fault lines not budget bottom lines dominate so much budget coverage in a cycle that is now just as dependent on opinion as it is on fact.

There is no link between what goes on in the community and what goes on in the politico-media complex, Lachlan. It isn't the community that's at fault here, they/we are right to be bewildered and even annoyed that these circle-jerks intrude on public debates. Just because you're in thrall to something called an "opinion cycle" doesn't mean we all are.

The chance of convincing someone you are governing responsibly through a flow of information that is dependent on personal criticism and divided opinion is basically nil.

So, the circle-jerk won't help you get through to people. What is it for, then?

The Budget wasn't perfect and the federal government has made its fair share of mistakes.

Those mistakes have centred on non-delivery, and assuming that you can engage in "opinion cycling" as a substitute for having delivered sound policy as proper return for votes and taxpayer largesse.

Freak emotional events that are well handled can result in almost Jekyll and Hyde like conversions of negative coverage into positive coverage (think Bligh/Floods or Obama/Osama).

Firstly, Jekyll and Hyde was a story about a drug addict (fact, not opinion) rather than a responsible government. Secondly "freak events" fail because delivery in one area (to use your example: Bligh/floods) doesn't result in delivery in other areas (Bligh/education, Bligh/health, Bligh/transport, etc).

In the opinion cycle, assuming the vast majority of opinion-based political coverage will be nasty, narky and negative, is a good rule of thumb. Forget about hitting the panic button because the Budget, or the carbon tax, or the pokies reforms got hammered. Nasty, narky and negative coverage is the new black.

It just gets ignored, Lachlan. If you want to get announcements out, make them real and stand up for them.

Lasting popularity in politics is dead ...

No, it's just too hard for you as a child of the "opinion cycle". To quote from a book with which your old boss may be familiar: you sowed the wind, and you reaped the whirlwind.

... taking action based on ideals (even if unpopular) may be the only effective communication tool left.

Action based on ideals is not a tool; it is that which is communicated by tools such as Lachlan Harris. Action based on ideals may be good or bad, depending on circumstances and on those to be affected by such actions. It will not be at all dependent on the "opinion cycle", a make-work scheme for failed Labor staffers like Andrew Bolt and Lachlan Harris.

Elsewhere: the essential Mr Denmore on how Bob Brown sent the opinion cycle into a tizz. He was caught out by Chris Uhlmann but basically he showed how it's done: make the opinion cycle spin on its own axis while you pursue your ends by other means. A self-referential opinion cycle is, at the risk of mixing metaphors like Lachlan Harris, digging its own grave.

Johnny Panic

The selection of John Robertson as NSW ALP leader shows how committed they are to staying dysfunctional, on a number of levels.

The rise and rise of John Robertson has been happening for the better part of five to ten years. The same five-to-ten that has seen that party go from a credible, even in some respects formidable government, to being a small-scale rabble and a big national joke. You'd think that Robertson could cool his heels in the Legislative Council while they are still pulling survivors from the rubble, until the fabled consultation with the members takes place - but no. If Labor had won, Robertson would have switched to the lower house. Now that Labor has lost, the same solution is applied: Johnny Robertson, the man for all seasons. The accepted wisdom among the journosphere is that Robertson has somehow lucked in to the leadership of his party, just like Steven Bradbury's ice-skating gold medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics, which is rubbish. There's been a lot of work go into getting Robertson up, and journalists who claim otherwise don't understand politics and will believe anything.

You could argue that Robertson is a man who is wildly popular. You'd have to ignore the fact that his vote was 18.7% down on last election (not as bad as some, but a lot worse than most), when Paul Gibson was getting ready to prove himself unsuitable for ministerial office. People flocked to Blacktown to help Robertson during the campaign, but they weren't Blacktown locals. They weren't members wanting Robertson to rank and file them. They were the sorts of careerist who know the value of sucking up to the next leader at a time when he could use a bit of face-saving. Another victory for the Labor careerists: the voters, the ordinary members were right to turn off.

You could argue that Robertson is wildly popular because of his position on electricity privatisation. After thirty years of Labor and Coalition governments selling off public assets, only old-school socialists are against privatisation per se (and they are more likely to vote Green than Labor anyway). What people don't want is sudden price hikes or disruption of service - which are contradictory impulses, and without leadership you can only go the populist route and set yourself as the champion of an unsustainable status quo. Throw down the baton of leadership and you can't be sure that someone else won't pick it up.

Most Labor people who insist that Robertson is wildly popular assume that the voice of the unions are the authentic voice of working people. With fewer than one in ten private-sector workers in unions, this is a poor assumption - but one on which Labor seems to rely heavily. A non-entity made it to number two on Labor's Legislative Council ticket on the basis that all the shop assistants in NSW would vote Labor because he was so well known and loved among that occupation. I'd love to see some proof of that, but it would be like yanking the curtain away to reveal the 'real' Wizard of Oz. If Robertson had to rely on union members in Blacktown, he'd be finished.

Yes, he has enemies, it's part of politics and many other walks of life - but real power isn't having no enemies. Real power is making your enemies shut up. Robertson doesn't have that power, not even if he were Premier today could he hand out trinkets and threats to get a unified team. With Keating and Iemma coming out hard against him, Labor has turned its back on leaders who could actually win elections and chosen someone almost purpose-designed to repel them. People who've known Robertson for many years think he's a jerk, so why would most people who don't know him at all be persuaded differently? Robertson would need to back up the tough-guy persona with some chucking-out of the people who got him his job in the first place - can't see it happening myself.

Robertson's rhetoric indicates that he wants to hold the government "ferociously to account". Watch O'Farrell bat him away like Gillard is increasingly doing to Abbott. Labor lost government because it had lost its sense of big-picture, longterm policy, and little niggly criticisms will only reinforce the idea that O'Farrell is doing his best (for which well-meant slip-ups and newbie errors will be forgiven). Like his federal counterpart, Robertson can't be guaranteed to keep his inner boofhead disciplined, which will add to his troubles getting others to shut up and toe the line. You can see the 2015 election campaign from here: Barry the Gentleman vs Johnny Boofhead.

Of the 19 seats Labor can be sure of in the Legislative Assembly, 11 are held by women - the joke is on so-called "progressive women" that they can't get one of their own elected with a 11/19 majority. At what point do you tell Tebbutt to lead or get out of the way? Do you have to wait until the Greens develop a genuinely focused political killer in that district, someone who won't be distracted from the main game and who'll go door to door in order to represent the electorate?

There's an argument that says you put Robertson in and burn him out so that someone else can have a go. That idea didn't work last term, where Labor just looked stupid and flaky by changing leaders. It won't work given the extent to which the machine is invested in Robertson: if they try to take him down he'll take them all down with him, like the Man from Ironbark in the barber's shop. It's understandable tthat no other leader would want Robertson plotting away behind them, but show me a leader afraid of that and I'll show you no leader: Bob Carr survived ongoing comparison with Peter Anderson, but none of the current crop have Carr's drive and tactical sense. Robertson won't sit quietly after dumping like Rees did, either: when he's gone as leader he'll flame out and go at the worst possible moment, because he has no other job to go to, no "Paris option". We could yet have a Liberal MP for Blacktown.

There have been so many articles and interviews by Labor figures over the past week, all paying lip service to the shellacking but all proposing to carry on as they have been. They could have broken that pattern by choosing an outsider (too bad there aren't any), or even someone harmless but articulate like Daley, and demonstrating that things really are different without being worse.

It's a dilemma of participatory democracy that those who do it fulltime - and develop skills that part-timers or well-meaning novices develop to a lesser extent, if at all - get the rewards for effort, and that this discredits the whole enterprise. What looks like a "poisoned chalice" is like mothers' milk to some, just as there are creatures that live in alkaline or near-freezing environments that can't relate to fresh, temperate air. Nobody regards professional athletes as "hacks" or cries about "jobs for the boys", and nor does it necessarily diminish the same activity performed at the community level by amateurs.

Politicians fund sporting organisations to maintain those grassroots links, and though they also fund political parties their grassroots links to pollies and policies is weak and getting weaker. Preselection candidates disdain local connections and make a big deal of "media skills", which can be acquired quickly and are mostly bullshit. The assumptions behind these dark satanic skills work against genuine community activism anyway, and won't help NSW Labor climb out of its hole.

If John Robertson is your answer then you're asking the wrong question.

Protesting too much

Labor strategists in NSW only embarrass themselves when they speak of campaigning, and there is nobody any more with any authority in Labor to impose STFU on these people. One would assume that journalists are giving them one last go-around for old times' sake (because they'd never be lazy; lazy journalism is against MEAA guidelines, so therefore it never happens). There is, however, one topic on which NSW Labor might be heard: how they did over the Greens.

In Marrickville, Labor gave Fiona Byrne plenty of rope by letting the anti-Israel motion go through council. They could not have dreamt that Byrne would be caught out trying to distance herself and embrace the idea at the same time. At an election where parish-pump issues and service delivery was at the forefront, nobody wants to hear any self-indulgent claptrap about East Jerusalem and Gaza. Byrne had a good story to tell the people of Marrickville about public transport and environmental issues generally. She faced an opponent who was neither a dutiful local member nor an especially formidable minister (relative to the jerks in the last government, she was a colossus; but in absolute terms, her policy achievements can be described as, um ...). Byrne blew it for the Greens.

In Balmain, Jamie Parker will probably win but will wear the sort of hounded look that Rob Oakeshott has increasingly borne: jeered at by the Liberals and shunned by Labor. Verity Firth seems to have roared back from the political dead, seemingly by denying her party affiliation and somehow convincing people to overlook her craven gutlessness over unflued gas heaters. The broadminded people of the electorate ignored the tut-tutting of the Murdoch rags over Matthew Chesher's adventures in pharmacology. It could have been worse: he could have been attempting to buy Horny Goat Weed.

Preferences are hard to map where preferencing is optional, yet some common sense can be applied. It's conceivable for people to vote [1] Liberal and [2] Green. It's conceivable for people to vote [1] Labor and [2] Green, or vice versa. It's almost inconceivable that anyone would vote [1] Labor [2] Liberal, or vice versa. The postals will favour the Greens.

Speaking of the ridiculous, here is hopefully one of Imre's last pieces on a subject he doesn't understand:

HAVING snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in one, possibly two, NSW lower house seats, the Greens now face the prospect of four years in the political wilderness without real power.

As opposed to all the power they had in the last term of Parliament? Surely the power to make Labor fight on two fronts counts as "real power"? The Greens are to NSW politics what the Sharkies are to rugby league.

Fronting the media to explain what was widely seen as a disappointing result for the Greens, lead upper house candidate David Shoebridge said the Greens could be proud of their effort.

"They focused their resources on those two seats. We stood up, we're still up, and we'll be in the counting for the rest of this week," he said. "There remains the possibility, in the NSW upper house, to get a majority to do things like call for papers."

This is precisely the sort of thing that the journosphere ignores in the hype of election time, but which is powerful in the actual conduct of Parliament. The Greens went into this election with one Legislative Council seat and came out with three. This puts them ahead already, regardless of what may happen in Balmain. A real journalist would explain what a "call for papers" is and why it matters.

Sydney University political scientist Rodney Smith said the Greens' Marrickville candidate, Fiona Byrne, had suffered from her difficulty getting to grips with the truth over her support for a boycott of Israel.

"It began to look like she was being a bit too clever by half by appealing to people for whom the boycott might be appealing, but at the same time saying, 'Oh no ... I don't support it'," Dr Smith said.

And since when do we at the Murdoch press start quoting pointy-headed academics other than Ian Plimer?

Byrne is not the first politician to talk out both sides of her mouth, but the fact that she was caught and went into a dither shows that she's second rate at best. Had the campaign gone on a bit longer she would have found herself beset by anti-Semites, never a good look for anyone.

He said that Mr Parker had struggled after the late entry of a rival independent candidate and former local mayor, Maire Sheehan, who directed her preferences to Labor.

Politics in that area is basically Labor vs Not-Labor. The Liberals never had a look-in until recently and the Democrats were sneered out of town early on. The various flavours of communist gave up the ghost during the '90s, during the gentrification of suburbs like Rozelle and Balmain with increased numbers of yuppies prepared to vote Liberal. The strongest Not-Labor of that time was a bunch of ex-Labor middle-aged women rebelling at the deals stitched up by Labor men. Maire (not a mis-spelling; pronounced "Moira") Sheehan was one of these, and became Mayor. Since then, she must have made her peace with Labor: at every election where Labor is in trouble, Maire Sheehan comes out and wrings her hands and considers running, and then a couple of media cycles later she nominates. Her effect is to siphon votes off this year's Non-Labor (formerly No Aircraft Noise, now NSW Greens) and funnel them back to Labor. Surely somewhere there's a journalist in Sydney who's awake up to Maire Sheehan.

Former NSW premier Bob Carr hailed Ms Tebbutt and Ms Firth as "heroes" of the election.

So?

Carr has learnt the lesson of military history that disasters are celebrated officially. The two battles at which more Victoria Crosses were awarded by the British than any others were Blood River and Lone Pine, two terrible defeats. Carr seems determined to pull something from the rubble of his legacy and here they are, the bedraggled Tebbutt and barely alive Firth. He doth protest too much.

"It's now clear that the internal politics of the Greens are chaotic," Mr Carr said.

As opposed to the well-oiled machine that is Sussex Street in 2011.

From this it would seem that Bob Brown basically is "the internal politics of the Greens":

Labor has seized on the Greens' failure to win seats on Saturday to demand that Tony Abbott follow the lead of the Liberals in Victoria and NSW by refusing to pass the party preferences ahead of Labor in the next federal election.

"It is difficult to envisage a situation whereby the Greens would win a seat in the House of Representatives without Liberal Party preferences," Labor frontbencher Chris Bowen said yesterday.

Easy, tiger: Bowen forgets that Victoria's Liberals kept Labor on tenterhooks last year before deciding against preferencing the Greens at the last minute. The normally unflappable John Brumby was well and truly flapped with his increasingly strident demands of Liberals to preference Labor. The new Senate, where the Greens have nine Senators whose votes are vital to get Gillard Government legislation through, has not yet been convened. Chris Bowen didn't get where he is today by going out too hard too early (unless he's rattled).

In last year's federal election, the Greens claimed the balance of power in the Senate and won their first House of Representatives seat -- Melbourne.

However, their failure to win seats on Saturday or in last year's Victorian election ...

In both states they have increased their representation. They do seem confined to the upper house, like the Democrats; and like the Democrats they are one big sell-out from a downward spiral of recriminations and oblivion. It's sloppy reporting to suggest that the Greens have gone backwards when they're ahead of where they were,

Yesterday, Mr Bowen said the results showed Mr Abbott had the power to determine the Greens' future in the federal House of Representatives.

"Mr Abbott goes on a lot about the Greens," Mr Bowen told the Ten Network's Meet the Press program.

"Well, it is up to him whether he'd preference the Greens or not ...

There are Liberal voters who preference the Greens: they're called moderates, Chris. All Tony Abbott need do is be true to himself and he will drive moderate Liberals away from the Liberal Party and toward the Greens. Neither Abbott nor Bowen are obliged in any way to give the Greens a two-year head start in building on their considerable progress in inner-city Australia.

Next year's election in Queensland will be fascinating as the state has experienced an array of eco-disasters. You'd expect the state's Greens to step up to a whole new level in seats along the Brisbane River, and in farmland resisting the encroachment of mines and gas wells. Bet they don't though: hacks like the ALP and yee-haw boofheads like Jeff Seeney will squeeze the Greens out of any elected office.

You could argue that the Greens are chokers, and that they'll be bereft after Brown goes. However, they've come a long way in a short time, and NSW Labor of all people ought not be jeering at anyone. They played Fiona Byrne off a break but if anyone is going to learn from this experience it will more likely be the Greens, not Labor.

... Heroes often fail
And you won't read that book again
Because the ending's just to hard to take ...
... But for now, love, let's be real.

I never thought I could act this way
And I've got to say that I just don't get it
I don't know where we went wrong
But the feeling's gone and I just can't get it back ...

- from If you could read my mind by Gordon Lighfoot

Talking to Gladys

As a summary of the election result itself, it's hard to go past this. What follows here is just another spitball lobbed in the general direction of Journalism Most High, and of one pit of particularly poor journalism: the NSW state parliamentary press gallery.

For almost all of the last four years, polls in NSW have shown that there was at least a chance that the Coalition might win State government. For most of that time it was a dead certainty. It was incumbent upon the journosphere to get to know the State Libs and ask them penetrating questions over time rather than just accepting Labor's portrayals of them as punchlines in Labor jokes. We are all poorer for this failure.

Silly articles have appeared over this period claiming that the Coalition frontbench are "anonymous" (they're public figures and they adore attention from the media, so why don't you give them some and see how they go?), or that they have no policies (they released over a hundred - and no, you don't just have to accept lazy journalism as "the way media works"). Just because Labor want to frame them that way doesn't oblige the journosphere to present them that way. The articles that need to be written now - firstly, analyses of what the new government must/can do, and secondly NSW Labor picking through the rubble - should have written themselves. Instead, the journosphere is grappling for words to describe a situation that was crystal-clear to anyone who'd been paying attention.

Last night the only live TV coverage of the State election was on the ABC. Kerry O'Brien chaired the panel with stale State politics reporter Quentin Dempster.

O'Brien was doddery and dithery, unsure of state politics and ill at ease with the off-screen technology. There were a lot of Freudian slips where "Labor" had won seats actually won by the Coalition. This is why O'Farrell cut him and spoke directly to Gladys Berejiklian, getting his message through to her (including confirming her as Transport Minister) in a classy manner unfiltered by O'Brien. If O'Brien was so tired of Keneally's bullshit, why didn't he have her on what was then "The 7.30 Report" and just shred her?

If he had, it would probably have brought on a demarcation dispute with Quentin Dempster, a Queenslander who had crusaded against Bjelke-Petersen in his final days and was brought to NSW in the late '80s to do the job in Greiner. Dempster is a caricature of an-old school journo, but his heart is with Labor and he has been poor at disguising it. He would occasionally display irritation at Labor's media management and backtracking on commitments, but I can still remember him interviewing John Brogden and dimming the studio lights so that Dempster looked like he was talking to someone in a witness protection program.

Dempster interviewed the Liberal candidate for Balmain, who referred to inner-west Liberals. Liberals had won the seats of Drummoyne and Strathfield in Sydney's inner west earlier that night, and Dempster look stupid for asking "what's an inner west Liberal?". For the past twenty years Liberals had worked assiduously to break Labor's lock on inner western Sydney, but Quentin wouldn't know this as the non-members bar in State Parliament faces away from the inner west. Like most journalists he disdained the Liberals, and they are right to return the favour. Matt Wordsworth does the heavy lifting in State Parliament for that network, so as of yesterday Uncle Quentin's value-add on state political issues has plummeted.

Antony Green is a pre-eminent psephologist but he's not much chop as a software programmer. Every election broadcast for the last five years has seen a software glitch that makes a nonsense of his contributions, a disconnect between what one sees on the screen and a hasty verbal explanation of why a candidate who is supposedly getting thrashed is slightly ahead, or vice versa, or something. If he's wrestling with his own software it detracts from his attempts to clarify and electorally tricky situation, and only adds to the discombobulation of old-school presenters like O'Brien.

O'Brien looked rattled by the end of the program, a quill-and-ink man in the age of Twitter. The contrast with his aplomb on previous Federal campaigns, and with that of Virginia Trioli in last year's Victorian election, could not be greater. It's time for Kerry O'Brien and Quentin Dempster to give it away.

The only trouble is that the coming generation of journalists ready to take senior roles reporting state politics cut their teeth dutifully reporting bullshit from the Walt Disney Secord fantasy factory. Some may snap out of that, examining the O'Farrell government more thoroughly than 16 years of Labor ever were. Some will just put their brain in neutral and go along with the under-construction Liberal bullshit machine, while yet others will just end up as rain dogs (Brian Robins from the SMH is probably going to be one of these, unless he can be shunted into reporting on something else).

It would be wonderful if NSW state political reporting was so debased that journos were forced to get into policy and treat politics as a sub-set of that: but why would they bother? When your idea of investigative journalism is refreshing your email inbox, or having the new Opposition point out the political versions of IEDs that the new government will stumble upon, once can hope for better journalism out of Macquarie Street - but not too much.

Into the pyre

In the lead-up to Labor's victory at the 1972 Federal election a number of journalists produced books about Whitlam, either entirely as biographies of the man or at least partly so. Depending on your regard for press gallery journalists, these works either surfed the wave that swept Labor to power or they were gobbets of jetsam on that wave.

In the past six months, only journalists have been listening to Kristina Keneally. There is no relationship between what she says and what actually happens. When Bob Askin or Neville Wran or Nick Greiner announced something, it bloody well happened. The office of Premier of NSW can be a very powerful one and it shall be again, but it hasn't been under Keneally.

I lost count of the number of times she said she was "determined to see this through", and nothing happened about whatever it was. I lost count of the number of times she demanded "a full and immediate report" on something or other, and just sat on it. Many times she said "I am very angry" that a particular stuff-up occurred - but no consequences flowed from that anger and the same sort of thing happened again and again:

• When Wran or Greiner got angry the structural changes were so substantial the ground almost shook;


• When Bob Carr got angry a journalist would get a phone call laden with sarcasm. The entire state parliamentary press gallery would go to water and immediately drop any investigations they were pursuing into the inertia and/or malfeasance of that government. Then, Carl Scully would make an announcement about the Parramatta-Epping Rail Link to which they would all go and report on like it was real news;


• When Morris Iemma got mildly displeased with something inside the Labor Party, Mark Arbib and Karl Bitar would use it as another excuse to get rid of him. When the issue was outside the Labor Party, he would call a commission of inquiry chaired by Fred Nile;


• When Nathan Rees got angry, for the first month or so things happened - then after that, nothing; but


• When Keneally gets angry, there is a grab on the news where she says how angry she is and that's pretty much it.

Lately, however, there have been all these biographical pieces on Keneally as though she's storming into office like Whitlam in 1972. Andrew Clennell in The Daily Telegraph (I tried linking but the News Ltd search engine is crap) and this piece by Sean Nicholls in the SMH are running the sorts of puff pieces you'd expect at the start of someone's career, not the end.

All that stuff about her fierce determination, from the high school basketball courts of Ohio to the backrooms of the NSW ALP - it seems to have dissipated once she got the top job. There should be more evidence of it, in actual transport and schools and hospitals, than is apparent. That contrast is the real value-add in reporting, and none of these profiles went there.

There is also plenty about her compassion and her work for Catholic social organisations. It's all good, but none of it really explains why she talks at people rather than to them. None of it explains why as Premier she lets her media outfit use kids and others in need of special (labour-intensive, costly and highly-regulated) care as backdrops for picfacs.

Overdoing that determination and community work makes journalists look like they are just taking whatever PR bumf Labor hands them and running it uncritically. John Fahey played rugby league for Canterbury-Bankstown and the Liberals would have looked absurd in 1995 had they over-emphasised that in terms of the Premier's toughness and determination.

It would have been nice if journalists could get over themselves enough to understand how disruptive it can be for an organisation for the Premier to descend on them. The relevant manager is informed and comes under increasing scrutiny, including fielding calls from media flacks making veiled threats and demands but not offering extra resources. Then a bunch of media people turn up, trampling the flowerbeds and running cords everywhere, and they snarl whenever you ask them to do their job in a manner that respects the place they are visiting. Then the Premier arrives, patronises everyone, makes an announcement (which, in Keneally's case, is almost always later retracted) and leaves, then the journalists hang around for a while and they leave, while those who remain try and fail to answer the question: what was all that about?

It would have been nice if journalists could get over themselves enough to understand the sheer poverty of their assumptions:

"It would be foolish of me to sit here and claim that I would never be in a position where I have made a mistake", [Keneally] says. "In hindsight, sure, if I could do it over, I would do it differently. If I was faced with the same decision today, perhaps I would have spoken to a wider group of people about the ramifications."

It's the closest she will come to admitting error. Yet it's not clear if she has grasped quite how much damage it inflicted. Inside Labor there are mounting concerns about her strategic judgment and apparent lack of deep political instincts.

A government backbencher states: "She has a real ability to go and learn a brief and go out and talk about it. But as far as real political nous goes? I believe that she lacks that and so do many of my colleagues."

Keneally was chosen for the Premiership precisely because she can transmit ideas. She was never expected to have political nous, deep roots in the community anywhere within this state.

Political nous involves the interplay between the opinions of the community and the extent to which they can be changed. Democratic policy-making is a two-way process; an increasingly educated populace armed with technology should be more of a two-way affair, but not in an age where communication shapes policy and governments regard themselves as transmit-only mechanisms. Contemporary politics, with its focus on "selling the message" and repetition of "talking points", is a one-way process. This can be seen from restricting the scope of action for backbenchers, to renaming press secs as "media advisors" and having them override policy decisions, to misinterpreting focus group data, to preselecting candidates who have "media savvy" but who lack the depth of experience that might give them political nous.

For journalists, where there is two-way democratic interplay you can report on surface-level goings-on, because the debate is out in the open. You needn't go into dull backroom operations, because that isn't where the action is anyway. Where politics is one-way transmissions, the backroom processes that really make decisions become all-important and the journalist must not be fobbed off by spin or inappropriately old-fashioned journosphere notions that it's all too boring.

One would expect a senior politician to have political nous. Keneally wasn't hired for her nous, she outsourced it to people who overestimated the extent to which they had it: Roozendaal, Tripodi, or the various State Directors of the NSW ALP. She outsourced it to the people who put her where she is, because what further validation of their political judgment could she want? When she talks about consulting "a wider group of people", she doesn't mean a particularly wide group - certainly not so wide and so representative as, say, the State Parliamentary ALP Caucus.

The factional system within political parties can work to manage disputes within that organisation, to distribute rewards and punishments in a manner that is orderly and sustainable for the party. Factions are not responsive to community needs, notions of efficiency, or policy issues. What has happened to NSW Labor over the past 16 years is that they have believed that to manage the party is to manage the state. In the absence of an effective opposition, this has been a fair assumption, but with the emergence of an Opposition that has established not just a threat but pre-eminence, the Labor government just looks like it can't get out of its own way.

Rather than flog the dead horse of NSW Labor again, let's look to Japan. The major parties in Japanese politics operate on factional levels so that the Prime Ministership is turned over regularly: the holder of the office transmits policy but does not receive political signals from the populace, and does not stay in office long enough to get airs that would place any political imperative above the factional. Now that Japan needs real, cut-through leadership - where emergency services must respond in real time to real issues on the ground - the Prime Minister of Japan is unable to give it, reciting the kind of anodyne scripted lines on radiation levels or fresh water supplies that might be more appropriate for slower-moving issues like teachers' pay negotiations or the biodiversity of some gully.

Anna Bligh is the product of the Queensland ALP machine, but she also had the ability to cut through and get information from her bureaucracy in that State's recent travails, and communicate them to the public. She did not get in the way of operational decisions; she did not have to. Keneally is also the product of a Labor machine, and she lets her staffers get in the way of operational decisions. Keneally's character evaporated once she got a job with real power: all she has left is the front for a whole lot of dopey decisions.

There is a difference between smiling as the ship goes down, rallying the troops etc., and the kind of denial verging on mental illness seen from Keneally these days. The complete disregard for what others may think, the scorn for the very idea that the will of an ill-governed people might have consequences, only confirms that chucking this government out is the right way to vote. In times like these, voting Labor is an anti-social practice performed by a small number of people, like spitting. The idea that a bad Labor government is better than the best Liberal one comes from a time when Labor governments were rare, and the current NSW government negates it utterly.

Maybe the reason why the MSM are lavishing attention on someone to whom the public has stopped listening isn't just because they are lazy ("that's what we do every election, it's what the punters want, it's balanced") or because they are tired of having viable businesses and an engaged public. Maybe they expect Keneally to bounce back in some transmit-only capacity (the federal government would be mad to take her on until they get a sizeable majority), in which case they are investing in a longterm relationship. Whatever it is, wherever you have a politico-media co-dependency complex it is clear that over time the pollies do all right, but the media suffers. Given technological and social changes on top of that, the MSM have to wonder how much suffering they are willing to tolerate in the name of "just doing the job".

How not to cover politics

First, there was this superb dissection of how The New York Times published only the story its journalist was able to write. This is an excellent takedown of standard political reporting.

Nikki Barrowclough started out writing profile pieces on herself living in France, or with a Frenchman, or something like that. For some reason The Good Weekend commissioned her to write a profile piece on Mark Arbib.

Arbib is one of those figures in politics who doesn't have a high profile, but who has a considerable impact on those who do and on the way politics works, and in a way that isn't fully explained in Politics I courses. To do a profile like this you need to be able to explain how a kid from Bondi got to wield such power, not just describe his ascent through Young Labor and Sussex Street as though he rose smoothly in a balloon, or on some sort of escalator, like it was inevitable. There was the odd anonymous, bitchy aside, but no real explanation of why this guy can kybosh the career of two Premiers (and much else besides).

It is anti-democratic and patronising to suggest that politics can only be understood and explained by a specific caste. Yet, someone who doesn't understand politics can't really explain why senior people in responsible positions within government fear to do things that he doesn't like. Barrowclough mentioned that two NSW Premiers have gone down because they fell foul of Arbib - but you have to ask what areas of policy would be different were it not for Mark bloody Arbib.

... Arbib replies, "I have always done what is in the party's and the national interest, even when it has been detrimental to my career. All I'm going to say is that much of what has been reported in the media is incorrect and not factual. That's it. Full stop."

There is no evidence of him doing anything that was detrimental to his career, whether in the national interest or not: Barrowclough's job was to test that, not just transcribe it. I would suggest that helping Barry O'Farrell become Premier of NSW was also in the national interest, but I accept that thousands hundreds quite a few Labor supporters would disagree.

Mark Arbib undertook "work experience" as Minister for Employment Participation Minister and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on Government Service Delivery 2009-10, and it is unclear what fraction of bugger-all he achieved in either role (especially when you consider that government service delivery was one of the reasons Labor was hammered at the last election).

He is Minister for Social Housing and Homelessness, and it is unclear what he is doing in that role. Barrowclough acknowledges that she doesn't focus on policy but doesn't really explain why anonymous bitchiness and childhood memories are enough of a substitute (the childhood stuff might be worthwhile in a colour magazine but it is possible to write about public policy in an engaging way. The fact that people in leading NGOs working on housing think he's a great guy/a fool/a bastard/never around and takes no interest would be significant.

Arbib is Minister for Indigenous Employment and Economic Development. Given that policy in this area over a hundred years has ranged from half-hearted to half-arsed, how does Arbib rate? How often does he travel to Aboriginal communities (not just picturesque remote ones, not just Noel Pearson's people, but grungy settlements in urban areas)? Do his professions of deep concern, combined with his sheer clout within the ALP, lead to policy outcomes that help Aboriginal people seeking meaningful work? Are the policy people you quote in passing major players in that area, and is a Parliament House internship worth much more than window-dressing?

He was and is Minister for Sport. The old dilemma of sport policy is the extent to which it should foster elite performance or community participation: what's Arbib's take on that?

He gave $45m of taxpayers' money to a bid for the FIFA World Cup that went nowhere at all, including at least a million to the sort of spiv NSW Labor specialises in; if he was such a master fixer he would have done better than that at a world-class numbers-crunching event. The fact that he hasn't been filleted by the relevant Shadow Minister, Luke Hartsuyker, can only be attributed to:

1. Hartsuyker being lazy and stupid;


2. The Coalition not wishing to embroil Frank Lowy in a partisan spat (or not being smart enough to target Arbib without collateral damage falling on Lowy); or


3. A combination of the above.

Seriously, what the Coalition needs to do now is start knocking off some ministers. Peter Garrett survived everything they could throw at him - but imagine if the Opposition were to knock off Mark Arbib. It would be the scalp of scalps, the biggest loss to a government since the air disaster of 13 August 1940 on the Menzies Government. It wouldn't alter the numbers in the House immediately but it would take a while for the power vacuum within Labor to subside.

The fact that Arbib stood down from the Federal Executive of the ALP in 2010 is significant, and Barrowclough missed that too. He'd been on that body for six years, and membership of an club like that is not given up lightly for anyone who takes politics seriously. Gillard and her Cabinet must have resented answering to a body that included a junior minister who wasn't across his portfolio: yes, he would have said that he would have spent more time with his portfolio or career or whatever, but a good journalist would push through that.

What's his Master's thesis on, Nikki? It would be in the UNSW Library if you asked for it.

Former NSW federal Labor MP Michael Hatton feels great enmity towards Arbib. He says that debate in the NSW branch of the ALP was stifled after Arbib took control as general secretary in 2004, and that it has been that way ever since.

To what extent is Arbib to blame for that? Is it a good thing (after 2004 Labor won a State and Federal election) or a bad thing (Labor's policy ideas on State and Federal level since then have been dire, and their polling in both arenas is way beyond ups-and-downs and heading for the abyss)?

Still another source says, "The Left and Right haven't had serious wars for a long time ... Mark saying that he stopped the wars simply isn't true. The wars were long over. He did deals with the Left in order to screw over his enemies in the Right, and to assist the hard Left against the soft Left. His [machinations] infuriated everyone in the Right."

Again: good thing or bad? Never mind the ALP, what about the impacts on state and nation? What policy ideas were nurtured and championed by someone who fell as chaff before Arbib? What stupid, wasteful and unnecessary policies have been foisted upon us simply because this joker decided to flex his muscles?

No politician is entitled to be taken at face value. Too much of Nikki Barrowclough's Arbib profile is a non-political profile of someone who is entirely political; a profile of (say) Nicole Kidman that paid no attention to the craft of acting would be considered too trite for The Good Weekend, but that's what happened here. From the start of the article Arbib knew he was dealing with a lightweight, and so we have seen; but we might yet hope for better from the journosphere.

Arbib is not a policy detail guy and I hope he'll be hammered again and again whenever he exerts the clout that Labor seems unable to resist. He supposedly joined the Labor Party because he cares about people and issues, but there's no evidence of that. He has supposedly put the interests of party, state and nation ahead of his own interests, but there's no proof of that. This was a poor piece, neither an in-depth study of a man nor a study of his (seemingly crucial) place in the political context. If Nikki Barrowclough was paid well for this piece at least one good thing will have come from it.

Mark Arbib initially declined to be interviewed when I rang his office in December, the same month The Sydney Morning Herald broke the story about him. His change of heart doesn't mean he has forgiven Fairfax for what he regards as the newspaper's malicious treatment of him. He hasn't. But he's also media savvy.

Maybe that's it: a soft piece like this, peppered with a few anonymous quotes to maintain a perception of "balance" without anything that will really wound him, is designed to build bridges between a key politician and a news organ that feeds on political gossip.

As with the New York Times piece referred to above, it's one thing for a journalist to write a story about politics without any real understanding of politics; it's quite another for a serious MSM brand to not be able to tell whether or not a journalist really understands the subject matter they're covering.