Quality control

Australia has a two-party system, where the Labor Party and an established Coalition of parties contend to form government. Each of these parties (the Liberals in particular as the lead party in the Coalition) have a responsibility to choose candidates worthy of the responsibilities of government. It's easy to pick out examples where you don't like an MP and use that as an example of systematic failure, but the Coalition as the incumbent government have work to do in vetting candidates and drawing a line under unacceptable behaviour.

A need for intervention

Mal Brough helped the Coalition get rid of Peter Slipper, thus helping to hasten the end of the last Labor government. After all that effort it might have seemed unfair to exclude him from preselection for Fisher in 2013, but revolutions eat their own and the LNP should have waited until police processes had been exhausted. The reasons why he has chosen not to recontest in 2016 are the same as those for which a functioning party should have vetted him out of contention.

Looking at the LNP cohort in Federal Parliament, none of them are much chop. There are 22 LNP Members of the House of Reps (Queensland has 30 overall) and six Senators (of 12). Only Karen Andrews has a future. Six - Warren Truss, Bruce Scott, Warren Entsch, Teresa Gambaro, Ian Macfarlane, and now Brough — are waiting out their time. Stuart Robert will probably be a shadow minister next time the Coalition go back into Opposition. Brandis and Ciobo are floundering out of their depth. Dutton will probably lose his seat in a swing big enough to carry Labor into office, especially if he devotes too much time on punishing little injured children. Canavan is another culture warrior low on ammunition. Jane Prentice would make a perfectly nice Minister but the dolts will barge ahead of her.

The LNP have done a lousy job in talent selection, but then again they probably don't have much choice. Now that the central premise of the LNP - presenting a united front at state level - has been revealed as a hollow joke, they have an obligation to put their best people forward (Joanna Lindgren? Really?).

The very prospect of Newman’s ninnies slouching toward Canberra should fill everyone, Queenslanders or not, with disgust. It isn’t appalling, it isn’t funny, it’s just a disgrace from a state that is finally getting off its knees: every other party has managed to find some talent (except Clive, and he’s proving my point). Nobody with any other options wants to be a LNP MP, and it’s sad for the LNP that they have worked themselves into that position.

Leaking submarines

Greg Sheridan lied when he denied receiving the leaked National Security Committee papers from Abbott about the submarines. Nobody in any position of authority should have commented on it; Abbott tipped his hand when he did so.

Defence Minister Payne was the real target here: a factional opponent of Abbott’s from NSW, Abbott is trying to perpetuate Kevin Andrews’ laughable claim that removing him from the portfolio was a risk to national security. He hasn’t just missed the target (one does not simply wound Marise Payne and flit away), he’s made himself the issue.

You just can’t go around leaking top secret documents and be a credible government. If you’re a party of government, you can’t put someone who does that into your parliamentary team. There are some issues that are bigger than faction or party: this is one of them.

The Chief of the Defence Force and the Secretary of the Defence Department were right to negate the substance of the issue. Those guys do not mess around and nobody messes with them. The press gallery cannot simply report this as he-said-he-said argy-bargy any more.

J’accuse Tony Abbott of leaking that material, but I recognise that finer minds and keener students of Canberra skullduggery are on this case. If my suspicions are confirmed, the NSW Liberals have no real choice but to disendorse Tony Abbott as a candidate. I don’t care that he doesn’t have another job to go to, or that Curl Curl is full of dickheads who love him. No party of government could tolerate someone who tools around with top secret material.

In the 2007 election it was easy to follow the easy line that Rudd was cruising to victory, but real aficionados of politics were following closely Tony Abbott’s careening efforts in helping marginal-seat Liberals get unemployed. Abbott is doing that again, but instead of Tasmanian hospitals he has crossed the line into national security issues. The Liberals have to get rid of him.

If you thought Trent Zimmerman was tough standing against homophobia, wait until he has to take on the baddest homophobic, sexist, top-secret-leaking, don’t-give-a-damn bully of them all, in his capacity as NSW President of the Liberal Party. And take Abbott on, Zimmerman must - for the sake of party and nation.

Zimmerman and Payne are mates. Any other NSW Liberal who pulled something like that - any of these losers, for example - would already be toast by now. If the Liberal Party is to have any credibility at all, it cannot tolerate someone who leaks national security documents for a cheap headline (and headlines don’t come any cheaper than Sheridan’s).

The legal powers that the AFP and Defence have in investigating Sheridan and related parties are the very ones passed by the Abbott government, which caused an outcry at the time from journalists - real journalists, that is. Actual investigative journalists warned it would be used against journalists and journalism. Press gallery didn’t speak out on this issue in any meaningful way - they tend to be really bad at reporting legislation and debates and actual core business of parliament, and anyone who stood up for journalists and journalism would have their access limited. Now that legislation is demonstrably being deployed against a journalist, they have nothing to say about that either.

Turnbull is convinced he can ladle out another dollop of smarm and calm the waters: this might work on anyone but Abbott. At Goldman Sachs, Turnbull could sic the lawyers onto a recalcitrant employee, but the Liberal Party doesn’t work that way. He needs a combination of toughness and deftness that he probably doesn’t have.

The press gallery think this is about Turnbull vs Abbott, but it isn’t. It’s about the success or failure of the quality control systems that make representative democracy possible. The press gallery and those who employ them are part of those systems, and they’re quite simply fucked. Labor have played this impeccably (imagine if they hadn’t. Imagine some ragged old lefty had spoken out against the very construct of “national security”), but can they be trusted to go on?

Now it is time for the Liberals to wake up to themselves. If you want a reputation for targeting threats to national security, never mind kicking down the door of some young loudmouth in Punchbowl: start closer to home.

Missions and omissions of 'Political Animal'

I started out writing a review of Quarterly Essay 47 Political Animal: The Making of Tony Abbott by David Marr. I think it is the best thing I've read about Abbott, and recommend very strongly that you read it if you haven't already.

The straight-up review is taking ages but the following pretty much wrote itself. It is a rookie mistake for book reviewers to review the book they wish was written and judge the actual book by an inherently unfair standard. Very well: let me separate the review from what I wish Marr had examined (allowing, of course, for the fact that he only had 25,000 words to work with).

The Education of Young Tony

Abbott's education at Riverview is significantly under-examined, and maybe only a full biography can do it justice. Readers from outside Sydney may appreciate the brief summary but Marr's brief description reads like that of a Sydney social-climber: the real estate and the prestige being all you need to know about the place.

St Ignatius' College Riverview (to give its full title) was founded in 1880. The systemic Catholic schools and nascent public system at the time was designed for the self-employed and those who would spend their working lives as employees to undertake valuable, but subordinate work. The elite schools of the time were exclusively Anglican, Methodist or Presbyterian; Riverview was established in order to provide Catholic men with the education that would enable them to participate in the elite of society in New South Wales. Not long after its foundation, Riverview was producing judges, surgeons, members of parliament, captains of industry and other worthies occupying leading roles in Sydney and throughout the nation. No doubt it is possible to trace Christian, and specifically Catholic values, exercised by those men in office as a result of their Riverview education. This aspect of the character of Riverview differentiates Abbott from the education Julia Gillard would have received at Unley High.

Marr makes much of Abbott's ability to write. He also refers to Abbott quoting Shakespeare and other evidence of great reading, and of course there's the adage that you can't write well without having read well. His mother may have read him Ladybird books about the great and good, but did she read him Taming of the Shrew? Somewhere at Riverview a teacher stoked and channelled a high-level of ability and interest in reading and writing: who was that? How many other Ignatians were inspired by that/those teacher(s) with a love of good writing and the ability to practice it?

What is it about the Jesuit education that's special/different? Why did Abbott emerge from Riverview as an, err, energetic Catholic enforcer while others (e.g. Nick Enright, Robert Hughes, Abbott's classmate Ignatius Jones) did not? Three Labor Cabinet ministers were taught by Christian Brothers at St Patrick's College Strathfield: what makes Abbott different to/from them?

Why did others, trained in the same "old-fashioned 1950s Catholicism" abandon it while Abbott stuck by it?

Women

When Abbott was a member of the SRC and Barbara Ramjan was its President, it is possible that she was the first woman apart from his mother in a position to exercise power over him. Wall-punching aside, this aspect of the Ramjan-Abbott relationship is important: Abbott may be among the last of generations of men to have moved up in Australian society without having to deal with women in positions of power.

My guess is that before and during the 1970s, Riverview did not employ female teachers. The Universities of Sydney and Oxford would have employed few female lecturers and tutors, particularly in law and economics. The Catholic Church certainly didn't. The Bulletin and The Australian wouldn't have employed too many women at senior levels. Each of his political mentors/employers John Howard, John Hewson and David Flint were men. Only when he got into the Liberal Party when aged in his thirties would Abbott have encounted women in significant numbers, and at significant levels of power, where he had to deal with them in order to get what he wanted.

So Abbott had a girlfriend who, by the end of his first year at uni, he had abandoned while pregnant. Marr recounts his easy charm and his male friendships at university, and hints at 'women in the background' but fails to examine relationships with his female peers, other than Ramjan. Some of them must have fell for him, however hard, and others who gave him a wide berth. If, say, Greg Sheridan had been Gail Sheridan, would she have been able to form any kind of platonic friendship with the young Tony Abbott? Abbott's relationship with women outside his family, and other than the one he married, are significant.

Prurient detail is unnecessary. These relationships go to the issue of women's attitudes toward him, and to the wider question of whether someone who flouts social norms so flagrantly can truly be considered a conservative.

The University of Sydney

Again, it's significant that Abbott went to the University of Sydney, rather than UNSW or Macquarie (the latter of which is closer to Killara than the city's other universities). Why did he not light out for somewhere like ANU, like his contemporary Kevin Rudd? Why didn't he go straight to the seminary at 18? A Sydney graduate himself, Marr assumes that simply everybody goes to Sydney.

Also: given that Abbott was drinking, rucking, fucking and politicking quite a lot at uni, how on earth did he pass his studies? You don't get a Rhodes Scholarship by barely scraping through. Did any of the subject-matter actually captivate him? Given his love of good writing, and the fact that more female students study those courses, why did he not study Arts?

Sydney's Economics faculty at that time included several prominent marxists, like Ted Wheelwright and Frank Stilwell: how did Abbott bear it? Is the quality of his economics education responsible for the dismissive attitude of Costello and other commentators toward his grasp of economics?

Aside from Joe Hockey, and Marr's erstwhile Fairfax colleagues Peter FitzSimons and Malcolm Knox, many of Abbott's fellow students and rugger-buggers now occupy senior positions in law, finance, medicine and business (Knox writes novels about such people). It's one thing for them to have said "shut up, Abbo" at uni, but how do they feel now that the Prime Ministership is within his reach? Do they cheer him still or does the swot from Unley High not look so bad in comparison? The Liberal Party and the business community are no longer so synonymous nor as in lockstep as they were, even as recently as the 1970s.

Voting in campus elections is voluntary. It is possible to do very well in student politics with very few votes. It relies on apathy to speak and act unchallenged on behalf of students, and this aspect translates into the ennui of wider politics through student politicians carrying their assumptions through to the bigger games. It is a symptom of the failure of campus politics to extrapolate to national politics that Abbott's Sydney University contemporaries have not acted sooner to thwart his ambitions.

One of Abbott's associates at uni was one Steven Lewis. News Ltd employs a political correspondent called Steve Lewis, recently notorious for targeting allegations of homosexual activity as Abbott was at university. Are they the same person?

A junkyard dog in the Liberal Party

In the year following Sir John Kerr's dismissal of the Whitlam government, more Australians joined political parties than at any time before or since. Tony Abbott was not one of them, disdaining the very party he would one day lead. Marr should have made more of that than he did.

I was a member of the Liberal Party at around the same time as Abbott. I was a committed Young Liberal by the late 1980s when he was still flirting with joining the ALP, and I remember when he went to ACM. In the interim he was a "junkyard dog" for the right in internal party machinations.

The most notable of these was the 1989 Senate preselection, for the election the following year. The favourite to win top position on the ballot was a sitting Senator and a Shadow Minister, Chris Puplick. Also running was the immediate past State President of the party, Bronwyn Bishop. Only the top position was guaranteed of election; the second position on the Coalition ticket went to the National Party and the third was vulnerable to the vagaries of preferences.

Conservatives supported Bishop and the moderates Puplick; the moderates were being routed in Victoria and were under pressure across the nation. Abbott was a preselector and tore into Puplick with such ferocity that he became flustered, particularly on Puplick's support for gay issues such as HIV funding. The genteel NSW Liberals had never seen anything like it but they rewarded Bishop with the winnable spot, mainly because the moderates did not respond in kind to Abbott's provocations.

Abbott did the dirty work for Bishop and Howard. The right had no love for the relatively moderate Greiner-Fahey state government and people like Abbott made life difficult for it within its own ranks. It is telling that Howard had the clout to get his man into Warringah in 1994 while Hewson didn't, and couldn't play the internal party game; it's one of the reasons why Hewson never made it to the Lodge and Howard did. Abbott went into his first preselction with a sizeable chunk of votes in his pocket not despite, but because of, all that dirty work. It is genuinely amazing that Marr omitted this.

It is a real weakness of political history - particularly when written by journalists - that one minute someone joins a party and the next the party bestows their most prized offices and emoluments, lending a sense of inevitability to a process subject to duckshoving and luck. Marr was a journalist during this time, he had to be aware of it and it would not be hard to find Liberals who worked more closely with and against Abbott to talk about his role in the party.

After he became an MP Abbott would have watched at close quarters as Howard went through the Liberal Party like a dose of salts in 1995-96. This was the price the party paid for his leadership and the prospect of power. As leader, Abbott hasn't transformed the Liberal Party in his own image to anything like the extent that Howard did. Abbott was a happy spear-carrier for the right but he never led it. People like David Clarke call the shots; never has Abbott disagreed with them and carry the day. This is hugely significant as to Abbott's hold on his party's leadership.

Humanae Vitae

That factional warfare gave rise to this. People thought that was out of character too, because they weren't paying attention. My patience with Abbott's verbal binge-and-purge approach ended there, and so did my ability to regard his supporters as mugs and/or shits. Marr didn't mention this episode at all, and it (along with Foyle's article) complicates Marr's thesis about Abbott being a ratbag at uni who later matured.

Abbott refrained from making similar comments when Labor MPs Nick Sherry and Greg Wilton attempted suicide, but this should be a basic measure of humanity rather than a special concession on his part (Abbott is not entitled to be judged by his own standards). His condolences to the Prime Minister on the death of her father are niggardly to say the least.

When I first found out many years ago that Abbott's father was a dentist, this was the first thing that came to mind. Never mind that nice house at Killara, David, or the various organs of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church; Abbott has simply been badly raised.

Joe de Bruyn and anti-materialism

Latter-day conservatives in the Liberal Party consider that moderates have no place in that party. Any moderate objection to the conservative agenda was met with a chorus of "Why don't you go and join the Labor Party?". Abbott used to do this most enthusiastically to me and other moderates. This simple binary approach belies Liberal conservatives' close relationship with Labor's conservatives.

Marr identifies Joe de Bruyn as having encountered Abbott at school but ignores him thereafter. This is a mistake, particularly for someone who professes to examine the interface between religion and politics in this country.

During the Howard ascendancy of 1995-96, de Bruyn built back-channel relationships with Liberal conservatives; especially Howard, Abbott and Kevin Andrews. Unlike other interest groups the union movement cannot openly work well with both major parties, so any relationships it has with the Coalition must be covert. After he left the portfolio Peter Reith and others have argued that there was much to be done in workplace relations reform, and one major reason why Abbott and Andrews did so little was because de Bruyn made it clear to them that any such initiatives were unacceptable to him.

On other issues, de Bruyn is active in Liberal circles and acts to support Abbott, especially on those issues where the Vatican line is engaged. He intervened with conservatives for Abbott in the debate over RU486 against Labor's then Shadow Health Minister Julia Gillard (those who are amazed that Prime Minister Gillard, a lefty lawyer from Melbourne, won't support gay marriage would be less amazed if they understood de Bruyn better). It is a cop-out for Marr and his entire profession to simply label de Bruyn "shadowy" and/or ignore him altogether.

In this interview (at 13:28 - 14:03) Marr claims the role of conservatives is to keep the price of labour low, and that the DLP don't do this.

De Bruyn works with two of Australia's biggest companies and most significant employers, Coles and Woolworths, to keep labour costs down, down and to limit industrial disputes. The combination of labour cost reduction with Catholic principles is significant in disdaining the materialism on which trade unionism is built. Marr observes Abbott's personal lack of materialism, but fails to mention how this flows through to his regularly expressed scorn for people who band together and carry on for the sake of a few extra bucks. He never supports campaigns for higher wages other than those for MPs. If you're going into Abbott's record and projecting it forward onto what an "Abbott Government" might look like, anti-materialism as an impulse to keeping wages low is a misunderstanding of how what used to be known as Groupers operate today.

You can over-egg the Abbott-de Bruyn relationship, and to be fair de Bruyn operates in a way where he leaves very few traces that journalists can detect. His impact is so significant that Marr tells half a story when he labours the DLP-Santamaria aspect of Abbott but then ignores de Bruyn, who is a latter-day Santamaria in many respects.

Craig Thomson

Craig Thomson was Federal Secretary of the Health Services Union from 2002 to 2007. Tony Abbott was Federal Minister for Health from 2003 to 2007.

Given that Abbott was the sort of minister who'd work with a wide range of stakeholders to get things done, according to Marr, he and Thomson would have worked together at various points over some years - including during the period when HSU member funds were allegedly being misused.

As a political animal, Abbott must have been aware that Thomson was targeting what was then a marginal Liberal seat. He must have been able to pick up indications, however subtle, across the political divide that Thomson had baggage.

For most of this term of Parliament the Coalition have targeted Thomson. It is unlikely that any Coalition MP or camp-follower knows Thomson better than Abbott. Abbott led the attack on Thomson and even, in a simulacrum of magnanimity, suggested that Thomson resign for the sake of his family (which, if Thomson had resigned, may well have made Abbott Prime Minister by now). It is hard to imagine what more the Coalition could have done to ramp up the pressure on Thomson, yet he remains an obstacle to Abbott's ambitions.

This isn't some facile point that Craig and Tony used to work together and now they don't: that's politics, baby. The question here goes to Abbott's judgment. He decided that Thomson was Labor's weak link, he decided that the Coalition's road to government was over Thomson's political body, and this tactic hasn't been as successful as Abbott and others might have hoped.

"the most successful Opposition leader of the last forty years"

Marr said that Abbott is "the most successful Opposition leader of the last forty years". This is one of those mantras of the Canberra press gallery whose adoption is almost a price of admission to that institution, and facilitates the groupthink by which it operates.

Marr doesn't define what success means in that position. Given the high standards and competitiveness of the major parties, you would have to say that a successful Opposition Leader is one who becomes Prime Minister. Here are some Federal Opposition Leaders with a better track record than the incumbent:

• Malcolm Fraser became Opposition Leader in February 1975 and was Prime Minister within ten months. He led the Coalition to the two biggest electoral majorities ever.
• The winner of the third-biggest election victory in our history, John Howard, took 14 months to go from being elected his party's leader to the Lodge (yes, yes, he had another four years or so in the 1980s).
• Kevin Rudd became Opposition Leader in December 2006 and was Prime Minister a year later.
• Bob Hawke achieved the same feat within a month.
• Billy Snedden became a laughing stock for refusing to concede that the Coalition had lost the 1974 election. Even so, he led his party to set the parliamentary conditions that saw a popular and reforming government turfed out. He was a "political animal" at uni and was rude to the incumbent Prime Minister in the House.
• Kim Beazley led Labor to 51% of the two-party-preferred vote in 1998: yet we all agree that Labor lost that election while Abbott's result in 2010 is a "near victory", whatever that means.

Being at best the seventh-best Opposition Leader doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

Going back further than forty years, Abbott has a lot in common with his co-religionist Arthur Calwell: a record as a minister that belied a hardline set of beliefs, an authentic representative of an aspect of his party that is no less attractive to the public for that, and a leader who got lucky in his first election from which it was all downhill. Mosman Town Hall is in Abbott's electorate.

In word and deed

You can only accept the claims by Greg Sheridan and Gerard Henderson that criticism by Marr and others of Abbott is "anti-Catholic" if you assume that Abott's every word and deed is done to advance the word of the Lord and the Church. Good luck with that.

The organisation that Abbott leads is looking to increase its numbers in Parliament, while Sheridan's employer is looking to cut staff. Mateship aside, Sheridan's shrieking about Abbott must constitute something of an audition for redundancy. If I were responsible for putting names to job-reduction targets at News Ltd, Sheridan would be top of mind.

Redemption and forgiveness

There was a time when such appalling behaviour would see a chap blackballed from clubs and other institutions of the elite. Clearly this hasn't happened to Abbott, and in this regard too perhaps he should be grateful for living in an age free of the social rigidities he would seek to (re-)impose.

Abbott may insist on a fresh start, but this does not mean he has to be given one. Expecting forgiveness to follow from confession without the drudgery of introspection and atonement may be as Catholic as all get out, and certainly the media seem prepared to cut him plenty of slack. There is, however, real doubt that everyone accepts Abbott's insistence as much as the Catholic church or the Canberra press gallery do. In this disconnect will Abbott's fate be sealed.

In a recent episode of ABC Radio National's Sunday Extra, one of Australia's most professional trolls made the following observations (at 14:33):

... reciprocity, that is ... [almost two minutes of drivel as he marshals his thoughts, then] I turn up to work on time, I do a good job, I expect you [the government and other 'élites', strangely not including him] to do the same.

He used that to imply that Australians were basically conservative and that they would therefore reject the incumbent government. Here's why (in line with his patchy record of success) this guy lacks the ability to make the link and make it stick.

Tony Abbott has gotten away with it all his life. The vandalism and violence as a youngster, the leer and swagger, all show a man who cares not a whit for the opinion of anyone else and is supremely convinced that everything he does is right and good (or if not, that he'll get away with that too). Gillard at least takes people seriously, and the education and NDIS initiatives provide proof of that.

Abbott has done all the learning he is going to do, and if people don't accept the scraps of contrition he tosses out from time to time then to hell with them. Such an unstable man cannot deliver the stability in government that conservatives crave, and that conservatives need to convince voters of if they are to form government. That's why he relies so heavily on Howard Veneer; and he'll thank lefties like David Marr not to probe it too hard and rake over old ground, thanks very much.

Profoundly out of character

Should one incident, many years ago, denied by one of the two parties involved, be enough to disqualify someone from the Prime Ministership? No.

Should that incident give rise to a repeated pattern of both violence and cover-ups? Yes, it should disqualify Tony Abbott from the Prime Ministership.

It is a fact that Barbara Ramjan alleged Tony Abbott threatened her in 1977, and it is a fact that Abbott has (later) denied doing so. It appears to be true that there were no witnesses to this event. Both of these facts appear in David Marr's Quarterly Essay Political Animal: The Making of Tony Abbott, with direct quotes from both Ramjan and Abbott. The wording of Abbott's quasi-denial (on page 17) is significant:

"It would be profoundly out of character had it occurred".

Out of character, you say.

Greg Sheridan stakes everything on Abbott's character. It is interesting that he places such great credence on the word of Jeremy Jones and then fails to quote him directly, leaving the reader hoping that Sheridan has summarised Jones fairly. According to Sheridan, it is not enough for Abbott to be a man of high character in himself; someone else, in Manichean terms, must be made out to be less than he appears:

Marr claims that in 1977, when Abbott was defeated for the presidency of the Student Representative Council by Barbara Ramjan, he went up to her, came within an inch of her nose and punched both sides of the wall beside her as an act of intimidation.

Marr records Abbott's denial of this but says he, Marr, believes the incident took place as described by Ramjan. Marr is wrong. And this mistake reflects his overall sloppiness as a journalist, failure as a historian and distorting bias as a polemicist ...

Abbott was my best friend at that time ... I remember the night in question quite well. No such incident was ever discussed by Abbott or by anyone else in his circle. It is utterly inconceivable.

Marr could have found this out if he were a competent historian.

Found what out? Found out that Abbott's friends support him, and that Ramjan's support her? That sort of thing might pass for EXCLUSIVE at the Daily Murdoch but it's not much chop in itself.

Marr described an incident between two people: one described what happened and the other denied it (and apparently neglected to discuss it with his muckers). There were apparently no witnesses to the encounter itself apart from the two protagonists. Marr sets out the facts and declares his judgment: a reader who was not there on the night in question is free to come to a conclusion other than the one Marr reached.

Marr was not obliged to hijack a wider story by rounding up a posse of non-witnesses to vouch for the general character of either protagonist in a single event that may or may not support conclusions on the general character of a man with more power and responsibility than the whole of the Sydney Uni SRC put together.

Sheridan's attack on Marr's journalism, historianship etc seems like a lunge for some objective quality in a subjective dispute (and criticising a polemicist for being biased and even distorting is to misunderstand what a polemicist is, whether or not Marr is one).

What might have happened if Abbott had confessed to Sheridan of having committed an act of violence, or if Sheridan had witnessed such an event, and Abbott had then asked Sheridan - for the sake of their friendship - not to tell anyone? In the sky-high dudgeon of his wouldn't-hurt-a-fly routine Sheridan has not denied Abbott's assault of Joe Hockey: Hockey himself has admitted it, and there were plenty of witnesses. Sheridan protests a little too much.

Sheridan has since been refuted, if not negated, by fellow Bulletin alumnus Lindsay Foyle referring to a separate incident.

Marr sets out a pattern of behaviour where Abbott trashes - physically, verbally and otherwise metaphorically - those with whom he disagrees, particularly if they are women. You could probably find people who regularly attended Sydney Uni SRC meetings chaired by Ramjan who'd deny that Abbott ever addressed her as "Chairthing" (if Sheridan was an investigative journalist, rather than one whose only forays into investigative journalism involve a feed and claret on Rupert's coin, he'd be on that case now).

Look at the way Gillard and Roxon ran rings around him as his shadow minister, and how they make him mope and snarl today, how he doesn't respect them enough to engage with them.

If you've been in and around politics a while you have seen crises come and go, and you develop a bit of a hide to get you through and realise that even big-seeming crises can pass without a ripple. The trouble is that after a while, you can't tell when things have built up slowly to the point where "just another straw in the wind" is the one that ends up breaking the camel's back. Howard ended up like that in 2007. Abbott may be approaching that point.

Andrew Peacock and Kim Beazley Jr spent their careers as Tomorrow's Man, until one day they woke as Yesterday's Man, without ever having the days as The Man that Fraser, Hawke and others had. Tony Abbott is headed that way. If the government dusts off this campaign from 2004, hoisting him by the petard that finished his brother-from-another-mother Latham, Abbott won't make it to the next election as leader. The Liberals will dump him as leader not because of any abhorrence of violence against women, but because he's becoming an impediment rather than a facilitator and leader of a Coalition Government.

Dennis Shanahan became a laughing stock throughout 2007, predicting that Howard would turn those bad polls around; like a longer-form version of watching a man fall from a plane, Shanahan was predicting that the parachute would open any moment now, any moment; when Howard bit the dust Shanahan alone could not believe it, and he has stumbled through Canberra incredulously ever since. With Shanahan still there, and Christopher Pearson and Sheridan and a few others, The Australian has more than its fair share of staff who look like being surplus to requirements once it becomes clear that there ain't gonna be an Abbott Government.

It's one thing to watch Abbott at a stunt for journalists, who lap up whatever he dishes out; but when people flinch when he waddles toward them in what Abbott and the press regard as a marginal seat (but which locals regard simply as their community) it will be all over.

It's the cover-ups that get me: the petty vandalism here, the offences not recorded and written off as youthful hi-jinks there. When he became a man he should have put away such childish things, but over time the protection of Abbott from consequences that have put him in the position where he simply can't be trusted with important stuff.

The let-Tony-be-Tony crowd have done him no favours, and those that remain inside his bunker must realise they are doing the party and the country no favours either. It must be like Howard's office in 2007 (the old stagers from those days have no excuse not to know what political death smells like) - except it's one thing to go from government to opposition, but where do you go from opposition?

Tony Abbott was never going to be brought down by a single, sharp blow, the way you'd take out a feral boar with a shottie. This is why the who-said-or-did-what-in-1977 will be fruitless for friend and foe alike (even for someone like Sheridan, whose favourite game is zero-sum). What will bring Abbott down is getting stuck in a bog of implausible denials and ill-considered statements and hollow promises; where the daily cycle still spins but no longer fully rinses.

Although he's not finished yet, Abbott has fewer options than his fans imagine. Those who believe Abbott is big enough to shrug off difficulties of this degree have never really seen him do so.

Policy against type

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Test of character

Over the past few days we have seen Tony Abbott's character tested, and found wanting. He has cemented his reputation as one insensitive to the suffering of others, and of being unable to build any longterm policy agenda (one extending beyond the next episode of Insiders). It really is time to give up on the guy. Those who defend him look shrill and silly and miss the point.

First, Katharine Murphy once again instructs us on the attitude we are to take in order to maintain the increasingly unsustainable Canberra fantasy that Abbott is a credible PM.

Tony Abbott is serially scatological. It's a problem.

To have such a firm grasp of the wrong end of the stick does no favours in understanding this situation or presenting yourself as a credible reporter on Australian federal politics.

Firstly, the 2007 election campaign was a tough one for the Coalition, and you'd expect a highly-regarded senior minister to make things easier rather than harder. By swearing at Roxon and bungling health policy, it is a truly amazing feature of our political system that defeated Liberal MPs did not line up to wring his neck (and run for preselection for the subsequent byelection), let alone for Abbott lead the party to the following election. That's not just bad manners Katharine, it's bad judgment on his part, the Liberal Party's, and yours for talking him up.

Secondly, "shit happens" is an appropriate expression for anything other than the death of a human being (let alone a dangerous situation into which Abbott voted to commit people). As I said on Drag0nista's blog (of which more later), I'd thump anyone who said that. It wasn't a faux pas, it was a window into the guy's soul: of a piece with his cry-me-a-river response to the Brisbane floods or refusing to see the late Bernie Banton for being insufficiently pure.

Kevin Rudd could turn on the bad language and he was Prime Minister for almost three years: almost three year longer than Abbott will ever hold that office. But Rudd and Abbott aren't the issue here:

But it's not time for Abbott to become bland, to lose his texture, to speak only focus group and its associated dialects - otherwise we are looking at a rerun of 2010, when political discussion elected to give itself a lobotomy, the voters all switched off in disgust, and I nearly went mad and contemplated a second career as a sandwich artist to escape the shallow febrile horror of the landscape before me.

If political journalists keep playing "gotcha" - crucifying our elected representatives every time they appear before us in three dimensions - we will lead ourselves inexorably back to the vacuum of the past 12 months, and I for one do not want to go there.

Of course you do. It's The Narrative, and without it you'd be doing a different job. If everyone in the press gallery is writing the same story, Katharine Murphy will write it too. If you want someone to dissect some tendentious bullshit with Aesculapian skill, particularly where neither major party is better than the other, there is no reason to seek out the latest piece by Katharine Murphy ...

... well, that was my opinion until I read the last four paragraphs of her piece, starting with:

If we are intent on running a substantive ruler over Abbott, then here we can make a productive critique.

This is what the article should have been, it's the only bit of any value.

This piece by PvO can be dismissed out of hand. Abbott has been his own press secretary before and during his whole time in public life. The idea that he should be ambushed by the media - and of all people, Mark bloody Riley, a prize pissant if ever there was one - is a joke. The idea that he should be ambushed with several hours' warning is nonsense.

Abbott did nothing to dispel the doubts of people who might vote Liberal, and embarrassed those who do. If there had been footage of Mark Latham breaking the taxi driver's arm, it would've been of a piece with Abbott's bobblehead routine. He's done this sort of thing once too often. Philip Coorey, however, is ignoring this and trying to present it as a one-off:

To accuse Abbott of deliberately making light of a trooper's death is absurd and no one has levelled this accusation.

If you can accuse Julia Gillard of faking tears over Queensland flood victims, why not?

However, a key factor that has so far been overlooked is that the Coalition did politicise MacKinney's death at the time.

Indeed he did. He has sowed the wind of Canberra's media storms for two decades, and now he has reaped the shitstorm.

Several weeks ago, Abbott's senior minder, Claire Kimball left the office. It's a safe bet that, had she been around, she would not have let that happen.

As stated earlier, if Claire Kimball is all that stood between this clown and the Prime Ministership, then good riddance to Claire Kimball. It's an untenable position for a media advisor to save someone with Abbott's experience from themselves.

Former Liberal staffer Drag0nista had a go at constructive criticism of Abbott. My first reaction should have been: good on you for trying. That said, I stand by my comment on that blog, and regard her piece as showing the limits of media advice. If you found a cold, decaying and beheaded corpse it would not do to plot strategies for chest compressions, crepe bandages or mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

One journalist who couldn't help himself is Greg Sheridan. Sheridan is right to disdain Bishop, but wrong to do so on an issue where she is clearly right.

The Coalition front bench could do a lot worse than read The White Man's Burden - Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by William Easterly, a former senior economist at the World Bank.

Later, he says:

It is right that our aid emphasises the Asia-Pacific while European aid emphasises Africa.

But Greg, Easterley's book slams European aid in Africa: isn't Australia's practical, community based aid far better than that dished out by the EU? Did you not share the Wikileaked US criticism of Australia as ineffective against Mugabe?

A hundred million dollars will generally buy you a smile and a warm handshake in most parts of the world, especially when so much of the money will inevitably be skimmed off in corruption.

If we want to help Africa, we'd be much better off opening embassies there and promoting trade, which might actually help.

... or get skimmed off in corruption, Greg. Damned if we do, etc.

Everything [Bishop] touches she gets wrong, in both the politics and the substance.

Here she knocks Abbott into a cocked hat. Never mind Gillard, it's Julie Bishop playing Judith to Abbott's Holofernes.

Sheridan is dead right here, if clumsily expressed:

Building schools in Indonesia is about the best possible use Australian aid money could be put to.

But not here:

Also, if Abbott looks as though he can't handle Indonesia, it will threaten his credentials to be prime minister.

We've never had a Prime Minister elected to the office on the basis of appearing to "handle Indonesia". None of them have spoken Bahasa Indonesia - is there anyone who can speak that language in Federal Parliament? Howard came closest: even he took some convincing that we could do it without the Americans, and for all his experience his analysis of the place and its politics is pretty rudimentary.

Finally, Abbott's other mistake was to recommit to the Millennium aid goal for 2015. This clunky, dumb formula allows for no proper evaluation of aid levels, as every other part of government spending is subject to. It is just part of the nonsense consensus of the international relations class.

Clunky and dumb goes for much of Bush-Blair policy, but because Greg wets himself over that he refers to that consensus as "the Anglosphere" rather than "the international relations class".

It's also true that the Millennium goals represent something of a last gasp by the US and Western Europe in exerting themselves in world affairs. China and India are increasing their use of aid as part of their 'soft power', which has real implications for Australia. Stick the Easterley book Greg, and investigate that.

A cosmopolitan, sophisticated, liberal opposition with any intellectual firepower on foreign affairs might challenge this consensus. Alas, there is no sign of that in this opposition. Abbott can't do everything himself, and he is poorly served by his front bench in this area.

Abbott's whole career has seen him work against a Liberal Party (much less its parliamentary party) consisting of "cosmopolitan, sophisticated, liberal" people. Given his experience and job title, Sheridan is wrong to lament what Abbott would consider success.

Abbott's front bench can only work within the parameters their leader sets. While Abbott may not be able to be his own foreign affairs spokesman as Rudd, Beazley or Peacock were, he has to be able to set some sort of direction. Bishop's floundering is not her responsibility alone.

Tony Abbott is showing us that he can't be Prime Minister. That's the story, press gallery people. Don't wait for "anonymous rumblings", because Abetz et al are following you and not the other way around. Show us what the job of Prime Minister should involve, and then assess Abbott - and Gillard, and whomever else - against that.

The reason why the press gallery is so protective of Abbott is not that he was once a journalist back in the day. It's because he plays the politico-media game that Gillard can't and won't play. He butters up journos, he picks his favourites and treats them like they are important. They can't believe that the last true believer in old-school media relations won't restore the Whitlam-to-Rudd situation where the press gallery hold the keys to the Lodge. If Tony Abbott goes down, the press gallery would be as irrelevant as it is to voters/media consumers. Never mind Riley's riles: the efforts to prop Abbott up are starting to look silly.

What's in it for us?

The UK Foreign Secretary and Defence Secretary have visited Australia and spoken with their counterparts, which is nice. They even wrote a piece for the paper on how important this is for Britain.

Nobody in Australia's mainstream media, apart from the grossly inadequate Greg Sheridan (of whom see more below) has bothered to consider what this might mean for Australia. Are the UK going to help us in trade with their Eurobuddies (well, those that have the readies to spend on our products and services)? What Australian foreign policy aims are helped by a close and productive relationship with the UK? Which of those aims are harmed or in any way limited by an Australia-UK relationship that is less than fully engaged?

Are they going to help us in any way at all? Most of their article is generalities and fluff (we're all concerned about cybercrime and terrorism). Hague and Fox mention North Korea, and while UK forces played an important role there in 1950-53 their presence since then has been scant. Having the UK weigh in to the Korean conflict today is about the same as having them not do so. The last time the Brits showed any real foreign policy interest in this part of the world was during the 1960s, fighting for Malaysia in Konfrontasi with Indonesia while retreating from colonial interests.

A hundred years ago Australia adopted many governmental institutions from the UK, but in recent years the reverse is true and looks set to continue. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have state parliaments just like those of Western Australia or Victoria, and England is clamouring for one just like it. Even London has a dinky municipal government not dissimilar to that of the ACT. The London Olympics is being run along the same lines as the Sydney Games of renown. The Bank of England, formed almost a century before the first settlement at Sydney, has been restructured in the same way as the Reserve Bank of Australia. In the wake of the GFC this country's prudential regulatory system will be grafted onto the City; there won't be any of that Montagu Norman nonsense as in the 1930s.

So, the UK wants to increase their trade with Asian countries - ah, so they're a competitor. This is significant for Australian foreign and trade policy, and should have an astringent effect on all that treacle about shared ties. For the first time in two centuries, the UK is no longer among our top ten trading partners. UK retailers are flocking to open stores in Australia's solvent cities while the same is not happening in reverse (another reason to despise Gerry Harvey et al in their bellyaching about online sales from foreign websites). Am I right in suspecting that there is a great deal for the UK in an improved UK-Australia relationship, while there is a real possibility that (warning: inevitable sporting analogy coming up), as on the Test cricket pitch and Fortress Twickenham, we Australians are being played for mugs.

It is significant that the News Ltd papers haven't made more of the Hague-Fox visit for the sake of cross-promotion in the company's UK brands. Tony Blair would have given News Ltd as much facetime as they could handle, if not more so. Greg Sheridan's blimpish effort is an an attempt to assert his employer's importance and to address the idea that there is a lot for Australia in such a relationship. Could News Ltd be declining in power in UK public life?

To describe the UK-Australia relationship with "intimacy", as Sheridan does repeatedly, is nonsense. It implies a reciprocity that was never forthcoming from London, however much I-did-but-see-her-passing-by loyalty went the other way.

Some Poms, especially journalists, can still be condescending and cliche-driven when they consider Australia.

I didn't know Greg Sheridan was a Pom.

Blair frequently referred to Australia as Britain's "closest ally in the Asia Pacific". But apart from the Five Power Defence Arrangements, which link Britain and Australia in the defence of Singapore and Malaysia, there is no formal military alliance between us.

In other words: Blair was just blowing smoke, Greg, wasn't he.

Blair and Howard ... were polite but noncommittal [at the idea of a closer Australia-UK relationship]. Blair joked to me that perhaps Britain and Australia together could invade China.

Did Blair make a joke to you, Greg, or of you?

Downer responded thoughtfully and you could see the idea taking up residence in his head.

No wonder Downer retired - when journalists can see your neural pathways at work it's time to get out.

Blair responded with immediate enthusiasm and relish. So did Howard. Thus AUKMIN was born.

And bugger-all came of it, just another part of the ISAF discussions over Afghanistan and Iraq, with a bit of camouflage about Our Long-Standing Shared Interests over the more difficult aspects of these negotiations.

No British foreign secretary has visited Australia since 1994 ... the main UK-Australia talking points were Paul Keating's attacks on British policy in World War II and his couching of his pro-Asia policies with an anti-Europe tinge ... [there was] a certain reluctance on his [Hurd's] part to repeat the experience.

Not to the point of dereliction of his official duties.

The elipses in the above quoted paragraph represent Sheridan big-noting himself and his opinions. Compare it to the original and you see that nothing is lost in the editing.

Never mind the outsized role for Greg Sheridan, it is amazing that John Howard or Alexander Downer should have spent a decade in office before they even considered the idea of closer ties with Britain, or that it would be worth doing. One of the first things Howard did as PM was get himself and Jeanette to London, hole up at the Dorchester and picfac themselves silly in front of the door at Number 10. You'd think he'd be able to whack up a bit of policy infrastructure to support Our Long-Standing Shared Interests. You'd think that experienced politicians such as he and Blair would take less than eight or nine years to stumble upon such commonalities.

Sheridan's final paragraph, about burrowing through Mother England's apronstrings to have an influence upon the world, is sheer utter guff of the type always promised but never realised throughout this country's history. From Lloyd George attempting to sideline Billy Hughes at Versailles, the pattern has been set: Australia exerts is influence most strongly when it resists the jowl-wobbling outrage from Westminster that we have a national interest at all, let alone the temerity to express it and work with others to make it real.

If Britain is willing to help us in some material way, or if there is the prospect of that (some clearly identified Australian objective which may be enhanced by UK co-operation), I and many other Australians would be keen to find out what that might be. Foreign policy is one aspect of public policy, and as such it should come under public scrutiny and involvement - indeed, all this guff about Our Long-Standing Shared Interests tends to imply this. What we need is another UK tradition - a fearlessly independent and investigative media which reports decisions of government to the citizenry. Oh, wouldn't it be luvverly?

The final days of North Korea

The idea that China may abandon North Korea as an independent state and prepare it to merge with the Republic of Korea is easily the most important to come from the recent Wikileaks release. It's a matter of global importance, in the way that tittle-tattle about Prince Andrew and Berlusconi isn't.

Don't let the tentative language belie the deep and serious changes underway here: the seismic changes in what used to be Eastern bloc regimes in 1989 was expressed in similar terms, intending to review this minor detail or moving to discuss that aspect of whatever. Note the sheer absence of angry denunciations or even the odd bit of ordnance since that release: North Korea is finished. China is managing the transition to a Seoul-led government, which will probably involve:

• North Korea's nuclear weapons going to China;


• Members of the North Korean elite fearful of prosecutions and persecutions to also go to China;


• ROK (the Republic of Korea, a.k.a South Korea or the Seoul regime) to take the starving millions, polluted landscape, buggered infrastructure, &c., and


• US forces will probably be required to pull out of ROK as part of the deal, and will get the USS Pueblo back, which will suit the Obama Administration down to the ground.

Australia has skin in this game. Lest we forget, 339 Australian servicemen gave their lives fighting for the ROK in 1950-53. There are tens of thousands of Korean migrants in Australia. ROK, China and Japan are three of our biggest trading partners, and there was considerable diplomatic effort invested under both Rudd and Downer in building as good a relationship with North Korea as any country other than China could possibly have.

What are the responses from our leaders to this important event? What options are available to them? These are not merely legitimate but important questions for Australians to be asking right now.

In response, we have the usual mix of me-too bland nothings and utter crap from "wire services" in the foreign news sections. Maybe there is a lot going on behind closed doors right now, and hopefully the Foreign Minister can bring himself to trust us enough to bring us into the debate sometime soon, being an intelligent man capable of getting over himself and learning from recent experience. Australian consideration of this major issue appears to be limited to this from the Federal Opposition, that from Gerard Henderson and something else from Greg Sheridan: and very limited it is too.

North Korea's recent attack on South Korea highlights the increasingly erratic behaviour of Kim Jong-Il and his military regime, and represents a dangerous escalation of tensions on the Korean Peninsula and the broader North Asia region ... It is not in Australia's national interests for the situation on the Korean Peninsula to deteriorate to a point where open conflict appears inevitable. Not only is South Korea an important trading partner, it is a valued friend and key regional ally.

That is what we can expect from our alternative government. The bits covered by the ellipsis cover recent events that you can dig up in a Google search, and read like a try-hard essay from a not particularly gifted first-year uni student in international relations. Why have a whole newspaper column and stuff it full of pap, showing once again that people should be relieved that your lot aren't in government now?

Pressure is now on China to join with the rest of the international community in condemning North Korea's attacks. China is uniquely placed to use its leverage to insist that Pyongyang cease its aggressive acts and tone down its inflammatory rhetoric, and start respecting international rules and norms.

Julie, pet, it's too late for that. North Korea is buggered and its whole reason for existence - to act as a buffer between China and The West - is a dead letter. We need more from China than to condemn the deaths of those on Yeonpyeong Island. We need to see how far China has gone in effectively liquidating a sovereign nation, and how it is mitigating the impact on its own territory and people that will come with the inevitable collapse. If you were a worthy potential foreign minister, you'd have put some thought into that and would now be showing Australia how we minimise the risks and maximise the possibilities this situation presents to us.

The world can only hope that China can influence North Korea to stop war-mongering.

Because, if we do not succeed then we run the risk of failure.

North Korea has a fair degree of unexploited mineral wealth - opportunities for Aussie companies but they'll detract from export opportunities here. Will North Korean refugees "jump the queue" ahead of those from, say, Sri Lanka or Afghanistan - happy lands apparently, where asylum seekers are being sent back? Any public policy issues to consider there, Julie?

What do you mean, they never occurred to you? Don't worry, they never occurred to the renowned foreign policy brain that is Gerard Henderson, either.

There is a certain predictability about international diplomacy in north-east Asia.

I never cease to be amazed that conservatives like Henderson or Janet Albrechtsen can describe events as 'predictable', and then demonstrate no idea as to how to deal with them. If it was so predictable, Gerard, why did so many people have to die? Why such fear and loathing abroad?

Once again, the communist regime in North Korea has launched a unilateral military attack on the land and people of the democratically elected South Korean government. And, once again, the former Democratic United States president Jimmy Carter has effectively said that the way to handle the current crisis is to ask the dictators in Pyongyang what they want and then to give it to them.

That's right: Gerard Henderson could have foreseen the whole thing, but people just have to die so that Hendo can play culture wars with Jimmy Carter.

Carter opined that "it is entirely possible" North Korea's actions "are designed to remind the world that they deserve respect in negotiations that will shape their future". Well, anything is possible. Especially since virtually no one - including Carter himself - knows anything about the regime in Pyongyang, including its leader, Kim Jong-il, and his son and anointed successor, Kim Jong-un.

Yairs. While Jimmy Carter was getting top-level briefings on the best intelligence about North Korea and China, Gerard Henderson was marking dim-witted essays like Julie Bishop's at the University of Tasmania. He does not demonstrate any sort of superior understanding of that arcane and obscure regime himself, mind you.

Carter's view that all North Korea wants is a bit of respect has been around for some time.

Well yes, Gerard, since 1976 or thereabouts. The debate has moved on from 1976, though. You could have used the latest developments as a stick to beat Carter with, but instead you're sucked into the 1976 vortex too. If you read Carter's article, he implies that regime change in North Korea can only be imposed militarily from the South and the USA. In 1976, China was not as strong as it is today, and North Korea was run by one of the great strategic geniuses of the twentieth century (Kim Il Sung, I mean, not Gerard Henderson).

There are no easy answers to the continuing crisis on the Korean peninsula.

You don't have to be a strategic genius to come up with something like that: Jimmy Carter came up with something similar in the article Henderson refers to:

Dealing effectively with North Korea has long challenged the United States.

If you read Carter's article, he's not calling for appeasement at all. He's calling for talks. If some fool from Pyongyang can jabber away to a junior staffer in the Jubilation T. Cornpone Room in Washington while the Chinese are pinching North Korea's silver (and plutonium), this could be a solution that works for everyone.

Gerard Henderson has grossly misrepresented Jimmy Carter. Henderson is not stuck on a hillside in Kapyong in 1951: it's worse than that. He's stuck in 1938, equating Carter to Neville Chamberlain, completely ignoring the situation we face today and utterly unable to describe it, let alone develop a sensible response.

1938 was the last time the conservatives were right and the moderates wrong about world affairs. When the Soviet bloc collapsed in the 1980s, it was the conservatives who were most dire about 'the evil empire' and were convinced they were just playing possum, while the moderates accepted Vaclav Havel for what he was - and mourned the Tiananmen protesters for what they might have been.

Speaking of utter inability leads us to General Sheridan:

On Sunday, the US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the [USS] George Washington, will lead a joint US-South Korea military exercise in the Yellow Sea.

Yes it will, giving Chinese naval intelligence lots of luvverly new data and making it harder for the Chinese to smooth the dying pillow over the face of North Korea. Note that the belligerent Sheridan misses both points: if China are in the drivers' seat here, and they have been since Macarthur overreached himself sixty years ago, is it not appropriate to consider their perspective?

Even as they cancelled exercises, the Americans said they would send an aircraft carrier back to the Yellow Sea whenever they chose to do so and the Chinese had no right of veto over who sailed in the Yellow Sea.

Big talk from a debtor to its creditor.

Now attention is swivelling directly to China. Australia's Foreign Minister, Kevin Rudd, expressed a Western consensus when he said the world expected China to be much tougher in its dealings with North Korea.

Yes, the world's attention is on Korea not because of so much violence and death and fear, not because a major power has changed its mind; but because Heavy Kevvie has made a speech. Really, Sheridan.

Rudd has spoken at length to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and to the foreign ministers of South Korea, Japan and other regional nations. Soon, the US will attempt to lead strong condemnation of North Korea in the UN Security Council.

Beijing's response will be critical in judging whether it is acting with any goodwill in this matter, or whether it should be judged to be to some degree complicit in North Korea's actions.

It will also demonstrate the limits of bullhorn diplomacy. The whole idea of Rudd as a Mandarin-speaking representative of this country (whether as junior diplomat, PM or Foreign Minister) was that he might engage a bit more sensibly with China. Instead, he's doing nothing different to what Stephen Smith or even Downer in his more sober moments would have done.

There are two unpredictable dynamics at work, one in North Korea, and one in China.

Ah yes: the wily Orientals.

But perhaps the worst element of the situation is China's role. Not once this year has Beijing uttered a word of criticism of its close ally.

Close ally? Really? What does China get out of the North Korea relationship except embarrassment? The fox does not condemn the chicken before eating it.

Sometimes Beijing's leaders say they do not have decisive day-to-day influence on Pyongyang. But this justification lacks all credibility if Beijing will not even utter condemnation of Pyongyang's behaviour.

And if they did, what? Would North Korea continue their defiance (a Beijing pantomime) or would they snap back into line (clear evidence of Beijing control)? Plenty of time to do that, more in sorrow than in anger, once North Korea lies eviscerated at their feet.

Sheridan ends by declaring his intellectual bankruptcy. His last four paragraphs ignore the possibility of China switching off North Korea's life support (that "blood ties" stuff is intellectually dishonesty verging on lazy racism) and can't bear to assume that China is smart, strong and skilful enough to lance its own boils.

Sheridan's article assumes Australia is irrelevant to Korea (except, of course, for the decisive intervention of Rudd on the world stage). He might be right, but there's no need to rub it in.

Sheridan referred to China exerting itself in the region, but missed the possibility that it might be strengthening its position, not weakening it, by letting North Korea go. Missing the point is his singular talent, charming in a young idealist but somewhat pathetic in a Foreign Editor. China's geopolitical position was strengthened, not weakened, when the neighbouring USSR dissolved in 1991. Korea is the tenth largest economy in the world and a competitor with Chinese manufactures: saddle it with the wreckage of the North and see how long Seoul remains a competitor, turn that buffer zone around. None of these occurred to Sheridan, fixed as he is on gunboat diplomacy and Washington gossip.

And there you have it: our politicians and media serve us so badly when it comes to big, world-changing events. We can't even articulate our interests, let alone act on them, but I still think it's a slander to suggest we have the politicians and media we deserve.

The limits of partisan reporting

Greg Sheridan is the foreign editor of The Australian. In writing this article he clearly hoped to do two things: first, explain the results of the US midterm elections to Australian readers, and secondly express his satisfaction that conservative candidates beat liberals. He failed at both.

Firstly, the headline is wrong: Americans did not flock to the Tea Party. More than fifty of the 89 candidates endorsed by the Tea Party lost, and none of them have made it to the upper reaches of the Republicans. In an earlier post I pointed out how stupid it was for the Republicans to run the wrong candidate in Delaware, and so it has proven: Republicans might have won even more had they were strong enough to hold off clowns like the Tea Party candidates.

It is intellectual cowardice to pretend that the American people were not passing judgment on the policies of the last congress. They don't like the deficit, the size of government or the unemployment rate. You can blame all that on George W. Bush if you like, but at the very least the Democrats did not convince voters that their solutions were effective or sensible.

It's amazing that after eight years of Bush stuff-ups, people are turning back to the party of Bush. Someone in Sheridan's position should be able to explain that without getting all giddy.

Many bad things have been written about the Tea Party. But it had a huge win yesterday. It injected energy and enthusiasm into the Republicans. As a result they won many more House of Representatives seats than they expected. On the other hand, the selection of two frankly weird Tea Party candidates, Christine O'Donnell in Delaware and Sharron Angle in Nevada, probably cost them two Senate seats. But that in itself is a good thing. The Tea Party got rewards for its efforts, but was shown that it must select mainstream, credible people.

The Tea Party has been a huge strategic success for the Republicans at another level. It would have been very easy for the Tea Party to end up as a third party. Doing this, Ralph Nader's Greens fatally split the Democratic vote in 2000. That would have devastated the Republicans. That the Republicans were able to accommodate the Tea Party is a huge strategic gain for them.

The Tea Party can't tell the difference between weird candidates (Christine O'Donnell) and non-weird ones (Mike Castle). Rand Paul and David Vitter, who won, are no less weird than Sharron Angle, who lost.

The election was also a big win for former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. Almost every candidate she endorsed won their Republican primary. Several of them, such as senator-elect Marco Rubio from Florida and governor-elect Nikki Haley from South Carolina, won their general elections and are future stars for the Republicans.

Nikki Haley ran for the Republicans in one of the most Republican states in the US - she should have won overwhelmingly, in a state and a year favourable to her party, but she squeaked home with 51%. Someone like Greg Sheridan should have looked into that. Rubio won against a split centre-left vote.

The Nader example from ten years ago is silly. A better example is Obama in 2008: he got people's hopes up, he let them down, they voted against his party in 2010. Now it's the Republicans who've got Americans hoping, and if they can't deliver the Democrats look set to reap in 2012 what was sowed this week.

In virtually no other country is it conceivable that at a time of widespread unemployment a huge grassroots movement could be demanding lower government spending, fewer and smaller government programs, an end to the deficit, and lower taxes. The Tea Party is quintessentially concerned with mainstream economic issues and it gives both Obama and the new congress a real chance to rein in government spending.

As if the Republicans are going to rein in spending across the board. As if.

The most senior Republican politician is not some three-cornered-hat-wearing yokel: he bears a physical resemblance to Bob Dole, and like Dole is basically a career politician. He didn't get where he is by cutting government programs. Taxes, particularly for the well-off? You betcha. Bush had eight years to cut government spending, and he increased it. The Republicans, like the Gingrich revolutionaries of the 1990s, are no more going to deliver smaller government than they are going to deliver victory in Afghanistan. Sheridan should be honest enough to admit that (and to realise that no classics contain the phrase 'Oy vay!', unless you want to rush some Philip Roth or Fiddler On The Roof into the Canon.

The Republicans this time also did well in the critical battleground of the midwest, winning key contests in Ohio and Illinois. I see it all as a magnificent sign of America's determination to come to grips with the key economic challenges.

The Republicans will block and block and block, they'll start up nonsense like Obama's birth certificate and gays and denying healthcare for poor people; they will no more come to grips with key economic challenges than Sheridan will define them. There shall be sex scandals, oh yes and ugly too. Republicans don't do economic reform, haven't done since the Berlin Wall came down, and Sheridan should know that.

His second-last paragraph, on demography as political destiny, is too stupid to be reprinted here. Sheridan's whole article is what you'd expect from a first-year undergraduate Liberal Student jotted out the night before it was due, rather than the Foreign Editor of a major newspaper (whose owner in headquartered in Delaware, largely because of the policies of Mike Castle).

Greg Sheridan basically wants to look both sagely responsible and giddily partisan at the same time when it comes to American politics, the only element of foreign policy with which he has any real familiarity. In a time of turmoil he lacks confidence in his predictions, mainly because he has no confidence in his assessment of what's going on now. No reader should have any confidence in his assessments either. The radicalism of the Tea Party provides no evidence of political success, let alone conservatism or even coherence in that country's government.

Your guess is as good as mine

North Korea has detonated a nuclear weapon, and even as they condemn people are looking for guidance as to what's going on, what this means and what might happen next. The traditional place to look is the media, yet for Australians there is simply nothing on offer that can give the information required to make sense of it all.

First, Fairfax got the website guy from the Lowy Institute, and he has no idea:

As with every previous act of military bravado from Pyongyang, the latest nuclear test is being parsed and dissected for its "messages". But sometimes a nuclear test is just a nuclear test.

What a load of wank. At no time from nobody can it be said that "a nuclear test is just a nuclear test". It's the biggest and baddest weapon there is, and it's always about sending a message, every single time. Glibness is intended to convey a deep reservoir of knowledge becalmed by emotional balance, but it actually conveys the opposite: Roggeveen hasn't really considered what little he knows, and has lunged for the bucket o' clichés in the hope there might be something there for him. "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar", said Sigmund Freud; but at no time is a nuclear weapon just a cigar.

That's not to rule out that North Korea wanted to send a message of defiance to the United States and its allies. But this test should not be seen just as an elaborate performance for the benefit of foreigners - it is not always about us.

So what's it about? Is it some internal power play?

... there is the inescapable strategic logic that nuclear weapons give the North Korean regime what it most wants: security for itself and the country. Nothing the North Koreans do for themselves - or the US offers - will perform that task better than nuclear weapons.

So it is about foreigners after all, Sam, because if you want security from external threats you have to send them a message about your strength, don't you? Why not just say that? "The North Korean government was feeling a little insecure so it let off a nuclear weapon, with the implied threat that there's more where that came from, the end."

So what hope of a peaceful solution? Some have argued that the Bush administration took its foot off North Korea's throat in 2007 when it ended some financial sanctions in exchange for a new nuclear deal, on which Pyongyang subsequently stalled and dissembled.

Some?!?!?!? Who are these "some"?! Take down their names and send them to Greg Sheridan at once!

NORTH Korea's nuclear test and missile launchings offer sad and perhaps startling lessons. Lesson No.1: So far, the Barack Obama charm and kindness offensive has had no positive results in any conflict anywhere in the world.

Obama may believe he can change the world with a smile, a willingness to consult, extravagant official humility and a dose of undeniable charm. He is indeed not George W. Bush. Guess what? It makes not one tiny jot of difference to North Korea's Kim Jong-il or, indeed, to any of the world's dictators, terrorists, nuclear rogues or other bad guys.

Let us not forget, as Greg has, that at this point in the Bush Administration the then-US President was begging the Chinese for the return of a spyplane which they had brought down inside their airspace and which they were busy reverse-engineering. Look at that key phrase, "Obama may believe", as though Obama were just like every other Democrat happy to act as a blank canvas for the projection of Greg's silly and shallow theories.

Perhaps the financial sanctions that brought North Korea to the table once before deserve another chance.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Perhaps nothing much was achieved at that table, the venue for all that stumbling and dissembling. Perhaps it's not worth pinning your hopes on a possibility from which no progress on any issue arising from this (the security of the northwestern Pacific, the rights and aspoirations of North Korean people, take your pick). Having attempted to hose down other people's hopes and fears, it's pathetic to offer this as some sort of - well, if not a solution, then some hoped-for process.

It would also help if China and Russia did more to convince Pyongyang to change course.

That's it? Hopin' and wishin', the same strategy that has beset Western policy on the peninsula since 1953. While you'd expect Greg Sheridan to have none of that, his bombast gland has poisoned his ability to perceive reality:

Lesson No.2: China is overestimated as a geo-strategic partner and as a central player in any solution to the problems North Korea presents. ... Why? Because the status quo suits China ... If South and North Korea reunited on the model of East and West Germany the whole peninsula would become a democracy ... a reunited Korea would almost certainly remain an ally of the US. Although China doesn't like the trickle of refugees it gets from North Korea now, it would hate sharing a 1400km border with a bold, prosperous, rich ally of the US. The refugee flow would then be the other way.

Far better to have a Stalinist buffer state, so long as it does not become so erratic as to directly endanger Chinese security.

This assumes that maintaining a Stalinist buffer state is sustainable. North Koreans and Chinese from regions bordering North Korea need only travel to the great cities of southern China to know just how badly they've been had. There, jobs and prosperity beyond the dreams of these wretched people is available because of capitalism and trade with other countries - the very countries from which the North Korean regime seeks protection.

But the six-party talks have conferred splendid benefits on Beijing. They not only afforded Beijing great prestige from hosting them, they also offered Beijing a superb diplomatic lever with Washington. The US State Department bent over backwards not to annoy the Chinese in case it led to them going slow on the six-party talks. Now Kim's tests have shown us, whether the Chinese were acting in good faith or not, they have achieved absolutely nothing that we want on North Korea.

And how is doing nothing prestigious, Greg?

Sheridan's "lessons" seem to be that nothing has really changed and that recent events represent just another step on the treadmill of dealing with North Korea. It's the mentality that left us unprepared for the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and for September 11. This flatulent certitude Sheridan engages in simply isn't helpful in understanding this complex issue.

To all who pin their hopes on the US military colossus, consult an atlas. North Korea's military may be decrepit, but it can mass enough Soviet-era artillery pieces on its border to do a great deal of damage to Seoul and a number of other cities close to the 38th parallel.

Consult a history book while you're at it, Sam. Chinese and Soviet military forces put paid to American adventurism in 1953 and while Greg Sheridan might sneer at Obama today, the very idea of US military action against North Korea has been a non-starter for almost seventy years. This is a straw man worthy of Sheridan himself.

Military action against North Korea would be utter folly.

Seoul, is barely 30km from the border. Across the border is a range of gentle hills. In those hills North Korea has nestled thousands of artillery pieces. The North could cause untold devastation in Seoul in the first hours of any conflict.

Strangely, Greg is not suggesting a pre-emptive strike, like he did with Iraq. Only the geography is different (including the lack of oil): the mad and belligerent dictator and the WMDs, they're all there Greg. Smite those peacenik wimps who would have the 38th remain one of the world's festering sores. Why do they hate our freedoms, Greg?

Sam isn't afraid to dream:

Perhaps the only hope lies in attempts to reform North Korea itself. That way, even if Pyongyang never disarms it would at least slowly become a more "normal" country that is less belligerent, more predictable and a more responsible nuclear custodian.

Is North Korea flexible enough to bend without breaking, or would it (to coin a phrase) melt down, as Pakistan is in the process of doing? Would it stay a "nuclear custodian", or would these be yanked back to Russia and China like the Soviet nukes were from eastern Europe after the Warsaw Pact dissolved? Greg Sheridan considers these matters in his muddled way:

What, then, is to be done? The problem cannot be ignored. The North Koreans have an appalling record of nuclear and missile proliferation, specifically to Syria and Iran ... some things can be done. One is to make maximum effort to prevent North Korea from proliferating nuclear material and technology.

North Korean nuclear technology came from Pakistan. It illustrates another failure of realism - containment. Kennan was conceiving of containment at the very time that nuclear secrets were leaking to the Soviet Union, and to even speak now of containment is ridiculous. Sheridan himself admitted it was ridiculous, yet he has nothing left to offer but empty procedure, just like Lowy's website boy.

All journalists have let us down when it comes to this issue, repeating the same old crap and accepting intelligence failure as just one of those things you just have to put up with. Clearly, it isn't - this blog and the story that followed, not led, the blog are running rings around flatulent clowns in the journosphere like Sheridan and Roggeveen. We are all poorly served by their intellectual and moral laziness, and the demise of newspapers as a business cannot but follow their demise as the source of information on our world.

White, paper and The Plastic Gangster

When the government releases a White Paper on Defence, the Foreign Editor of a major newspaper should be expected to provide an intelligent and considered response. Not, however, if that editor is Greg Sheridan. He has had a go at the Defence White Paper, and frankly it's poor Greg who comes off second-best.

THE defence white paper is an almost incoherent blancmange of oddly unharmonised flavours.

A blancmange does not have harmonised flavours, Greg. It is pretty much a single flavour all the way through.

It reads like a biblical commentary in which 50 Talmudic scholars, each representing an alternative school of thought, have been allowed to write alternative sentences.

Biblical commentators tend to be Christian while Talmudic scholars tend to be Jews, Greg. What has this got to do with blancmange? Do you mean "alternate" where you've written "alternative" (and are you man enough to own the error rather than blame the subbies?)? I challenge you to provide any biblical commentary that reads like the Australian Government Defence White Paper 2009.

The internal contradictions in the document are so staggering it looks like sentences have been bolted on almost at random, like pieces in a Meccano set manipulated by a two-year-old.

As the parent of a child who is past his first birthday but yet to experience his third, I can tell you that much of any Meccano set would not be bolted together but inserted into the mouth.

No part of a Meccano set would be bolted onto biblical commentary, or to a blancmange, by a two-year-old or anyone other than the foreign editor of a national newspaper. He's not succeeding at being funny, nor at conveying meaning, nor at helping us understand what our government is doing with our money to provide for our defence. That is what Sheridan's job is here, and he has failed.

That's a bit unfair, of course.

More than a bit. You are accusing the document of lacking a coherence you don't have yourself.

For all that, the Government has mostly come up with the right decisions: 100 Joint Strike Fighters, 12 new submarines, the continuation of the army expansion program, new, big surface ships and so on.

How do you know it's made the right decisions? Based on what? Where's your in-depth thinking on defence issues, other than taking that shopping list and working backwards? Why 100 JSFs, and not 200, 50 or none? Should the army go for quantity or quality? When you say "big surface ships", do you mean aircraft carriers or Queen Mary 2?

In defence, to some extent equipment and budget are real policy, the rest window-dressing.

No, the idea of the White Paper is to determine what our defence needs are. The Budget and the shopping list you are so fixated on comes after, not before, a detailed examination of what Australia's defence needs (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) are.

Australia's neighbours in the Asia-Pacific will look at the equipment commitments more than anything else.

Yeah, they'll see all those second-hand tanks that the Yanks foisted on the Howard government, the ones that are too big to go over bridges and across sand in island counties to our north and northeast, and they'll laugh. A big silly tank or a submarine won't stop another bombing in Bali, Greg.

They will see the air force, the navy and the army getting bigger and more capable.

Capable of what, Greg?

That's all that really counts.

What?

The white paper will reinforce Australia's reputation as a formidable defence power.

Not bad for a biblical blancmange with Meccano stuck in it.

But a couple of sentences on China are, by white paper standards, remarkably direct and will confirm for everyone that the Rudd Government believes Beijing could do a much better job reassuring the region that its extensive defence build-up is not threatening.

The white paper comments: "China will be the strongest Asian military power by a considerable margin. Its military modernisation will be characterised by the development of power projection capabilities. But the pace, scope and structure of China's military modernisation have the potential to give its neighbours pause for concern if not carefully explained and if China does not reach out to others to build confidence regarding its military plans.

"China has begun to do this in recent years, but needs to do more. If it does not, there is likely to be a question in the minds of regional states about the long-term strategic purpose of its force development plans, particularly as the modernisation appears potentially to be beyond the scope of what would be required for a conflict over Taiwan."

These are inelegant sentences and seem bizarrely to accept the proposition that it is entirely legitimate for China to build up forces designed to devastate and destroy Taiwan if it feels that's the decent thing to do.

No Greg, what that says is that China is developing the power to project force well beyond Taiwan. It describes this force build up in neytral terms befitting a fact, rather than conferring legitimacy, or using redundancies ("devastate and destroy") followed by more value judgments ("if it feels that's the decent thing to do").

If he can't get that right, could it be that he's wrong about the whole document?

This plastic gangster, faux hard man approach aside, however, these sentences state without much ambiguity that the white paper authors - that is to say, the Australian Government - believe China's military build-up is destabilising, inherently concerning and, given that the white paper says defence planning must be based on others' capabilities, not their declared intentions, something Australia should hedge against.

That, believe it or not, is a single sentence. I don't know what it means either. I recognised "the Australian government" and "China's military build-up", but that's about it. If it was complex defence-international relations jargon, I could understand it being incomprehensible - but seriously, that's just a poorly worded para-sentence, and not the only one in this piece.

Asia-Pacific nations will pay some attention to these sentences. Their inherent judgment will be shared in every capital except Beijing. Beijing will be annoyed by them. So be it.

Yeah, because the sentences don't make it through Babelfish.

... at the same time it avoids the intellectual myopia of former defence bureaucrat Hugh White, who argued recently that the rise of China was virtually our only fundamental strategic consideration.

I think you've misrepresented White there, Greg. He said that the rise of China was fundamentally important and that other considerations, while important, were less so than China. This isn't myopia, it's prioritisation and well-balanced judgment - and after the mish-mash you've presented to Australian readers, you should be a bit more humble in discussing the work of people who know what they're talking about.

It's in favour of self-reliance and the defence of Australia, but it's also in favour of an expeditionary military culture, the need to be able to undertake a vast range of operations within the South Pacific and Southeast Asia, and everything else as well.

It's in favour of building a capability where we can lead an operation if we have to, much as we did in East Timor or the Solomons, without waiting helplessly for the Americans.

At this point Sheridan goes on to point out a contradiction between the rise of China and the relative decline of the US, without wishing to offend the US at all. Sheridan has lost all credibility so that you wonder if he actually made the quote up, or cut out something that might help understand this phenomenon.

... the Government has gone a bit wonky on funding, projecting the 3per cent real increase only up to 2018, when the real big expenditure items start to kick in.

There are at least three elections between now and 2018. Has there ever been a nine-year budget projection in any area of government (or outside government) which has actually held up, ever?

In the end, the main decisions are sound, the accompanying verbiage dubious. That, of course, is much better than the other way around.

Given that Sheridan makes no decisions, and that "verbiage" is the tool of his trade, this article is an example of poor writing and a pathetic attempt to disguise ignorance of defence issues that should be inexcusable in a so-called foreign editor. It's sad when a two-year-old Talmudic scholar who eats blancmange with a Meccano set would make more sense on Australin defence issues than the foreign editor of The Australian, but that's what happened in Sheridan's analysis of this key document.