You can lead them to the right, but you can't make them think

When we were in the NSW Young Liberals together, John Ruddick told me what a nice guy he was. Now he has tried to convince readers of The Australian that someone who used to pay him was a nice guy and was important to the intellectual and political life of the country.

Stan Zemanek was a stirrer, and got noticed by being rude about things that people cared about. He tapped into the same market as Rodney Rude and Kevin Bloody Wilson, whose lasting political impacts are non-existent.

What follows here is not an attack on either Ruddick or Zemanek. Ruddick regards any criticism of him and anything he might say or do as "vicious", and Zemanek is dead. What follows here is despair that when you get to where the right want to lead you, there's nothing there.

Take John Ruddick's ideal man, Rush Limbaugh. He has a drug problem, has three failed marriages and made his name by bagging the then-13 year old daughter of a Democrat President. It ought to go without saying that real conservatives don't beat up on young girls, and those who do are nobody's hero. Like other "conservatives" of his generation, Limbaugh dodged the draft to Vietnam without having the guts to stand for principle. I make no comment about Zemanek or Ruddick, except to say that a conservative who cannot act as a moral exemplar is no conservative at all.

Limbaugh is not "unbridled", he's just rude. He doesn't care about accuracy when he can just revel in the attention, as though drawing attention to himself were more important than issues which affect millions other than himself. Thankfully no Australian broadcaster comes close to Limbaugh's reach and influence, although it is Alan Jones - and not Zemanek - who comes closest.

But when they heard someone spell out loudly and clearly why Keating was wrong on Mabo, or an apology to rampant welfarism, or his Asia-first foreign policy, they loved it. And so they went to the ballot box in 1996 and voted Liberal for the first time.

Loudly? Sure. Clearly? Only in some technical acoustic sense - Zemanek would only say that Keating was wrong, not why. He had a predominantly male radio audience, whereas the key to Howard's electoral success was the vote of women. Those easily-flattered old slappers from Beauty and the Beast would never have tolerated the crudity of his radio program, and if it follows that Zemanek wasn't really a beast then were his defenders truly beauties?

He worked for a right wing radio station, of course he'd proudly claim to be pro-Liberal. And as with Limbaugh, Zemanek picked the wrong targets: Zemanek's real competitors were those who played music to help people forget about their working conditions, love lives or whatever. Phillip Adams' Late Night Live was broadcast at the same time but tailored to a niche audience - it was silly for Ruddick and Zemanek to regard Adams as a competitor of the latter, in the same way that it is silly to compare a bonsai to a box gum. It is patronising for Ruddick to talk about the people of western Sydney and Queensland as though they'd never heard radio before.

Keating’s final years were Zemanek’s heyday.

Indeed they were. He failed absolutely to capitalise on the ascendancy of his views into public policy, and if Howard owed him anything he did little to repay compared with, say, John Laws. Zemanek had a role to play in keeping Howard honest, but others took up that mantle without descending to Limbaugh-style tactics. You'd have thought that standing up for a government that did everything you claimed to want would help in the battle against the asterisk, but apparently not.

It cannot be claimed that Zemanek realigned the intellectual and cultural climate of the nation because he was determinedly anti-intellectual and uncultured. In Melbourne, Australia's most self-consciously intellectual and multicultured city, Zemanek was a flop. I wonder why? Ruddick offers no answer ecause this, like so many others, is an inconvenient truth.

In 1996 people voted on the economic and social direction of the country as well as the economic and social circumstances in which they found themselves. The same is true today. Nobody gave a damn about a bridge in South Australia, it was a issue for a small number of commentators on both left and right and shifted no votes elsewhere in SA, let alone the rest of the country. Even John Ruddick does not care enough about said "battlers" - including local Aborigines - to work out how that bridge is going, and whether it was all worth it.

It falls to me to point out that Ian McLachlan submitted his resignation to John Howard - the same John Howard who sought and demanded Pauline Hanson's resignation from the Liberal Party. Howard later appointed McLachlan a minister, an appointment hardly rewarded with competent administration or innovative policy. Did Zemanek ever force Howard to change tack, as Jones or the ABC regularly have?

Ruddick implies that Stan Zemanek helped Pauline Hanson get elected in 1996. This is dishonest as others deserve more credit (insofar as credit can be claimed for this), and it is telling that Hanson never thanked him or acknowledged the contribution Ruddick ascribes to him. Hanson was turfed out by the same idealised blue-collar voters after one term, restoring Labor's dominance in Oxley, a fact that discredits Ruddick's piece for its being omitted. If Zemanek had the effect that Ruddick implies he did, why did it evaporate so quickly? I doubt that the good people of Oxley all suddenly became turtleneck-wearing intellectuals and determinedly returned Labor to represent them in the face of a Liberal ascendancy.

Can any sensible person look at Howard's foreign policy and deny the centrality of Asia, from Iraq to East Timor and Japan? At APEC later this year, do you think he's going to spend the whole time with Bush and the Prime Minister of Canada? You don't have to be an inner-city intellectual to see what rubbish it is to disparage Australia's practical and bilateral foreign policy focus on Asia.

I will now make an accusation against John Ruddick what will cut him to the quick, from which his reputation and feelings will never recover and which will lose him friends and allies. Here it is: John Ruddick is an intellectual. Oh yes! A university graduate with more than one degree, and good marks too if memory serves. That will trash his reputation on the right as surely as his own embellishments, wishful thinking and straw-man punching has done for the rest of us.

I left the Liberal Party because the less liberal it became, the less interesting it was. The right stopped thinking out their position and what they could offer a dynamic country, and instead lapsed into asserting that all their opponents had to go and join the Labor Party (notwithstanding that the overwhelming majority of Australians to the left of Ruddick and Dave Clark form a massive, permanent majority - which is only an issue so long as you respect democracy). But never mind all that - this post was inspired by John Ruddick, what could be more important than that?

Reform reform

The Liberal rightwingers who want to turn a large party into a small one have succeeded in convincing gullible broadcasters into calling them "reformers". It's an achievement for them I suppose, but it's amazing how the word "reform" acts as a verbal prophylactic on further thought.

In all broadcast outlets they call John Ruddick and his pals "reformers", and their agenda "reforms", without really thinking about what they might mean - as though the word itself drowns out thought and examination about how we might be governed. Today's risible effort by Peter Hartcher is just the latest offender; nowhere in Australia's supposedly diverse and competitive media is there any organ that refers to them in any way other than as "reformers". Nor do they examine what those "reforms" mean, for those in the Liberal Party, and for those of us outside it in jurisdictions governed by said party.

Let's understand this "reform" movement by reference to its actual behaviours, and analyse what those "reforms" might mean. Let us do, in other words, what Australia's political journalists are too lazy and stupid to do (harsh words those, but justified by examples in what follows). Australia's democracy has been ill-served by poor reporting. We've elected poor governments on the basis of poor advice from Hartcher and others telling us crises exist where they do not, that shit is actually chocolate, and yet those responsible for such poor and toxic advice remain in their offices.

The view from the aristocracy

Aristocracies preserve themselves longest, said the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, "but only democracies, which refresh their ruling class, can expand".

Quite so. It's just as true for organisations as it is for entire countries ... These power cliques are expert at preserving themselves. They are closed to refreshing themselves. They are stagnant, failing, largely invisible to the public, the slow-rotting foundations on which the public [information about] parliamentary structures stand.

Sure is. Politicians come and go, but Peter Hartcher is ensconced atop The Sydney Morning Herald. Hugh Trevor-Roper advised Rupert Murdoch's The Times that a forgery purporting to be the diaries of Hitler was the genuine article: he became a Lord, and Murdoch's organisation continues to rely on bogus information on many other issues (e.g. climate) rather than face up to issues of truth or falsehood. Just so we're clear about who's who and what's what.

There's a bit of Wikipedia journalism on North Sydney, followed by this:

It's such a Liberal stronghold that Labor has conceded defeat; it's not even going to put up a candidate for the North Sydney by- election. In short, it's a great opportunity for the Liberals to put forward an outstanding Australian, someone of real accomplishment, a future leader.

I'll give Hartcher that. Before I knew Trent Zimmerman was running I thought Turnbull would use the opportunity to get a top-level QC/SC into North Sydney, to avert the laughable situation whereby nobody in the Coalition had a finer legal mind than George Brandis. The parallels with Menzies and Barwick, or Howard and Daryl Williams, are instructive at a time when the law is a major aspect of the changing contemporary relationship between government and the governed.

Instead, the power aristocracy that controls the NSW Liberal party head office declared an "emergency", shut out branch members from voting, and imposed a party machine operative on the electorate.

Political parties move fast like this whenever there's a sudden election. It isn't the first time the Liberals have done this and nor is the practice unknown in other parties. Hartcher's hysterical hyperventilation echoes Sheehan's shifty shouting in keening for things that never were, and confusing anti-democratic rightwing clowns with democratic reformers.

Branch members did vote in that preselection, and it is misreporting for Hartcher to claim otherwise. He's so carried away pushing an agenda that he's made an error of fact. A junior reporter would be disciplined for that; the political editor seems to be above such petty disciplines as mere factual reporting. Local branches did get a say. Hartcher and Sheehan imply that they might have voted differently if they had exclusive rights over their local candidate; I'm not sure that's true.

A senior federal Liberal describes his achievements with this euphemism: "He's a man of wide experience within the party."

It wouldn't be a Hartcher story without an anonymous quote, with the unspoken demand you be impressed that senior sources talk to him (and play him for a mug). We might equally say that Peter Hartcher is a man of wide experience within Fairfax and the press gallery.

If I were political editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, I would remember (or be reminded) that Zimmerman had recently run for preselection in the state seat that covers most of North Sydney. I would recall many of the criticisms that can be made of Zimmerman now could have been (and were) made against Hockey when he was first preselected, or former Liberal North Sydney MP John Spender: great party pedigree, not much accomplishment beyond it.

Zimmerman was President of the NSW Young Liberals in 1991-92. His predecessor as NSW Young Liberal President was Joe Hockey, a former candidate for the federal leadership and a long-serving minister. He was succeeded by John Brogden, who went on to become state Liberal leader. The tension between these three was adequately described in Madonna King's biography of Hockey. If Hartcher can accept (without smart-alec wisdom-after-the-event) that Hockey and Brogden were politically talented, then he can accept the same of Zimmerman.

The broadcast media apoplexy over Zimmerman reminds me of similar kerfuffle from Victoria in 2006, when Josh Frydenberg ran for Liberal preselection in the safe Liberal seat of Kooyong. Nine years later Frydenberg is a Cabinet minister. Zimmerman is much smarter, harder-working, and better able to get over himself than Frydenberg (the same can be said for most people, and some bits of furniture).

What does it mean for "the Liberal Party" to endorse a candidate?

When I was a member of the NSW Liberals in the 1990s I voted in preselections for Liberal candidates. So did John Ruddick, for that matter. Neither of us were members of a "power aristocracy", or even senior members of the organisation. We sat among local Liberals in making those decisions, because the Liberal Party selects its candidates as a cohesive organisation rather than the sort of franchise operation the "reformists" want.

Every member of the Liberal Party is a member of a local branch. Some local branches operate in areas where the local members are (almost) always a Liberal; these are safe seats. Some local branches operate in areas where local members are sometimes Liberals, often not; these are marginal seats. Some operate in areas where the Liberal Party has never been represented at state or federal level; these are safe Labor or Nationals seats. None of them are more/less Liberals based on where they live. Members of all those types of branches come together to represent the Liberal Party as a whole. When the Liberals preselect a candidate for North Sydney, or anywhere else, that candidate represents the Liberal Party as a whole.

When the Liberal Party loses office at state or federal level, the MPs preselected for safe seats on Sydney's north shore and elsewhere become the face of the party as a whole, and provide the building blocks for re-growth. When the party preselects fools for these seats, the image of the party as a whole suffers. When the party preselects capable-seeming people for those seats it reflects well on the party as a whole. The party has a renewal opportunity in North Sydney, and soon in Berowra and Mackellar and hopefully Warringah. If the party as a whole chooses well in those seats, the Liberal Party across the state and nation will be well served; if they choose badly, good local candidates in marginal seats will be handicapped by association.

Many readers of this blog will not be sympathetic to the Liberal Party, but to understand how it works you have to put yourselves in the shoes of those who are.

Political journalists and the Liberal Party

The Liberal Party is the leading party in the Coalition of parties that governs Australia, the country's most populous state (NSW) and a few other states besides. If you don't really understand the Liberal Party, you probably aren't much chop as a political commentator regardless of what it says on your business card.

If you want to talk about democracy in the Liberal Party, start by explaining why local members in safe seats should get all the profile, the kudos and resources, while Liberals in marginals and other seats make do with scraps. A fundraiser in North Sydney will raise more money than a similar event in almost any marginal; those who set up the North Sydney Forum knew this, and you'd think Hartcher of all people would go back through his notes on that. It was (typically) sloppy journalism for Hartcher not to call Ruddick on his "reforms", to interrogate his ideas.

From 1990 to 1996, North Sydney was represented by an independent MP, Ted Mack. Mack had hundreds of local supporters who didn't give a damn what Liberal Party head office wanted, and didn't care about Liberals inside North Sydney or beyond it. They raised their own money and took their chances. What the "reformists" want is a version of the Mack model: for local Liberals to select local candidates, removing the idea of whole-party candidate endorsement, but gaining all the money and resources that come with a major party. Sheehan and Hartcher haven't considered that. Nobody else who calls these people "reformers" has, either.

I called out Gabrielle Chan and Daniel Hurst from Guardian Australia on social media about this. They had enough social-media savvy to say "Thanks for getting in touch!", but neither they nor anyone else covering politics in the broadcast media show any sign of questioning the terms "reform", "reformist" etc. regarding these people and their agenda. Being dumb is one thing, being incorrigible is another.

Political journalism fails when it makes you less well-informed about politics rather than you were after reading/ hearing/ watching it. When political journalism fails, it has far-reaching consequences for the nation.

Moderation in all things

Hartcher flails about with Wikipedia, incensed that someone should have gotten to Zimmerman's position without duchessing him. He then cuts-and-paste a whole lot of wild-eyed Sheehan howling about Michael Photios (who is, to be fair, close to Zimmerman). Then comes this:

[Zimmerman's] faction is known as the "moderates" but it's a system based on patronage, not ideology.

Well, yes and no. For 18 of the past 20 years the Liberal Party has been led by either John Howard or Tony Abbott: there isn't a lot of ideological moderation left. The only real "moderation" comes in tolerance of intra-party dissent, which is a "democracy" issue I suppose.

In the 1990s John Ruddick wanted republicans out of the Liberal Party. "Go join the Labor Party!" was one of his favourite refrains to us "lefties". In 1997 he ran for a Senate vacancy, and lost to Marise Payne - a woman, a moderate, a republican, a former NSW Young Liberal President, a friend of Trent Zimmerman, and now a minister in the Turnbull Government. Those of us who are awake to Ruddick know that had he won, he would have become like South Australia's Cory Bernardi. Look at how Ruddick embarrassed himself at APEC in 2007 by demanding we all fawn over the visit of President Bush (it's in the archives, journos!). Not even the most obtuse press gallery journalists regard Bernardi as a "reformer", yet they happily and unthinkingly slap the title on Ruddick.

When the right control the Liberal Party, they set the terms of compliance and enforce them ruthlessly. A few weeks ago, Eric Abetz was foaming at the mouth at the very prospect of Liberals voting for same-sex marriage: now that the boot's on the other foot, Abetz is happy to cross the floor over an issue that was settled when he was a member of Cabinet. John Ruddick was as happy as a pig in mud within the party of Howard and Abbott, and goodness knows he flung plenty of the stuff; but now that it's not all going his way, he's flounced out and is openly threatening to take down an endorsed Liberal candidate.

You'll note that Juris Laucis got off much more lightly than any outspoken Liberal would have if Ruddick and pals were running things. Bronwyn Bishop shirtfronted Liberals who went to the press against her and hers, but is more than happy to let peanuts like Laucis and Ruddick off the leash when it suits.

Ruddick is mates with Jackie Kelly, another self-styled Liberal "reformer". Kelly also quit the Liberal Party and ran against an endorsed Liberal candidate, directing preferences to Labor.

Abetz had said it was some sort of tragedy that people left the Liberal Party after Turnbull became PM. With Ruddick, and Kelly, and this shithead, and that dill, and others besides - they don't seem like much of a loss in nett terms. Hartcher's idea of "Liberal rot" more and more upon Ruddick and his word trumping all other considerations. This isn't some sort of Liberal Spring, and I'm not going back - but there sure is a gap between the line Hartcher/Sheehan wants to push and the actual facts.

If I was a political journalist I'd be awake to this "reform" scam by bloody-minded rightwingers who can't get their way: but not a single member of the "competitive" press gallery, nor any of their "political editors", are.

Ruddick made headlines when he was twice threatened with suspension from the party for daring to publicly urge reform. Now he's gone further and quit the party in despair ... "The Left ran the party in NSW and it was a disaster, the Right ran the party in NSW and it was a disaster, we need a new way, and that is democratic reform.

If you leave the Liberal Party in despair, as I did in 2000, you stop referring to the party and its members as "we". Factions become a problem for other people. You get on with your life.

Although Ruddick was part of the minority faction, the Right, he says his motives are not factional ...

What sort of "journalist" takes someone like John Ruddick - or anyone else in politics really - at their word?

Get to work

Let's set aside journalists not doing their jobs, a regular theme of this blog. You did ask Ruddick what he did for a living, didn't you Peter Hartcher?

... mortgage broker ...

Ah yes.

Maybe there are Labor-voting mortgage brokers out there, but I haven't met many. There may even be some who are Greens, or Racists Who Like Being Racist But Don't Like Being Called Racist, or other parties. Met plenty of Liberal mortgage brokers/financial advisors though. I note that when Liberal governments get in, they tend to relax reporting and other regulatory compliance issues on mortgage brokers, such as acting in the client's interests rather than the broker's. To be fair, there was a bit of coverage about this in the broadcast media - mostly by the business journalists rather than the political journalists. They noted the donations to the Liberals by big financial advice firms, without really looking into the little guys (big players have big compliance departments who take regulation and reporting in their stride; smaller ones less so).

Blessed are the financial advisors, and heaven forfend that any imputation should fall upon ol' Johnny Ruddick - but if I was a political journalist I would examine further the link between this man's business and political interests. Not saying there's anything there - indeed, I'd give him the benefit of the doubt - but just as mortgage brokers tell you they'll give you the best possible deal on your mortgage, so too journalists love to say they're inquisitive and sceptical and ask the tough questions.

"If I run I'd say, 'This is a referendum about whether we want a democratised, reinvigorated Liberal party or whether we want the head office machine and its dull candidate to have ever-growing power.'"

He says that, if elected to federal parliament, he would vote as a pro-Liberal independent, "I wouldn't do an Oakeshott or a Windsor." And he'd prefer not to have to run at all. He's casting about for another candidate to stand as an independent Liberal against Zimmerman.

Why not? Oakeshott and Windsor got great deals for their electorates in 2010-13. If you quit the Liberal Party "in despair", as Oakeshott and Windsor did the Nationals, why not? Why did a journalist who followed the 2010-13 parliament closely not unpack this?

Why is Ruddick "casting about"? Does he want his vision for the Liberal Party or not? Is he afraid to get his hands dirty (yep, sounds like the John Ruddick I know)?

The byelection is a bit over a month away - now's not the time for "casting about", now's the time to get it together. Hartcher really has lost whatever investigative touch he may have had.

The whole point of reform, Ruddick says, is about attracting candidates of real accomplishment "people like Malcolm Turnbull", not faceless apparatchiks.

Turnbull is going to campaign for the endorsed Liberal candidate, and I doubt he is fooled by Ruddick's saccharine compliment. Ruddick didn't run in that preselection because Zimmerman would have thrashed him, even with a greater branch weighting. By dodging the prospect of losing a ballot while standing for a principle, Ruddick can claim to stand for democracy without looking like the serial loser that he is (the Liberal Party just doesn't want him, they never have). Ruddick's being disingenuous about Turnbull and Hartcher's too dumb to call him on it.

Ruddick is no more a "reformer" than he is a "saucepan", an "idiot", or a "Wednesday morning". This will not stop journalists insisting that both a) he is so a reformer, and b) when it comes to politics, they know what they're talking about.

Political bikies

If we have a democratic party, there simply won't be this bikie gang style of factions because you'll have 1000 people voting instead of a handful.

Former Liberal leader Billy Snedden once described the Whitlam government as "political bikies pack-raping democracy". Former NSW Labor Premier Nathan Rees and former Queensland LNP Premier Campbell Newman announced plans to crack down on bikie gangs and spiralled into political oblivion. Going after bikies should be a political winner, but it clearly isn't.

Everyone, just cut out the bikies thing. That includes you, Ruddick.

Song of Myself

Tony Abbott showed in his parable of the medicine cabinet in Battlelines that when he is given a job and doesn't want to do it, he simply doesn't. Commentators who call on Turnbull to pull Abbott into line are stupid and ignorant of history, and of any tangible mechanisms to "pull Abbott into line".

You don't pull Abbott into line. Kevin Rudd was ready for a third crack at the Prime Ministership, like Andrew Fisher, until the ALP told him firmly it was a non-starter. The Liberal Party won't do it. If you want Tony Abbott out of a job he does not want to do, the only way to do it is to get behind the most effective political operation I have seen in a long time.

I laugh at supposedly experienced commentators who fall over themselves with shock and horror about Abbott's speech in London: how could we possibly have known what he was like? Oh please, Barrie and Paul, please just fuck off, and take Hartcher and the "reform" zombies with you.

Reform political journalism

The very word "reform" has become so debased that anyone who wants to change anything, and cloak themselves in respectability, will call their tweaks "reform". Protagonists in zombie movies used to cry out for "brains" - these days zombies cry out for "reform".

Journalists don't have the skills to assess whether or not a proposal really will have the positive, far-reaching effects suggested by the dictionary definition of that word, but they bleat for "reform" nonetheless. Tax reform, productivity reform, reform reform.

Journalists can detect if a reform is "controversial". If it's "controversial" is unlikely to be "bipartisan", which is the gold-standard for political journalists. Any policy that ascends to "bipartisan" can only be good, even if it is an embarrassing and costly and all things against the dictionary definition of reform: mandatory detention of asylum-seekers, superannuation tax concessions, defence procurement, billion-dollar fuck-ups that cost our nation more than money, all of them bipartisan and lauded by people like Peter Hartcher. Anyone who wants to "reform" those things, particularly in a bipartisan way, will get a rails run from Hartcher and other press gallery dummies.

In the 1980s sitcom The Greatest American Hero the character Bill Maxwell (Robert Culp) would fall into a sudden deep sleep if he heard the word "scenario". It was the hook for many comic moments, and the Liberal right's use of the word "reform" on the press gallery is similar (all the funnier when press gallery journos get all huffy about their experience and savvy, etc.). Eric Abetz talked about reform all the time and did bugger-all. John Ruddick has learnt this trick, hiding in plain sight under a cloak of "reform". If Tony Abbott had used the word more he might still be PM.

Australian political journalists notice that when politicians use the word "reform" they turn people off, but still they persist in reporting "reform" without examining it. They fail to realise they discredit themselves when they bandy about a word when it is obvious they do not know what it means, and that their sources use the word deliberately in order to deceive.

O, say can you see?

John Ruddick thinks that a sufficient number of stunts like this will constitute "media experience", a potent credential in securing Liberal preselection for Parliament. He may succeed at that, but only so long as you are impressed by the quantity of is media exposure rather than the quality. In the quality of a4a you see clearly that John Ruddick offers nothing beyond the stunt.

Conservatives believe that government involves long-term and well-thought-out policy that is in line with the past, addresses the present and promises continuity and room for growth into the future, in a responsible and sustainable way. John's problem is that he loves the rush of short-term sensationalism more than the hard and worthy work of representative and legislator. He just can't manage even the anodyne, third-rate analysis you get from his fellow aspirant, Josh Frydenberg. I have mentioned John in passing, but if you can bear to look at Ruddick's s(h)ite you'll see what I mean.

There were thirteen original states in the USA, represented by thirteen stripes on the US flag. Here are thirteen points on this site:

1. The Battle of the Coral Sea was only important because of the Australian successes at Kokoda and Milne Bay. These Australian victories on land provided the pivot around which the American push succeeded. It is one thing to say that the Australian and American efforts complemented each other, or even that the Americans devoted greater resources; Aussies would never negate their own efforts to praise those of the Americans. This is not an alliance, this is fawning.



2. The events he describes are strangely passive for such a mighty nation. There are better stories to tell about Menzies, because all sorts of third-world scumbags told Nixon how much they love America - not necessarily to the benefit of their countries.



3. South Vietnam was not "on its way to being an Asian tiger like ... Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore". Its government was corrupt, small-minded and not at all investing in people and infrastructure like those other places. The more support they got, the more corrupt they became: the departure of the Americans was not an act of murder, but euthanasia. "The Western left" was never powerful enough to force either victory or defeat, but fighting the wrong fight in the wrong way could lead to no other outcome. President Eisenhower foresaw that a war in Vietnam would be a disaster, and if Australia had truly been a friend we should have held them to their best intentions.



4. "If we have the guts to see Iraq through it will end up similar to Jordan and Egypt – a fairly stable nation where things aren’t perfect but are improving". It's hard to know what "improving" means in that context: things are no better or worse in those countries than they have been since the 1950s, without direct American intervention. Nouri al-Maliki governs not a country but a few blocks in Baghdad, a smaller constituency than Clover Moore. He is the new Arafat, someone who says in English what Americans want to hear but whose actions and omissions show someone in league with the worst opponents of America, capitalism and a stable society. As far as who he means by "we" - perhaps Ruddick might have succeeded as an Army officer, giving him both the leadership he craves and the responsibility he dreads.



5. Demonstrators against capitalism and free trade also rely on downloads from the US, which is ironic. It is not anti-American to say that inventions from beyond the US are also important to Australians. This is a silly statement that doesn't even serve to knock down the straw man Ruddick sets up here.



6. "The biggest beneficiaries of the fall of the USSR have been the Russian people" who see that all that crap that Marx spouted about oligarchy and mass poverty is being borne out. Ruddick hasn't made the case for Australian participation in the Cold War, which is a pity.



7. "America does far, far more than any nation today or in history for those less fortunate". The Marshall Plan was not about patronising the Europeans, it was about getting them back on their feet - such a pity that it has never been repeated. Beyond the immediate aftermath of natural disasters, when you give people handouts you make them dependent on you which breeds sloth and resentment. It's holding America to its best standards when you criticise America for falling short of that Olympian standard. Read the poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty and know that the last five lines stand against everything John Ruddick stands for.



8. "The American Constitution ... The Australian Constitution has provided us with beautiful stability of government and it is a merger of the best elements from Britain and America". It is a lament for both our countries that notionally conservative governments are trashing our constitutions and the freedoms embedded in them.



9. "If (American culture) distresses you ask yourself, ‘what is it about me that dislikes success?'". If you were a conservative, you'd know that material success is not the only, or even the best, measure of success. Much that is popular can be corrosive of society. American sports tend not to be popular outside north America, and it is not anti-American to point this out.



10. The bit on Murdoch is, like the rest of the site, meant to be provocative: in reality it's just a combination of fawning and self-pleasuring.



11. It would have been embarrassing for Ruddick to attempt to defend this, which is probably why he didn't try. Truman was about the hard work necessary to build a framework: Bush is more like Rutherford B Hayes, a dilettante whose only historical significance is to presage disaster. Rice is a stuntmeister who's light on the policy; unlike John she looks good in knee-high boots.



12. "in the 1980s New Zealand ended its proud tradition of fighting for freedom ... They currently have troops in East Timor, Afghanistan and the Solomon Islands." Well, which is it? The Wallabies know that when they take on the All Blacks they have to be consistent, and so it is when Ruddick attacks people he falsely declares his "friends". It is simply a lie to declare that "Whenever the going gets tough, however, New Zealand takes the soft option". NZ's stand on nuclear ships did not delay the end of the Cold War and reversing it will not affect their economy one way or another. If you're going to be in favour of "ANZUS", you shouldn't diminish the A or bag the NZ.



13. Like many who defend the Queen's position, John Ruddick commits numerous offences against the Queen's English but refers to a one-person operation with the royal pronoun, implying that his site includes the support of others than himself. He's finally found a political movement that won't roll him!

See the message below the Free Newsletter field on the left of his pages: he wants a commitment from you, dear reader, but he owes you nothing and he hopes that's OK by you. Once you know John you realise this is a genuine insight into the guy.

I first met John Ruddick when the ministry he aspired to was Anglican, but even with Jensenism ascendant the message of compassion and modesty from the gentle carpenter must have grated on him. Since then he was shunned by his fellow Young Liberals in seeking to govern them, and did not even offer preference-fodder for serious rightwing candidates in Liberal preselections. He was a performing monkey for a radio buffoon who spent as much time laughing at Ruddick as with him.

Once APEC is over and Bush leaves office, what then? After the coming election there will be a rush to the exits for many who realise their political heyday is behind them, and a shellshocked Liberal Party will contemplate the rebuilding of its fortunes. Ruddick will almost certainly fall short. Chances are you'll see him in a marginal seat thanks to his rightwing buddies, but voters won't warm to him. He overestimates how clever he is in disguising his Hansonite Anglo nationalism, which will get him lots of publicity but will damage the Liberal Party.

He could go back to Tamworth - his brother has edited the local paper and even though local Liberals and Nationals are desperate to get rid of Tony Windsor and Peter Draper, the fact is you'll only beat them with grown-up candidates who can relate to other grown-ups and the issues that affect them in a grown-up way. The CEC would love to have him, and he them ideologically - but he's enough of a pragmatist to know that even though he'd be a big fish in their little pond, they can't get him elected.

No, young John has been foisted on big-city suckers and while they may well take him on, people4ruddick would find the poverty of the national debate made worse by his being part of it. There are more important things for Australia - and our foreign alliances - than slaking the ambitions of yet another attention junkie who can't and won't give back.

Left right out

In Shakespeare's Henry V, an immature and destructive young man unaccountably destined for high office hangs out with riff-raff who encourage him in his immaturity. Upon assuming leadership he sobers up and wins a famous victory against a larger but disorganised enemy. In the course of that he leaves behind his old mates, who end up wretched and dead in the hour of his triumph.

Something similar is happening to the far right of the NSW Liberals. The ascent of Tony Abbott represents everything they hoped and worked for over a generation, but he owes them nothing. They are bitter because they put all their eggs in his basket, and now he's taken that basket and shared the spoils with everyone but them.

This is the story that ABC superjournalist Matt Peacock has missed not once, but twice.

I met John Ruddick when I was a Young Liberal branch president in 1992-3. The party's head office referred him to me as a prospective member and we met in a pub. He was living at Moore College but denied that he was studying toward Anglican ministry (turned out that he had been, but was in the process of unwinding his commitments; the truth would have been more interesting than the blow to his ego that came from looking irresolute, but that's John for ya). He made his own way into the Young Libs and realised before I did that the moderate ascendancy in NSW could not survive the coming of Howard. He was personable unless you disagreed with him, had your facts together and stuck to your guns without getting emotional, whereupon he would become dull company.

The reason why his service and loyalty to the Liberal Party has not been rewarded is because, while he is a smart guy, he only operates well where others aren't as smart as he is; thus his devotion to the dopier, more extreme rightwingers (and they to him). In party backrooms he was either boorish or snivelling, lacking the peer relationships and basic respect necessary for cutting deals. He was amazed when people saw through tactics like his overuse of your given name when he speaks to you, for example.

He told me that the moderates would never support me and that I should come across to the right, where the power was. He was right about the former but wrong about the latter, and we each considered the other weak for having chosen the wrong side. At a time of increased factionalism in the NSW Young Libs I would say hello to John and he would snarl at me, and we haven't kept in touch. By the time his side came through I didn't even care. Years later, at the 2007 APEC leaders' meeting in Sydney, he made a right git of himself with placards venerating President Bush and yelling abuse at those insufficiently enthusiastic about all things American.

John fell in with Christianists* like David Clarke and Ross Cameron. When the Howard government took office in 1996, Cameron became Federal MP for Parramatta and Ruddick joined his staff (this is easily checkable, but note how Peacock presents them as just two guys who just happen to agree with one another). Few moderates got staffer jobs in that government. Eventually Ruddick fancied his chances in business, and rightly recognised that he couldn't build a political career from staffer jobs, so he left Cameron's office and was replaced by the far more capable and assiduous Alex Hawke.

In Parliament Cameron followed Tony Abbott around like a puppy. Tony was the big brother Ross never had, and Ross the annoying little brother Tony never had or wanted. When Cameron's political career failed in 2004 nobody took him on as an advisor or a lobbyist, including Abbott, despite other ex-MPs being warehoused in that manner. Cameron went to Macquarie Bank and achieved precisely bugger-all: he had been Assistant Treasurer (he was succeeded in that job by Peter Dutton, who is in Cabinet today), when Macquarie was at the height of its pre-GFC powers. He crawled out of the Defects skip at the Millionaire's Factory in order to produce crap like this**, which is to good writing and service to the nation what burnouts are to automotive excellence.

In the 1980s Ross Cameron had worked for NSW Transport Minister Bruce Baird. Baird held the NSW parliamentary seat that Cameron's father once held. Baird's chief of staff was Barry O'Farrell, who is in a position to offer his erstwhile colleague a job but hasn't yet. Baird's daughter Julia sometimes hosts ABC TV's The Drum, which sometimes slings Cameron the taxi fare to and from the studio. Mark Scott, now Managing Director of the ABC, worked in another Greiner government ministerial office while Cameron was there.

Prime Minister Abbott has clearly been too busy to call his old mate Ross (if he had offered Ross a job, we'd know all about it): what with putting together a new government, and do they even have telephones in Jakarta? You know how it is.

There is an old saying in politics that applies to successful governments, particularly to those that are newly elected and united: those who know don't talk and those who talk don't know. Ross Cameron talks a lot.

Ruddick, Cameron, Fierravanti-Wells et al are from that part of the Liberal Party that most disdain the ABC. That talk about the national broadcaster as a nest of lefties comes most strongly from and appeals most strongly to them. Quite why Matt Peacock gave these guys the time of day, let alone representing them as political cleanskins, is unclear. Quite why the ABC takes on Cameron or other erstwhile ABC critics like Peter Reith or Amanda Vanstone so enthusiastically is unclear too. This isn't balance, it's a lack of institutional self-respect. Like the sex worker happy to take the coin of the morals crusader indulging a secret vice, it's possible to overestimate your own cleverness in dealing with those who just hate you and want you gone.

In the lead-up to the 1999 NSW election I was a Liberal preselector for Manly. There were a number of candidates, and I guessed (rightly) that the one I knew wouldn't make it. I rang Joe Francis, who was then working for the Federal MP whose eklectorate included Manly. "Mate", he said, "if a pigeon shits on The Corso, I'll know about it". I asked the obvious question, about who was likely to win the preselection and why, and he became vague. I asked him about the branches in the area and he stumbled again. Joe plays dumb very, very convincingly.

When I found out he'd become a state MP in WA I read his inaugural speech. He pays tribute to Ruddick directly and indirectly - the Joey Francis I knew had never read a book in his life, let alone Hayek. You can bet all that small government stuff has melted away with the responsibilities of office, with the realisation that being carried fiscally by the rest of the nation is a pretty sweet arrangement.

Meanwhile, back in NSW, Liberal Senator Marise Payne, who started out as a moderate, had actually developed a long-term and wide-ranging strategy for expanding the Liberal vote in western Sydney. Cameron and Ruddick and Clarke had been wedging clowns like Jaymes Diaz into winnable seats, because they could. The right got in the way of Payne's plan without offering a superior alternative (like Abbott's unrelenting opposition to Julia Gillard, but without the success). At the election last month two things became clear: the extent of Payne's planning and effort, and the extent to which the Christianist right had stuffed it up.

Abbott needed to be a leader for the whole Liberal Party, not just the Christianist right, and here was his chance. He rewarded Payne with a ministry (had the Senator been Martin Payne, he may well be in Cabinet). Abbott dropped NSW Liberal right stalwart, and Ruddick-Cameron mate, Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells to a lesser portfolio than she would have hoped or expected. He wouldn't have done that if Fierravanti-Wells was powerful or if she had contributed greatly in net terms to Abbott's victory. When we're down we all hope for redemption, but in Fierravanti-Wells' case she is more likely to be leapfrogged not only by her old rival Payne, but by younger people like Kelly O'Dwyer or Little Jimmy Briggs - or even ideological fellow-traveller Cory Bernardi.

David Clarke had been a solicitor in his own practice and an influential powerbroker in the NSW Liberals for many years. Lawyers sneer at the sort of lawyer Clarke was; "ambulance chaser" is a cruel thing to say about anyone. Yet, for such lawyers to maintain their business, and keep clients going through emptionally and financially draining legal actions is to stoke a sense of hurt and grievance, and keep it going for years. Clarke is very good at this.

The victim mentality you see in Ruddick and Cameron within Peacock's reporting comes from Clarke. Clarke cultivated religious communities on Sydney's western fringe, telling them that they were persecuted by inner-city secularists and homosexuals and that he would be their champion if only they would join the Liberal Party en masse - he would pay the membership fees, and no input would be required of the members other than to turn up and vote. People who have surrendered their attachments to the outside world and who do what they're told are the best branch-stack fodder there is. Both Ruddick and Cameron know their Bible and can talk the talk to such people. Sophie Mirabella should put her adventures in Kelly country behind her and join John and Ross and the gang.

In the 1970s Clarke cultivated Croatian migrants, claiming that he shared their anti-communism (Serbs were disproportionately in control of communist Yugoslavia). Most Croatian migrants have made a great contribution to Australia but Clarke courted those from the fringe of that community. Again: no input required, not even any money; just loyalty both ways, a relationship in which openness and transparency plays little role. Without having hacked it, I wouldn't be surprised if Clarke has a bigger ASIO file than many self-aggrandising old student leftists.

Just because Ruddick talks about transparency and accountability doesn't mean he will or even can deliver it. All political outsiders talk about those things. You can criticise Rudd and Gillard for lacking accountability and transparency, but despite his words electing Abbott to replace them will do little to improve those matters. The Liberal right work best when they're secretive and dismissive of challenges; their record in creating open and transparent environments isn't great. Look at Ruddick's job: he's a mortgage broker, a job involving subjective judgments and secrecy. He's simply not going to create, or thrive in, an environment where his every move is second-guessed.

Look at another of their good mates, unaccountably left out of Peacock's stories: Peter Phelps. Despite a lifetime in politics he fails to understand that very few opponents of Pinochet were really seeking to build a similar tyranny; most sought to be free of tyranny altogether. As someone who's never been in business, he failed to understand that arbitrary arrest and execution impact negatively on the economy. It takes more "moral courage" to face reality than to poke a stick at leftist drones, real or imagined . Ruddick's political judgment and commitment to transparency is scarcely greater than Phelps, but only due to Ruddick's lack of what Phelps would call 'moral courage'.

It is true that the Liberal Party has been taken over by rent-seekers. I saw that in the 1990s, and did what little I could to turn it around; it didn't work and so I left. Since I left the Liberal Party my life has gone from strength to strength, and I note the party's success at local, state, and federal level: talk about a win-win situation. The Christianist right were the first to bid good riddance to me and other moderates (the moderates who stayed and gave up their moderation did too, but they don't get it either). Now the Christianist right are so lacking in understanding and humility that they cannot cope with being on the outer in their own party, bleating about transparency just like the moderates did in the '90s.

Tony Abbott is the sort of Liberal Leader and Prime Minister that the Christianist right had not only dreamed of, but spent a generation working to bring about. Now he's left them with nothing, and it's too late for them to start again. When Abbott starts to fade he will turn to them again and they will rally, because they have no choice. Such a prospect is a poor base on which to build whole careers in politics; but this is where the Christianist right have positioned themselves. With the carry-on in Washington over the budget they are unlikely to draw comfort and tactics from abroad.

Openness and transparency from John Ruddick and the Christianist right? Yeah, right.


* Yes, like Islamists - people who claim to profess a religion but who disdain core aspects of it relating to gentleness, humility, and tolerance.

** Thank you @AequoEtBono

What conservative triumph looks like

Conservatives within the Coalition should be enjoying their moment of triumph. They have negated a supposedly progressive Prime Minister and tethered him to the unpopular and disastrous policies of his conservative predecessor. They have cast off all but two of those pesky state governments, with their namby-pamby health and education and human services, and have command of the high ground of the federal government. They stand poised to deliver tax cuts, to hold forth against Aboriginal claims through the Uluru Statement, and for welfare crackdowns.

This is the moment Australia's conservatives worked so hard for so long to achieve. Why, then, is everything crumbling around them? Could it be that what Donald Horne called "second-rate people" are part of our defences against tyranny?

The press gallery started the year by trumpeting a 1% rise in polls as "a strong start to the year" for the government, and we now see why that was not merely wrong but fundamentally stupid. It simply had no basis in fact. It was wishful thinking masquerading as analysis.

There Can Be Only One

Turnbull and Joyce have been at one another's throats for a week now, and today it came out into the open.

Malcolm Turnbull is the first Prime Minister since Gorton and McMahon whose parents were not married before and throughout his childhood. Keepers of the sacred flame of Leather Jacket Malcolm, closet liberal, overlook and cannot reconcile his absolutely fustilarian attitudes toward marriage and adultery. It may explain why his approach to the same-sex marriage debate convinced both sides he wasn't with either. The amendments to the ministerial code are in line with that aspect of the man: if you ever wanted an authentic response from Turnbull's heart to a public policy issue, that will have to do.

Barnaby Joyce has rallied his party around him (see below) and acts like he's invincible. In 2009, Joyce's lower-key predecessor Warren Truss helped sink Turnbull's first term as Liberal leader when he all but declared he wouldn't work with him. Joyce is trying to reprise that when he called Turnbull "inept", but the stakes in government are higher than they were back then. He has reached the stage where Nobody Tells Him What To Do, what the Greeks called hubris - and you don't need a classical education to know what comes next.

From time to time the Nationals have to stand up to the Liberals to protect their distinct identity, and to assert the interests of rural constituents. This is not one of those times. Any National who dies in a ditch defending Joyce - come to think of it, they seem awfully quiet at time of writing - gets nothing from this government. Even Christensen has retreated into the arms of his white supremacist buddies than defend the man who stuck his neck out for him.

Joyce is the minister in charge of national infrastructure. To do that job you need to operate effectively across government, and with the now-Opposition in order to give jittery financiers the bipartisan support they crave. If Joyce can't do that, they will ramp up their relationship with former minister and current shadow, Anthony Albanese, and wait out the fall of this government. A Coalition government will do absolutely anything to avoid this. Even if Turnbull backs down, the Nationals will need some way of pulling Joyce's head in now that they have forfeited the ability to do so themselves.

How am I supposed to live without you?

Barnaby Joyce first rose to prominence as a Senate candidate for the Nationals in the 2004 election, by publicly taking positions contrary to his then-leader John Anderson. Joyce's term in the Senate began the following year. For over a decade, he has been a dominant personality in the Nationals. He has shaped the public image of that party. The fact is that if you want to be a Nationals MP, you are going to have to deal with Joyce.

There are 16 Nationals in the House of Representatives and five in the Senate. Only Luke Hartsuyker and Senator Nigel Scullion entered parliament before Joyce (both in 2001): all the rest of them have entered a parliamentary party which he has shaped. Barry O'Sullivan is only in the Senate because Joyce resigned from it. Matteo Canavan was a member of Joyce's staff. Joyce has promised publicly to get George Christensen into Cabinet. It could have been different - there are Nationals preselection candidates, dedicated members of their party, who were defeated or dissuaded from running because Joyce took against them. Those who are there are largely Barnaby's people. Apart from Hanson, no other federal political party leader has that degree of control over his caucus/party room. If you pardon the expression, Joyce has made his bed and is lying in it.

Nationals MPs know that Joyce has done everything necessary to be kicked out of a leadership role. They are sincere about marriage and families. Natalie Joyce and her daughters are not abstractions, as they are for journalists or bloggers; they are people they've all known well for years. It is telling that no Nationals other than Joyce and those in his retinue, Nash and Canavan, have been affected by section 44 and its questions over citizenship: while that's partly down to membership demography, it also shows the party doesn't have a culture of playing fast and loose over constitutional validity.

The Nationals can't get rid of Joyce because they can't imagine their party or life generally without him. Liberals can and do imagine a future without Turnbull; Shorten isn't the be-all-and-end-all of Labor, either. If you can't even imagine the Nationals without Barnaby Joyce, what are your grand visions for rural Australia worth? You can see how Joyce persuaded the party to use its scarce funds to tide him over during the byelection campaign: imagine Turnbull, Shorten, or di Natale asking the same of their respective parties.

Joyce might go within the next few days or he might not. Media assertions about him "surviving" or "weathering the storm" are stupid, because we have seen this man in his flaws. Joyce does not have nerves of steel and an unconquerable will (dare to quibble with that, press gallery drones who've known him for years). Joyce is a man who has been under extreme pressure for a long time now, and the idea that he will simply carry on as before is a fantasy.

What the Nationals are doing by dithering over his future is putting it into the hands of the unknown public. In other leadership challenges, MPs invoke the public being for this candidate or against that as reasons for voting as they do. Because the press gallery denied New Englanders the necessary input into their decision on 2 December, nobody with the Nationals party room has a real clue about what people think about what has now come to light about Joyce.

What is most likely to happen is that, at some point, the Nationals will be required to take a strong public position on an issue. Joyce will not be able to make that position, because the response will be derision. This is a basic aspect of leadership, and Barnaby Joyce is not up to it. He never was, and all the glowing profiles written about him from the front bars of dusty pubs somewhere are just so much award-winning content shit. O'Sullivan's rustic imagery about the horse that jumps the fence doesn't work, because a horse can be put back on the right side of the fence and everything can carry on as before: not an option open to the Nationals. The Nationals may well decide to defer their decision, but they will be no clearer about their future than they are now.

Keep in mind that recent polling would see at least four Nationals MPs (Michelle Landry, Ken O'Dowd, Kevin Hogan and George Christensen) likely to lose their seats to Labor. O'Dowd might not be Joyce's favourite bloke right now, but their future requires them to work something out or hang separately: Joyce can't dispose of him like he did with previous party opponents. Others may come under threat from local heroes who don't think the incumbents are up to the job (e.g. in 2016 Rob Oakeshott went from a standing start to come within 5% of knocking off Luke Hartsuyker in Cowper). The Nationals have this in mind. Existential pressures such as these emphasise the need to make a decision, but do not necessarily improve the quality of the decision made.

The undead John Ruddick

Once again, the NSW Liberals have expressed a wish to broaden their base beyond their existing membership and existing pool of candidates. Once again, John Ruddick pops up and claims The Members want people like him and Abbott to run the party. Once again, the NSW Liberals vote for something more than what they have, as befits an aspirational people. Once again, Ruddick convinces himself - and then some of the more gullible journalists - that an actual vote of party members represents a kind of false consciousness.

Tony Abbott disgraces himself further by lending his name to Ruddick's quixotic cause. He gets his just reward by being shown not to be The True Champion Of The Liberal Base, The King O'er Narrabeen Lake, to all but the most dull-witted observers. If Ruddick were elected to parliament, he'd give Turnbull some minor grief and then defect to the Cory Tories; NSW Liberals know this and consistently vote against him. Trent Zimmerman beat him for NSW Young Liberal President in 1991 and will beat him again if Ruddick runs for preselection in North Sydney. After a few months, journalists will again return to Ruddick as though he were A True Voice Of The Liberal Base, regardless of the accumulated evidence.

The hill to die on

In Victoria and Queensland, the coalition has basically offered their agenda to that of the Murdoch papers. Teach Aussie values rather than fancy-pants foreign languages or computer code; but deride the teachers doing the teaching. Law and order, but no new prisons and run down lawyers and judges.

Their commitment is now total, but their success is far from assured. Matthew Guy should have resigned over the "lobster mobster" thing because he is now diminished, if not absurd. Deb Frecklington in Queensland is willing to lend her name to the daily story in The Courier Mail but in recent years success in Queensland politics has been more assured by turning away from that noisy and insubstantial publication. Could Guy and Frecklington be the last conservative leaders willing to die on the hill set for them by the Murdoch papers?

Peter Dutton's scare campaign against African gangs in Melbourne has done nothing for the conservative vote in Melbourne nor in Queensland. Could this utter lack of impact be a harbinger for his political future? Would it make any self-respecting journalist wonder if the real story was wherever Dutton wasn't? The answer to the latter question is no, of course, so that they can try to drum up interest in a dead contest ahead of, well, any other live but complex issue.

Matters of life and death

Conservatives failed at blocking same-sex marriage, though they succeeded in blocking Malcolm Turnbull in claiming any credit for it. Welfare crackdowns like the debit card and robodebts are compensation for aggrieved conservatives. They won't win the euthanasia debate but they will win concessions like more palliative care and psychotropic drugs for the terminally ill. Offshore detention is a way of penalising some, but not all, non-Anglo migrants. Conservatives wan economic growth without economic disruption: this explains why education funding and the broadband network are so limited. They've given up altogether on Indigenous people. They are failing badly in invoking the authority of religion in any area beyond the strictly theological.

Conservatives can't win the big debates about our economic future but they are doubling down on the petty measures to which they find themselves confined. This is called the culture war, and you take up arms at your own peril. It is not designed to be won, it is designed to give nobodies something to do.

The Anglosphere

Both Theresa May and Donald Trump have bitten off more than they can chew. Neither offer much help to conservatives in Australia. The NZ Nationals under Key and English provided solid examples for Australian conservatives, now both are gone. Boris Johnson is yet another British politician who seems well-disposed to Australians but offers nothing whatsoever in policy terms. Julie Bishop has been Shadow Foreign Minister and now Minister for a decade, and she seems utterly discombobulated by events in foreign policy; there is no evidence anyone else in the Coalition parties in thinking about the many moving parts in foreign policy right now. The foreign editor of The Australian, one of the great champions of the Anglosphere, is more at home with shenanigans at Young Liberal branches in northwestern Sydney than he is with actual foreigns, and his counterpart at Fairfax is obviously an algorithm that synthesises American magazines that the company hopes their readers have not read. There are no lessons CrosbyTextor can apply to Australian campaigns from the widely discredited 2017 UK election. No clues are offered, nor any picked up.

At the moment of triumph

Strong, stable leadership is easy to talk about, hard to deliver. The moment has arrived for Australian conservatives but they have nothing to show for it. It's as though conservative triumph had no moment beyond the careers of empty vessels like Abbott or Abetz. Conservatives don't do steady any more, and shirk the responsibilities that come with paternalism and/or The White Man's Burden.

The consensus for what should replace them isn't clear, but it never is. We should be at a moment of conservative triumph, and see what that belief system looks like at its finest and most effective. Even for dedicated followers such triumph seems to ring hollow; and what to celebrate, what to cast away, is no clearer than it might be in a moment of conservative defeat.

The right balance

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

- Newton's Third Law of Motion

The Liberal right are convinced they can trash the Turnbull government in the same way that they trashed the Rudd and Gillard governments. They might just be able to do it, but if they do the Liberal Party forfeits its position as a party of government.

Our notoriously obtuse press gallery thinks it detects a "stoush" or a "split", but there's more going on here: a wholesale redefinition of the Liberal Party. The Liberal right like it the way it is - small, ageing, reactionary, and with its liver-spotted hands on the levers of government, jamming the gears and sending things into reverse wherever possible.

I doubt Turnbull's progressive instincts, and his political competence. While it is unlikely he will transform the Liberal Party single-handedly it is possible that he could unleash reforming forces beyond his control, similar to those who made it to the top of eastern European Communist regimes in the late 1980s. No-one else in the Liberal Party is remotely capable of this. This is why Turnbull is the Liberal right's worst nightmare. This is why they're arcing up: they face losing control of the Liberal Party if Turnbull, and people like Mike Baird, succeed.

Working with smart people

What follows here sounds like some sort of paean to the corporate sector of the sort you might see from Ayn Rand or Pamela Williams. That isn't my intention. I'm trying to show how certain people seem to think and follow those thoughtlines to (what seems like) their logical conclusion.

In the late 1990s, when the Chinese mining boom was starting to take off, Malcolm Turnbull was head of Goldman Sachs Australia and Julie Bishop was managing partner of the Perth office of law firm Clayton Utz. These people worked on big deals with tough, clever people, capable of nuanced thought and thinking several steps ahead. These are people who would rather pay a skilled worker $300k to get a mine up and running rather than play silly-buggers with self-defeating nonsense like zero-hours contracts.

Turnbull and Bishop want to work with people of that calibre again. They know those people, they get them to donate and otherwise keep them involved, but capable people like that laugh at the very prospect of going into parliament, playing silly shouty games and having to account to journalists for ever time you breathe in and out. The Liberal Party says that it wants to attract such people, but it has rarely succeeded; it tends to attract those who would never cut it at the top end of town, big-firm droputs, small businesspeople for whom an employee payrise comes from their own pockets, or staffers who can talk fluent corporatese but who don't really get it.

When Turnbull was leader in 2008-09 he wanted to attract clever, capable people into government. Corporate careers became shaky and the importance of effective politics became obvious to all: if ever you were going to get capable people from the corporate sector into politics, that was the time to do it. These are people who understand large-scale, complex thinking and get things done. The Liberal Party foisted Chris Kenny and Peta Credlin into his office to stifle any far-reaching ideas, and they largely succeeded. As Turnbull's star faded in 2009 he was less convincing in attracting capable people from the private sector, at the very time the Liberal Party was starting to open preselections for the 2010 election.

Working with dumb people

When Abbott took over, the Liberal Party responded enthusiastically by preselecting people compatible with Abbott: people who could recite their lines, recite their lines, people who weren't particularly fussed about the big issues or making things happen, but boy could they recite their lines. People like Eric Abetz and Peter Dutton came to campaign for them, and the candidates who won thought people like Abetz, Dutton and Abbott were what the Liberal Party were all about. This was reinforced in 2013, by which time Abbott had set the tempo of national politics. If you couldn't bear all that empty, obnoxious horseshit that lay at the heart of almost everything he did, then you simply didn't join (or stay in) the Liberal Party let alone run for preselection. The Liberal Party was dumbed down to the point where it could be controlled by people like Abbott, Credlin, and Loughnane.

What sort of person looks up to people like Abetz, Dutton and Abbott? The sort of person of such limited capacity they make Jaymes Diaz look like Demosthenes, i.e. many Liberal Party office bearers and candidates.

Big businesses dealt with Abbott and his team before 2013 to discuss what they wanted from government, and what they weren't getting from Gillard-Rudd and their team(s). The deal big business does with politicians is that they provide money to political campaigns and align their messaging, so that the politicians in question appear 'economically responsible' to journalists employed by big businesses. In return, politicians don't explicitly promise to deliver on specific reforms, but they do offer the public relations skills to present pro-business reforms as in the public interest.

Before the 2013 election the Abbott-led Coalition linked the abolition of carbon and mining taxes to voters' household incomes; this was dishonest but nobody in the corporate sector or the media called them out. Insofar as the Abbott government had a reform agenda, it was either not raised or denied before the 2013 election and again business and the media played along. When Labor and some NGOs did call them out they were mostly ignored. By the time they came to light in 2014, they were unattached from any wider reform agenda and from the prevailing economic conditions at the time. No thought had been given to selling policies that disproportionately affected low-income earners, and whose impact on measures like debt, deficits, and business confidence was negligible. The government's political leverage was trashed.

Pro-business reform has no hope when it is presented as benefitting big business only, and having zero to no benefit for employees and the community as a whole. Chifley's bank nationalisation proposals failed in the High Court. This failure was compounded when the banks successfully presented the proposals as detrimental to the community as a whole and synchronised their messaging with the Liberal Party: Chifley's government was replaced, the banks remained as free enterprises, the Liberals won government and held it. Despite decades of 'professionalism' in communications strategy, this remains the gold standard of Liberal-business co-operation to win public support.

Abbott promised to introduce a raft of fairly limited reforms, tax cuts and reduced environmental restrictions and the like. He failed because his politics skills sucked. The media kept saying he had great media skills, but he couldn't really explain why he did things, and they couldn't articulate why he was so great at media. He expected his edicts to have authority in themselves; contemporary CEOs know that they need extensive change management programs to make internal changes, and they assumed the Liberal Party knew what it was doing. The media were wrong about Abbott's media skills, and if Tony Abbott wasn't good at media then what was he good at/for?

Business came through with their side of the bargain (campaign donations, synchronisation of communications between corporate umbrella groups and Liberals), but the Liberals did not (public acceptance of pro-business reforms, enactment of those reforms into law). This is the reverse of the situation with WorkChoices, where business expressed support for the reforms but deserted the Liberals once they enacted them.

The Liberal-business relationship is pretty unproductive in policy terms. It succeeds only as a measure of donations to the Coalition parties. Business hasn't really considered whether it is asking too much of the Coalition (e.g. are penalty rates really inhibiting productivity? Do lax environmental regulations stifle efficiency?). Coalition MPs today lack Menzies' smooth touch in knowing when and how to push back on reforms that cannot succeed.

Representing corporate manoeuvres as being in the public interest is hard. It requires an understanding of intended and unintended consequences of reforms, a deep understanding of government, and being in touch with communities to an extent that polling and focus groups can only hint at. I am starting to believe Abbott did his best to deliver for business; I have always believed that his level best was never good enough. I remain amazed that professional journalists who are paid to observe politics up close for decades couldn't tell political shit from chocolate, but don't get me started ...

Might as well jump

Cory Bernardi has courted money and tactics from the Tea Party in the US for many years, threatening to leave the Liberal Party. The Tea Party's evangelical wing is fading and nothing but racism seems to keep it going in 2015-16. Economic resentments seem to be fading with a recovering economy, less readily translated into racism than in previous eras. US rightwing politicians who had been notorious Kochsuckers (funded by the disclosure-resistant Koch brothers) find their supply of funding drying up.

Bernardi is a former SA State President of the Liberal Party and was preselected at the top of the Liberal Senate ticket at the last election. He knows that a Liberal Senator who leaves the party robs the party of significant funding and other entitlements, earning the enmity of hardworking Liberals who underwrote the privilege he now enjoys. In 2013 he wrote a fatuous book (no I won't link to it) from which he was supposed to launch his political independence, but you have to sell books for that to work. Now he's taken the phrase "Liberal Party" off his social media profile - *yawn*.

If he's going to leave the Liberal Party, like Bob Day did, he may as well join Day's Family First - but it won't be big enough for the two of them. He couldn't join forces with Pauline Hanson or Clive Palmer for the same reason. If he wants to run his own show, why doesn't he just wear the slings and arrows and step off the mothership? People start small businesses every day, and Bernardi likes to think he champions such people - but it is almost painful watching someone talk so tough and yet pussyfoot around when time comes to take a meaningful stand.

Cory, buddy, I left the Liberal Party before there was social media in any meaningful form. I didn't just change my social media profile or hide behind Andrew Bolt, whimpering "this time for sure". I wrote to the State Director and told everyone I knew that I was taking the step. Some tried to get me to stay, which was nice, but nobody can or does claim I was dithering like you are. There was much, much less at stake with my departure from the Liberal Party - where's the leadership you found lacking in Abbott, and now Turnbull? Stop being so gutless and just take the leap. Join the 'ferals' who are more your kind of people anyway - or else, get in behind the Turnbull government. You could have a meaningful role in building bridges between the government and the crossbenches - but to do that you'd have to get over yourself.

Bernardi discredits Seselja and other conservatives so long as he neither fully commits to the Liberal Party nor strikes out on his own. He is the sort of dilettante the rightwing accuse moderates of being. If the Liberal Party is really and truly this conservative redoubt, why is Bernardi heading toward the exits? Can he really do better, and at what? When will be the perfect time for him to take the bold step around which he has minced for so long?

If Malcolm Turnbull can take on a sitting PM after Question Time on Monday, and be the PM at Question Time on Tuesday, you can do it! If that milquetoast Nick Xenophon can start his own party, why can't you? Silent majority got your tongue? You're tougher and smarter than Turnbull or Day or Xenophon. You can take Seselja with you, and John Ruddick (see below). Jump, Cory, jump! You didn't want respect and influence within a major party anyway, did you?

A new people

Turnbull is likely to appoint more women in his ministry today and otherwise represent the government as making a fresh start. This might attract people who had held off joining the Liberal Party at all, let alone run for preselection, had Abbott remained as leader. Turnbull won't be able to shift the party much, but one or two high-profile recruits could change the way Liberal Party sees itself.

John Ruddick is one of those conservatives who likes the Liberal Party just fine the way it is. His piece this week, and again back in February shows another conservative desperate to head off reform, even to the point of appearing as a moderniser clearing out 'archaic' practices - whatever it takes, anything but fresh blood that might reinvigorate the Liberal Party and take it from the hands of high achievers like John Ruddick.

A political party is always different after it has held government. When a party returns to opposition it's wounded and good people give up on it. Those who harbour and foster resentments, like Ruddick and his mentor, former plaintiff lawyer David Clarke, hold the whip hand. Barry O'Farrell had to fight people like that to get the Liberals ready for NSW government in 2011, and Mike Baird fights them still.

In Victoria and Queensland, defeated Liberals have brought back old hands like Michael Kroger and Laurence Springborg rather than take any more risks that might not pay off. These people will turn narrow losses into routs at the next election because risk-aversion and resentment are the very qualities that killed the former Coalition governments in those states. A backbiting, infighting party keeps the incumbents at the top and that's just how they like it. In South Australia, Steven Marshall wants to be a winner but just can't take on the dead weight of a party that doesn't really want to win and wouldn't know what to do with state government if Labor dropped it into their laps. In WA the party has a vicious reputation for infighting despite near unanimity on policy - staunchly conservative, low taxes.

Preselections for the 2016 election are opening soon. Those who control an ageing, stagnant party use preselections as prizes where they can, making "captain's picks" that flatter a candidate without necessarily offering voters a good choice for election. Turnbull has pledged to avoid captain's picks but nor is he someone who suffers fools, despite their abundance atop the party he now leads. He's not as skilled in party fights like O'Farrell, and he doesn't have the time and lack of media scrutiny O'Farrell had in state opposition.

A candidate who was courted by Turnbull and fast-tracked into preselection would edge out some long-serving hack who had built up credit with people like John Ruddick. When they lose, they'll grizzle to people like Ruddick, who will write another piece for The Guardian on how unfair it is that interlopers are taking our jobs, fuelling the very resentment he would claim to relieve.

Once you understand Ruddick's Liberal nativism, you can see how the asylum-seeker debate is both a simple case of projection, and an existential threat to the perpetually resentful. Ruddick was a good mate of Michael Towke; people who think Scott Morrison is from the far right of our politics should take a closer look at this man and those behind him.

A quick response to Anika Gauja

This piece by Anika Gauja on why Australian political parties turn over leaders so often is well considered and worth reading.

Her contention that leadership ballots involving party members slows down leadership churn is negated by the experience of the Australian Democrats in its final decade. It is also negated by the experiences of the Liberal Party under Malcolm Fraser (six years without being challenged for the leadership) and John Howard (twelve), where rules on leadership challenges were scarecely different to those under which Abbott both rose and fell.

Before social media, Australia had a rich history of political activism outside political parties. Political parties followed rather than led campaigns on major social and political issues such as women's suffrage, alcohol licensing, conscription in World War I, counting Indigenous people in the census, euthanasia, and a republic. What social media has done is make organising faster. It is paradoxical that a party-room ballot can be organised in a few hours while a membership-wide ballot takes months, and yet neither relies on social media.

Political leaders today are feeling the strain of outsourcing their needs to engage the community to the broadcast media, which is increasingly inadequate for the purpose, while social media in its current form cannot support the political class (and leaders thereof) in the manner to which they have become accustomed. We see this not in the speed in which leadership contests take place, but in the parties' ability to rationalise leadership changes after the event:

• Labor failed to adequately explain why Kevin Rudd had to be replaced as Prime Minister in June 2010.
• The press gallery claimed that Labor would have more credibility with Rudd as leader than Gillard. When Rudd replaced Gillard in June 2013 his forebodings about an Abbott government were ignored.
• In February 2015 Abbott promised there'd be no more captain's picks, and "good government". The press gallery, again, took him at his word.
• The downfall of Abbott last week was different to Rudd's downfall because the policy dysfunction in Abbott's office was examined more clearly than that of Rudd, where commentary was reduced to a he-said-she-said interpersonal spat (reinforced in The Killing Season).
  
• There is an element of sexism about the roles played by Julia Gillard and Julie Bishop in recent leadership ballots that was not present in examinations of their no-less-implicated male colleagues, which affects the way women engage with traditional political processes.

The zombies that ate Canberra

One or two high-profile candidates could give a defensive, unimaginative party a glimpse of what relevance to an attractive, tangible future for this country might look like. Turnbull might not be capable of that. The rightwing might hem him in to the point where he can present Abbott's policies in a slightly more oily way, in which case he's finished.

There is no civil war in the Liberal Party. Turnbull won fair and square, and decisively. Abbott is no more able to return to the leadership than Harold Holt. What you have is a bunch of political zombies roaming around offering nothing, with that nothing being breathlessly quoted by the press gallery. Nihilistic sooks do not deserve equal time. If we've learned one thing from Abbott's period as leader, we've learned that you can't quote the incoherent howls of the pointlessly outraged and then wonder why public debate has become so debased (well, everybody outside the press gallery seems to have learned that).

Turnbull is the Prime Minister of Australia and should be able to prevail over backroom heroes like Ruddick. The Liberal Party would be stupidly self-indulgent to choose Ruddick or Seselja over Turnbull. Evatt and Calwell failed to tackle the backroom boys, hence failed to become Prime Minister; Whitlam succeeded at both and underlined the importance of both. Howard dealt with the backroomers in 1995-96, which Ruddick witnessed up close (and Turnbull didn't). If Turnbull can't take on the backroom operators he has no business being Prime Minister, and the Liberal Party's key value proposition as one of two major parties providing responsible and representative government is pretty much forfeit.

How to write about the prospect of Malcolm Turnbull becoming Prime Minister

Tony Abbott has been Prime Minister for long enough for the press gallery's initial thrill to wear off. That thrill lies largely in the linkage between their thinking well of Abbott, their giving him favourable coverage, and people voting according to that favourable coverage. Their enchantment with Abbott personally simply cannot survive the reality of his blunders in office, their consequences in the community, and the recognition of these by his backbench.

Bill Shorten is the alternative Prime Minister. To examine Shorten in detail and demand that he release detailed, costed policies - or even go hunting for some sort of moral core to the man - is to admit that the press gallery couldn't be bothered doing this to Opposition Leader Abbott during the last term of Parliament. They shy away from him, for now, to hide their own embarrassment.

The most potent and immediate threat to Abbott's longevity is the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party. If you're going to do a greener-pastures piece on a prospective PM, you have to focus on the most potent and immediate threat within the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party: Malcolm Turnbull.

Why Turnbull is appealing as a potential Prime Minister

We live in a time where much that we have taken for granted, even treasured, no longer holds and will not carry us into any sort of secure future.

Malcolm Turnbull is an intelligent man, widely learned beyond the academy and also nourished by the arts. He has done a number of things with his life, pointing the way for most of us who’ll never have a full-time career in the same organisation. People awake to the various threats and opportunities facing the country believe him to be someone who gets them, someone with whom they can do business.

Toward the end of a long rambly piece, [$] Mike Seccombe quotes Thomas Keneally to good effect on Turnbull:

“Malcolm might be a prince but he’s not the sort of prince that tramples people under the wheels of his carriage.”

More importantly, perhaps, Keneally thinks the public now sees something in Turnbull that makes him forgivable, and therefore loveable again.

“He still holds out the chance of development, and most importantly, for God’s sake, a bit of vision. I think the public can see he is a work-in-progress.

“Whereas Abbott gives a sense of being a work that’s reached the limits of its capacity to change.”

That first paragraph is doubtful, but more on that below.

Turnbull’s scope for growth may enable him to shake off his party-line adherence to stupid Abbott policies, which is necessary to take the Coalition from where it is to where it needs to be.

Keneally is right about Abbott: no scope for growth, only gaffes and failure from hereon in. There is no point in making people fearful when you haven’t got what it takes to make people feel safe. There is no point playing up security when the machinery of policing and the defence forces look clumsy in your hands.

Why Turnbull failed as leader in 2009

Turnbull failed as leader because he wouldn’t listen to advice. He likes to surround themselves with the sorts of bright young things who surrounded him at Goldman Sachs, people who’ll put up with his crap and who will make ill-considered ideas sound plausible and now.

Never mind that crap about tall poppies, or how nobody likes a know-all; politics is for participants. Only journalists treat it like some sort of spectator sport - which is why they are surprised all the time, not least at the decline in public consumption of their stale cliches.

Turnbull learning to appreciate other perspectives is the sort of huge personal challenge that will define him as a man as much as a leader, like Hawke’s victory over alcohol, or Howard’s over the nasty racism and sectarianism of his upbringing.

Can Malcolm Turnbull get over himself?

It’s hard to ask that question if you're besotted with his charm. When someone's charming you, you can't disparage them without disparaging yourself as an object of attention.

You can only realise you’re being gamed and stand up to a facile charmer if you know who you are and what you’re about. Self-awareness and guts are two of the many qualities in short supply in the press gallery.

Hope for a liberal approach

*snort* If he isn’t going to stand up for issues on which he had taken a strong public position over many years (same-sex marriage, climate and carbon pricing, republic), what are your hopes for issues on which he hasn't (asylum seekers, science, etc)?

Let’s have none of your malarkey about idealism. Given the choice between wistful idealism and hard-headed pragmatism I want both, in spades, and a whole lot more besides.

Grech and Utegate?

Both were put-up jobs by Eric Abetz.

Moral of those stories: stop listening to Eric Abetz.

The Coalition has problems getting its legislation through the Senate. Abetz is leader of the government in the Senate. Abetz isn’t working. Abetz should be sacked.

Maybe the Fair Work Act is less than perfect, but if it is Abetz will be unable to correctly identify either problems or solutions. He will make backbenchers unable to show their faces in the communities they represent.

Yeah, never mind Abetz. What about Grech?

Godwin Grech embodies two things, both more significant than he - more significant than Turnbull, if you can imagine.

The first is mental illness. This country need more and better support for people suffering mental illnesses, and their families. The Liberal Party broke Godwin Grech’s mental health; my guess is that James Ashby received far more support from the Liberal Party than Grech ever did.

This government is not serious about doing anything with mental health services except cut them. Returning servicemen, domestic violence victims, none of them will get any more help from this government with or without Turnbull.

Second, Grech was a nobody; but there are millions of Australians who might be classified similarly. The way he treated Grech may well be more indicative of Turnbull’s approach to the little guy than Keneally’s apologia.

Other nobodies

Richard Ackland is right about Turnbull playing to the Liberal Party gallery with his exultation of Phillip Ruddock. I mean, what school did David Hicks go to?

Administrative competence

Given that he doesn’t listen, what makes you think he’d be administratively competent? In terms of pushing paper around Canberra, working through ideas in a calm orderly manner - what makes you think Turnbull is even capable of that?

The Labor Party assumed Kevin Rudd was administratively competent, but they voted him as leader because the press gallery loved him and couldn’t distinguish an administrative shambles from a hole in the ground. Even now, they can barely articulate the chaos in Rudd’s office; the only story the press gallery understand is that Gillard was a bitch.

The Liberal Party knew Tony Abbott was administratively incompetent, but they (like the ALP) overestimated their ability to cover for him. The press gallery hyped Abbott and even pushed for Rudd to return to lead the ALP, because they still can’t distinguish an administrative shambles from a hole in the ground.

Labor have learned their lesson; in October 2013 their only two candidates for leader were two known quantities, machine-men with decades of experience in the party itself. The press gallery thinks Shorten is boring but so what.

The Liberals are looking for their next fix, and Turnbull is dealing. If Tony Abbott can make Katharine Murphy go to sleep for two years imagine what she and her ilk will do under the spell of Turnbull’s juju.

The NBN

Australia could have built a national telephone network in the 1920s but conservatives in power then didn’t feel like it. When the nation was under attack in the early 1940s, US advisers were appalled that the country didn’t have a national telephone network and lobbied Chifley and Menzies until they made it a bipartisan postwar priority.

The National Broadband Network could have been like that, but all Turnbull did was hand it to Telstra at the behest of Murdoch. A statesman would have stood up to the old bastard. Turnbull doesn’t understand upload and assumes internet consumption is as essentially passive as television.

Journalists don’t understand the potential of broadband either - or if they do, they understand it only as a threat to the sorts of fools who employ them. Playing to the gallery is one thing, but when journalists travel and counter faster broadband everywhere but here, Turnbull will be seen to be negligent.

Shirtfronting public broadcasting

Tony Abbott ruled out cuts to the ABC or SBS. Turnbull cut both. Nobody asked whether Turnbull was undermining Abbott.

You know who watches both the ABC and SBS? Urban moderates. A politician who shafts his base for no reason is a clown.

You know who watches the ABC? The very sorts of people Turnbull needs to reach out to - older conservative people, in the suburbs and the bush. Talk about self-defeating behaviour.

Not even his party

Right-wingers in the Liberal Party have spent a generation pushing liberals out of the Liberal Party. Their job is almost done. They have discredited moderate liberalism by having people like Phillip Ruddock and Joe Hockey act as standard-bearers for right-wing ideas.

The last thing they want is to have their agenda completely discredited with a shift too “the sensible centre” and have Malcolm Turnbull foisted on them. In 2008, Malcolm Turnbull looked like a messiah and would have won a leadership plebiscite hands down. That’s why right-wing dickhead John Ruddick wasn’t writing pieces like this back then.

Most people can appreciate nuances in political positions, in the same way that most people can distinguish between red and green. John Ruddick and his pals in the Liberal right genuinely can’t distinguish between a moderate liberal like Malcolm Turnbull, a moderate social democrat like Bill Shorten, a left-wing Labor figure like Kim Carr or the late Tom Uren, and a rancid old communist like Lee Rhiannon. He genuinely sees them as peas in a pod. All of those far-left gradations in which Guy Rundle has lived his life would be lost on the likes of Ruddick. This is his tragedy, and if he had his way the Liberal Party would consist only of people with the same deficiency.

Turnbull is a moderate and a negotiator, which means he reaches out to those with whom he feels he can cut a mutually beneficial deal. Ruddick has nothing in common with people who aren’t rusted-on Liberals, thank you very much, and as with Bronwyn Bishop as Speaker they ride their (real and perceived) opponents when things go their way.

Turnbull is out of step with the Liberal Party, as I’ve said before. He has to wait until it is even more discredited than it has been before he can remake it in his image. He ignored that last time and they rolled him the minute he faltered. They will do the same again.

Turnbull could be the first genuinely dapper PM since Keating

And?

His wife is very impressive

Yes she is. A combination of Jeanette Howard and Peta Credlin, with plenty more besides. And?

You're being very brusque, aren't you?

Yes. If you really want more of Turnbull you'll have to get used to that. And I'm perfectly certain someone like you would, too. By brooking no discussion on this subject I do so in homage to the man himself.

Any specific issues you'd like to explore?

Oh, plenty. Big, important issues, which should be the bread and butter of press gallery journalism but which causes actual practitioners to bleed from the eyes. Tax reform, asylum seekers, cybersecurity, promoting economic growth in a stagnating global economy, Defence capital acquisitions, water flows in the Murray-Darling, a sound foreign policy based on goodwill and shrewdness, closing the gaps between Indigenous Australians and non-Indigenous Australians …

Any testable indications on how Turnbull would make a blind bit of difference to Abbott (or Shorten) in any of those areas? The longer you've been a press gallery journalist - or a Liberal - the fewer plausible excuses you have for talking up an unsuitable leader.