The end of Peter Dutton

For much of the past 12 months, the press gallery has agreed that the power of Peter Dutton has grown within the government, possibly to the point where he could challenge Turnbull for the Liberal leadership and hence become Prime Minister. It's time to call bullshit on that, and to point out that the more enthusiastic advocates for Dutton (or those most hungry for stink) aren't helping us understand how the government works.

Dutton solves none of the problems facing the country. Think about the big issues (go on, dare to do so despite our appalling national leadership and inadequate media):

• Maintaining stable electrical power supplies (and gas for that matter) in the face of changing technologies - that is, to take on the political risk that all state governments but WA and Queensland have shirked;
• An economy that creates jobs within a sustainable environment;
• A relationship with Indigenous people that goes beyond the tokenistic, but which does not negate non-Indigenous Australia to the extent we tried to negate them;
• The ability to encourage people to come to our country, as visitors and migrants, but not to the point where we fear the loss of who we are (see above); and
• [insert your big issue here].

Dutton offers answers to none of these questions.

Dutton offers no answers to questions of good government, he has fucked up every portfolio he's held (including the current one, see below). He offers no political answers either: he's not more popular than Turnbull, and any regional variations in relative popularity for one is offset elsewhere.

The proof of this is in the Queensland election. Had Dutton been a political go-getter, if he had half the ambition of Howard or Abbott or Turnbull or even Sam Dastyari, Dutton would have been at the side of every LNP candidate in every winnable seat up and down the state. Were he a potent political threat Palaszczuk should be cursing him by name, piling on to the outrage about Manus, but she rightly regards him as irrelevant. Maybe he's raised heaps of money for the LNP behind the scenes, but I doubt it.

Turnbull's main political weakness is his lack of judgment: when to push open a door ajar, and when to walk by it. Dutton has the same weakness. He was right not to throw himself into the 2015 Queensland election, when Campbell Newman threw away one of the biggest majorities ever, and at the next Queensland election it will be too late.

Dutton is too stupid to know Manus has reached its endgame. As a junior policeman he was removed from situations requiring subtlety and deftness, but as a senior politician he has been let loose by a weak leadership and goaded by right-wingers thirsty for some impact (yes, the government of Australia is less well run than the Queensland Police). All cruelty requires prizing toughness over all other considerations, and Dutton has shielded himself from those considerations for too long.

UN and non-government agencies have long criticised Australia's mandatory detention system, and so have journalists from outside the press gallery (recent converts to the idea that the system is appallingly inhumane, like Paul Bongiorno and Michael Gordon, do not count). Dutton assumes that recent criticism, accompanied by video, is more of the same and can either be ignored or fed into culture wars.

When a boatload of asylum-seekers foundered on the rocks at Christmas Island in 2012, with accompanying video, Australians were appalled. The out-of-sight-out-of-mind approach to offshore detention was exposed. So too was the nation's entire political class, which were heavily invested in "strong on border security" and could not easily or deftly change course. Michael Keenan and Joe Hockey shed tears of self-pity and the sheer impossibility of changing course: and so too did the press gallery, which from then until now took the Coalition at its word on these matters.

The solution then largely consisted of media management: restricting access to Christmas Island, redefining what a "boat arrival" meant, harsh words to dwindling media proprietors and threats of outsiderdom to press gallery insiders. The press gallery responded to this not with defiance, as journalists might, but by insisting then-Immigration Minister Scott Morrison was a genius for his ability to bamboozle the press gallery. Morrison is less effective in bamboozling economists outside the press gallery in his current role, but that respect has transferred to Dutton for his continuation and expansion of limits of media access to content sources beyond official statements.

Now we know that official statements are in disgrace, and bear no relation to reality: moving people from one settlement to another violently, cutting off water and medical aid, and doing it all in a media environment that can't be controlled exposes Manus to its Australian sponsors. NZ's offer to take some refugees, denied again, makes it look as though the government doesn't want the problem solved, or is so obstinate that it overlooks obvious solutions (a common feature of all governments nearing their end). The double game of Australia taking credit but blaming the locals is over: all the gallery's faithful stenography to that end was always wasted, but is now irrelevant.

Dutton has batted away politically-correct lefties before, and is doing so again, not realising it's too late for that. The combination of images from Manus going global, combined with the policy being shunned by all but the farthest right (even Trump blanched at it: "you're worse than I am"); along with a reputation for ripping off backpackers, and now being lumped in with human rights abuses in Myanmar in terms of callousness to asylum-seekers, it's too late for cosy chats with Ray Hadley trying to discourage listeners from believing their lying eyes.

With Trump's US and Brexit UK shunning clever and ambitious migrants, we see now that there is no plan for Australia to offer an attractive destination. We see nothing for tourism and education beyond the lazy assumption that more Chinese will ramp up numbers for us. Nobody has any right to assume that the Immigration Minister would even want to play a long game on this front: this government has a vacuous leader, nobody from the press gallery went looking for evidence of long-term national-interest thinking, and the Opposition dares not engage in any product differentiation on this issue. And so, an absurdly inadequate minister is off the hook.

Had Labor been re-elected federally in 2010 to a greater extent than it was, it is entirely likely that Dutton's career would have ended then. Dutton's seat, Dickson, between northern Brisbane and the southern Sunshine Coast, is almost entirely represented by Labor in state parliament. Dutton's mate Dan Purdie won a state seat, but so what? The LNP machine is not exactly the killer outfit it was five years ago, and whatever the answers might be to the LNP's malaise almost none reside in that potato head of his. Contrast that with the way John Howard rebuilt the Liberal Party from the ground up in 1995-96.

When skittish politicians get worried about an unpopular leader, they try to imagine that leader in their local community shaking hands with local worthies and randoms. This is the political equivalent of picturing what your house looks like from the kerb; nobody pretends it's all-important but it isn't unimportant either. Those who were unimpressed with John Howard underestimated his ability to walk among ordinary people, chat with them and appear to be listening; those who love the guy rave about his ability to do that, a quality pretty much absent in your standard political-class drone.

It was hard to imagine gimlet-eyed obsessive Abbott in actual communities with actual voters, but he waddled around the country doing passable imitations of political gladhanding. Then, he spent two years returning to Canberra screwing the people whose hands he'd shaken. Liberals found this dissonance puzzling, until Peta Credlin and the passage of time helped them realise Abbott was really like that. As he became both less popular and less effective, it was easy to imagine Turnbull gladhanding the way back to popularity. No Liberal, not even those in safe seats, wants Dutton anywhere near voters who like their local MP but have their doubts. Again, you'll notice he played scant role in Queensland, and he's not doing much heavy lifting in the success story of immigration that is Bennelong.

Dutton doesn't look like the stereotype of a Queenslander, like Bob Katter does; Abbott looks more like a copper than he does. For all his aggregation of power over federal intelligence and law enforcement capabilities, Dutton has played no role in shaping public debates in the area. He hasn't brought in much experience from his own experience as a police officer (oddly cut short just before he became eligible for considerable benefits). Maybe the guy just doesn't believe in public debate. Maybe he just isn't a leader to anyone outside the Liberal right. He's probably not the right person to dissuade people from their growing inclination to chuck out the incumbent government.

With his bald pate and deadpan features, Dutton looks like a public servant who says no, like a banker foreclosing on busted small businesses. Howard had that look too, but he could do sunny optimism better than Dutton. Dutton goes hard in Question Time, but Labor seem to have his measure after his lacklustre opposition to Nicola Roxon and Catherine King's painstaking work in Health when he was minister (besides, who gives a fuck about Question Time?). He is such a cold fish that this experienced (non-gallery) journalist was moved to tears at a simple display of humanity before some children. He is not a steady hand in an uncertain future. Anyone who thinks leaks and backbench rebellions would cease under a Dutton leadership is kidding themselves.

Shorten will look like a model of calm forward thinking in contrast to the darkly foreboding Dutton. If you were a Liberal MP in a marginal seat, or a Liberal candidate in a Labor one, Peter Dutton is lead in your saddlebags. You'd risk chucking Turnbull for someone with more of the common touch, but you'd no more choose Dutton than Kevin Andrews or Peta Credlin. His biggest fans are the people who also insist we can have lve new coal-fired power stations and no same-sex marriage. He offers empty threats and petty bullying, maybe not even that. Dutton embodies the Liberal predicament - frustration without resolution - but it is wishful thinking to insist he's got what it takes to fix it.

So close, and yet so far

There was a time when to be the best male Australian tennis player was to be the best at that sport, to be able to beat any man in the world anywhere in the world. Rod Laver, Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall, and John Newcombe, along with supporting players like Ken Emmerson or Tony Roche, dominated the sport as it transitioned from an amateur era to a professional one. This dominance lasted over a decade, which hadn't happened in Australian sport before or since: in swimming or cricket there were seasons of Australian dominance in fits and starts, even with uniquely talented individuals like Bradman or Dawn Fraser. Even in women's tennis, Margaret Smith Court was a freak sui generis; Evonne Goolagong Cawley did not breeze past her contemporaries as Smith did. Both those women left tennis to raise families, while Newcombe and Roche in particular tried to keep alight the mystic flame of Australian men's tennis.

John Alexander was fated to be the leading Australian male tennis player behind Newcombe. Later in their careers, Newcombe and Rosewall held off the brash and aggressive American Jimmy Connors, but Alexander in his prime could not. The 1970s saw the Europeans adopt Australian coaching techniques: Ilie Nastase from Romania, Bjorn Borg from Sweden, Guillermo Vilas from Argentina, Connors, and others all showed that there was nothing in our water, nor in Vegemite or Milo, nor in any other way essentially Australian about the skill and focus necessary to win big-time singles tennis tournaments. Alexander was a very good singles tennis player, but not a great one. He wasn't lucky, like Gosford's Mark Edmonson winning the 1976 Australian Open. He didn't have a heart-rending back-story and an oafish foil, like Jelena Dokic. The recent parallel would be Andy Roddick, the US male succeeding Sampras and Agassi and Courier, but fated to be creamed regularly by Nadal and Federer and Djokovic. John Alexander showed us the important lesson that sometimes guts and determination just aren't enough.

Alexander won the Australian Open twice as half of separate doubles pairings. He didn't bond with one other player to form a memorable killer team like like MacNamara/McNamee or Woodforde/Woodbridge, and he had a reputation for being short-tempered. Other tennis players had this reputation too - but in the 1950s and '60s the optics were all of Gentlemanly Behaviour and Good Sportsmanship. Winners are grinners, and the image of Laver or Newcombe grinning so often holding up trophies smoothed any jagged edges in their reputations. In their later years, Connors and Nastase freely admitted to having been pricks, assessments not contradicted by observers at the time. Not so Alexander: when Connors or Nastase threw their racquets around, intimidated ball boys, talked back to umpires, or snarled at interviewers, this Bad Sportsmanship somehow underlined their foreignness. When Alexander did the same, it confirmed him as a sore loser and UnAustralian and Surely There's Another Talented Young Australian We Can All Get Behind?

I was a kid in the 1970s. My Dad's family were all big on tennis, playing and watching. They made it clear to me, my brother, and my cousins, that we were not to carry on like John Alexander. Better to do your best and lose gracefully than to end up like that guy.

I've said before in this blog that I used to live in Bennelong, and that I observed a number of times how awkward he is with actual humans whom he has represented in parliament. He seems to be attentive only to people he knows well, or who are important, or both; seven years representing the community has not defrosted him. One thing the left always underestimated about Howard was his preparedness to engage with locals, to talk sincerely about vandalism in West Ryde or schools in Gladesville at the same time as he was dealing with Iraq or the economy. Alexander still can't fake genuine interest in the small stuff. Alexander is a tall man (I'm 183cm and he's a head taller than me), and often such people have to work hard not to appear aloof - but he always looks pained when approached by randoms, always on the lookout for someone else to talk to or somewhere else to be. He has mastered the ability to turn up to an event just before pictures are taken and leave immediately afterwards, with local papers happy to create the impression of warm engagement on his behalf.

Once he beat Maxine McKew in 2010 the massed dim lights of Australian political journalism went off him, and he seems to like it that way. He increased his margin out of that limelight, confirming his political instincts. In the past two elections he has faced an authentic product of Labor's left-leaning local branches, Lyndal Hewison, a local teacher and a nice person; at the last election she lost the primaries to Alexander 28-51. Yes, that's right: this remote man has increased the Liberal vote in Bennelong to the point where it doesn't go to preferences, back to where it was early in Howard's prime ministership despite the massive demographic changes in the area since. The swing against the Coalition that saw so many Liberals lose their seats last July saw Alexander hold steady.

I kept looking around Bennelong for an example of Alexander's legacy, and I think I found it. Behind Eastwood Library, there's a kids' playground and a public toilet and an oval that shows up in old maps as a lake. In that area is a green, wooden table-tennis table: Alexander had it placed there, a nod to Eastwood's Chinese community, who all seem far too busy to use it. It's also a nod to Alexander's tennis career but he's too busy to use it too. Like the local real estate market, it isn't a level playing field. Only the die-hards come forth with bats and a ball and a cloth to wipe the birdshit; they don't stay for long.

It's almost fitting that Labor have passed over Hewison for the byelection, or promising local mayor Jerome Laxale, in favour of Kristina Keneally. She's warm and engaging where Alexander is aloof and awkward. Like Alexander, she lives in another part of town, and in the 1970s and '80s spent quite a bit of time in the United States. Also like Alexander, she knows what it is to step up just as a winning streak is ending, and to cop the blame for that.

Her media experience counts for nothing. The total audience for Sky News is so small, and perishingly so in Bennelong, that she may as well have spent the past six years getting drunk. Her former co-host Ross Cameron is politically just as dead today as he was in 2004. The idea that she'll be a media darling like former press gallery journalist Maxine McKew - and that this will count for something - is bullshit.

Toward the end of his career, John Watkins was Deputy Premier and State MP for Ryde (the state electorate that takes up much of Bennelong). When Watkins retired in 2008 Ryde swung heavily to the Liberals. That byelection may have been the last time Keneally set foot in the electorate until the last day or so. That byelection was a precursor for the 2011 state election, and so too Federal Labor is hoping for a dramatic result that works against the incumbent government. Like it or not, Keneally is associated with a flailing and failed government, one that casts a shadow over a government that is yet to come.

What are the possibilities for this byelection, and what are the consequences more broadly?

• Alexander wins handsomely, like he has at the past two general elections. This (along with the likely re-election of Barnaby Joyce in New England) would confirm Turnbull and the government and they will blunder on. Surely the performance of the government will give rise to a protest vote.
• Keneally wins Bennelong. This is unlikely but it would panic the Liberals into wounding Turnbull and generally running around with their hair on fire while trying to convince Sharkie and McGowan that they really are a stable and responsible government.
• Keneally gets a swing toward Labor but doesn't win. This will be the kind of result that anyone can read anything into, producing the kind of inconclusive and fatuous jabber that is "political debate" and "insider commentary" in the Australian media. This is the most likely result.

Keneally will wander the streets saying "你 好" to people and getting "G'day" in return. Alexander will be out and about wincing at people for the cameras and it will make no difference at all. Turnbull will condescend to petty locals in their petty lives and people will vote for him with gritted teeth. Shorten will turn up and create surprise at being a regular guy, who may be up for consideration next time. Labor's NSW head office will be confirmed in its view that the best way to win in Bennelong is to override the local branches.

It will be quite the blessing that the press gallery will mostly be on holidays, and that The Daily Telly won't lose one of its few presenters who doesn't just nod along with Paul Murray or Chris Kenny. The sheer witlessness of Australian political journalism will not be affected in any way by this byelection. The Australian media has in its archives all of that stuff about Alexander's sporting and political career, and Keneally's: and yet the sheer wasteland of drivel on this topic (no I won't link to it) stretches out before us once again, with no useful information and no respite.

The choice of Joyce

But look, oh look, the Gothic tree’s on fire
with blown galahs, and fuming with wild wings.
The hard inquiring wind strikes to the bone and whines division.

- Judith Wright For New England

The press gallery seems to be of one mind that Barnaby Joyce will win the New England byelection handily on December 2. Tony Windsor isn't running, PHON and ShooFiFa aren't running, therefore Joyce will win it in a canter, won't he?

Joyce has an excellent ground operation, the envy of any party. At the last election we saw money was no object; Joyce started his political career as the champion of Cubbie Station, and ever since he's had more sympathy for those who breach their water allocations than you might expect from the leader of the farmers' party. He's cultivated a beautiful friendship with Gina Rinehart. Those who say Joyce will win easily have a point: surely on the night of December 2 they'll simply weigh Nationals votes rather than count them, and that he's good for at least 70 percent of first preferences, surely?

I'm not so sure. Joyce is no longer a fresh face in a promising government. He is not a powerful member of a stable government that is racking up substantial achievements. Election campaigns often end differently to the way they start, and experienced press gallery journalists should know this.

This isn't simple contrariness against the gallery. To be fair to them, I'm not exactly the go-to guy for political predictions - but then again, when I said Tony Abbott would never be Prime Minister, I was closer to the mark than those who assumed he was good enough to become Prime Minister. On the same basis, I reckon any victory Joyce wins in New England will be pyrrhic.

Strong and stable

Joyce's central offering to the people of New England is that he is Deputy Prime Minister in a stable Coalition government. He spent the first couple of days of the byelection campaign sledging unnamed detractors from within that same government; strong people do not do this, they dismiss their detractors. Since then we've seen the President of the Senate and the Minister for Energy experience similar doubts over their nationality as that which put Joyce into the position he is in now.

Electricity infrastructure in New England has not been gold-plated. Coal-fired power still comes from the Hunter and from Queensland, and its cost to New England customers is rising as it is for the rest of us. It isn't only hippies who are installing solar in the hope of boosting reliability and cutting costs over time. If you don't blame Joyce for making the price and reliability of power worse, then you can't claim that he is doing much to make things better.

The position in Manus now, under this government, is similar to that point in the Gillard government where boatloads of asylum seekers were crashing against the rocks of Christmas Island. Remember Michael Keenan and Joe Hockey coming over all teary at that? They are the same people pooh-poohing the men on Manus Island digging for water while coming down off anti-depressants. It goes way beyond a bad look. A policy has failed when it ends up at this point, and so have the ministers responsible for it - and Barnaby Joyce has been one of those ministers.

This isn't to say Manus is a hot-button issue in New England right now, but it does go to the competence of the government and Joyce's place within it. It does mean that other political actors have scope to exploit the gap between what good government should look like, and what Barnaby's offering. The status quo, steady-as-she-goes approach isn't the elixir that the lazy press gallery thinks it is.

Old-fashioned journalism

He's the last of the backslappin', have-a-beer politicians - well, the last you'll find above municipal level. Some journalists have to hunt for their stories, but the press gallery love nothing better than dusting off a cliche, painting by numbers and then flicking it at the public. They'll be looking forward to writing those same stories from the pubs of New England - particularly where Joyce is the main act and not a sideshow in a multi-faceted, continental general election. It will be interesting to see if Joyce gets sick of them, or if he discloses some tidbit too tempting not to share.

Another cliche is the idea that people - rustics, particularly - are so bedazzled by promises of public largesse that they auction their vote the highest bidder. It's hard to imagine more largesse than that promised by Shenhua in its various explorations into the Liverpool Plains, or the similar proposals for the Pilliga. It doesn't quite work out like that. Joyce is stuck between those locals who like both places as they are, and the whiny drone of the economic vandal: "business confidence". NSW Mineral Resources Minister Don Harwin has almost nobbled the Liverpool Plains proposal, but any decision (including none) would have put Joyce in a difficult position. Mining companies were all very well when they were lobbying for non-farming land, but now that they're after the prime stuff it's all a bit Faustian for everyone's mate Barnaby.

The advent of social media and the weaponisation of polling this century saw the end of taxi-driver journalism. Journalists would hire taxis and represent the driver's patter as The Voice Of The Common Man, warping all coverage of political and social issues around half-baked impressions gained from reading tabloids and listening to gruntback radio. If you have ever wondered how Ray Hadley got to be like that, look back at taxi-driver journalism and wonder no more. When you hear journalists praising old-fashioned shoe-leather journalism, part of what they mean is plonking their arses in the back of Ray Hadley's taxi, switching on the tape recorder, and letting their stories write themselves. The only practitioners of taxi-driver journalism these days are press gallery journalists, long cut off from - dare one describe it thus - the mainstream of traditional media offices.

They'll miss the stories that are both more interesting and more telling. You don't have to pretend that warmed-over cliches are valuable and worth supporting.

Tamworth, Tamworth, Tamworth

Tamworth's airport is over-engineered for a town of its size. The airport was designed half a century ago to accept the biggest aircraft of that time, the Boeing 727. The idea was not to facilitate junkets from Canberra, or even the annual spike in tourism for the Country Music Festival. Tamworth airport was designed to support high-value agricultural exports by aircraft, where food could depart New England in the morning and then be consumed that evening in Asian cities.

Despite several free trade agreements endorsed by the Cabinet of which Joyce was a member, that dream is no closer to reality than it was in the 1970s, when Joyce and I were growing up in that area. Contrast this with the Wellcamp airport west of Toowoomba, which went from conception to execution within the past decade and which handles the sort of cargo (including from northern NSW) promised but rarely delivered from Tamworth airport.

If you ask Barnaby Joyce about Tamworth airport and its potential, he will offer a generous helping of word-salad that the equally ignorant press gallery will accept and pass on without demur or examination. It will also show how disconnected government policy is from actual economic development in this area, not to mention the value-free and valueless practice of press gallery stenography.

During byelections, press gallery journalists gingerly venture forth beyond those concentric roads around the building from which they operate and afflict the people beset by the candidates and flyers in those communities that in Canberra are just are names on maps. In the New England byelection, taxi-driver journalism is concentrated on Tamworth. Tamworth is the biggest town in New England, with regular air connections to Sydney (not many 727s on that route any more, but never mind). It's easy to blow in to Tamworth, squawking and flapping with the tape recorder, and get back to the city without having to bunk down in a local motel. However, there are two main problems with this as quality information: 1) towns within New England like Quirindi, Uralla, or Inverell aren't suburbs of Tamworth, with distinctions that matter for those who understand the subtleties of rural communities; and 2) a review of voting records shows that Tamworth's polling booths are particularly strong for the Country/NCP/Nationals.

If you want to reinforce your preconceived notion that Barnaby is returning to Canberra as a formality, go to Tamworth and get a full dose of it. Senior press gallery journos have done exactly this, from almost every media outlet represented in the gallery, which again utterly defeats laws and other measures designed to foster media diversity. Every gallery outlet but the ABC has closed its regional and suburban outlets, making coverage of this community with nuance and depth impossible. As I've said, you don't have to pretend that warmed-over cliches are valuable and worth supporting.

For a short time, Tamworth turned away from the Nationals to send Tony Windsor to state and federal parliament. The Gillard government's abrupt ban of live cattle exports to Indonesia hit Tamworth's meatworks hard. Tamworth did not get the benefit from the NBN that Armidale got. Then again, when Tony Abbott became Prime Minister, Windsor's difficult choice became understandable. The vote against Windsor in 2016 was a vote against this difficult and aberrant part of Tamworth's history and a return to the National status quo; it may negate his ability to shift the Nationals vote in future contests. His absence from this byelection hardly negates Tamworth's history as strong Nationals turf.

A careless man

Barnaby Joyce once drove a government vehicle through floodwater, barely escaping with his life and writing off the vehicle. Most rural people, and some in the cities, rightly regard people who drive through floodwaters as idiots.

There is no evidence Joyce has learned anything from that. He spent more than $600,000 on refitting offices in New England. He toyed with the lives of public servants and the effectiveness of an agency vital to Australian agriculture by shifting its offices. He promised a white paper (a comprehensive policy document) on Australian agriculture that shows no evidence of in-depth, long-term consideration, and which failed to even consider that changes to the climate might affect agriculture. His blustering approach to his own citizenship has forced a byelection on his electorate that need not have been necessary: when Jackie Kelly did something similar in Lindsay in 1996, the press gallery lectured her for foolishness and the waste of public money arising from it.

Joyce is careless with matters of public trust, and with public moneys. People recognise this and will vote accordingly. The survival of the Turnbull government, however, depends upon the foregoing not being the case, or being overlooked.

Sunday, 3 December 2017

Both Joyce and the government of which he's part are on the nose. The press gallery believe both that a) Joyce has some sort of magic on the campaign trail, and b) the government has been behind in the polls; but they have not concluded and dare not consider that c) New England voters will mark Joyce and the government down on December 2.

Having blithely assumed that Joyce would return to Canberra, reinforced with a quick fly-by through Tamworth, press gallery journos will be at a loss to explain why Joyce will not be returning to Canberra with a thumping majority. They will assert their expertise in matters political nonetheless.

Marriage Equality 1: Accepting our way of life

We search for leaders on our hands and knees

- Richard Clapton Best years of our lives

Marriage equality will happen, sooner or later, by any one of what seem now like a variety of political means. 

There were only seven members of this government prepared to stick their necks out and bring on marriage equality. I leave them aside here, and also the jihadists like Abbott or Abetz or The Jack Man, and say: most of the others must realise it is inevitable.

One day, a vote on marriage equality will come before the parliament. Coalition MPs may vote for it, or they may not. People who weren't able to get married will do so. As in other countries, the institution of marriage will be strengthened rather than diminished. The Prime Minister of New Zealand, Bill English, had voted against it but came to change his mind, and so too will they.

When that day comes, most current Coalition MPs will simply anticipate that they can shrug, concede they were wrong and expect to simply move on. Malcolm Turnbull will, I suspect, be in this number.

LGBTIQ people have done everything right in lobbying to change the Marriage Act: they have patiently petitioned MPs, joined political parties and engaged in polite public events. The fact that they have not yet achieved their aim is an indictment of our democratic processes, especially when you consider the 2004 change that made this change necessary came about within hours after underhanded lobbying from the Exclusive Brethren.

Those responsible for seeing this campaign through should be recognised as among the most capable organisers and representatives our society has. It will be interesting to see if they continue in politics by other means. The 1999 republic referendum not only gave us Turnbull and Abbott, but also Sophie Mirabella and David Elliott on the monarchist side, as well as Greg Barns and Jason Yat-Sen Li on the republicans. The monarchists made more of their people than the republicans did; you can blame Howard for wrong-footing the republicans if you will, but the fact is no promising politician arose from that movement to revive and sustain it. Lyle Shelton was a failed LNP candidate for Queensland state parliament, and people like Sally Rugg may yet switch to broader political engagement.

As Paul Karp notes, Turnbull has sought to justify the rights of LGBTIQ people in terms of whether or not a majority might accept them. This government has diminished rather than expanded our rights as citizens; they are awkward when reversing themselves. What's genuinely appalling is that LGBTIQ Australians are being treated like non-citizens.

Majoritarianism is the same basis on which our immigration policy is conducted: new immigrant groups cop hazing and are accorded few if any rights, until some ill-defined process occurs after many years whereby they are granted the status of True Blue Aussies, and another group of migrants cops the hazing. It should surprise nobody that the Immigration Minister was one of the main proponents of the mail poll, with its exorbitant cost, its lack of rigour, and its disdain for the people most affected. Never mind Liberal Party rhetoric about the freedom and dignity of the individual: Australian citizens must now petition the government for rights, rather than demand them and vote accordingly for representatives who share them.

Even if you agree with the Prime Minister and don't regard LGBTIQ rights as one of the most pressing issues of our time, consider those that are. Consider climate change, or economic stagnation (including, but not limited to, employee shares of corporate incomes), telecommunications and data security, education or healthcare, or changing geopolitical balances of power. In each case, this government has no real answers, and demonstrates no real ability to engage with complex, multi-faceted issues. In each case, for 15 of the past 21 years, Coalition MPs faff around, shrug, and change course - all with the clear expectation that whatever they do will and must be rewarded with perpetual electoral success.

The democratic measures by which we keep politicians in check have been blunted. That's the worst thing about this debate: a ferociously democratic people have been played into negation and acquiescence by unprofessional professionals who cannot be dealt out of the game by the usual means. It's a problem for our politics, and that includes the way politics is reported by those with press gallery access - but don't even get me started on that.

Submission to the Senate Select Committee on the Future of Public Interest Journalism

The Senate established a select committee to investigate the future of public interest journalism. Its terms of reference are here. I was concerned that it would cleave too closely to the Federal Government's proposed regulatory changes to help prop up traditional media, and the recurring bludge identified most recently on Media Watch that Google and Facebook have some sort of responsibility to maintain journalists and their managers in the style to which they've become accustomed.

Here's my submission to the committee (the subheadings refer to the committee's terms of reference):

(a) the current state of public interest journalism in Australia

What is public interest journalism?

A pithy and useful definition is supplied here (http://www.mediahelpingmedia.org/training-resources/journalism-basics/360-applying-the-public-interest-test-to-journalism):

The public interest is in having a safe, healthy and fully-functioning society. In a democracy, journalism plays a central role in that. It gives people the information they need to take part in the democratic process.

I’ll use this definition when I refer to ‘public interest journalism’ in this submission.

Why public interest journalism goes beyond the products offered by media companies represented in the press gallery

The media organisations represented in the federal parliamentary press gallery have employed journalists to report on the activities of politicians in federal parliament – mostly the activities of the government of the day in executing policy, but also the activities of the opposition (as a potential alternative government), and politicians outside both the government and official opposition (in shaping policy and legislative outcomes and contributing to longer-term debates).

There is more to the public interest than what traditional media organisations deign to cover. The public interest transcends the reach, the abilities, and the wit of particular management teams of traditional media organisations. Press gallery journalists cannot offer the breadth of coverage required for public interest journalism. There are a number of reasons for this.

The weaknesses of the fourth estate

Romantic notions of “the fourth estate” aside, the press gallery is not accountable to the public as are members of parliament. The public has no role in appointing or removing members of the press gallery. Remonstrations with them have no discernible or consistent impact. The geographic and demographic composition of the press gallery is unrepresentative of the broader Australian public. Any idea that “public interest journalism” begins and ends with the press gallery is nonsense.

Most news output from the press gallery concerns government announcements – activities of government and interpretations thereof that responsible ministers are more than happy to announce, and which the press gallery transcribes and broadcasts in terms broadly similar to those announced.

There is a public interest in activities of government that are not announced, which go to questions of maladministration, incompetence, or even corruption. It can be tempting to see these non-announcements as a game one plays with journalists, rather than misinformation to the public at large; this is a mistake, one that public interest journalism should work to redress.

Media organisations represented in the press gallery rarely do the investigation necessary to bring these activities to light for the public, and almost never from within the press gallery. They sometimes did when they were better resourced than they are today.
There is no real link between any increase in funding those organisations may experience and any increase in the frequency, breadth, or complexity of investigative journalism they may deign to undertake. Investigative journalism resources required for properly effective public interest journalism does, and will continue to come from beyond traditional media organisations. Laws and policy outcomes should recognise and accommodate this.

The need for such journalism does not ebb and flow with fads or commercial decisions of traditional media organisations. The public has a right to know what its government is doing, and what the options are politically; this public interest exists independently of media operational strategy.

Are you a smart-alec?

As an engaged citizen and media consumer, I want to see, hear, and read what’s going on: preferably from those who understand what’s going on rather than merely physically present at a staged announcement, and who are simply relaying information supplied to them.
Apparently it is not reasonable to expect traditional media organisations to engage a variety of policy experts on an expanding range of topics. It is certainly not reasonable to expect that a press gallery journalist can adequately cover any and all of the complex policy issues covered by Australia’s federal government.

While the quality of online content can vary considerably, I have learned through wide and careful reading that there is no such thing as a dull subject, only dull writing and unappealing presentation of important facts. Throughout the community, there are people with deep and broad experience in many complex and important issues; it is important that we hear from them directly rather than awaiting the traditional media spotlight to fall on them.

One important example is the rise of science journalism. Fairfax, NewsCorp and the ABC recently had small numbers of specialist journalists with scientific training and the ability to explain complex, cutting-edge concepts to mainstream audiences. In recent years those organisations have downsized or abolished science reporting teams, despite the urgency in public debates for greater scientific understanding by decisions-makers and the community as a whole. Public interest journalists who focus on science provide a vital service, and raise questions about traditional media avowals of quality journalism.

The value of “insider knowledge” on complex, far-reaching public issues is often vastly overrated by politicians and traditional media. It is lazy and inadequate, as so often happens, to present a policy debate as “argy-bargy” within a party or across parties. It is irresponsible to abandon an important issue with the cop-out “the devil is in the detail”. Public interest journalism opens the possibility that complex policy issues might be engaged with and explained by knowledgeable, experienced people, who may help us all (including politicians and press gallery journalists) better understand and engage with the issues in public debate.

Statistical knowledge – not just the data and the presentation of it, but the understanding of how data may be manipulated – has never been more important in public debate. From their earliest days, newspapers carried voluminous data on shipping movements, racing form guides, and stock market movements. Popular television coverage of sporting events includes voluminous statistical information. So do popular weather reports, financial advice, and opinion poll coverage. Public interest journalists are more likely to gather and present in-depth statistical information than traditional press gallery journalists, who feel pushed for time and unable to digest official reports with rich statistical information that might inform key current debates.

The Australian community is better educated than it was. “Beer, cigs up” is not sufficient commentary on the budget. The Treasurer is scrutinised more than any other minister is because of the plethora of economics and business journalists who cover his portfolio, not all of whom are fulltime, salaried employees. Public interest journalism promises to apply similar scrutiny across all portfolios of government, far more than is possible from press gallery journalists limited to manoeuvering.

The contraction of traditional news resources goes against a growing need for more and better knowledge about how we are (and might be) governed. Salaried journalists in traditional media organisations might insist on exclusive rights and privileges over access to and dissemination of official information, and the structure of the press gallery institutionalises that view. This paradox will most likely be resolved against the interests of traditional media, as independently-operating public interest journalists will come to offer greater breadth and credibility of coverage than enfeebled traditional media. Allowance must be made for such people to come and go from places where public interest information is available, and that they may not be fulltime employees of a few large organisations.

The only way of ensuring viable, independent and diverse services would be to provide high-quality information to as many people as might want it, given appropriate safeguards for privacy and other forms of justice. Commercial organisations may worry about demand; the real question for regulators is and should be the supply of accurate and relevant information.

(b) Laws, market powers and practices

Do you really want diversity? The proposals put forward by the Minister for Communications seem to call for mergers and other anti-competitive measures in aid of traditional media organisations. Which is it: viability through competition and diversification, or by minimising them?

Consumer law and practice have little impact on media output on public issues. One regular media practice that defeats regulation of ownership is press gallery herding around One Big Story, told from much the same angle with almost identical inputs, at any given time. This practice defeats media diversity and inhibits the amount of information broadcast to voters and taxpayers about how we are (and might be) governed. I don’t know how you regulate that out of existence: a combination of public ridicule and corporate downsizing might work.

Public interest journalists know that the story is probably wherever they aren’t. They are more likely to fan out and find it, rather than timidly follow the herd. Competition and consumer laws seem somewhat beside the point. Instead, here are some laws that might be changed to foster more and better public interest journalism:

Parliamentary standing orders

There is no good reason why members of the public viewing the operations of the House and the Senate should be denied the ability to take recording devices such as notepads or cameras into the press gallery.

Public interest journalists should be able to take notes and pictures as freely as the press gallery can. Press gallery journalists are allowed into areas of the Parliament from which members of the public are denied access. There are predictable objections which may be dealt with as follows:

Objection	Response
Media organisations have commercial interests that are protected by removing recording devices from members of the public	Would these be the same media organisations who recently sacked their photographers? Why are public resources protecting private interests?
Media organisations comply with rules about parliamentary decorum	Do they? Would they be rules that help, or hinder, public understanding of how we are governed?
Random members of the public might create security risks	Parliament represents members of the public, and public access to parliamentary proceedings are an essential part of the parliament’s operations. Security issues are for security professionals.

Parliament has its own very sophisticated systems for recording official proceedings. The idea that public interest journalism might interfere with them is absurd. Standing orders that inhibit members of the public to take recording devices into the public galleries should be amended as soon as possible, as a sign of commitment to public interest journalism.

Fair use as a defence under copyright, freedom of information, and defamation laws

Public interest journalism should not be inhibited by restrictions arising from copyright. The Public Interest Journalism Foundation has called for ‘fair use’ provisions to cover public interest journalists, similar to those covering other researchers; you should look into this.

Freedom of information laws should only apply where there are violations of personal privacy, national security, or to police operations and judicial proceedings.

Public interest journalism should be a defence against defamation, similar to the principles in the High Court’s Lange case.

Open Government and Government 2.0 initiatives

The Australian government should be an impartial provider of high-quality, relevant data. That data should be readily available online, with appropriate safeguards for privacy, justice, and national security. The Australian Bureau of Statistics should be a leader in collecting and providing this data openly but securely (including in ways that resist spoofing), so that users can be sure Australian government data can be trusted.

Government agencies, politicians, and private providers (including the media and public interest journalists) may create value from that data by presenting it as information or even commercially-appealing content. It should not be the role of politicians to second-guess how certain data may or may not be used, and to restrict access according to short-term and half-baked tactical calculations.
I wish that the principles set out in the Open Government Partnership National Action Plan were applied, so that we could see fair and appropriate use of government data applied to public benefit. The Australian government’s commitment to the themes ii. Open data and digital transformation and iii. Access to government information should be a matter for close and ongoing scrutiny, for public interest journalists and parliamentarians alike.

Whatever resources government is committing to public data provision initiatives, it isn’t enough. The fate of the 2016 census (and, perhaps, the quality of ongoing government decisions based on that data) shows it cannot be done on the cheap. Readily available data enables creation of quality public interest journalism, and enables checking of news as to whether or not it might be fake.

The Public Interest Journalism Foundation

I support calls by the Public Interest Journalism Foundation to promote a culture of philanthropy to support public interest journalism, and to review legal restrictions (such as those described above) that inhibit it.

Calls to ensure diversity through reviews, legislation or public funds are problematic. In recent years we have seen cuts to legal aid and public broadcasting, and expansions of police powers over freedoms of the public in the name of security; the very idea that scope might be opened to public interest journalism against a trend of diminishing these important and related issues is questionable.

The terms of reference specifically refer to competition and consumer law, thank you very much. Your suggestions are outside our terms of reference

Are you serious about public interest journalism or not? You could work to reform those laws if you wanted.

(c) and (e) Fake news, propaganda, search engines

“Fake news” and propaganda are not new. Two persistent examples of fake news arose from Russia:

• 19th century Tsarist secret police fabricated a book called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which purported to provide documentary proof of a global Jewish conspiracy. Even though it has been extensively discredited, the book was a key text in Nazi Germany and is still disseminated among far-right groups today; and
• In 1945 Soviet troops discovered that Hitler had died. Stalin had his skull brought to Moscow. Yet, Soviet propaganda held that US and British forces had allowed Hitler to escape war-torn Berlin, and that he was living in South America, plotting his return.

This is not to say that Russia is somehow prone to “fake news” and propaganda, or that information from there is unreliable. Note that both of those examples pre-date the internet. It should surprise nobody, in government or outside it, that those who place a premium on information being fast and conveniently available run the risk of that information being untrue and unreliable.

For media organisations, the pressure on journalists to produce “content” to tight and shifting deadlines exposes them to the risk of unreliable information. By broadcasting it they risk damaging their credibility as their financial position worsens – but that’s their choice, not yours. I agree with New York University academic Jay Rosen when he urges media organisations to create value by focusing on truth and reliability over the traditional media imperative to be “first with the latest”, a battle that cannot be won against free internet-based providers.

Given that most press gallery coverage of politics simply involves relaying announcements and splicing together press releases, little of value is lost when online aggregators take these stories and promulgate them with no return to the media organisations originating that coverage. Media outlets who would have writers work for little or no reward get “a taste of their own medicine” when that work in turn is freely aggregated and distributed.

(d) Public interest journalism in underserviced markets: regional areas, culturally and linguistically diverse markets

Public interest journalism has a role in extrapolating high-level activities of government (e.g. millions of dollars spent in a particular area) and exploring how they affect a particular community, whether or not a particular affect has been included in a formal announcement. Whether or not traditional media organisations regard these communities as commercially appealing markets is beside the point of public interest journalism.

The more people there are engaged in public interest journalism, the higher the chances that local communities will be better informed on matters that affect them. Communities need not be geographically defined, but by language or other specialist interest.

“All politics is local”: this is a truism known to politicians, journalists, and to members of the public. While politics might operate on that level, the practice of Australian political journalism largely doesn’t.

The weakness of centralised traditional media is evident during and after election campaigns. In NSW and Australian elections, we see facile coverage of western Sydney that is resented by those who live there, and uninformative to those who don’t. Something similar is happening in the US after last year’s election, where centralised media descends on communities in Appalachia and the Midwest that have few media resources of their own, and which are poorly served by centralised national media. By creating room for public interest journalism, you relieve pressure of traditional media that simply isn’t coping with the demands placed upon it.

Again, there are two main ways that the Australian government can boost public interest journalism to these communities:

• The provision of reliable and relevant data online as an exemplar of, and expression of faith in, high quantity and high quality public information to inform public debate; and
• The removal of petty and self-defeating rules restricting access to quality data and information, and the privileging of other concerns less important than public interest journalism ahead of it.

I question whether public broadcasters should maintain correspondents in media-saturated locations like the UK and the US. In theory, an Australian voice from those places provides a uniquely different perspective on events from those places. In practice it is hard to see what that difference is, and whether resources might be diverted to improve reporting in the public interest.

I hope that members of those communities will rise to these and other related challenges of the information age.

Distressed assets, part 2

Following on from yesterday on Bernardi's political bottom-feeding:

What becomes of the broken-hearted

Bernardi has some capacity to make inroads into the Coalition, particularly the Liberal Party, but only after the Turnbull government has gone. Nobody, not even George Christensen, wants to do to the extant government what Jack Beasley or Vince Gair did to Labor back in the day. Bernardi may be able to lord it over the churchmice who run Family First, but there are limits to his political reach and skill.

In South Australia, losses at state and federal level will see out the Liberals. Pyne and Marshall are not strong enough to hold out for long against a concerted movement by both Bernardi and Xenophon, not even if Pyne shakes down defence contractors for campaign funds. Say what you will about Xenophon, but he's tougher, smarter, and more deft at both policy and tactics than Pyne. Every step Pyne took to the right to maintain his place under Abbott and survive all that sniping from Minchin is erased by Bernardi.

The Liberals in WA (the most right-wing division of the party) are in disarray, discredited after so long in state government and little to show for the boom but debt. WA's normally strident business community is weakened and cannot afford to antagonise the new state Labor government, nor discount the prospect of a federal one. Once Cormann is gone, and Dame Rachel Cleland dies, who will block Liberal ears to the siren call of AusCons?

Michael Kroger has almost succeeded in his life's work of ridding the Victorian Liberals of Hamerite moderates. Liberal preselections are beset by such dire candidates they make Sophie's Choice look straighforward. Whatever doubts Daniel Andrews may have are surely allayed by the unshakeable commitment by Kroger, Matthew Guy and Inga Peulich to douse their party in voter repellent. Once they lose three or four federal seats and get belted on Spring Street, they will embrace Bernardi like the old VFL used to snaffle Magarey Medallists - especially if Bernardi gets Bolt on board.

The ACT Liberals are pretty much Bernardi people anyway. Zed is one good lunch away from throwing in his lot with Bernardi, or he'll lose to the Greens and the party structure will switch to AusCons bag and baggage. The NT's CLP might take a detour via Hanson but they will end up in his camp sooner or later.

All of the above scenarios, and the ones in the preceding post, show the one thing required for Bernardi to succeed politically: a vacuum.

In Tasmania, Abetz and Lambie will see off Bernardi. As the Hodgman government fades, a conservative may appear who doesn't like Abetz and won't play second-fiddle to Lambie, and may turn to Bernardi: there are too many variables for that to even postulate now.

The Queensland LNP was formed to secure state government, keeping control in gnarled rustic hands while presenting a civil face to the urban south-east. They only succeeded once. Once. What happens if they get smashed, not just by a Labor government but one led by women! Two of them! Re-establishing the Liberal Party's Qld division and the non-national Nationals won't be an option.

Queensland is a long way from South Australia, but Bernardi can speak slowly and it isn't like he's from Sydney or Melbourne. Some LNPers may drift to AusCons if the scenarios with Katter and Hanson come off, but again there are too many variables.

This leaves NSW.

There are two factors operating in NSW. First, the Coalition is running a functioning, popular government, that is getting stuff done and solving problems. There are some right-wingers, but not enough to destroy the government with dogmatic focus on issues that don't matter and neglect of those that do. Right-wingers like Dominic Perrottet and Anthony Roberts are on a sweet wicket, and nothing Bernardi says or does will entice them away from their current roles.

The second is the current federal member for Warringah. Abbott was never a factional leader, but he's had to become a figurehead because the Liberal right in NSW are such monkeys. He can't sit around Canberra or go jogging or do whatever else he does with any confidence that his homeboys are minding the shop.

Whenever you see the press gallery insisting that Abbott is lunging for his old job, know that he's flat out securing his own preselection. Preselection (the process by which a party endorses a candidate to run for a parliamentary seat) is basic political competence, one of those fundamental skills upon which higher-order operations depend. Even the newest, lowliest backbencher has won preselection.

Murdoch TV personality Ross Cameron was the little brother Abbott never had. He spent eight years as MP for Parramatta on Abbott, like those betas who trail around behind school bullies. Cameron should be one of Abbott's chief lieutenants within the NSW Liberals, but instead he has fallen foul of a basic rule that has seen him suspended from the party for five years. Quite why Murdoch TV regard him as some sort of sage is unclear to me. Another of Abbott's posse, Jokus Ludicrous, is facing similar disciplinary action because of similarly basic stupidity. Abbott's bestie, David Gillespie, is under threat of losing his seat over yet another basic act of dumbness.

Those guys should be supporting Abbott, not putting themselves in need of support. After 23 years in Parliament, he should have a tight-knit band of professionals who head off any threat to his political survival and keep the home fires burning. Abbott fans will tell you what a great guy he is, and how his staff love him, but if the guy can't keep preselection in Warringah then he's fundamentally weak and probably even more of a prick than I think he is. Canberra is brutal at exposing and homing in on political weakness, and no weakness is more fundamental than preselection: the result of building a team in your local branches that is both loyal and effective.

Here is where the idea that Turnbull is worse than Abbott falls down. For all his limitations, Turnbull can hold his preselection against all comers. He has a loyal and effective base within his local branches. Whatever travails he may have with Dutton or Shorten or Trump, his base is sufficiently solid so that he can act on the national stage.

The idea that the government are going to elect a leader who can't be sure his own branches are behind him is stupid, an idea advanced only by people who don't understand politics and have no business reporting on it. Abbott might feel more at home in a party that consisted only of conservatives - but it wouldn't be a governing party. He fancies his chances at winning a wider constituency, and to do that you need to be in an established party with a track record of being in government - like, say, the Liberal Party as it is currently constituted.

If Bernardi offered Abbott a role within AusCons it would be a comedown for both men. Bernardi can lord it over Gichuhi or Carling-Jenkins, but Abbott is a different beast. Would Abbott be a net gain to the AusCons?

If Turnbull and Berejiklian lost office then the right would be out for revenge - but they are so stupid they would fuck that up too, and activate the party's "let's not be hasty" mindset that saw them lose state government for 16 years. There might be a few individuals and even a few Liberal branches that might defect to AusCons, but so what? The defection of, say, Walter Villatora might not be the coup Bernardi's people might want the press gallery to believe.

Follow the money

Bernardi was unsuccessful in securing money from the US right, such as the Koch brothers (the real reason for his trip to New York last year, to the point where questions should be asked about his publicly-funded trip and its impact on Australia's representation at the UN). He might be more successful if the Republicans lose Congress in 2018 and the White House in 2020, and those donors spread more of their funding internationally.

Bernardi won't be able to conduct fundraising and parliamentary business simultaneously, but who would he trust to raise the money? Where is his Santamaria? Where, apart from his wife is his sounding board?

Any liquidator will want to make sure his party's financial management is even tighter than his message discipline. Even the whiff of impropriety will repel potential and current members, and will invalidate any of the prospects described here for Bernardi's and AusCons' future. The Liberal Party will not take kindly to having its money switch with members to AusCons.

Why Bernardi can't win in the long term

When you're a liquidator/administrator, you don't have a long-term stake in the business you're taking over. The dream that inspired the business and motivated those within it is over: those people may weep as you take their security passes and send them home. You stop the bleeding and focus on the short-to-medium term interests of the stakeholders, who all have unequal importance when dividing what's left of the loot.

Bernardi's wish for an equal-but-opposite broad social base for conservatism is doomed:

• Workers join unions to secure better wages and working conditions; there is no countervailing broad movement for less and worse, especially as the Reserve Bank and the Business Council realise the economic impacts of consumers withholding spending.
• Progressive social movements seek to force change on politicians often unwilling to grant it; few will work as hard or as long to retain stasis.
• Even conservative women bristle at being patronised, denied opportunities open to male counterparts, and/or subjected to violence. Countervailing forces to feminism are weak and yield when pushed or even exposed.
• And while there is countervailing force to same-sex marriage, there appears to be no fallback option should it ever come to a vote and pass the parliament. It's hard enough to maintain one's own marriage let alone interfere in those of others.

Assuming you can't just outlaw GetUp! and the ACTU, what would happen with a broad-based activist left and a broad-based activist right? There are two possibilities:

1. Centrist stasis, moderate liberals in ever more pointless set-piece quadrilles with Centre Unity Labor, achieving little of real import; or
2. A hopelessly riven polity that talks past one another, as we see in the US; or
3. There is no third option. Conservatives do black/white only. As Tony Abbott shows us, nuance is for sissies and losers.

Where is the left-wing Alan Jones? Probably arguing with the right-wing Van Badham. This kind of shit is where Bernardi's head is at. As a liquidator, and then as a politician, Bernardi's focus is short-to-medium, which is a problem for any conservative.

We live in an age of great upheaval, and conservatives are people looking for timeless continuities when everything seems nasty, brutish, and short. Bernardi says he's a conservative, and for all I know he may live a traditional life in Adelaide's more sylvan glades, but it isn't enough. As per the dot-points above, he doesn't have a long-term agenda. Where are the institutions that might buttress enduring human interests: the church? Government? Western Civ expressed through arts institutions?

Thanks to publicly-subsidised education at Sydney and Oxford, Tony Abbott can drop Western Civ references from Augustine to Zwingli - but he doesn't live those values. He can't show conservative voters how to do so, nor persuade non-conservatives why it's desirable (remember his proposal for hard-to-dissolve covenant marriages?). Bernardi can't just do old-school scolding, hoping tradition will back him up. If he gets Abbott in the tent, he cedes control, but without Abbott he runs a boutique operation beneath his ambition.

Once he assembles a ramshackle gang (with or without Abbott), Bernardi will have to keep them together and focused on some long-term goal that's bigger than all of them. There is no proof Bernardi has leadership skills. There is no proof he has a strong team outside parliament offering depth of perspective and a sounding board, as the major parties do with their executives. I've explained his lack of a long-term agenda. What he's doing is clearly working for some in the current, transitory environment; but to use a phrase much used by hippies, it's just not sustainable.

Distressed assets, Part 1

Despite its both-sidesism, John Warhurst's piece on Senators Rhiannon and Bernardi is worth reading. I wish political commentary from the press gallery was half this good.

Warhurst makes some good points on Bernardi (and on Rhiannon too - balance!), and on Bernardi's wish for conservatism to become a movement that extends beyond parliament. I won't speculate on Rhiannon's wider game, but Bernardi's is interesting because it indicates a new development in Australian politics.

The pattern (from which Bernardi is departing)

The Liberal Party and the Nationals (including the Northern Territory's CLP and the LNP in Queensland) represent the enduring political institutions on the right of Australian politics. Right-wing parties operating beyond the Coalition tend to rise and fall with individuals and/or with short-term political predicaments that, when resolved, push the smaller party into oblivion.

Far-right white-supremacist parties tend to congeal around a leader: now Blair Cotrell, formerly Jim Saleam or Eric Butler or Francis de Groot. While this remains a virulent strain in Australian politics, it goes into remission without a disciplined leader, and relies heavily on the personal quirks of whomever has managed to herd those turkeys at any given time.

Slightly to the left of those guys, but mainly to the right of the Coalition, we have seen right-wing insurgencies from Pauline Hanson, Bob Katter, Brian Harradine, Fred Nile, David Leyonhjelm, Bob Day, Rob Brokenshire, Clive Palmer, and others who slip my mind at this hour. They have all built political vehicles that got them elected and re-elected, and achieved not much else (I'm not counting pissed-off Coalition MPs who lose preselection, flounce to the cross-benches, and get flushed out of the political system at the next election).

Most were flashes in the pan. Harradine served in the Senate for a generation. Fred Nile is NSW's longest-serving MP; when he was elected in 1981, the state's current Premier and Opposition Leader were in primary school. Hanson, briefly an MP in the late 1990s, has returned after a career on life support from dying commercial media - but for how much longer?

The exception that proves the rule

The one right-wing movement that endured outside the Coalition and had a real effect on the Labor-Liberal "main game" was the Democratic Labor Party. It was formed out of the Catholic Social Studies Movement, orchestrated but not led by Bartholomew Augustine (Bob) Santamaria. It sought to represent conservative working people in line with Catholic teaching on labour representation and other social policies, including anti-communism; this placed them outside the ALP, which was not communist but also not as anti-communist as the Coalition.

The DLP held the balance of power in the Senate between 1955 and 1974, mostly passing government bills put to them with few or no modifications. They won a NSW state seat from 1973-76 because a Liberal minister forgot to lodge his nomination forms. It was considered a spent force after then, except in campus elections at Victorian universities.

The party was resurrected around the turn of the century by Archbishop George Pell, who wanted a distinctively Catholic voice within Australian conservatism.

Pell ramped up the DLP, with representatives elected to the Senate and the Victorian Legislative Council. He involved the Church in the Institute of Public Affairs, which was integrated with the Liberal Party in Victoria (and which promptly dropped libertarian positions on issues like abortion or euthanasia). Chris Berg was paid to write a book extolling the virtues of Western Civilisation, and put the Church at the heart of it; but in his hands a compelling, vibrant and eventful story became a damp grey mist. Pell wrote articles for Quadrant and served on its board. Catholic schools received more government funding than at any time in Australian history.

In 2003, Peter Hollingworth resigned as Governor-General because he had mismanaged instances of child abuse within Anglican church organisations for which he had been responsible. Howard briefly considered holding a royal commission into child sexual abuse within church institutions; Pell told him he would recreate sectarian divisions by such a move. Howard's lifelong political project was to unite conservatives across sectarian lines within the Liberal Party, so (as Pell knew) his words cut deep.

The DLP won a seat in the Senate, but John Madigan left the party before losing the seat. It may not have retained its place in Victoria's upper house at the state's next election, even had Pell not himself been charged with sexual offences against children. A subsequent royal commission, called by an atheist woman PM, showed the Catholic Church could not be trusted to run aspects of its affairs and that the application of secular law to practices within the Church would prevail over internal processes. The imbroglio over government funding of schools reached a consensus that funding Catholic schools would be reduced, and that they would not spend public money contrary to government guidelines.

In short, all that Pell hoped to achieve in Australian politics from reviving the DLP lies in ruins. He has the right to remain silent - but in politics as in law, anything he does say may be taken down and used against him.

Enter Cory Bernardi (but not in That Way)

When Cory Bernardi left the Liberal Party he gave up his wish to unite broadly conservative forces within the Coalition, which had been his aim as recently as late last year. It was reasonable to assume that Bernardi would build up Australian Conservatives as just another vanity project, electing nobody but himself, and that it would die when either the voters of South Australia grew tired of him, or he of them.

Before entering parliament, Bernardi was an accountant specialising in insolvency. While standard Liberals talk about growth and opportunity, Bernardi's experience comes in once the go-getters have gotten and gone, following a very tightly regulated process. He has brought these skills to bear on distressed political assets on the right. Not since the Liberal Party was formed in 1944 has anybody bothered to do this in an ongoing, systematic way. Press gallery journalists look to shoehorn developments into clichés and call it news, so it is disappointing but not surprising that they have missed this development.

Family First was the Protestants' attempt to match the DLP and get around Fred. They succeeded in electing Stephen Fielding and Bob Day to the Senate, but neither was capable of building the party beyond himself. Bernardi picked it up for a song. Having two Senators looks like momentum, like Chipp and Mason for the Democrats in 1977. It made up for his failure to secure funding from Gina Rinehart, and from the right-wing groups now reaping the billions they sowed into what is now the Trump Administration.

He did the same with the DLP, wiping both the Pell taint and the antediluvian irrelevance of Madigan. He gave Rachel Carling-Jenkins MLC with more options than a slow slide into irrelevance. He spread his wings beyond South Australia, which is more than small-l liberal Nick Xenophon could manage.

To pick Bernardi's next move, develop a nose for decay within what look like viable structures.

Bob Katter is 72 years old. Maybe he will want to keep travelling from balmy Charters Towers to chilly Canberra indefinitely, but maybe he won't; maybe the decision, one way or another, will be made for him.

Fred Nile is 83 this September. He has fought off successors within his own party, and the hacks and sycophants surrounding him now won't be able to run a chook raffle without him. If Bernardi comes calling they will hear him out at least.

Pauline Hanson won't hang around forever. For all the media opportunities created for her, she isn't exactly a media tart. She snarls at scrutiny and is awkward at stunts. These days her words are every bit as measured as the dullest major-party hack. In Parliament she does what the DLP did and basically votes with the government. One Nation's experience in WA showed she is clear about what she wants from her followers, but much less so about what she offers them in return. After all, the party is called Pauline Hanson's One Nation, not Your One Nation.

In the late 1990s she spent two-and-a-bit years as an MP. In 2004 the federal parliamentary pension scheme was closed to new entrants. Four-and-a-bit years from being elected to the Senate in 2016 she will hit the seven-year eligibility for that lucrative old-school parliamentary pension, which has always been her light-on-the-hill. On that day (in 2020/21) you won't see her for dust, gay Muslim Aboriginal wind-turbines or no. By then her boosters in commercial media will be even weaker than they are now - learning the lesson that if your product is crap, regulatory reform won't help you.

And yet, Hanson will still have a following. Bernardi will make them an offer they won't be able to refuse.

Either Danny Nalliah will give politics away, or he will sign on with Bernardi. He has no third option. Christians can't convincingly maintain the politics of turning away the stranger.

David Leyonhjelm would not give way to the slippery Helen D. His gunloser constituency in NSW overlaps with that of One Nation's Brian Burston. Either or both will give way to Bernardi when the time comes, or they will give over to Shooters & Fishers and leave Bernardi nothing to salvage.

Clive Palmer leaves no legacy, in business or politics. Jacqui Lambie was elected in her own right and works all sides of the political street, starving Hanson of oxygen in what should be a strong One Nation state. Lambie had guts and base enough to see Palmer off, and she can do the same to Bernardi.

Bernardi will be able to crystallise the supposedly large but disorganised movement of men upset with the Family Court, and against Rosie Batty's movement on domestic violence. Hanson has indicated her support for these, but as a divorced woman who had sought police protection from her exes, she is unconvincing. Were Mark Latham to throw in his lot with Bernardi (and face it, he has nowhere else to go either) it would be the biggest act of political self-abasement since Billys Hughes or Holman.

--

Tomorrow: will Bernardi cannibalise the Coalition? Does he have a long-term future?

That old junkyard dog

I am not going anywhere.

- Tony Abbott

The traditional media are making the same mistakes with Abbott that they made when he was Opposition Leader. Almost all members of the press gallery were there when he was Prime Minister. None of them learned the lesson that Abbott talks a lot but achieves very little. All of them just did what they did in 2011, and ran his slogans verbatim.

Abbott became Prime Minister in 2013 on a promise to end the interpersonal turmoil between Rudd and Gillard, and promising to change relatively little policy-wise. When he began reneging on promises to maintain education funding, and other matters scarcely covered by the press gallery for their beyond-Canberra impact, his polling sank and stayed low. The press gallery put Abbott's decline down to the 2014 budget, but only because they continued to give him the benefit of the doubt long after wiser observers had turned away. We had seen Abbott for what he was and is.

Even those who believed in this shower of platitudes must know that Abbott can't make good on it. He can sow confusion about carbon abatement measures, but he can't pretend it is a non-issue, and the idea that he might come up with a workable solution is long proven false. And that's the most credible of his pronouncements! All the rest of it - reintroducing the 20-shilling pound, reducing costs on WestConnex by importing English convicts under a new deal with the equally desperate and incompetent May government - if press gallery experience really was worth more than I prize it at, then they would have dismissed both messenger and message long before now.

Tony Abbott is not newsworthy simply as a former PM. When tax-and-spend social democracy faded in the late 1970s - after Whitlam, and with the uninspiring examples of Callaghan and Carter and Schmidt - Billy McMahon did not start monstering the Fraser government. He was treated as a irrelevance whenever he proffered the mildest suggestion. While Whitlam himself refrained from commenting on many of the Hawke-Keating reforms, Whitlam-era relics like Tom Uren or Stewart West spoke out and were received with bemusement. Abbott's contributions should be viewed in a similar light. His slogans are slightly reworded from half-a-dozen years ago, and were stale a century before that: he has learned nothing and forgotten everything, just like the press gallery.

Some believe Abbott returning to the Prime Ministership would further ensure a Labor win at the next election, a weak-tea version of the marxist notion of 'accelerationism'. All this would mean is that the next government would be so traumatised by the ratbaggery that preceded it, that the imperative for far-reaching reform would be weakened. Areas where the current government has clearly failed, such as school funding or reducing carbon emissions, would yield half-baked compromises to "get it off the table" rather than well-considered solutions.

Weak-tea accelerationism is idle. Either go all out with buckets of blood, like the Bolsheviks did, with the risk that the blood spilt might be your own; or start planning for both the victory and what might lie beyond it.

Abbott might be disrupting the Turnbull government from its stumbling, whatever-happens agenda, but he is weak on three levels that the press gallery don't really appreciate.

First, he's weak in the administration of government. There was no link between what he promised the public and what transpired in his government. He could not get legislation through parliament: bleating about fractious politics ignores the Gillard government's successes in getting legislation through both houses in which no party had a clear majority.

Second, he's weak politically. A leader in the ascendant has his people in key positions. Abbott's people are either out of the party (e.g. Ross Cameron, Cory Bernardi) or on their way out (Jokus Ludicrous). You can't lead a party with people who aren't sure whether or not they want to be there. In parliament, his supporters are burnt-out husks (Eric Abetz, Kevin Andrews), accident-prone clowns (Michael Sukkar, Peter Dutton) or unimpressive nobodies (Craig Kelly), who don't help Abbott in his attempts to establish a new future for the party and the nation.

He's not a great judge of character. His closeness to George Pell is not the asset is was; a bit like his other friendship with Ian MacDonald from earlier in his career.

Abbott has made assertions about the Liberal Party's base, and the press gallery dumbly assumes he knows what he's talking about. They haven't twigged to the idea that he might be bluffing or lying. Take this for example:

(c) The Shovel
No similar picture exists of Abbott with, say, Trent Zimmerman, a fellow Liberal who holds an adjacent electorate to his. If you don't even like Liberals, you can't lead them.

Third, his timing is off. If he became leader now, or soon, his failure would be complete long before the 2018 budget. 2018 would see Labor dancing around a hapless Abbott, and backbenchers preparing for opposition and/or unemployment, watching those lobbying jobs recede before their eyes. Timing is crucial for a successful leader.

Timing, and loyalty. The ability of his most feared weapon, Peta Credlin, to enforce discipline would be weaker than it was in the first half of this decade. She and Abbott had commanded loyalty and discipline by demonstrating it, but that's gone now. Had Abbott been quiet and dutiful, busying himself with the quotidian concerns of Warringah, his outbursts might have more impact. They have shown the utility of disloyalty, and there would be pushback if they tried to reintroduce the permission-to-breathe environment they had established previously. I pity the first Liberal who tells Credlin to just fuck off, but life will be easier for those who follow.

No press gallery journalist is awake to the possibility that Abbott has been paid for his speeches, to 2GB and to the IPA and CIS. He has not declared any such speaking fees, but he is probably not too proud to seek them, outside of the Liberal Party's standard (and regulated) processes for accepting donations. C'mon press gallery, let's see some journalism from you.

Dickhead claims the Abbott-Turnbull disagreement is about policy, when clearly it isn't. The merest whiff of policyness is more than enough to overwhelm his argy-bargy detection skills. The gallery does not do policy, it cannot use policy to assess political disagreements. This is also why Bernard Keane (no I won't link to him) was so risible: if Abbott was ever going to be challenged on policy it would've happened long before now.

Where is the journalist challenging any minister in this government on policy? Scott Morrison made a long, dreary, focus-group-ridden speech about how we're all bored with politics. No mention of his own role in that, and no fingering the media whose crap reporting is largely responsible for creating that anomie either; little wonder the gallery loved it.

The press gallery added together and cubed has no more knowledge of policy, and no ability to call him on it, than Abbott does himself. His rise to the Prime Ministership the blind leading the blind: the gallery are still blind to policy, though in fairness there isn't much to see in their limited purview. Coorey and Keane and the rest of the gang are still hankering to be (mis)led and the sucking vacuum Abbott creates draws them on, helplessly.

The press gallery serves the nation badly when all policy discussion is "argy-bargy", and when statements about policy mask underlying tensions that have nothing to do with philosophy or policy.

To give but one example: when Senator Payne correctly points out that the Navy doesn't have the infrastructure to support nuclear submarines, journalists report it as a "slap down" of Abbott rather than a simple, indisputable statement of fact. Nuclear submarines and the infrastructure necessary to support them is relatively easy to research and describe in "good old fashioned journalism" terms. If the dwindling band of journos are so keen to invoke GOFJ, they should be keen to do it; and if they don't value GOFJ, who will?

No journalist has the courage to say to Abbott: come back when you have some policy chops, not just the meat but the motion too. He might, as Captain Oates said, be some time.

A decade ago, Peter Costello wanted to be Prime Minister but couldn't explain how he'd be better than, or even different to, the foundering Howard. One sharp live interview could have burst that bubble. The leading political journalists of that time are still fossicking for fool's gold with Abbott. Labor frontbenchers write whole books that may or may not survive contact with their respective policy areas. The policy landscape is changing: even the Business Council recognise that nihilism isn't an answer on carbon or energy policy, and the plebiscite on same-sex marriage is very much less brilliant than Christopher Pyne touted it as.

The last politician to defiantly declare themselves going nowhere was Abbott's self-described political mother, Bronwyn Bishop.

The reason why northern beaches Libs kept voting for Bishop was because they thought she was a heavyweight. The reporting from Canberra certainly described her in that light - they all knew how she loved a freebie, and how she'd monster public servants over relative trifles without anything like an overarching vision, but day after day they still put her in the thick of the action. All the tales came out after she'd lost preselection; sitting on them had been a mistake, in both journalistic and political terms. Had the press gallery done some GOFJ on Bronwyn Bishop, her embarrassed local branches would have dumped her years ago.

The more the press gallery pumps up Abbott as A Former Prime Minister, One Who Has Supped With Kings And Presidents And Deserves Hectares Of Media Space, the more prone they will be to give him another go. That doesn't mean press gallery should start sledging him - it just means that a simple application of GOFJ on things like his donations, and the fact that coal is subsidised to billy-o, and how his indiscipline is repellent to leadership rather than a guarantor of it. He doesn't have any answers on jobs. He doesn't have any answers on his own job, or the one he held less than two years ago, or on those of the journalists far beyond the press gallery.

He described himself as a junkyard dog in 1994, and that's all he'll ever be. He doesn't have any teeth any more, but he still goes around gumming people who have better things to do. You can be humane about it, but it's time for those responsible to put him down, and for the rest of us to turn away.

If he wants his stuff run, make him buy ad space: he can go on junkets after he retires. Abbott has access to the money, and goodness knows traditional media could use it. They're not going anywhere either.

Shootout at Manus

About once a month in her column at The Conversation, Michelle Grattan comes to the conclusion that Peter Dutton is not a team player and not fully honest when it comes to the complicated facts and issues of asylum-seekers. This doesn't deter her from quoting his (what by now must surely be) worthless assertions: thanks to the wonders of goldfish journalism, every Dutton stuff-up is a fresh surprise to someone who sets the standard for the press gallery.

When it came to ministerial responsibility, public accountability, and other key principles underpinning democracy, Peter Dutton never had a chance. He entered parliament in 2001, at the election following hysteria about September 11 and the refugees aboard the MV Tampa. He defeated Labor's Cheryl Kernot, learning the lesson that even high-profile opponents can be brought down with enough dirt. Being a politician in a marginal seat requires a warm personality and a genuine concern for the local community; Dutton learned that fundraising can get around such shortcomings, particularly where Labor largely seemed to direct its energies elsewhere.

By the time Dutton became Assistant Treasurer under Peter Costello, the Howard government had lost its policy reform momentum; Costello had become bitter and twisted at not becoming Prime Minister. Soon afterward the Howard government lost office: any opportunity to teach young Dutton the finer points of vision, negotiation, or any other aspect of policy development and implementation simply went by the board.

He could have learned these lessons from the two Health Ministers he shadowed, Nicola Roxon and Tanya Plibersek. Both ran rings around him, policy-wise and in terms of having things to announce, but Dutton just sat quietly for six years; eventually their job simply fell into his lap. Healthcare professionals rated Dutton the worst Health Minister in a generation, but onward he went.

Like a child raised in poverty and dysfunction who ends up addicted and/or imprisoned, there was never any possibility Peter Dutton would or could have become an effective minister. Grattan and others in the gallery who chide him for falling short of standards impossible for him look like they don't understand the people and environment they've been covering for years.

From Trump and Abbott, Dutton learned that doubling down when wrong appeals to those who confuse obstinacy with fixity of purpose. The events of this week, where Dutton implied that asylum-seekers were pedophiles and shirked responsibility for yet another riot on Manus Island, should not have been as shocking as they apparently were.

Four things arising from this were surprising, however, and none received much coverage from the supposedly alert and diverse press gallery.

The first is that the Papua New Guinea police flatly contradicted an Australian government minister. Papua New Guinea had been an Australian colony from the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 to independence in 1975, and since then the country depended heavily on Australia for aid. Previous PNG governments danced around open confrontation with Australia; any exceptions tended to be reported in the Australian media as personality defects of the PNG politician concerned, rather than the issue itself. Recently, however, PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill has boosted relations with China, which has reciprocated in spades. PNG's trade and economic position relies less on Australia than it has for a century. Note the contrast with always-compliant Nauru, or too-quiet Christmas Island. We can expect more of this.

While Dutton has brushed off the accounts of local police about the Manus incident, it is clear the PNG government will not spare Australia from embarrassment, and that more information is yet to come out from Manus about conditions in the detention centre. Anzac Day pictures of smiling "fuzzy wuzzy angels" were designed to convey the idea that PNG will continue being compliant to Australian interests, but to rely too heavily on that would be a mistake.

Second, Turnbull didn't have to lend his name to Dutton's frolic. It has done him no good politically to embrace Dutton and feed his tough-guy fantasia. John Howard happily set off his pet ministers like Peter Reith or Tony Abbott on frolics of their own, not denouncing them but not standing in shot by them, prepared to step in to either claim credit or smooth over the damage, as appropriate. Turnbull should discipline Dutton for lying, and he needs to start casting around for an Immigration Minister with some credibility; he can't do either of those things. The Prime Minister has limited the scope he needs to manoeuver, which can't end well for him or the government more broadly.

Thirdly, the idea of cracking down on asylum-seekers as a vote-winner no longer applies. Nobody in the press gallery has twigged to this.

Fourth, Dutton as secret-intelligence bullshit artist hasn't learned the lessons from his fellow Queenslander, George Brandis. As soon as he became Attorney-General, Brandis began enthusiastically reducing our civil liberties on the basis of threats to which only he was privy. Over time Brandis' credibility has been diminished with all this wolf-crying, to the point where his every announcement is assumed to be a gaffe or a stuff-up. Demonstrations of competence, such as High Court appointments, are treated with relief. Brandis has spent decades trying to cultivate gravitas on the barren fields of his own abilities, and it hasn't worked; that's why it is time for him to go. Dutton is approaching the same point.

Peter Dutton's first job was as a police officer, a job requiring instant cultivation of gravitas and respect for kept secrets. Like Brandis, Dutton overestimates the extent to which "because I said so" is actually going to convince anyone. Never mind sincerity - conservatives have to be able to fake gravitas, or they're finished. This government is full of senior ministers who simply couldn't do gravitas if their lives depended on it - Dutton and Brandis, Pyne, Hunt, Cash, Joyce - they have to know on some level that their game is up.

As I've said before, Dutton has no powerbase. Queensland's LNP is disintegrating before our eyes, and he is neither a big enough player to ride out the storm nor small enough to survive and start again. No marginal-seat Liberal wants Dutton gladhanding in their electorate. The idea that he might become Prime Minister is a joke. He is a stalking horse for Abbott, just as the equally hapless former Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews was; just as the Abbott forces hoped Morrison might have been.

Dutton's attack on Mike Cannon-Brookes was reported by Mashable as just wacky political randomness, and the press gallery missed it entirely. Dutton was making a proxy attack on Turnbull. The Liberal Party isn't big on tech, and Turnbull's limited, long-ago experience of the sector (which informs his out-of-date preferences for the NBN) are virtually their only connection to a non-farm industry sector growing in size and importance. To attack somebody - anyone - in the tech sector is to attack Turnbull. Cannon-Brookes appeared not to realise this; government departments, the banks and other big companies import more IT workers (and employ more Australian IT workers) than Atlassian, yet you'll notice that Dutton didn't go after them. After all this is over, watch Abbott or Dutton sidle up to Cannon-Brookes and semi-apologise for using him as a political football.

For Turnbull, this is the thanks he gets for sticking his neck out for Dutton. It was genuinely amazing that the press gallery weren't all over this.

Queensland Labor needs to target Dickson with a seriousness that has largely been absent throughout Dutton's career. No more nice-but-dim local heroes. You don't want to give the LNP a run for their money, you want them to write Dickson off and scramble to foist Dutton elsewhere.

To be fair to the press gallery, while they remain deeply flawed we have seen this year some actual outbreaks of something approaching real journalism. Press gallery claim to be hunting for truth 24/7, but this is bullshit. In the first year of both the Turnbull and Rudd governments, the press gallery behaved as if the government could do no wrong. Throughout the entirety of the Gillard government, the government apparently could not do anything right. We are not in a position where the government is dead, where the opposition are wildly popular or where they have the gallery bluffed like Abbott did. Yet, the embarrassing gushing about Real Malcolm is behind us, and lately gallery reporting sometimes starts from a position of scepticism about what is being announced. It was genuinely shocking to see a carpet-stroller like Barrie Cassidy brave the choppy waters of ministerial authority - like Justin Bieber playing Macbeth, it's so incredible that it is even being contemplated that actual critique can't and doesn't take place. It can't last, and it's a product of an uncertain environment where gallery narratives simply aren't strong enough to sustain regular stories. Normal (dis)service will resume soon enough.

If Dutton has learned from Trump that you double down when the facts go against you, the US media is starting to learn the limits to which you can/should hang upon every word of a bullshit artist. The Australian media has never learned this: Abbott is not the media pariah his predecessor Billy McMahon was after 1972, and the media have embarrassed themselves by showering his handler Peta Credlin with the trinkets and baubles of their profession.

While it lasts, start thinking about government from first principles, and compare the tentative reporting of today with the gushing rubbish and ridiculous pile-ons from not very long ago. Then start thinking about how government can and should engage with the public. Playing the double game of hoping for more and better public information, while also lamenting the loss of redundant journo jobs, will only drive you crazy. Those wider questions of coverage and who does the covering has taken focus away from the daily whack-a-mole on which this blog has been built (and haven't I told you that lapsing into the passive voice means the writer/speaker is up to no good?). The work continues, with apologies to those hoping for more content more often.