Could be worse

Imagine if Peter Costello actually did become Opposition Leader. It's a ridiculous thought and I still don't think it will happen, but let's imagine:

• By the end of his first week, every journalist in the country would ping him on the lazy notion that a vote for Costello would automatically mean 'happy days are here again' and the Libs will outpoll Labor on better handling of economic difficulties.


• You can be a hard-arse on industrial relations reform when jobs are easy to get, when take-it-or-leave-it can be leavened by a range of opportunities if you do leave. You can't cede to Labor the appearance of caring-and-sharing toward job loss as well as that of best economic policy to suit current and anticipated economic circumstances; this is exactly what Costello would do, and what Turnbull is seeking to avoid.


• The rise of Costello would see the increased prominence of Tony Smith and Mitch Fifield, who play Biff and Happy to Costello's Willy Loman but otherwise offer nothing to the nation, Victoria or the Liberal Party. Costello has made the Victorian Liberals in his image, and what a sorry bunch they all are. No electorates in Victoria now held by Labor would vote Liberal because of the man from Malvern.


• Beyond Victoria, a victory for Costello in the current context would be a victory for the far right, and voter-repellent candidates like Alex Hawke and Peter Dutton. Chris Pyne would cut a deal to stay in the game were Costello to get up. Costello wants a Liberal Party intact and rivals exhausted, but he also wants to use the Liberal Party as a hammock rather than a springboard: he isn't strong enough to buck the right and move toward the centre, wherever that centre ground might shift. Having represented himself to the right as the keeper of the Howard flame, he can't represent himself as a post-Howard Liberal like Turnbull can and does. Costello can't through the switch to vaudeville, because like that other vapid Victorian Andrew Peacock neither the smirk nor the scowl are convincing.


• Costello would win no rural votes, none.


• Costello would win no votes in outer suburban seats like Lindsay, Macarthur and Robertson (NSW), McEwen, McMillan and Corangamite (V), Forde and Longman (Q), Solomon (NT), Hasluck and Canning (WA), Bass (T), Kingston and Wakefield (SA) and their equivalents in other parts of the country.


• "Parliamentary skills" count for nothing. Nothing. No polling says that it does and any that says otherwise is wrong. Costello at his best is inferior to Keating on a bad day: Keating got to be Prime Minister, and he lost; only the latter is true of Costello.

In short: for the Liberals to hand Peter Costello the leadership of the Liberal Party would be suicidal, before 2010 or after. He'd win no votes for the Liberal Party and repel many.

WorkChoices is to the post-Howard Liberals what abolishing Medicare was post-Fraser. Time and again the Liberals vowed to abolish Medicare, and loyal supporters cheered them to the echo as it reflected everything the Liberal Party stood for. Time and again voters voted against abolishing Medicare. In 1996 Howard dropped his objections to Medicare and voters dropped their objections to him: never did the Howard government move to abolish Medicare, not even with control over the Senate, despite the nudge-and-wink campaign of people like Minchin to rally the faithful in '96. That's how you deal with the Liberal Right: lie to them, give 'em nothing.

Just because Peter Costello has been to a G20 meeting or two doesn't mean he'd know what to do at the current meeting, or the next one. The message that these are uniquely fraught economic circumstances has well and truly got through, and cuts out any advantage Costello may have in economic policy.

Costello embodies the idea that a return to Howard-era policies is viable. He is not, in himself, any sort of potent threat to Labor.

Wen Turnbull was first elected leader, Rudd tried to raise the idea of a republic to wedge the Liberals: Turnbull blunted this brilliantly by talking about the economy and other big issues, and implying that Rudd was being irrelevant and obtuse by focusing on the republic. It was brilliant and worked brilliantly.

Labor are doing something similar by focusing on Costello: the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is a joke and the Murray-Darling a tragedy. Wayne Swan goes all the way to Britain, where the Labour government is convinced that Australia has nothing to teach them. Peter Garrett may as well go back to his old job, and so might all of Labor's ministers theirs for all the good they appear to be doing. Costello is the diversion they've been looking for - and with a lazy press gallery, they're of course covering Costello as though he mattered, rather than that confusing economics stuff.

John Howard achieved more in Opposition than Peter Costello did in government. Deny it if you dare: that statement is the rebuttal to all those "political professionals" who insist that winning government is all, and that principle, policy and even guts are secondary to holding office.

The unravelling of Stephen Fielding

Steve Fielding was elected to Federal Parliament by factional deals first, and a tiny proportion of the good people second. He's out of his depth, which didn't matter in his capacity as just another Senator, but caught between the tectonic plates of the major parties in the balance of power, Fielding is starting to unravel.

His first speech to Parliament was a declaration of principle and intent by Family First, an organisation of well-meaning souls who had broken into the club of those who wield legislative power by having representatives elected to Parliament. Since then we have seen him come down from the high plane of principle to cut deals and become a player, and pull stunts to keep up the profile. The nature of those stunts outside Parliament and the positions Fielding has taken within it show that he is not coping, and this could become a worry.

The stripping off with pensioners at Melbourne's Flinders Street Station was ill advised, to say the least. It would have been perfectly legitimate for the Senator to support the pensioners in their aims, but removing his shirt was a bad look, and more than a little creepy for anyone who believes Family First rhetoric about nudity and appropriate public behaviour. It called to mind Bob Hawke appearing on TV with the budgie-smugglers, after his Prime Ministership with Blanche, and before it at the 1975 ALP Conference at Terrigal.

The difference is that Hawke could handle the pressure and rise to the occasion where possible. Hawke could lose his temper from time to time, but in most cases the explosion was carefully controlled to bring pressure to bear on those who stood against him. Fielding's rant about "arrogant" government bypassing him over the stimulus did the opposite: it showed he couldn't handle pressure and it strengthened rather than weakened opposition to him and his agenda.

Soon after this the Federal government began to back away from internet filtering. I don't believe that Stephen Conroy has a Tony Abbott-style love for family-family-family rhetoric, but he does need to keep Fielding and the de Bruynite members of his own caucus onside, and by standing steadfastly by internet filtering he is doing that. Conroy could afford to ignore the techies who decried the fact that it would slow Australia's already snail-like internet, and wouldn't stop transmission of porn anyway - how many votes do techies have? - but if the Bible-bashing vote can't be relied upon to stick by filtering, and if it can't be used as leverage to get other Labor policies through, then stuff filtering. Next time Fielding pulls a wacky stunt that sucks in the media, watch Conroy quietly drop internet filtering altogether.

This story on Fielding is old-fashioned straight-bat reporting at its best, if only it weren't for the internet. A straight-bat story about politics where you quote one politician saying this and another politician saying that is unnecessary, you can go straight to the relevant parties' websites and check out their media releases directly. The value-add of media is no longer the transmission of this information but the evaluation of it; it's a pity that Christian Kerr didn't have time to tailor his story accordingly.

KEY crossbench Senator Steve Fielding is standing his ground as the Government increases pressure to pass its workplace relations legislation.

No, he is not standing his ground. As you read the article it's clear that Fielding has no firm ground to stand upon.

"Work Choices was too hard, the question is, is the Fair Work bill too soft."

Fielding lacks the ability to do the classic Goldilocks balance-of-power routine, of which the Democrats were past masters and which Xenophon, and Green Senators Milne and Siewert, are adept at: what, exactly, would be "just right"?

But Senator Fielding has repeated his call for a statuary body, not unions, to inspect employee records.

I hope Christian Kerr strangles the sub-editor who confused "statuary" and "statutory" - what statuary body had he in mind, the Venus de Milo perhaps? - or if that's what Fielding said, his addled participation in debate is worse than I thought. Union inspection of records is a small issue in the wider issue of the regulation of employment in an environment where unemployment is likely to rise - the emphasis has to be on regulations which don't cause people to lose their jobs who might otherwise have kept them had regulatory settings been different. Kerr missed this with his straight-bat reporting, and worse still Fielding shows no evidence of having thought about it. So much for media holding politicians to account.

(I agree with Fielding and Xenophon on the "right of entry" question though - I suspect Labor want to give all those union organisers who aspire to become MPs some real work to do rather than sitting around soaking up member contributions and scheming against sitting MPs. Unions have no right to inspect wages records for non-members, but they should have access to their members' records.)

Senator Fielding has flagged a further fight with the Government over its emissions trading scheme.

Draft legislation for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme was released yesterday, but the Senator has raised concerns over its proposed start date of July 1 next year.

"We don't want to see jobs booted offshore," he said this morning.

The CPRS as mooted would not see a single job in Australia sent offshore: Fielding has taken some Coalition hack or lobbyist at face value. Pity he couldn't have raised this issue earlier. Harradine would have at least asked for information before coming to a conclusion like that. Global warming affects families, pollution affects families. Reducing carbon emissions is (or should be) a question of the very kind of economic efficiency that will promote economic recovery: Fielding has never shown any sign of being able to take in the big picture, he's a small-picture man and his world is closing in on him.

Fielding faces re-election next year, and Australia has not exactly, um, caught the fire on Christian-based politics, so there won't be any groundswell for Our Steve nor any interlocking preference deals. His election in 2004 came at the expense of a Labor-SDA Senator, and if Fielding is going to stymie every government initiative that comes up then Labor are hardly likely to preference him. The Coalition might, but then they have to get four Senators re-elected in Victoria where they'll be lucky to get three.

The pressure on Senators with the balance of power can only increase as the Rudd government makes its case for re-election, and the Coalition theirs against. Steve Fielding is likely to be confronted with more of the big issues for which the Bible offers little, or contradictory, guidance; his stunts are likely to become both more lame and erratic as unemployment increases and his own job comes up for review.

Negotiators from the major parties are likely to increase the pressure on Fielding, rather than let up as his increasing vulnerability would warrant. It is too early to tell, and I am no psychologist, whether Fielding is doing an Evatt-style slide into madness - but it won't be good enough if he is returned to the bosom of the Fielding family in mid-2011 broke and broken (he doesn't get the fat pension), unemployed and unemployable, to have both of the cliches rolled out:

1. Politics is a tough game!


2. Is the media to blame? (long canvassing of issues, followed by resounding no, sneering at Fielding's expense, then see 1. above)

Milney's emissions

Glenn Milne has lost the ability to communicate with people about politics because he has missed the point about what politics is. Maybe he's got Oscars fever and wishes he was in LA rather than Manuka, as you can see from drivel like this:

the Government was actually undergoing a real crisis over whether the global financial meltdown would give it the cover it needs to dump its Emissions Trading Scheme in its present form. Which would have been important had voters actually noticed.

I blame the lousy, self-indulgent press gallery, Milney. Your employer, your whole profession is going down the tubes - and there's you, with your long and distinguished record of bringing environmental issues to the attention of the wider public and their elected representatives, you're whinging about attention deficit disorder (the fact that others aren't paying you the attention you'd like). Your confusion is obvious:

And who could blame the public for being transfixed? The Liberal script was compelling. Curtain Up: Helpless blonde heroine tied to Ghan railway track by erstwhile friends and supporters. Climax: Train approaches relentlessly en route to Perth.

Milney, little milney, the Ghan runs north-south between Adelaide and Darwin. A train going west to Perth would miss anyone tied to that track. Junior journos get chipped for howlers like that. Senior Press Gallery Doyens should know better.

What makes you think "the public" is "transfixed" by a hoary old cliche that didn't even survive the era of talking pictures, which was obsolete by the time Federal Parliament first met in Canberra? Just because you're a hoary old cliche doesn't mean we all are.

The truth is the opportunity cost of having missed the chance to nail the Government over its ETS dilemma is only one of many going by as the Liberals fail spectacularly to resolve their doubts about Malcolm Turnbull and their yearnings for Peter Costello.

The fun ain't done, as you know: the Liberal-Green committee investigation in the Senate is the most interesting political story since the election - and of course you've missed it. The very idea that the Rudd government might be playing the hare against the Liberals' tortoise is a prospect that haunts all progressives.

Whose yearnings, by the way? Have you noticed that those who once, um, pined for Costello no longer do, and vice versa? Isn't that interesting? Would you call them yearnings, or is Costello becoming more like William Hughes Mearns' man upon the stair? What are our chances of getting a (frightfully well-connected) press gallery doyen to write about that?

Rather than draw on that experience, though, you've been sucked into flattery:

... in the middle of last week a senior member of Labor's NSW Right emailed me with their analysis of what's really going on with Kevin Rudd. What was truly surprising though was their request that I publish it. I can only guess on the assumption that a crippled Opposition lacks the wit to shine lights where they need to be shone.

What follows is a fascinating account of how Rudd has gone about shoring up his power base inside the Government.

How easy it is to draw this little man away from any issues of the day: load on the flattery and dangle un harengs rouge, and he's anyone's.

So eloquent is my emailer I'll let them take up the tale: "When Rudd came to power in late 2006 it was on the back of a strange grouping," they write. "Essentially it was recognised by Rudd and his supporters that the only way that he could get the numbers to execute Beazley was through a deal with Julia Gillard, that she got Deputy Leader and on that basis would deliver her supporters and a majority of the Victorian Left through (Victorian powerbroker) Kim Carr.

"This was an unholy alliance.

That's it? Hot news from three years ago, all publicly available at the time? Pretty sad idea of eloquence, Milney - though I guess if you hungered for eloquence Canberra isn't where you'd go.

... upon coming to power Rudd has moved quickly to consolidate what every leader before him has had at some time: the firm following of the NSW Right.

"The former NSW premier Bob Carr is a close confidant of Rudd and has been instrumental in persuading him of the necessity to form this base.

"Carr (was) horrified to see the control that Gillard (had) in deciding the ministry (witness Joel Fitzgibbon, Simon Crean, Kim Carr, Warren Snowdon, Brendan O'Connor: all Gillard supporters). A key player in the Rudd leadership battle and also the restoration of the NSW Right has been Mark Arbib, first as secretary of the NSW Party and now as a senator.

In other words, the NSW Right has made as much of a hash of Canberra as they have of Macquarie Street. If Arbib weaves his special magic then Gillard might be stepping up sooner than she might think.

"Rudd ordered support for Arbib's efforts and has encouraged the rise in profile of his lieutenants. As everybody knows Rudd's media office ruthlessly centralises and controls the media appearances of ministers. With this control they have been able to ensure that Arbib, Chris Bowen (a trusted Arbib and Rudd loyalist) and Jason Clare (seen as a future talent) have been awarded regular media appearances to aid their profile.

Bowen comes across like a hack in his column in the Herald, a poor choice on their part and ultimately not doing Bowen many favours. Jason Clare could, if he works hard and keeps his nose clean, become the next Alan Cadman or Gary Nairn. Something to look forward to, eh Milney?

(Arbib has his own column in The Sunday Telegraph in Sydney).

Yeah, but so do you and nobody reads that either. Arbib is the next Stephen Looseley, but without the charisma or the FDR Fun Facts.

"Second, Steve Hutchins has been told he is to go as he has been a vocal critic within the party over Rudd's leadership and largely is seen as an unreliable waste of space.

Apart from his criticisms of Rudd, though, you'd hardly call Hutchins a waste of space because, um, because, oh I can't fight it - Milney, your interlocutor is just as much a political doyen as you. Now that Alan Ramsey has retired, nobody else can wield the extensive blockquote quite so well as your own self. This paragraph is proof that this is not a hatchet job, enjoy it while it lasts.

Graeme Wedderburn['s] ... job is to control Rees and ensure that (the) NSW Government does not hurt Rudd at (the) next election.

Great, another reason not to vote Labor. The Euthanasia Man can best represent New South Wales in dealing with the crucial issues of our time? Let's hope he gets nowhere near any infrastructure spending (I mean real infrastructure, not fixing the toilets at Marginal Heights Primary), every toll road in Sydney can be blamed in part on this clown. C'mon Milney, do I have to do your job for you?

"Arbib's targets are: Joel Fitzgibbon, seen as closer to the Victorian Hard Left (especially Kim Carr and Gillard) due to his support of (former Labor Leader Mark) Latham and Gillard.

"Robert McClelland, seen as a real gentleman but plays no active role in the Right.

What a political matador this Arbib is: first he targets a minister who is more than holding his own, at a particularly crucial time for the nation. Then he targets a nuf-nuf who's tired and ready to go anyway. The idea that McClelland is both "a real gentleman" and "plays no active role in the Right" is, of course, a tautology: the conjunctive "but" is misplaced.

At a time when our legal system must confront:

• the adequacy of corporate and prudential regulations;


• federal-state relations;


• privacy and the accessibility of toxic content on the internet;


• our changed and changing relationship with Aborigines;


• the reach of foreign treaties; and even


• basic human rights (remember them?)

Why have such a weak link in the key position of Attorney General? Is this not an indictment of Rudd? I couldn't have imagined an Attorney General who'd make Ruddock look good. Never mind scoops from three years ago Milney, that is the story to be written. You could even force Rudd's hand - goodness knows George Brandis won't do it.

... there are those who ... stress that Fitzgibbon is a favourite of Rudd's who's performed extremely well in Defence, and who Arbib supports.

So does our Defence Minister, in a time of war, have the Prime Minister's full support - or merely his "full support"? That's another story - with all its implications - that a grown-up political correspondent like Paul Kelly would have written.

Apart from a spot in Cabinet, and the scalps of big game like Mr Stroganoff and Tired Bob on his belt, what does Arbib want and why?

Milney's latest would have been an appalling article had it not been so typical of this stunted, ridiculous little man. So many important issues left begging, a career utterly wasted and what should be a fatal inability to tell eloquence from flatulence. Don't anyone dare ask for public support for newspapers so long as ink is wasted upon this twerp.

The right whinge

Malcolm Turnbull has apparently realised two things this week. First, whether or not he becomes Prime Minister is largely out of his control, in terms of what economic policy may or may not work in the face of the "unknown unknowns" of the Global Financial Crisis. Second, he now understands that he must, like all successful leaders, put his stamp upon the Liberal Party: because left to its own devices the party organisation will help no-one.

I've said before that I think Turnbull has blown it with his niggardly neither-one-thing-nor-t'other response to the GFC. However, Andrew Norton points out that the Liberals stood firm against the opposite policy merely twelve months ago, and as things are so uncertain who knows? Turnbull's efforts depend entirely upon the success or otherwise of the Federal Treasury (there is no evidence that Wayne Swan is doing anything other than following the Treasury line; his statements do not come from any sort of Labor tradition, nor do the draw upon The Thoughts Of Chairman Kevin in any real way. When Keating or Costello departed from the line the absence of Treasury gruntlement was immediately obvious). The actions of the US and EU regulators, not to mention the so-far silent creditor nations, are yet to be felt.

The one thing Turnbull can do is clear out the Augean stables that is the Liberal Party apparatus:

• Recent stories that Turnbull is determined to get rid of Federal Director Brian Loughnane, who defers to nobody in the ALP for his determination to lose elections for the Liberal Party.


• Sir Alan Stockdale, Federal President, has done nothing to get the Liberal Party positioned for victory: no identification of promising candidates, no money raised, no structural reform, not even any policy ideas. A burnt-out shell of a man, utterly redundant.


• Job-snob Tony Abbott, the inert object over which Julia Gillard, Nicola Roxon and now Jenny Macklin have climbed and who wanted back the job he was working toward as Manager of Government Business - namely, Manager of Opposition Business.

Actually, doing over Abbott was a masterstroke. It confirms the result of the vote on RU486: you can, for all that strut and bluster, screw Tony Abbott with total impunity. Once more people start to realise that his career will truly be over. It would be another indictment of the NSW Liberals if there were no other candidates than him for their preselection for Warringah.

So too, the Victorian Liberals should no longer be treated with kid gloves. Whatever advantages may accrue from making the Liberal Party in that state a Costello monoculture is dwarfed by the prospect of Brumby getting re-elected (with the real prospect of a Liberal government in NSW!) and having that state become a Conroy-Carr redoubt federally. Costello should be challenged in Higgins by someone with something definite to offer the future of that party in that community. In Kooyong, Costello is only supporting Frydenberg because he would have targetted Higgins as the next softest option - not that Frydenberg promises the Liberal Party anything more than his own mediocrity as a new standard to limbo under, but the only good he might do is to encourage others who may otherwise be daunted. Michelle Grattan is wrong to truckle to the readership of The Age with crap like this:

Coonan, like Turnbull and Hockey, comes from Sydney. The reshuffled team continues to marginalise Victoria, which doesn't have any representation in either the Liberal leadership group or the key economic trio.

So? It's to the credit of Andrew Robb that he's more of a national figure who could just as easily have found himself a seat pretty much anywhere, but Robb's quiet and reasonable persona wouldn't have cut it and Grattan knows it. Like Ralph Willis, Robb would make a better Treasurer than a shadow, and at least we can be spared the crocodile tears from people like Michelle Grattan saying things like "personally I like Andrew Robb, but he doesn't come across well on telly, does he?". Get some talent in there Victorian Liberals, not just Costello mini-mes like Smith and Fifield.

Cory Bernardi was a self-indulgent prat who did nothing for those in his shadow portfolio - disabled people and their carers, people who could sorely use some effective representation and championing within government - let us hope this is the last we hear of him. Insofar as he'll do anything at all, Fifield will patronise and smirk at these people who work harder and are better than him.

While it's true that Pyne can be a bit of a ponce, he hasn't yet blown his chance (mind you, in his role as assistant dramaturg of Australia's best subsidised and most boring theatre, he is unlikely to make for smart tactics on the floor of parliament), and much can be said for a man whose enemies are all fools, clowns and shits. The rightwingers had it all their own way under Howard, and they should be big enough to cop the (ever so slight) readjustment taking place now rather than just bleating. Buck up, people! Anyone who whinges more than Christopher Pyne or Marise Payne did under Howard ought to be regarded as too weak to be a conservative.

Hockey showed the right amount of steel in taking on Ian Burgess at AMP when he was company regulation minister, compared to the truckling to mendicant industries you get from Nick Minchin, Tom Switzer and other rightw(h)ingers. Hockey is smart and works hard, and will almost certainly grow into the role of shadow Treasurer.

If Rudd really is going to mire Australia in a swamp of debt for no net gain, and if Australians really do pay too much tax, then perhaps the tax system needs an overhaul - yes, tax, the very issue that Malcolm Turnbull used to draw attention to himself as more than just another backbencher, and which so irritated Peter Costello. Turnbull can outmanoever Swan on tax, because Swan is only doing what Treasury tell him to - if Treasury get it wrong Swan will be exposed, and if there's a semblance of a sense of direction among the Libs then people will turn to them. As John Quiggin points out, Costello is a nostalgia act only rather than someone capable of forward thinking and reform, so he's hardly the threat to Turnbull that some of the sillier commentators would have you believe. Tax should be the battleground for 2010, something that should rally moderates and tories alike - on any other area of policy the Liberals (under any leader) have no chance.

Playing the long wrong game

Julie Bishop has had a fair go, but Julia Gillard is wrong to make her out to be some sort of fall girl. Bishop knew what she was getting into, she had her chances, and she simply isn't what the Liberal Party needs right now in a deputy leader.

Julie Bishop has had a fair go at being Shadow Treasurer. She was a good minister outside Cabinet but now she's out of her depth. For all his failings, Wayne Swan has the Federal Treasury advising him, and Bishop does not - Bishop's job is made harder, not easier, by Coalition Senators demonstrating their pissantry to Ken Henry. She has failed to master the brief of shadow treasury, and shows no leadership on economic matters within the opposition, let alone beyond it. She should not go into another role because any Cabinet role would be too hard for her, and the deputy leadership is not a consolation prize.

The shadow treasury should not go to Hockey or Robb, because neither are true believers. Neither of them are baffled by the public rejection of John Howard, neither of them think that wondering What Would John Howard Do? is the way forward for the Liberal Party.

Tony Abbott should become Shadow Treasurer. His shortcomings are well defined and he is a "job snob", in that he refuses to do the shadow FAHCSIA job to which he has been assigned. However, he truly believes that tax revenues go up in a recession as rates go down, he truly believes that nothing is worse than debt, and he is truly undermining Malcolm Turnbull in his rodent-like way. When Abbott said anything particularly stupid, Turnbull could simply contradict him in a back-me-or-sack-me standoff. You'd bet that Nick Minchin wouldn't waddle off to the loo while a Senate division was taking place over one of Tony's powerplays.

Stand up and fight, ye conservatives! Do you think Churchill would have hid behind some banker, bleating about "clear air" and distinct difference from the socialists? What about John Howard shirtfronting Hewson in the final week of the 1993 campaign, that's political courage for you! Let's have a red-in-tooth-and-claw conservative take on all this Labor debt head-on! Anyone else is just not going to have the conviction necessary to crash through. Put your best man up and if he succeeds, then bully for you.

Malcolm Turnbull's deputy needs to be someone who can smooth his rough edges, a sounding board both for Turnbull himself and a backbench feeling left out. The deputy needs to be someone who can keep everyone focused on the job at hand, someone not quite so polished or thrusting as the leader. Someone who is a conservative, but not to the point where (like Abbott) they're linked closely to this deadshit. No, I can't think of anyone like that either, but that's what they need.

Conservatives, like the communists many of them were, fancy themselves as playing the "long game". Their trouble is that the game changes: neo-conservatism is behind us not ahead, the current economic predicament alters the once-immutable rules about regulation, and neither Aborigines nor carbon have turned out to be the "passing fads" that they need to be for conservatism to maintain its conceits. You can only lie doggo for so long until people start ignoring you. Stand up and fight the rearguard action for Howardism! If you really believe far-right-isn't-far-enough, then now's the time to save the 2010 election. It's not the lefties who are in the marginals any more, a swing against the Liberals could produce a party room that doesn't give Nick Minchin the respect he is due (you can stop that cackling right now).

Start by vacating the deputy's role. If you've got the numbers to roll Helen Coonan and Marise Payne, you can roll Julie Bishop. Put in a true believer and accept the verdict. If the people reject John Howard again in 2010, have the good grace to accept the verdict and leave the Liberal Party to those looking for a new direction through these different circumstances, someone who can beat Rudd by the only effective measure - the dreaded "me-tooism".

Update: Larvatus Prodeo gave me a going-over, see my feeble efforts at 60, 61 and 64. Alex Hawke for Shadow Treasurer!

Stimulating the Murray-Darling

Senator Nick Xenophon was right to reject the government's stimulus package because it did too little for the Murray-Darling. Accuse him of stuntmongering-as-usual if you will, but he is there to represent the people of South Australia and they need a less polluted river more than they need a new road or school assembly hall.

The Rudd Government was wrong to refuse the extra $3b on an already extravagant bloated large package. Signing Kyoto was easy - the failure of Penny Wong and Peter Garrett to address the impending failure of this river system would be the fatal flaw of the Rudd Government, but for the fact that the Opposition are so inept they cannot exploit this issue effectively. What is the point of having the Nationals if they can't nail Labor - particularly a Labor government led by Queenslanders, who've stolen so much water they don't know what to do with it - on this issue?

What more important piece of infrastructure is there than a healthy river system? It's more important than the Hume Highway, more important than the Dalrymple Bay coal loader, even more important than the entire motor dealership industry. Pony up you people and be quick about it.

The Greens have failed profoundly in not joining Xenophon on this. They've been mollified with vague promises about renewable power, but I'll bet a lot of that is "clean coal" and the like. Look what happened to Meg Lees when she was bought off with a hill of beans over the GST and know that it can happen to anyone.

The government will reintroduce the bill to the Senate, apparently, but they have missed the point. Sure, the government might get a double-dissolution trigger, and an election it would almost certainly win; equally sure is that South Australians would re-elect Xenophon so that crow-eaters might also drink. After the hurlyburly's done, the Murray-Darling basin would still be dying, a clear example of political failure, an indictment on this generation of Australians and one that could well undermine the ability of the political system to solve this country's problems.

The Rudd Government could stick to their guns and risk the same result again (and have the satisfaction of a double-dissolution trigger: good luck raising campaign funds while the economy is tanking, particularly in NSW!). Or it could bend to Xenophon and spend the money on the Murray-Darling. Never mind Xenophon - it would be the ultimate wedge to the Coalition to have Labor looking after Australia's rural communities and industries while its city-slicker leader groused about money.

Turnbull has strong grounds to stand on as a champion of the Murray-Darling if (only) he so chose, as steward of John Howard's $10b initiative in 2007. If he has softened his opposition to fiscal stimulus, he should insist that the expenditure have lasting and substantial benefit. This is one of Turnbull's few escape routes from the predicament that he and his find themselves in: eat Xenophon's lunch.

Yeah, every interest group is getting in for their chop while there's billions in the offing - but again, good luck with making the case that your hobby-horse is more important than the Murray-Darling Basin. Everyone has a vested interest in the viability of that river system, nobody has an interest in the catastrophe that would follow its failure.

Do something

Kevin Rudd has correctly identified the two main threats to Australia: the climate and the economy. He's doing more on the latter than the former at the moment, but any measure that addresses both will be seen correctly as either a winning move, or well-intentioned and ultimately harmless.

Malcolm Turnbull has done as much as he can on climate, given the dead weight he carries behind him, but it isn't enough to demonstrate that he gets the problem and has the answers. As far as the economy goes - he's practically abandoned the field. The monster that is the GFC just won't be appeased by ritual sacrifices such as tax cuts; the grab bag of tricks that saw off Kim Beazley or Mark Latham just won't do.

I'm no economist, and it may well be that Rudd's latest stimulus package falls into the classic fallacy of political logic, doing something for the sake of appearing to act:

We must do something.




This is something.




Let's do this.

However, Rudd is at least Doing Something in the face of crisis, which is more than Turnbull is really doing. If you show that you at least understand the problem, you can be forgiven for not having all the answers; if you don't demonstrate that, people will stop listening. You can be cynical and talk about getting between voters and buckets of money - but doling out the cash didn't save Howard, and if Rudd had made a coherent case for belt-tightening people would have gone along with it.

Frankly, I expected better from Turnbull. He should have taken on Minchin by now and made him a national laughing-stock. Minchin is a backroom operator who hates scrutiny, he would have shrivelled having to defend all things Howard in the face of overwhelming public rejection. With Minchin incapacitated, Turnbull would have a freer hand on environmental issues and been a bit more nimble economically. He could have dazzled us all with some out-of-the-box way of spending $15-20b, but nope - same old same old.

The reason why Rees is in such a hopeless position is because he seriously thought the AAA rating from the very clowns who gave similar ratings to subprime mortgages was worth having in the face of impending disaster. He didn't get it, and still doesn't. He might try and turn it around with a massive capital works budget, but all the political credit will go to Rudd and state government will go to the Liberals.

Similarly, Malcolm Turnbull really is dead now. It's 2009, the election is next year. Liberal MPs are positioning themselves for preselections, and the fact that Minchin and Abbott have any clout at all means that brainless hacks are short-priced favourites for the plum seats. He's a clever man and he works hard, but Malcolm Turnbull is a man trapped in fast-setting cement. Turnbull should have been more savvy about the party he leads, which involves more than the Federal Parliamentary Party.

By now, either Rudd or Turnbull needs to get the measure of the other. Bernard Keane makes the case that it is Rudd who has it over Turnbull, and his argument is persuasive; the reverse argument relies on Turnbull getting credit for foreseeing any failure of the stimulus to fend off economic disaster, but it is Rudd who will get credit for Doing Something.

The first thing that Turnbull, that slickest of city-slickers, needed to have done was to get out into the bush and prevent troglodytes like Katter and Joyce from defining him to rural voters. Here are eight rural seats Turnbull should have been all over by now, glad-handing and scone-munching his way to victory:

• Flynn (Q)


• Corangamite (V)


• Braddon (T)


• Page (NSW)


• Dawson (Q)


• Eden-Monaro (NSW)


• Blair (Q)


• Franklin (T)

None of those seats is particularly safe for Labor, and all should be expected to snap back to the Coalition as part of the swing back to the centre. Bob Hawke's first government was much more savvy than Rudd's is, yet moderate Andrew Peacock gets a lot of credit for taking Hawke to the wire in 1984. Similarly, Turnbull could have done the same in 2010, with a bit of zip and a bit of drive, making Rudd look shopworn and out of his depth. Rudd is doing what he can while Turnbull is still idling, like a Ferrari stuck in traffic on Sydney's William Street.

Nobody will give a damn what Turnbull says hereafter on, say, Defence or Education or whatever: he's missed the main game, and all he has to look forward to is that of every moderate Liberal: a human shield for those who deserve the ignominy for the position the Liberals find themselves in, Minchin, Abbott and the other Howardites.