Two good stories today

I might be 'a formulaic takedown artist' but I promised to be better at recognising good examples of political commentary. There were two examples today.

The first was Jason Wilson's description of Abbott and the way he is reported. Journalists will stop at Wilson's description of what a weirdo Abbott is, and stop short of considering their own role in persuading a sceptical public that whatever you didn't like about Gillard/Rudd, Abbott was the better choice. In a country where most people were biased against Abbott, and had those biases reaffirmed since September 2013, what even does it mean to be 'balanced' in covering Abbott? What does it mean to note that he did something that attracted criticism when you can't assess or even distinguish different types of criticism? Wilson has written a cut-out-and-keep article on traditional media failure, well worth reading right now. See you when you get back.

The other masterful piece of commentary today came from Peter Greste, in his address to the National Press Club. He was effusive in praising Julie Bishop for her work, and that of the Department of Foreign Affairs, in gaining his release from prison in Egypt. His warm thanks of others, and detailed explanations of their tireless behind-the-scenes work, truly shows the benefits of living a generous life and receiving generosity in turn. Toward the end of the speech he effectively rounded on Bishop and the government: Greste criticised data collection for its impact on journalism, and successive cutbacks (by all recent governments, and by traditional media) of Australia's engagement with the modern world.

Strangely, the NPC's fearless camera put Bishop out of shot at the point where the government and the media copped some well-earned stick. The questions from journalists were inane, as they usually are at such events. One of Australia's most respected press gallery journalists twat actually wasted his opportunity by waving around a post-it note. Greste pandered to them by describing journalists as cantankerous and competitive and difficult to organise. The press gallery are the exception: they are eager to please, fearful of imagined consequences of not being so; they are herd animals who all report only one story a day, and from pretty much the same angle. Part of the reason why Greste is so highly regarded as a journalist must be because he puts out stories under conditions that would reduce almost all of the press gallery to shrieking wrecks. He played the press gallery masterfully. He had that Abbott ability to make them utterly suspend what feeble powers of scrutiny they have, by giving it more praise than it deserves.

It will be interesting to see how traditional media report that speech. They'll be all over the Bishop-praise, and Peter Hartcher lapped up that twaddle about journalists being cantankerous and competitive. They are unlikely to report that speech for the boomerang that it was, whirring off forcefully at the start only to smack them in the backs of their heads at the end. But hey, maybe this time will be different.

Julie Bishop is not running for Prime Minister,

No, she isn't.

In 2007 the press gallery nominated her as a 'dark horse'. Later that year she supposedly could have left federal politics and become Premier of WA. In 2008 she was a 'compromise candidate' between the terminal Brendan Nelson and the bumptious Malcolm Turnbull. By 2009 her cheer squad in the press gallery were becoming embarrassing: they still insisted that somehow she would rise above the Turnbull-Abbott-Hockey scrum and clinch the top job (Abbott did that because you can only win a race if you are actually in the running).

Now Phil Coorey is flogging a dead horse on the assumption that this time, no really, Julie Bishop is actually going to give up all that travel and busywork, give up the relatively private life of the senior-but-not-Prime Minister, and become leader of the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party. Bullshit.

Abbott is dead; even Liberals who have known no other leader know this. They doubt Turnbull will be an effective Liberal Prime Minister and can lead them to victory in 2016. Bishop looks like a compromise candidate (yet again). Bullshit. Coorey's sources are bullshit, his judgment is bullshit, his article is bullshit - but don't take my word for it:

With the matter on hold indefinitely due to a rebound in the polls for the Coalition and an uptick in Tony Abbott's fortunes, senior Liberals believe lead contender Malcolm Turnbull stands to lose over time due to an increasingly vitriolic campaign being waged against him by the Liberal Party's arch-conservative base.

MPs report being flooded with emails from what they believe is an orchestrated campaign involving the Christian right and other similar groups, attacking Mr Turnbull over his position on issues such as gay marriage.

Rather than just reporting all that without examining it, as Coorey has, let's do the work he gets paid to do. The Christian right has no real base in this country, less so since they blew so much of their treasure and credibility over their don't-question-just-submit defence of child molesters. Nobody is going to lose their seat over support for same-sex marriage to someone who doesn't support it; if you're going to be obsessed about polls, look at levels of support for same-sex marriage rather than against. Take almost any Christianist position and its capacity to shift votes becomes clear.

MPs' offices get spammed by different groups from time to time over different issues. If Coorey knows anything about politics, he should know that. Consider the last parliament, where the then government was on a knife-edge in a way this government isn't; they held an actual vote on same-sex marriage, and you can bet the Christian right were over-egging their numbers then, too. Coorey should be comparing now with then and seeing if the assertion stacks up.

Ms Bishop decided last week that if the leadership was spilled, she would run for the top job rather than be part of any ticket, sources said.

This decision was made after she was approached by colleagues eager for her to form a ticket with Mr Turnbull in a bid to force the issue "sooner rather than later".

"Julie said: 'I won't be on your ticket. If it comes to a spill, I will run'," a source said.

You can take my utter, utter contempt for anon-source journalism for granted. Yes, Coorey is protecting his source for the sake of maintaining relationships in Canberra that lead to ... um, what exactly? There's nothing it those relationships for his readers, still less when the data retention laws come in (about which Coorey is pretty sanguine - it's not like he does any investigative journalism anyway).

The worst thing about that anonymous quote, however, is that Coorey is being played. So are his more credulous readers, and the clowns at AFR who deemed this good enough for their dwindling readership. Here's why that story is bullshit.

If poor old Phillip Ruddock was such a threat to Abbott's leadership that he had to be pole-axed, you can imagine how the Downfall-style Abbott bunker would regard a serious charge from Bishop. There would be a flurry of half-baked articles in the traditional media about how Australia's foreign policy has no real narrative, how it's a long way from the "Jakarta-centred" policy Abbott promised, and how nobody in Washington, Beijing, or the Lowy Institute can make head nor tail of what Bishop is about. He would demand that the party room chose her or him, and it would choose him because it did so just last month.

If Bishop had any real clout in the Liberal Party she would never have stood for the more egregiously sexist attacks on Gillard: she would've had Mal Brough's guts for garters over that "big red box" caper for a start. If she was PM material she would have responded to Gillard's misogyny speech more effectively than anyone on that side of politics did. She would not moderated the attacks on Gillian Triggs - that attack was so ferocious because Abbott's whole life has been about being a spokesperson with a consistent message, and Triggs spoke out of turn. That's why criticism of Triggs focused on timing and lazy assumptions about her work under the previous government, assuming that everyone in government is bound by the media cycle and not daring to question her command of facts. There would be more women, and more Western Australians, in the ministry than there are. Danielle Blain should now be Federal President of the Liberal Party, not the fatuous and complacent Alston.

That's what real power looks like: taken, not received with a simper. A senior political reporter must understand power, its exercise and its absence - not just passing on tittle-tattle, like Coorey is here.

Conservative commentators once critical of Mr Abbott but now keen to save him have begun piling on the communications minister, accusing him of undermining Mr Abbott and even leaking information to which he is not privy, such as secrets from Cabinet's National Security Committee.

Is that accusation even sensible? How can you leak a document to which you don't have access? Hang on - perhaps the Foreign Minister is a member of the National Security Committee, and therefore be able and even motivated to ... not that I'm making accusations. I'm not in a position to know - but a chief political reporter is.

Neither Mr Turnbull nor Ms Bishop agreed to representations from the backbench to force the issue this week, by either resigning or challenging Mr Abbott.

Mr Turnbull has emphatically rejected suggestions circulating internally that he sought to recruit Ms Bishop to run as his deputy.

There is little appetite elsewhere in cabinet to pursue the issue as a result of both the polls and the fact that it was agreed after the last spill attempt three weeks ago to give Mr Abbott a fair go.

Those three pars are where Coorey's story dies.

The Liberal Party is not going to elect Julie Bishop as its leader. It simply does not do unmarried, childless, lady lawyers from Adelaide. The idea is to drag things out for Turnbull and give time to Morrison, as I've said before.

The steam went out of the issue on Monday following the publication of the latest monthly Fairfax/Ipsos poll, which found the Coalition had closed the gap on Labor by 6 percentage points and now trailed on a two-party preferred basis by 51 per cent to 49 percent.

That's just bad writing. That poll showed the Coalition trailing 49-51; had the polls been 51-49 they wouldn't have been trailing at all. Which do you think was bullshit - the 49-51 poll, the 43-57 poll, or both? Sadly, Coorey is so compromised and so bereft of information sources not available within Parliament that he cannot call bullshit on polls. He has been a slave to polls as the prism through which all policy and policy must be viewed.

...MPs believe a combination of the two polls has killed of any further move against Mr Abbott until at least after the March 28 NSW state election and most likely well beyond the May budget.

MPs who want to see Mr Turnbull succeed believe that the longer the issue drags on, the more damaged he is likely to be by the campaign against him ...

Social Services Minister Scott Morrison stood to become either Treasurer or deputy leader had there been a change three weeks ago and remains integral to the outcome of a future move. "He's in a sweet place at the moment," said one MP, given Mr Morrison stands to advance regardless of who replaces Mr Abbott.

And once you see Morrison as the beneficiary of any delay, the real story becomes clearer to everybody but Coorey. Bishop has been deputy to both Turnbull and Abbott. She doesn't have to choose between two versions of the past. Her whole career has been about shaking off inconvenient events and moving relentlessly forward. As Prime Minister, you can't do that - you have to be consistent and not just flit hither and yon as moment-to-moment tactics require. That quote from Bishop about dying asbestos victims that so appals people is just another example of situational ethics.

If Bishop became Liberal leader, public debate would go like this: Labor would bring up her record and that of this government, while Bishop will roll her eyes and complain "Can't we talk about something else?". This is the very reason why she won't, of course.

The mere fact that Julie Bishop is the most viable alternative to the current leader is the reason why the current leader is safe for now. Bishop's offer (assuming Coorey's source is something more than a complete fabrication) is not a promise for the Liberal Party, it is a threat. History shows the prospect of Bishop as leader seems to vanish once an alternative becomes clear. Once Morrison has the numbers people like Coorey will once again stop talking about her as a potential leader. The fact that he has been sucked in again to this non-story does not reflect well on Coorey, nor on those who employ him, nor on the other press gallery sheep who look up to him.

How, then, do you assess the Foreign Minister? Traditional media outlets have outsourced their foreign policy expertise to people like Hugh White or the Lowy Institute, convinced that nobody wants to know about foreign policy and that competence in this area is not worth cultivating amongst journalists. As poster-boy for incompetent foreign-policy journalism, Greg Sheridan blew it with Bishop and never recovered. By contrast, Michael Bachelard showed as Indonesia correspondent what Australian foreign policy looked like from Jakarta's perspective. He couldn't do that job alone.

The press gallery should be stung by its negligence letting Rudd and Abbott through with little critical review of what they would have been like as PM. If Bishop was really a candidate for the Prime Ministership there should be a welter of articles on what she's like in seeking out information, how she handles being told what she doesn't want to hear - and all that other PM-related stuff which those who've seen PMs come and go up close should be fully across.

Instead, the press gallery allows itself to be played by Bishop. She has cultivated the vapid Latika Bourke, discussing policy while jogging so the journalist can't make notes (not that Latika would or could even do policy, anyway) and insisting that the only interviews she will do have to contain as much emoji as possible. It would be fine to accept Bishop corralling the media into the trivial if this were some sort of reprieve from serious policy discussion. If you've spent day after day chewing over, say, the implications of the ASEAN Free Trade Area for Australia, what's a bit of harmless fun? When emojis and handbags are pretty much the sum total of your analysis, if not your understanding, of the Foreign Minister - then it is bullshit, hopelessly inadequate, and a fair description of where the press gallery is at regarding Bishop.

If I was more savvy than I am, I'd love the fact that Bishop is into emojis and would pooh-pooh grumbly worry-wart stuff like the above paragraph. Fuck being savvy, it's no fun pretending clowns and rogues are more compelling than they are. My family and friends are much more fun than watching the Foreign Minister dumb down public debate; all I want from politics and media is information on how we are governed. When precious little such information is available, and when journalists insist on their right to be gamed (and to game their readers) it isn't me as a consumer/citizen who has failed. It isn't the Foreign Minister who has failed, either - she has maintained her powerbase without overreaching. She's seen what happens to lady Prime Ministers and has managed to convince everybody but Phillip Coorey that it isn't for her.

The traditional media has failed its audience and those it covers, and on this issue it's doing so again.

A slight change of emphasis

The reshuffle is interesting for how this government sees itself.

First, it's limited in scope, which reinforces Abbott's idea that there isn't much wrong with the government that a bit of spin can't fix. It also reinforces the idea that shifting some of the government's alternative leaders - Bishop, Turnbull,  and yes even Hockey - would be career-limiting for Abbott.

The only governments that have far-reaching changes to their ministerial line-ups are those in real trouble, like the two reshuffles Labor had in 2013. This government may well have a reshuffle or two on that scale, but not yet.

Abbott has not promoted any big thinkers because he does not want any profound transformations in the way policy is conducted. He does not want to have to defend any controversial ideas on matters about which he knows little and cares less.

Andrews in Defence We're sending our forces into Iraq at a time when warfare, like all other facets of human activity, requires fundamental reexamination of a number of basic assumptions. Australia's strategic environment is shifting fast. Kevin Andrews is not the man to handle that.

If you accept those limitations, then what is needed in that role is a program manager par excellence - someone who will ensure Australian warfighters go into mortal danger relying on kit from the cheapest bidder. He's not that, either.

Andrews holds the fate of a large chunk of the South Australian economy in his hands. He'll give them more than the bugger-all currently on the table now, but not much more. He won't be able to wrest any political credit for that away from the state's Labor Premier, Jay Weatherill, and will be deaf to the screams of SA Liberals on why that matters to them.

Defence is the death-seat of federal politics. Apart from genuine policy nerds like David Johnston and Kim Beazley, every minister for the past 40 years was appointed to that role in full knowledge that their career was over (apart from Joel Fitzgibbon, which demonstrated Rudd didn't get the role Defence plays in foreign policy). Andrews is being managed out of politics.

The mad scheme for Credlin to take his seat remains in place. Only Canberra insiders blithely assume the Victorian Libs will meekly comply with an order issued from Abbott's office. It also means that the constituency of paternalistic religious conservatives will have to be represented by someone else, which will mean someone like Bruce Billson, Tony Smith and/or Michael Ronaldson will come under threat, blood will beget blood, etc.

Morrison to Social Services This assumes Morrison has attained a reputation as a competent administrator, with some sort of magical touch to get things through the Senate. This portfolio covers 20% of the Budget and the fun ain't done in that portfolio. The people most impressed by his tough-guy antics against refugees are older people with few skills, who fret most about refugees taking their jobs, and who are also most affected by changes to pensions or unemployment.

It also assumes Senator Marise Payne, who has basically been responsible for executing policy in this area (and helping outmaneuver Andrews brainfarts like denying young unemployed people support for six months) hasn't done enough to warrant a promotion. Keep this in mind when you cheer Abbott's doubling of female representation in Cabinet (more below).

Dutton to Immigration This assumes the case for our current immigration policy has been made. It hasn't.

Conservatives confuse doltish obstinacy with firm consistency of purpose, which is why they rate Dutton more highly than his talents and record suggest. He was a political passenger, offering nothing against Nicola Roxon or Tanya Plibersek as ministers for health. As minister and now shadow, Catherine King ran rings around him. If Richard Marles takes the kid gloves off in dealing with the new boy, it could be the making of him.

Support for the current immigration regime seems strong but individual incidents puncture it. Polling does not capture this. Morrison starved journalists of detail and derided them for writing rubbish, but they love being put in that bind because they love Strong Narrative over anything else. Morrison, like Howard, had the ability to look plaintive while being inflexible - a tactic that fools journalists - but Dutton can't do that.

Dutton has only two political talents. He picked the Liberal leadership changes since Howard with great accuracy and extracted great deals for himself. He comes from a state that is crucial politically but which doesn't send talented people to Canberra.

Dutton will overreach the wide-ranging powers Morrison won for him. At exactly the wrong moment, Dutton will make a dumb and callous statement that leads to a policy rethink greater than he can handle.

He can plug, plug, plug a message regardless of facts or changing circumstances, a quality prized highly among those who regard politics as a sub-type of public relations. It won't be enough.

Ley in Health Of all the Coalition MPs not initially appointed to Abbott's cabinet, Ley had the strongest case for inclusion. Her appointment is less a what-if than a why-not. She is across the detail and can plug a line as well as anyone while also having a mind of her own. In short, she makes a stronger case for inclusion than almost anyone there now. If anyone is going to come up with a workable arrangement on state funding or NDIS she will do it. She will also counter some of King's work on regional health initiatives.

Ley's appointment is a tacit admission that Dutton failed in Health, and that his failure is politically costly. Peta Credlin had assured female Coalition MPs that there would be more opportunities for them but now we see what that means as far as Abbott is concerned: women tidy up after men.

Frydenberg as Assistant Treasurer This is reward for service to Abbott.

The Assistant Treasurer is basically Minister for Tax. The Budget has a revenue problem and this government will shy away from far-reaching tax reform. Therefore, the battle will be joined at the level of detail: the government will want to close lurks and loopholes while the lobbyists who pushed for them will want them kept open. The Assistant Treasurer will need an eagle eye for detail and a firm commitment to what's right for the country: the 2006 version of Arthur Sinodinos would have been perfect.

Unfortunately, we've got Josh, who has glided through life with a superficial charm designed to disguise his boredom with detail. He's an errand boy. Nobody wants this guy in the trenches when it gets tough, and this is one tough job. He doesn't complement Hockey's weaknesses, he compounds them.

He was in charge of not one but two of Abbott's so-called bonfires of red tape. Rather than do the hard work of identifying and costing (politically as well as economically) counterproductive regulations, Frydenberg slapped together a whole lot of straw men that impressed nobody but press gallery journalists. It was lazy stuff and this blog has had it in for him before he was first elected.

Others who might have done this job better - Little Jimmy Briggs, Kelly O'Dwyer, Christian Porter or even Steve Ciobo - are right to feel passed over for a lesser person. Briggs and Ciobo should be wangling invitations to Mal and Julie's supper club.

The Parly Secs
- Christian Porter (replacing the ousted Johnston from WA) rose fast and far with little competition in his native state, and it will be interesting to see what errands Abbott sends him on.
- Kelly O'Dwyer's investigation into foreign investment in Australian real estate looked like an audition for a higher role (along with hundreds of media appearances where she unblushingly recited the daily inanities), and so it has proven. She risks treading a narrow path with her Treasury background but nobody is obliged to pass up a promotion.
- Karen Andrews is a former Hockey staffer who has taken to the busywork of committees and generally kept her head down while other newbie MPs aare still coming to terms with how the joint works.

Abbott is sending the signal to ambitious MPs that Howard did: knuckle down and do the busywork and I'll call on you in my own good time. Howard regularly broke that rule, with Abbott and Mark Vaile and Petro Georgiou to name a few, but hey.

Abbott deserves all the meagre rewards that come from having taken meagre risks. You, my dear readers, deserve all the best that the festive season and 2015 can offer, so we'll see what happens then.

Leadership as distraction

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

- Gough Whitlam (1916-2014)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[start]
[insert]dinkus_lbourke[/insert]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Up for negotiation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The second clause in that sentence is flatly untrue.

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

That's nice.

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

According to Rundle:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disguise fair nature

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage ...

- Shakespeare Henry V

This past week has shown that a directionless government can easily lose what little focus it has. This past week showed that a party which is a 'flat track bully' when the polls go with them will go to water when polls are less than favourable. This past week has been all about ramping up for this government's one true test: the repeal of the carbon tax, the rod for this government's back.

After disasters on foreign policy, immigration, education, and other issues, the government needed a focus. The Murdoch press would have looked really silly if they had continued lionising this bunch of turkeys, so they dusted off their old campaign against public broadcasters. It was feeble, a fraction of the ferocity we saw in Howard's first term when gutting the ABC was a real prospect, complicated by Murdoch's grumbling about losing the Australia International TV gig and its phone-hacking corruption cases in the UK.

Despite being old enough to know better, Mike Carlton was taken in hook, line, and sinker:

Putting the ABC to fire and sword is unfinished business for the Tories ... They did their best, but it didn't work. Battered but unbowed, the ABC sailed on. But the Tories have long memories, and the Abbott lot are determined to succeed where Howard failed ... The idea is to goad the Tories into action, and so far it's working splendidly ... There is an eerie, Orwellian air to the Abbott government.

Oh, please. There are at least three reasons why Carlton is wrong.

First, Carlton should've disclosed that his wife works for the ABC. This is a basic bit of journalistic arse-covering which someone of Carlton's experience had no right to overlook.

Second, there is no proof that Abbott will succeed at anything which Howard failed. The braying of Bernardi is itself a signifier of irrelevance. The same people who put paid to Archer Daniels Midland taking over Graincorp are the people who put paid to Howard doing over the ABC, and the same people who will stop any meaningful action against the ABC by this government: if you're going to gabble on about political matters, look at where power actually lies.

If you wanted to wipe out the Nationals altogether, and such Liberals who currently represent regional electorates, you'd make the Coalition hack into the ABC. The ABC is a far greater national and community unifier than any political party, and Coalition MPs know that (even though this clueless press gallery journo doesn't, wittering on about Peppa Pig in the face of the ABC's ageing, dispersed demographic). The ABC is so hard-wired for 'balance' that it cannot take its own side in an argument, which means that Carlton's over-the-top effort defines the gullible but fails to rouse them.

Third, Carlton has lost the right to be taken on face value. In the 1980s Carlton was the second-most-popular host on Sydney morning radio. He was beaten by a genial man named Gary O'Callaghan, whose role in life was to give people a smile on their face and a spring in their step. Carlton went after O'Callaghan with snarling ferocity and eventually triumphed, and established from then on that to win at Sydney morning radio you have to be a prick. Alan Jones, Kyle Sandilands, all follow the Carlton template: Carlton himself attempted a kinder, gentler comeback years later and was rolled by his harder-edged successors. It's been a while since he was the journalist he claims to be; he is no more a journalist than I am.

Before the last election Carlton insisted that Abbott wouldn't be so bad as PM, that there is something ennobling that seeps off the walls of the Lodge as you sleep there and that Abbott would rise to the job. If that was going to happen, it would have happened by now. Carlton has joined the ranks of the duller press gallery hacks, acting all surprised that Abbott is every bit as bad as he said and proved he was going to be.

The stale bullshit flung by culture warriors within Team Murdoch and the Coalition was an attempt to rally the troops in preparation for next week's assault on the carbon tax. Abolishing that impost is the biggest test of this government's credibility - now that promises around debt, boats, and school funding have all been abandoned, this is pretty much the nearest this government has to any substance at all. Given the current configuration of the Senate, it cannot abandon this promise, but going through with it will be disruptive and have no benefit. Just as banks do not pass on savings from Reserve Bank interest rate cuts, so too power companies will not pass on any savings from an abolished carbon tax.

We all know it's a sad pantomime, but Coalition MPs can't be allowed to think that. They must hurl themselves at the Parliament with ferocity; the way to do that is to have the Murdoch press pump out the bile, and when it comes to the ABC there's plenty to go around. The fact that they can wind up an easy mark like Carlton on the way through is a bonus.

Mark Kenny embarrassed himself yet again with this. Everything in that policy imbroglio, Sophie Mirabella (remember her?) had been wrestling with for three years, with she and Abbott lambasting Labor for doing both too little and too much for our car industry - and now Kenny acts all surprised as though yet another Abbott government policy failure had been entirely unforeseeable.

Quite why Qantas wants to subject its fate to the geniuses who put Graincorp and Holden where they are today is unclear. The head of government relations at Qantas (Geoff Dixon's old job) is Andrew Parker, who used to be a high-profile lobbyist in Canberra a decade or so ago, and well-connected with the Coalition. I thought a campaign run by him would be more focused, more effective than this one has been.

The government conceded the failure of the Foreign Minister on the essential big-picture aspects of her job by sending her to the Philippines. There she did not apparently hobnob with her counterparts in government or profess our undying friendship/ trade/ cultural/ ties etc with that country, but instead went patronising victims of Cyclone Haiyan. Going around patronising people is what Margie-and-the-girls are for, not the Foreign Minister. If the Foreign Minister isn't up to Foreign Minister work, then we need a new Foreign Minister rather than for Julie Bishop to carry on as she is.

I want a stamp in my passport indicating that, if ever hospitalised in a foreign country, I am not to be visited by the Foreign Minister. It should be possible to do that without having my passport revoked altogether.

Given the treatment meted out to Nicole Feely as John Howard's chief of staff, and now Credlin - and of course the vile treatment of Julia Gillard that went well beyond the treatment meted out to an opponent - it's clear that the Coalition has a deep-seated unease with women in power. After the hoo-ha surrounding the Governor-General, we see that the Coalition is uneasy about women in figurehead positions.

Bronwyn Bishop as Speaker is no worse or better than she was as NSW State President of the Liberal Party in the 1980s, ignoring objections and conflating obstinacy with courage, observing traditions and niceties only when they suit her. When this government starts to look bad because Question Time is a monkey-house just like it was before the election, Bishop won't be able to improve things. When Sophie Mirabella was proposed as a suitable head of the ABC, it was again as a figurehead doing as she is bid rather than as an suitably effective manager of national traditions.

I've dealt with Credlin before on this blog and the whiny detractors quoted in the more recent Aston/Johnson piece remind me of nothing so much as the Fitzgibbon/ Husic/ Bowen briefings against Gillard. Gillard, at least, faced popular election and took public accountability seriously; Credlin didn't get where she is through accountability. The assumption that she is enforcing higher standards of governance and quality on this government in the selection of staff and dictation of government processes is, at best, questionable; this government only talks about higher standards and better government. Look at the parliamentary ranks: there is no deep reserve of Coalition talent ready to take key advisor roles.

When long-serving opposition staffers burn out in government's earliest days they need to be replaced by cooler heads, less enamoured of electioneering and even less personally loyal to particular politicians. Such people are most likely to be found in state parliaments, where Coalition governments have been at it for a while now. Who would move from a real job in a major city to work for, say, Peter Dutton or Chris Pyne? How many of those people have been impressing Peta Credlin from afar? Can she really resist the temptation to replace someone who's good at their job but not loyal to her with someone utterly loyal but second rate (and not only staffers, but ministers)?

Credlin is the internal lightning-rod for all dissent within this government. That will spare the leader, but only for a while. This isn't clever or novel politics - the Coalition has form.

It wiggles, it's shapely and its name is Ainsley Gotto.

- Dudley Erwin, explaining why he lost his ministry in the Gorton government, 1969

In 1968 Prime Minister John Gorton appointed his 22-year-old secretary, Ainslie Gotto, as his Principal Private Secretary and came to rely on her for political advice. She was the first modern staffer in Australian government, and the Coalition did not take well to her; she was blamed for isolating Gorton from the political forces that ended up driving him from office. In later years Gotto, like Credlin, worked on the staff of Senator Helen Coonan. If press gallery experience meant anything, older press gallery journalists would be drawing contrasts between Gotto, Feely, and Credlin in terms of what it says about the Coalition, Abbott, and women exercising power.

Abbott depends as heavily upon Credlin as Gorton did on Gotto. Any successes of this government will be attributed to Credlin by the media, while any failures will be worn by Abbott and his ministers. Nobody goes into politics in order to be a mouthpiece and/or a punching bag, yet that is the extent of Credlin's vision for them. There is no mechanism for calling Credlin to account apart from a frontal assault on Abbott; Credlin can see those coming anyway, and will be taking names.

When Cormann calls for Credlin's critics to capitulate, he wants the focus on the Labor-Green alliance determined to price carbon. He is also being chivalrous, as are all those people (including those not necessarily supportive of this government) who don't want a repeat of the vilification directed against a prominent woman in politics. Is quietism really the only alternative to vilification for women in public office?

If you want more nuanced, polite discussion, you need something to discuss. Not only do you need policies, but you also need respect for stakeholders and other interlocutors who might cause you to adopt a position different to that identified by focus-group wranglers. You need to abandon your idea that any change of position is a backflip, a backdown, a breach of faith, a weakness. And in that, you see the central shortcoming of the Abbott government right there. The question for Abbott and Credlin and all the other decision-makers (real and imagined) in this government is, what's to discuss?

The teachable moment

If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened — that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death?

- George Orwell Nineteen Eighty-Four

Events come and go, and all newly-elected governments have teething problems. It's tempting to confuse (or, in wishful terms, conflate) teething problems with crippling deficiencies that will ultimately do for this government. Yet, there are deficiencies among the Coalition that were detectable before they entered government. They are well and truly on display right now. There is no evidence of bureaucratic envelopment or wise counsel or other measures that might help this government grow the brains and capabilities that it so copiously lacks, and has always lacked.

Apart from Abbott himself, nobody in the Cabinet is more media-savvy than Scott Morrison. Morrison underestimated his skill in being all over the media before the election, and then engaging in blocking tactics afterwards (e.g. refusing to confirm his own statements, refusing to confirm that he talks to the PM, using a staff officer to lend him the authority that he lacks). The dissonance in Morrison being present yet absent for the media, and the fact that the Indonesian government (and the Indonesian media) is being as sensitive to Australia's internal politics as Abbott (and the Australian media) was to its, all makes for something of a gap between the responsible adult government we were promised and the shambles we were delivered.

That promise came not only from the Coalition, but from the press gallery. The press gallery cannot credibly maintain its hastily-constructed claim that this government's shortcomings have come about suddenly (and thus unforeseeably).

Soon after he became Treasurer, Peter Costello went to Washington and had a private conversation with then-Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan. Costello breached protocol and related Greenspan's words to the waiting media, and US stock markets and exchange rates juddered and lurched as a result. Costello learnt his lesson, but it is unclear what lessons Julie Bishop is learning about statecraft. If she is learning anything, she's doing it the hard way and expensively - but hey, maybe that's just Julie's style.

Having brought on rebukes from both Indonesia and China should be enough to get anyone sacked from the position she occupies, surely; a loyal deputy for six years under three leaders, she is letting the side down. She is certainly no Percy Spender, who put in place the entire architecture of postwar foreign policy in 19 months. She even offers less than the cross-continental dithering we saw in the last government from Smith, Rudd, and Carr. She has no excuse for being so unprepared.

There is no hinterland of considered thought, writing and speaking on which to build a hope for more and better in this vital area of federal government policy: only the partisans, with faces painted and screeching encouragement, can truly believe this pivotal moment in our foreign relations is best handled by someone so out of her depth even with basic political and diplomatic niceties.

It's possible that the last of the foreign policy wonks will take in hand these wayward ministers and lead them through to the fallow but safe-seeming ground of foreign policy conventional wisdom (much of which remains from Spender's time early in the Cold War). Being involved in this country's political class pretty much precludes long periods overseas during adult life, learning languages and other ways of operating; it's the one area of policy that smart-arse politicos seem happy to leave to the professionals, where gimps with focus-groups and standard deviations on internal polling simply have no impact. They airily claim that WesternSydney^TM has no interest in foreign policy, but in an interconnected world (and given the ethnic diversity of that area) how sustainable do you reckon that is?

An adult government need not come to office with a complete manifesto; Menzies didn't in 1949 and neither did Hawke to any real extent in 1983. It needs to hit the ground running though, or at the very least emerge from post-swearing-in hibernation looking co-ordinated. The whole promise of "no surprises", of government run entirely from the PM's office, leaves no excuses for the disjointed effort we've seen from this government in its establishment phase. The sheer absence of a clue means that someone like Mark Textor, wrongly regarded highly for his tactical acumen, screams and postures in the backrooms about Strategy but can only fluff and bumble when the limelight falls on him.

The floundering of Chris Pyne in education, however, shows just how far the rot in this government descends.

Like Morrison, Pyne is one of the government's more savvy operators. He is not some junior woodchuck acting above his pay grade, he has been in parliament for twenty years and was a minister in the last Coalition government. He cannot be said to be good at anything if not at managing the media: for many years he kept up the narrative that Peter Costello was thiiiiis close to knocking off John Howard, the model for Rudd's more successful guerrilla sulk, and has been a "senior Liberal source" ever since. Many members of the press gallery know Pyne more closely than do members of his family. His witterings about media misunderstandings are laughable.

Here is Pyne's political calculus: the largesse given to private schools will reinforce private school communities to strongly support the government, while public school communities are weak and will not rally against the government. That's it, really.

It seemed to be effective under Howard, although he had the advantage of Labor leaders who were ineffectual (Beazley, Crean) or unbalanced (Latham). Shorten appears to be neither of those things, but like Bill Hayden be could end up as nothing else either. Coalition state governments have not trashed the public school system to the extent necessary for Pyne's calculus to take hold.

With the fading of the resources boom, and the passing of the idea of almost effortless upward mobility that Howard sought to cultivate, people came to realise that education was all we could count on as a reasonable prospect for the future. That's why Gillard pinned everything on education. That's also why Pyne and Abbott pledged a "unity ticket", which they've since torn up; it was the difference between what they have now and much, much less, if not oblivion.

When Pyne mouthed off against Gonski earlier this year, Barry O'Farrell hauled him up to Sydney to show him what actual government and its needs are really like. The fact that neither man spoke about their encounter after the fact indicates that O'Farrell tried to knock some sense into Pyne, which he has clearly since lost. Nobody in NSW would choose Abbott over O'Farrell. Nobody in the Liberal Party wants the two to come to blows, but if they have to sacrifice the twerp from Adelaide to make peace do not doubt that he shall be sacrificed. Abbott is in the stronger position constitutionally but O'Farrell is the superior politician; if he has to run against Canberra then that's what he'll do, he will play grassroots populism better than Abbott will or can.

Education has retained both a depth of community feeling and of community organisation that the political parties have lost (they even used to be the same people in a more community-minded, less busy-busy age). Your average Parents and Citizens/Friends will have far greater tactical nous and organisational ability than your local branch of any political party. Any backroom operator, any Cabinet minister or inner circle denizen, who thinks the Abbott government is going to embrace that third rail and survive is kidding him/her/itself. Nobody who remembers the popular revolts in NSW against the Greiner government's education policy in the late 1980s/early '90s will ever forget it. O'Farrell doesn't. The sheer force of it propels Greiner's wife Kathryn onto the Gonski committee more than two decades later. Those who forget the lessons of history, at the very least, have no business mucking about with the curriculum.

If not Gonski, what? Under an adult government there should be an orderly transition to another funding model, not some dusted-off effort that led to longterm decline in school performance, and which was wrongly romanticised by Liberals (if Textor's advice was worth anything, he should have advised the Coalition to cut the nostalgia act as it impressed nobody who wasn't rusted on). Under an adult government the Education Minister would not be flinching and mincing at his own discomfort, but instead offering clear guidelines within which professionals can conduct careful planning. Bronwyn Hinz and I were completely wrong in April to assume that Pyne was doing any education policy work worth the name. At least he's had the good sense not to wheel out culture warrior Kevin Donnelly, when no other Coalition government is having anything to do with him.

There are a number of newly-elected Coalition MPs who won't make it past the next election because Pyne blundered into a political minefield. Pyne himself, having taken a safe seat to a margin under 5%, might well join them. He's sticking to his guns, but they're badly calibrated and pointing the wrong bloody way, and guess which fool placed them there? When constituents come to them and say that Marginal Vale Primary is losing this, or St Preference's is losing that, how will Pyne help them? He'll brush it off, and in doing that a lot of the respect that he earned by decades of hard slog that seemed to have paid off (for him at least) will be brushed off too.

Joe Hockey cut his political teeth under Greiner too, and has no excuse for gibbering about infrastructure in the hope that it will lift this government above the fray (let me guess: another second Sydney airport study), with all that crap about taking "tough decisions" instead of smart ones.

Much of the big important stuff that defines any government happens early in its term. Well, here we are early in the Abbott government's term. What's to show for it? No going to war as part of the new United Nations, no floating of the dollar, no gun buyback - no responding to Events in an adult-government way at all.

There is a school of thought that says a government should get its bad news out early. The trouble with this government is that it can't be sure its run of bad news is over, or that they have the power to decide when it is. Pyne's troubles over education do not detract from Morrison's problems with Indonesia, they compound the sense that this government is a bunch of stumblebums. This failure should be sheeted home to Abbott, and to strategists like Credlin and Textor. There is no suite of well-thought-out policies ready to go to stabilise early jitters, and thus nothing to bear fruit into 2014-15 to be harvested at the next election. Their only options are knee-jerk stuff, and that's when you get dopey policy outcomes like the ones that the Coalition try to hang on the previous government.

The idea that the press gallery is surprised at this government performing under expectations shows only that they haven't been paying attention, and have therefore rendered themselves redundant well ahead of the inevitable decisions of their current employers.

A government that wastes time eradicating any trace of the previous government incurs two big opportunity costs. First, you can't blame a government for all your woes and constraints if nobody remembers them. Second, and more tellingly, a lot of the big scope for action gets frittered away as momentum and goodwill dissipate - as they do, and nobody in the backroom or at the top table knows how to stop it. Labor, the Greens and other parties aren't exactly cringing before the threat of a double dissolution election. Looks like blocking the carbon tax is all this lot really have; anything else they do will be an accident, for good or ill.

To break a dealmaker

This week we saw Julie Bishop go from being an effective deputy to an ineffective one. For the Liberal Party, this is far more significant than merely changing the leader. Those who reject my idea that Abbott is a dud who'll never make it will come to agree that throwing Julie Bishop under a bus was the moment from which the Liberals could not recover the 2013 election.

The Liberal Party is built around the leader. The leader hasn't got time to crunch deals and make them stick, and loses a bit of burnishment in the process. Not hungry for the limelight themselves, effective deputies make up for their lack of name recognition by shoring up the leader and making him (a matter of historic fact rather than a requirement going forward) look capable of running an outfit bigger than the ad-hoc numbers-gathering operation, or "camp", that got him (sorry) the job in the first place.

Eric Harrison (1944-56) and Harold Holt (1956-66) underpinned Menzies' longevity. Phillip Lynch (1972-82) could not save Snedden - no deputy can save an inadequate leader - but Fraser regarded him as so indispensable that, when he sacked Lynch as Treasurer in 1977, he kept him as deputy because of his deal-crunching abilities. Peter Costello managed the transition from Downer to Howard, and Bishop from Nelson to Turnbull to Abbott.

Ineffective deputies undermine their leaders, either through mendacity (e.g. William McMahon 1966-71, John Howard 1982-85, Andrew Peacock 1987-89) or incompetence (e.g. Michael Wooldridge 1993-94). Ineffective deputies create a sense among Liberal MPs that nothing is settled and nothing is possible, and that engaging in leadership speculation (which an effective deputy roots out at every opportunity, or else rides when it becomes overwhelming) and gossip is no more/less useful than anything else.

Bishop was a dealmaker. She kept in contact with stakeholders, understood what they wanted and didn't want, and cut deals that stuck. Liberal MPs who opposed Howard's treatment of asylum-seekers were prevented from crossing the floor, from embarrassing their leader for the sake of a policy that has since proven illusory, through a combination of honeyed words and threats from Bishop. She cut a deal among squabbling wheat farmers, putting her own skin in the game as a Western Australian (WA wheat farmers play a more significant role in that state's Liberal Party than is the case in other states), which may yet count against her now that she is weakened.

Abbott isn't a dealmaker. He'll say anything and will go back publicly on what he said privately if it suits him. He has no experience in law and/or business. He wasn't a factional leader and fears the perception of getting rolled. Nelson wasn't a dealmaker either, operating under the patronage of powerful backers both at the AMA (Bruce Shepherd) and in politics (Howard); a natural deputy, but no leader. Like Abbott he was unable to make the transition from protege to patronage-giver.

Turnbull, of course, was a dealmaker, given his legal and business experience; but in Sydney since the 1980s legal and business leaders aren't Liberals. They were when Howard was learning the ropes in the 1960s and '70s, but that is one ladder that has fallen down since Howard climbed it. Political dealmaking is a different matter altogether from dealmaking in the Sydney business community, as Turnbull has either learned too late or not at all. This division is probably true of Melbourne, though to a lesser extent, and there won't be any Liberal PMs from there any time soon anyway. Elsewhere in the country, such as in Perth, senior legal/business people are still also senior Liberals - so when Bishop became a trusted dealmaker in one sphere she could straddle them all.

Bishop had gained a perception of strength from having kept her position while two leaders lost theirs. Until last week, a weakened Abbott needed Bishop more than she needed him. Nobody in the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party could do what she does in terms of dealmaking and smoothing ruffled feathers. Western Australian Liberals deferred to her as the nearest thing they've had to a Liberal PM. Bishop has lost the credibility and the status necessary to make deals stick, without anyone else having gained it.

People on Twitter who'd never vote Liberal mocked Bishop's mechanical approach to asking niggling, minor questions of the Prime Minister, yet again wasting the opportunities of Question Time to gather information about how a government is working. This is highly esteemed in the modern Liberal Party. Liberals respect plugging away at a doomed activity far more than taking a punt on an idea that might be costly and not work. Bishop should have come out of this week strengthened within her party, however much she was diminished publicly by flogging an issue that started small and only got smaller.

When Peter Slipper became Speaker, Christopher Pyne frantically nominated half the ALP caucus instead, all of whom declined; again, most people viewed this with mirth or incredulity but for Liberals, Pyne was being a loyal soldier in the face of enemy fire. His effete mannerisms and history of moderation will be forgiven if he's loyal. So it is with Bishop's personal vanity and being from a small but bumptious state. Malcolm Turnbull knows this too, which is why he won't challenge Abbott before the next election; he is wearing ashes-and-sackcloth by professing loyalty to a lesser man as leader and spouting much the same pathetically inadequate policy that the Coalition took to the last election.

The modern Liberal Party is not for people who take initiative - this is a matter for history and rhetoric only, from when the party was dominated by small businesspeople. The modern Liberal Party is for people who carry out the brief set for them and do not question it. This is why drones like Julie Bishop have thrived while more subtle minds have floundered.

Bishop's skittishness in the face of her meetings with shadowy figure surrounding the AWU has proven to be her undoing in the absence of a knock-out blow against Gillard. The phone dropped out, I only met him for coffee etc., these are the classic evasions of a politician in over their head. Peter Costello would have distanced himself from grubs such as Blewitt - but Bishop's from Perth, you'd never drink coffee in that town again if you limited yourself to only dealing with the true and the good.

A Liberal Party with initiative would have steered away from Gillard's personal life and used their accumulated trivia about the AWU to profess concern about union members, using that as cover (along with the HSU saga) to impose the governance on unions that would make it difficult for them to support and nurture the ALP. They could have neutralised their negative perceptions about industrial relations, the issue that stopped Abbott in 2010 and on which he (and Shadow Minister Abetz) has made zero progress since. Oh well, too late now.

Abbott doesn't look good for letting Bishop carry the Gillard-AWU issue (to use the label on Credlin's folder - photo courtesy of Fairfax):

Bishop's tragedy is the Liberal Party's tragedy, and it comes in two parts. First, Bishop did what she was told but it wasn't good enough. It has made her look stupid rather than strong - all the more so for lacking the initiative to demand someone else do the dirty work (such as Abetz, for example, in a house where Gillard would not monster him directly). The Liberal Party has a weakened leader and a weakened deputy, and for what?

The second is that Bishop, Credlin, and Abbott have underestimated Gillard. They don't have a plan B if she fights back - and the more effective she is when she fights back, the more likely the PM is to do it again and again, meaning the poverty of simply assuming she will simper or weakly stonewall when challenged is exposed. Effective deputies have a role in getting the measure of their opponent and standing up to a leader who makes the wrong call.

Had Abbott led the attack on Gillard-AWU he would almost certainly be finished. Bishop would support her fourth leader and the Liberal Party would go forward, with a fresh leader stealing Gillard's oxygen. Her ability to make and enforce deals within the Liberal Party and with major stakeholders outside it would be intact. Until this week, Bishop could have demanded the leadership herself after being such a loyal deputy, and she would have been put there had Abbott been felled by an explicitly sexist event.

Abbott has certainly removed Bishop as a threat to his own position, and has avoided being thrown under the bus himself. It was a feature of the Liberals in the 1980s-90s when leaders started to be regarded in insider-politics terms for the hits they scored against their own deputies. Treating a woman (who has supported him) in a shabby fashion will not help Abbott at all.

Bishop is Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade. This is not a policy area which shifts a lot of votes but taking it seriously is the difference between a credible alternative government and a bunch of bludgers who just want another crack at all the perks. Mark Latham thought he could afford to be a foreign policy lightweight in 2004, and he was wrong. If you're going to complain about defence spending, if you're going to talk about trade and jobs created through export, if you're going to talk about immigration, you need a foreign policy framework.

Julie Bishop has done nothing in this area. Her experience as Education Minister might have been useful in the debate over Asian languages. Her lawyerly ability to master a brief might have yielded a respectable if limited policy. It is now clear, however, she won't develop any ability to do so. No other current Liberal MP has or can, including (especially!) Josh Frydenberg.

Other candidates for Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party lack what she had before this week:

• Joe Hockey comes from the same state as Abbott and will always be seen as a rival. HOCKEY DECLARES FULL SUPPORT will become one of those zombie stories that no mere fact can kill. He can cut a deal but needs to be detail-focused and disciplined to compensate for Abbott's shortcomings;
• Peter Dutton comes from a state which should be represented in the leadership group, where the Coalition must hold all they have and advance if they are to win. However, Dutton has also been policy-lazy in a key area, and he doesn't compensate for Abbott's weaknesses - he's a wooden personality, not particularly fast off the mark, and would (like his home state's Deputy Premier) be more likely to crack down on dissent rather than manage it productively and subtly;
• Chris Pyne. Stop laughing, he's a serious candidate. It would raise his profile in his seat, and he could devolve the attack-poodle persona to others. He could switch to the kinder, gentler face of Abbott much as Bishop did does; and
• Insofar as Bishop attracted female support for the Liberal Party, there is no woman who could credibly step up as Abbott's deputy. Mirabella? Sussan Ley? Teresa Gambaro?

Bishop has been exposed as a lightweight before, with outsourcing work submitted under her name to a book by Peter van Onselen. She floundered as Shadow Treasurer. Foreign Minister Bob Carr and Trade Minister Craig Emerson are essentially setting their own pace because Bishop offers them no opposition to speak of. This time it matters. The failure of Gillard-AWU shows Bishop can't master a brief and execute it. She lacks the sense to avoid consorting with grubs while criticising the PM for doing exactly that. Now that it's becoming clear that Abbott can't beat Gillard, it's now starkly apparent Bishop has no clue either.

The Liberals will probably become a rabble over Christmas-New Year. Abbott will look weak and won't be able to rely upon anyone to charm/heavy the miscreants back into place. The wheat farmers of WA will attempt to meddle in Bishop's urban electorate. The Gonski reforms that start with today's legislation are designed to correct inaction on Bishop's part when she was Education Minister under Howard, and if Gillard ever has to dispense with bilateralism to get these reforms through then she will inject this into public debate good and hard.

Liberals are entitled to despair of their predicament, and if they can't take on their leader (who is protected by the National Right) then they will savage the deputy, even though the alternatives aren't great. Bishop could retreat and come back, like Howard; but she lacks Howard's commitment, patience and humility. She can't cut a deal any more, she's finished. Maybe she could go back to Perth and land some directorships, and if they become more attractive than the toxic environment of Canberra then she'll be off in a flash.

It's too late for the Liberals to develop a vision and from that a comprehensive suite of policies as an alternative to the incumbents. At the very least, however, they need a plan B for when attacks blow back on them. Bishop launched into an attack on Gillard without a plan B, and now it is Bishop, not Gillard, who has had the worst of it. Bishop's absence of a plan B does nothing to soothe jittery Liberals, but encourages Labor and gives them a momentum that can roll over zombie stories.

Liberals knew Abbott was imperfect, but with him and Bishop both on the ropes and no strong alternative that fits the Howard Restoration narrative, they are cruelly exposed. They could prise a feeble Labor government from office but not a strong one. They overestimated their own strength, and those of their leaders, while underestimating the growing strength of Gillard Labor. Having changed leaders so often, the Liberals have come to rely on their deputy more profoundly than on the leader pro tem. You can put up an umbrella when it starts to rain but when the levee breaks ...

Grist to the mill

By the time wheat makes its way to Sydney it is pretty well processed and refined. It's easy to take it for granted as a commodity and to underestimate the politics involved in making and selling it.

If you want to be Prime Minister, and especially a Coalition Prime Minister, you have to get your head across the politics of wheat. The idea that you should rise to a senior position without having done so is negligent.

Wheat was grown in small and feeble quantities in early Sydney. The Indian strain ruti was grown on a hill to the west of the city that is still known as Rooty Hill, but from which all trace of agriculture has since been lost. When the vast lands to the west of Sydney were exploited by the British it came to be grown in vast quantities; later vast quantities were grown in Western Australia due to subsidies channeled from gold revenue.

Government involvement in wheat-growing took off after the 1930s. It had become one of Australia's key industries and was then labour-intensive. One of the first impacts of the Depression on Australia came with the drying-up of wheat markets, when agents and brokers and other bulk-purchasers went broke and/or slashed their prices, leading to real and immediate impacts on jobs and liquidity generally. Government took over the selling of wheat with the aim of insulating the economy from that degree of shock, offering to pool wheat output and sell it through a "single desk" - with the consequences you'd expect, really, in a neoliberal age.

Firstly, wheat farmers have generally received an even but rarely grand income, as highly regulated as any award employee.

Secondly, the politics of selling wheat has gone way beyond mere hypocrisy and gone into the kind of dissonance that causes mental illness in individuals:

• Coalition MPs who made bloody denunciations of communism were happy to flog Australian wheat to the Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China (until Whitlam the communist regime in Beijing was not recognised as the official government of China, the Guomindang government of Taiwan was regarded as "China");
• The Howard government sold Australian wheat to Iraq despite UN sanctions against that country. There was a royal commission into the private sector's role in this, but the role of the then government has not been examined to the same extent. I expected the Rudd government to square that circle, but no;
• When you factor in government involvement in selling Australian innovations such as Synroc and Securency you have to concede that, in certain situations, libertarians have a point.

Basically, wheat farmers in Western Australia want to privatise the profits where prices are high and production is abundant, while wheat farmers toward the east of the country are prepared to stay under government protection to better ride out slumps driven by prices (set by overseas markets and competitors) and production (i.e. droughts, floods etc in Australia). When the government proposed to abolish Wheat Exports Australia (the latest label on the "single desk"), the Coalition found itself wedged:

• Eastern-states Coalition MPs were instructed to vote to keep the "single desk" in some form, and did so;
• Tony Crook, whose presence in Coalition ranks was always tenuous, voted with a calmly united Labor in the expressed interests of his constituents;
• Julie Bishop, the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, was mocked by some old has-been in her attempts to get Coalition MPs to all vote one way on the issue, and in a way that embarrassed the government;
• Mal Washer and Dennis Jensen, two long-serving MPs who had relied on government incomes before entering parliament, decided they would play libertarian in abstaining from voting either with their Coalition colleagues or with the government (if moderates had done this, the Liberal right would have gone apoplectic); and
• For their (non-)efforts, both were denounced by the Coalition spokesperson on agriculture, John Cobb. Cobb showed his genius for agricultural policy over New Zealand apples. He managed to harvest rural anger when the government banned live cattle exports to Indonesia, without a clear idea what he'd do given the breadth and force of opposition within Australia to Indonesian abattoir practices. Cobb pointed out that Jensen and Washer were not part of "the farming community", by which he means the agrarian socialist shakedown that makes people like him possible. 

Cobb's record of political and policy failure remains intact and ripe for rural independents to take advantage of. More broadly, the Coalition looked like a rabble in the lead-up to that vote, during it, and since in taking it to the government in Question Time (in the hope of uniting people deeply divided on matters of principle and what it means to represent the community's best interests).

Julie Bishop was used to brokering deals among fractious Western Australians, but this just proved too hard. Instead of focusing on policy, and taking the initiative away from the government, she instead focused on reacting to whatever the government did and making MPs toe an increasingly silly line.

MPs representing wheat-growing areas tend not to be party hacks with little direct experience in private-sector production, unlike most Coalition MPs. Simply cracking the whip and making these people do what they are bloody well told was never going to work, and nor would once-talismanic but no longer relevant input from Mark Textor jabbering on about elites. The main political tools of people like Bishop, and Abbott, were completely blunted in the face of a political issue that is, as it were, perennial as the grass.

Since his momentum has been slowed by sexism and misogyny, Abbott has been kept above the fray. The Coalition has realised that there is no further advantage for Abbott in his "junkyard dog" role. Bishop has taken over the role but she is no good at it. Pyne has disappeared from view and this is a good thing, nobody wants to or should have to hear from him. Hockey needs to be Mr Policy Substance but somehow he has been drafted into parliamentary theatre. Having abandoned his frontline role, Abbott sits there like his vision of the monarch: to advise, counsel, and warn.

The trouble for Abbott is that role is taken by Howard. His advice and counsel is not that valuable and his warnings have no impact. He sits in Question Time shuffling through papers like Kevin Rudd in 2007 - Rudd was a much more successful Opposition Leader and Abbott could do worse than emulate him more than he did. The difference is that Rudd probably read those papers, they were less likely to be the empty props that they are for Abbott. He will not become more Prime Ministerial by rising above the fray, but irrelevant in comparison with the hands-on Gillard.

The reason why you work on policy in opposition is that you can deal with "sudden" issues like this, complicated by an additional self-imposed requirement to gainsay whatever the government puts up. The Coalition reacts to events rather than demonstrating their capability in managing them. Pissant compromises are all very well for issues that come and go - but wheat is not an issue that disappears from Australian public life for long. The Abbott-led Coalition is not demonstrating that it is ready for government because it is not ready, therefore its criticisms of the incumbents will lose traction, and the Coalition will not be elected to replace them.