Raising doubts

In recent days we've seen the self-defeating vacancy at the heart of the modern right: the desire to create doubt rather than certainty.

Edmund Burke expressed this sentiment best when he said: "We fear God, we look up with awe to kings: with affection to parliaments; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility". That sense of assurance that the country is in good hands and that the common weal managed prudently, is the very essence of conservatism. It takes a lot of hard work to make that manifest - but not so much that you look like a try-hard, as Rudd and Swan do.

Cory Bernardi, in Friday's AFR, hooting about fobbing off both the ETS and Turnbull: "people like me were out there raising doubts [about the ETS]. The leader usually shapes policy in our party, but in this case Malcolm was unable to carry the party". It's not the role of a conservative to raise doubts, you fool: the role of the conservative is to allay doubts.

Then we have this shambles of a piece of journalism. Barnaby Joyce has gone from being The Scourge Of Labor, Bill McKell in reverse (but without the organised crime links), Cincinattus leaving his accounting practice - to being such a pitiable figure that Malcolm Colless is calling for the city folks to subsidise him.

Colless points out that Joyce raised a lot of doubt about the ETS, and also (however unwittingly) points out that he has failed to do much else since, particularly anything of a constructive nature.

This is all very well but now, as a member of the opposition front bench, Joyce must exercise a discipline in his approach to policy issues that does not come naturally or easily to him. Against this background it is difficult to understand why, so early in his new role, Joyce chose to make his recent televised address to the National Press Club in Canberra.

And once aware that he was fronting this media bearpit, why didn't Abbott suggest that Joyce run through his proposed speech with him and his staff, along with suggested responses to the sort of questions his address would likely prompt?

More to the point, why did Joyce wing it? Why did he think he'd take to an unfamiliar and daunting environment with ease?

Why did he not seek to exude an air of calm that the finances of the Commonwealth would be in good hands if those hands were his? This is what Peter Costello did, to the point of complacency: a few stats here, a bit of cross-referencing to observable phenomena in our society, and before you know it he'd lulled you into a torpor and you couldn't imagine the nation's finances in any hands but his. Credible future finance ministers are not dismissed in three minutes on light-entertainment programs. Their role is too important to be dismissed entirely, as Roskam did in the AFR on Friday.

Colless could have explored that, but he trots out the usual Nats whinges verbatim and unexamined. The Nationals' vote in Richmond declined from 70% under Doug Anthony to 30% under Larry; the Nats are irate not because they have "no chance of winning Richmond", but because their chances of are better than the Nats'.

... despondent Nationals are discussing retaliating by standing candidates in federal Liberal seats in NSW, including Macarthur, Hume and possibly Farrer on the NSW-Victorian border.

All of those seats were once Country Party seats - none has been held by the Nats for a decade, if not several. The moment the Nats' bluff is called is the moment it is all over.

The threatened hissy fit over the dumping of David Clarke from the NSW Parliament is another example of this. As a man in his late sixties Clarke should be sanguine enough to hand over to a youngster, secure in the knowledge that church and family and all good things will prevail and prosper once he is gone. Instead, he has no achievements and no pride, and is thus threatening the Liberal Party with what it fears most: fear, uncertainty and doubt. Clarke isn't concerned that his absence will mean the defeat of all that he holds dear: he knows that everything will be fine - no, much much better - without him.

The reason why the far right has abandoned conservatism is because it is too hard. In a shifting world all that is solid melts into air, which is why the metaphysical has become more important, not less, for many. What the far right have embraced, however, are intellectual boat-people from the far left, who have treated moderate territories of the political terrain as flyover country. These people have brought with them their Leninist assumptions: assertions that the people are with you, a perverse comfort that your position is unpopular but inherently right for that, and the assumption that your enemies will wither in the face of sarcasm and ad-hominem abuse.

Old time Liberals like Peter Coleman treated these intellectual refugees like prodigal sons, setting aside suspicion and slaughtering fatted calves. These days the fatted calves are gone and the hills are bare, yet the far-right Leninists hold the high ground and are leading the Liberals not to certainty and comfort, but to the kind of indolence and irresponsibility we have seen from the California Republicans since Reagan left the Governor's mansion.

It takes a good man to build a barn, said Lincoln, but any old mule can kick it down. Like mules, modern Liberals can take no pride in their recent heritage nor have much hope for their future. Conservatives need to start creating certainty, not doubt, and if that means that mules like Joyce and Bernardi must be replaced then we can take comfort that it is for the best.

Postscript: I've quoted from and referred to the AFR here, which is behind a paywall. That's the risk you take I suppose, I hope the AFR is happy for me to interpret its precious content as I wish.

Colless' credibility collapses

Malcolm Colless has gone after the wrong issues and ignored the real ones. He is shaping up as the worst press gallery reporter since Koutsoukis. Minchin et al diminish their credibility by using Colless as their mouthpiece as they have here.

THERE is a growing belief among Liberal powerbrokers that the conservatives can win the next federal election due by 2010.

At the same time they are adamant that they must win the next NSW election to be held the following year or face a major credibility collapse. Both prospects turn on leadership, and not necessarily the present conservative leadership in either area.

You'd expect these strategists to be further along than they would appear to be. If winning depends on Nelson or O'Farrell getting dumped, then it should be well underway by now. You'd expect an article like this to have salacious details on who's met with whom and what deals have been done to effect the (apparently) necessary change.

Someone's credibility has collapsed Malcolm. It could be your own: for the moment your article is all source, no substance. It could be that of your "sources": they seem to be all rattle, no sabre.

It is clear that Labor has rebirthed political correctness as a shield to protect it from the economic impact that the Prime Minister's latest vision to change the world will have on the lives of everyday Australians. And this is being reinforced by Climate Change Minister Penny Wong's tireless mechanical recital repetition of this policy dogma with almost robotic precision.

"Political correctness" could mean anything, really, but in the above paragraph Colless seems to be pre-empting criticism of his portrayal of the dour Wong as a robot. Remember when patriotism used to be the last refuge of a scoundrel?

Already under severe pressure from spiralling increases in the cost of living, Australians are now being asked to prepare for more pain through higher prices for electricity and gas and other consumer goods under Labor's solution to the problems of climate change. In the face of this they can quite justifiably ask: What do I get in return for this increased pain? The answer is a warm inner glow by knowing that you are doing your bit to save the planet and making life more environmentally secure for future generations.

While the opinion polls unsurpisingly [sic] suggest community support for this motherhood issue they also show that most people don't understand what they are in for. The Government has already swung its advertising spin machine into gear to underpin its policy. But the real test will come when it starts to bite, particularly if it becomes clear that the Government is itself confused.

And so far the Government's response to the climate change issue has shown some alarming inconsistences.

The political question is: will a vote for the Coalition alleviate current and projecte economic difficulties? The answer to that is a definite no, as Nelson, Hunt and Turnbull say different things on different days and make it impossible for Australians under pressure to regard the Coalition as their shelter from economic and environmental storms.

That's why your "strategists" are kidding themselves, Malcolm. An inconsistent Coalition makes for a poor alternative government. Labor don't have to be perfect, they just have to be better than the "alternative".

It also threw $70 million at Toyota to build hybrid cars

Tell us that Howard would never ever have done that, Malcolm, oh go on do.

a more sensible, and less open-ended, approach would have been to provide a rebate to people who opted to buy hybrid cars. Demand would then have dictated supply rather than the Government setting an artificial target to score a quick political plus.

That would be more open-ended, not less. There is something environmentally silly about importing vehicles that may or may not provide a net emissions benefit, and would have no local spin-off for developing lower-emissions technologies.

To muzzle criticism of the Government's response to what Rudd calls the great moral issue of our time, the Prime Minister says the conservatives must be responsible partners with Labor in the future economic direction of the country.

The Liberals have got some serious soul searching to do on this question in terms of acting responsibly, he added. Rudd's interpretation of responsible behaviour is for the Coalition to side with Labor, rather than the Greens who, holding the balance of power in the Senate, have called for a much tougher stance on emissions trading.

And the Coalition's alternative is ...? Because they don't stand for anything, it's an entirely fair assumption that the Coalition will fall for anything.

But Rudd's decision to throw down the gauntlet of economic management in fact provides former treasurer Peter Costello with the opportunity to re-enter the political debate instead of twiddling his thumbs on the backbench while he polishes off his memoirs.

Because writing is hardly work at all, is it Malcolm? You'd know. It might provide the opportunity, but will Costello take it? It's silly to raise a question and then dodge it. If you were a press gallery journalist, a Canberra observer, you'd have those answers.

There would be no shortage of forums for Costello to deliver a major speech responding to Rudd's challenge on economic management. This would send a signal to the electorate and the party that he was back in the game.

There are no such shortages and nor have there been for the past nine months, Malcolm. Anyway, what game are we playing at here? Costello has remained silent while Labor has blamed the Coalition for putting the country in an economic mess. Costello said and did nothing on carbon abatement. Labor have Costello's measure.

It would also show that instead of carping about lost leadership opportunities he now intended to do something about it.

Liberal strategists are adamant that the issue of Coalition leadership into the next election must be resolved by the end of the year. But there is no broad, enthusiastic support for either the present leader Brendan Nelson or the pretender, shadow treasurer Malcolm Turnbull.

A move by Costello would certainly provide a circuit breaker to the seemingly endless, counter-productive bickering between Nelson and Turnbull.

In other words, Colless' sources are not Liberal strategists - they are Liberal groupies, hopin' and wishin' and prayin' that the captain sleeping below will rise and lead them to victory rather than just scribble in his bunk. This is reinforced by Koutsoukis-like dreaming:

It would also dispel the perception that Costello has no stomach for the hard task of leading the Liberals out of Opposition, a view reinforced by his decision to duck the leadership mantle after the Coalition's election defeat last November.

Having shown that he's a federal politics joke, Colless turns his glass eye to Macquarie Street:

Meanwhile in Nelson and Turnbull's home state of NSW senior Liberals are unimpressed with a recent public comment by state Opposition Leader, Barry O'Farrell, praising Wong and Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.

Responding to a question on ABC TV's Stateline program about his ideal guests at a hypothetical dinner party, O'Farrell said that along with Barack Obama and the Dalai Lama, he would include both women, whom he admired. "I don't agree with much of what they say, but as politicians I think they're representatives that the public could and should be proud of," he said.

Liberal strategists believe that O'Farrell's media handlers need to develop a tougher public image for the Opposition Leader if he is to convince the NSW voters that he will deliver the policies needed to rescue the state from appalling mismanagement under the existing Labor Government.

It's all very well for them: O'Farrell will have to work with a Federal Labor goverment (oh yes he will, given that Colless' hopeful premise is crap) whereas "Liberal strategists" won't. Federal Labor will do all they can to prop up NSW Labor, but O'Farrell can blunt this with his avuncular and reasonable demeanour. Morris Iemma has been busy cultivating "a tougher public image", so has Michael Costa and all of the other jokes and muppets in the NSW government. If those "Liberal strategists" think that O'Farrell needs to be more like Iemma and Costa, they need their heads read. They certainly have no credibility as "strategists".

There is a message for O'Farrell in the leadership flakiness within the federal parliamentary Liberal Party.

There sure is. You're seven points ahead of Labor, Barry, and once you win the next election could you come and show us how it's done?

The same journal featured even more hysteria, this time from John Black about Gippsland. You'd think the guy had never seen a byelection before.

it's difficult to make projections of a Gippsland by-election result on to urban marginals at a general election.

Yes, John, it certainly is. Even more so when you're this stupid:

it's a lot more plausible than greenhouse science to say Labor is in trouble in its outer urban marginals, especially those which have a more activist religious constituency

I doubt that the Coalition are in any position to win religious voters back. Eleven years of Howard learning all there was to learn from US Republicans, shovelling millions at church schools and charities - and Rudd undoes it all with a couple of articles in The Monthly. Nelson or Turnbull can't win those voters back, and as I said Rudd can counter Costello. Amateur small-scale psephology vs climate change science? I doubt it.

In Ryan, earlier in 2001 there was a big swing of almost 10 per cent against the Liberals; following the retirement of long-serving sitting Liberal John Moore for what his constituents clearly thought were insufficient reasons ... Substitute ETS for GST and you have Gippsland 2008. The point here however, is that it took Howard five years to get to Ryan, but Gippsland has taken the Rudd Government only seven months.

Yep, and in Gippsland it hasn't even been a year since McGauran had been re-elected. I'd suggest that the then government was in worse trouble at that byelection than the current government is now. The ETS isn't the reality that the GST was in 2001, and the government did not lose Gippsland: Ryan is the safest Liberal seat in the country's third-largest city.

In Gippsland the threat of electing Nelson as prime minister was irrelevant and Labor's two-party preferred vote in the real world dropped by enough to cost Labor the government if repeated at a general election.

So you can forget using the present national opinion polls of voting intention as a means of projecting the next by-election result.

The next byelections will be in Mayo and Lyne: the former, and possibly both, won't be contrested by Labor. By your own admission this renders them irrelevant. The national opinion polls assume a general election, the capacity to change government, an opportunity which a couple of byelections just don't provide: it's not fair to make national polls bear a burden they have not claimed. Nice bit of straw man work John.

And if Nelson goes and the international economy is unchanged by 2010 ...

And if your articles were any more tenuous, John, you'd be no better than Malcolm Colless. Or his sources.

In the short term

When (If?) wondering what the Liberals are up to, never mind Brendan Nelson. He is the symptom of a wider malaise, not the cause and definitely not the cure.

The Budget handed down last week was the sort of muddle you'd expect from the middle of a third term from an exhausted government. It was the opposite of a bold declaration of intent, and no momentum can be created from it to carry all the trooby levers through the dull, cold Canberra nights to come, year in, year out. People wanted lamb, and were served mutton - its only redeeming feature was that it was dressed as mutton.

Both the Opposition Leader and the Shadow Treasurer come from Sydney. Rudd and Swan made an enormous error in claiming that a household income of $150k is a national benchmark of wealth, one that both Nelson and Turnbull should have hammered home in the following electorates:

• Lindsay (NSW)


• Robertson (NSW)


• Dobell (NSW)


• Bennelong (NSW)


• Bonner (Q)


• Brisbane (Q)


• Longman (Q)


• Petrie (Q)


• Hasluck (WA)


• Adelaide (SA)


• Kingston (SA)


• Melbourne Ports (V)

All of those electorates are, or should be, on the Liberals' list of seats to win back next time. All of them regard $150k as a bare minimum for entry to those communities, let alone sustainability. Building a Liberal message in those areas required a clear and consistent message, on something more substantial than whether their bundy and coke costs too much. Too late now.

5c a litre saving on a 60-litre tank = $3. No sandwich, no milkshake, no thanks to Nelson and the federal Libs. It didn't even work for Fielding First - if Nelson starts being photographed with his shirt off then never mind Peter Hartcher, it will be time for him to go straight away.

It would be interesting to see which ex-Coalition staffers have popped up as lobbyists for the alcopop makers. The good news for them is that a major party will go into bat for them, the bad news is that nobody will vote against $3b worth of revenue - essentially voluntary taxation - and the alcopop makers have no chance whatsoever of getting this impost lifted. Well done at picking the low-hanging fruit and finding the grubs have gotten to it first.

The trouble is that the geniuses who come up with this stuff are the same ones who wanted to bask in the fading glow of Howard rather than build a new day for themselves, the ones who don't know whether Alexander Downer is coming or going. The reason why Malcolm Colless' latest is such crap is because it fails to answer the question: hold to what, exactly? You can't just cling to policies that have not only been rejected but are being erased and/or surpassed before your very eyes. For the Liberals, some Howard government legacies just aren't viable while others are - pretending 2007 never happened won't help individual Liberal politicians nor that party as a whole in regaining office.

Pieces like this imply that debate is open-ended and may lead to outcomes that are not yet clear (in this case, it also reinforces a natural but unrealised affinity between social and economic libertarians, but that's by-the-by). When someone like Minchin or Julie Bishop says they're "happy to have a debate", what they mean is a Howard-style debate, where a decision is presented as a fait accompli and you can talk about it as much as you like but it's going ahead whether you like it or not. People like Malcolm Colless go weak at the knees about this kind of "decisiveness", but it suffers from the problem identified by Popper that the lack of corrective feedback leads ultimately to system failure. Disunity is not always death and there are surer, faster routes to political death than the luxury of re-examination from the freedom of opposition.

All policy ideas from clowns like Abbott, Minchin et al are going to be piecemeal and short-term, that's all they've ever been. The exhaustion of American conservatism augurs poorly for their capacity to take the Liberal Party forward.

The strangest section of Nelson's speech was his tour d'horizon of the nation's economy going back to the Keating years, which framed the period under John Howard as a flawless golden era. Defending the legacy is a necessity for every vanquished government, but Nelson took it too far. In the end, he veered close to scolding the public for kicking out the Coalition.

Hardly strange, Carney: here the Liberals are saying in clear English that they can't and won't differentiate between baby and bathwater in the ejection of a Liberal government, and thus can offer no reason why voters should reverse their verdict.

Yes, I said a Liberal government - when have the Country/National Party contributed so little to the Coalition as they have since Sinclair's day?

The best indications of Liberal challenges to the government are pieces like this, which dare to take on Rudd in an area where he's perceived to be strong. To take on Rudd you'd have to do your homework, and clearly Trood has: a few failings by foreign missions could wear down Stephen Smith and go to the heart of Rudd's agenda, do that enough times and you've got him rattled. The people close to Nelson, Turnbull and Minchin don't even think stuff like this is important, when it actually both undermines the foundations of the status quo and charts out what might replace it: too hard for the "hard". Sure, foreign policy wins no votes but this sort of quality analysis across other areas of government do make for a coherent platform not only for opposition - but for government. If you can't do it, get out of the way.

Stoop to conquer

What the Liberals need to do federally is to ditch aspects of Howard's intellectual and moral inertia while preserving above all else his reputation for economic competence.

The question of leadership is, who can best do this?

The current leader, Brendan Nelson, is not the man to shake up anyone or anything. Once the patient is stabilised and able to sign out of hospital, the services of the doctor should be dispensed with. This is not to say that the guy should be treated like rubbish and that any opinion he may have in future must be ignored, as is the case with John Hewson or Mark Latham.

The Liberal Party has alternative leaders. They just need to do some work first, rather than just thrust themselves forward. Anyone who thrust themselves forward before doing the necessary work can expect - and will deserve - what awaits Nelson.

Costello has the experience and the credentials, as Matthew Franklin points out, it is fair to accuse him of a Beazley-like lack of ticker. The test for him will ultimately be, of all things, a trawl back through his own life.

SENIOR Liberals are bracing for a political storm after learning that former treasurer Peter Costello will publish his memoirs.

"I think he will regret it for the rest of his life," a former member of the Liberal's federal executive said today.

Here Christian Kerr is thinking like a Liberal government staffer, back from the days when there were Liberal governments. He wouldn't have had to hunt far to find an old fart who thinks that it is always better for the Liberal boat to be tied to a wharf and accumulating barnacles than for it to be rocked.

It will be a sign of ticker for Costello to come out with a memoir that, if not a barbaric yawp, doesn't hesistate to tell timid souls like this to get fucked. Coleman can lend intellectual depth to such an enterprise but it is Costello who must take charge of it, have the book reflect both his life and forward thinking in a way that Coleman cannot deliver alone. A good memoir could be a platform for Costello. A poor one will confirm him as gutless and snide, remainder-bin fodder like The Abnegation of a Young Dickhead.

The next Liberal Prime Minister will be someone who will put the party organisation in a position where it supports rather than hinders the political leadership. This is what John Howard was able to do in 1995-96, and it is why he and not Peacock, Hewson or Downer led the Liberals to victory.

If you can't reshape the Liberal Party into a lean, mean fighting machine, at least you can push its most cumbersome features out of the way. Who has the clout to do that?

Costello comes from Victoria and likes that state's dysfunctional division full of nobodies just the way it is. He is not going to rip through the Victorian division, nor any other. If the memoirs really do provide a wake-up call, he'll have to dump some courtiers. Because he can't offer government bounty, his only choice is to push people into the cold. Failing that, Costello could end up like John West toward the end of Power Without Glory, despairing that he's surrounded by numbskulls.

It is NSW where there is greatest potential for reform, and where there are more seats that the Liberals need to win than in Victoria. There are three potential leaders there, and the first one to throw themselves into reforming the state division of the Liberal Party will position themselves as the next Liberal Prime Minister.

Malcolm Turnbull is the lynchpin of the Liberals' economic credibility and must not be moved from the shadow treasury. Swan is weak and, if he puts in a poor performance in the Budget, it is Turnbull who should run him down and claim his scalp (Rudd can't and won't keep his old Nambour mate on if he lets the side down) - as Shadow Treasurer.

One of the good things about a quote within a Malcolm Colless article is that it reveals sharper judgement than Colless:

"Malcolm and his backers should realise that he doesn't have the numbers at present," one senior Liberal said in a not too subtle shot at indigenous affairs spokesman Tony Abbott. "The cold reality for them is that neither the party nor the electorate is ready for Malcolm yet," he added.

Quite.

Turnbull can't and won't get down with Liberals in branches outside his electorate. He'd be happy to sweep through in a cloud of quips and bombast, but connecting with banal people and their banal lives will be too much of a grind. He can't and won't deign to treat David Clarke as someone worthy of his time and effort, nor will he have the base within the party to do to him what he did to Peter King.

Tony Abbott is not ready to take over from Turnbull as Shadow Treasurer. He's struggling as Shadow Minister for Families, Families, Families, Centrelink, the Northern Territory Intervention and Families. The RU486 debacle signalled that Abbott was not a rival to Costello for the leadership, and that judgement increasingly looks vindicated.

Abbott is uncomfortable about being a wholly-owned subsidiary of David Clarke and the Taliban, but that's where he is. Abbott lacks the guts to beard that lion is his den. He could embrace the Selig reforms and present himself as an honest broker - but the Taliban hates apostasy and the moderates hate him even more. He'd be crushed, and there's no point in a broker who's broken - and sometimes, as Nelson shows, you can be so "broke" that you can't be fixed.

Joe Hockey has form with reviewing the Liberal Party's structure, having participated in one such in the early '90s chaired by John Valder. Hockey is a moderate factional warrior and the smarter minds on the right can see him coming. Nonetheless, he could develop clout and gravitas in this process. He knows the structure of the NSW division and where the bodies are buried.

Reforming the NSW branch would be hard and dirty work, the sort of job likely to make or break a politician. Yet, in its current state it is an obstacle to government at state, federal and possibly even local level. Like Hercules emerging from the Augean stables, it is the sort of thing that could establish a leader on the national stage - someone well placed to make the most of opportunities when the Rudd Government loses its sparkle, and when mighty mountains of the contemporary landscape become spent volcanoes.

In the Liberal Party, battle lines are clearly being drawn between the executive and parliamentary wings. In NSW, the hardline right-wing faction, which exercises enormous influence at a state and federal level, is determined to resist the reform model being pushed by the party's president, Geoff Selig, which it brands as undemocratic. And it will be interesting to see whether Selig is still the state president at the end of the year.

The Right rejects claims it is being driven by self-interest that is unrepresentative of the Liberal constituency and is therefore holding back the party's electoral prospects. It argues that instead of demonising the factions, the party should publicly acknowledge their existence and their role in its operating structure.

It's Colless' job to investigate claims like that, not take them on face value. Stackers can't complain about being "undemocratic". He can't just accept a threat to Selig's position (a sign of what'd happen to Abbott if he stood up to them). The Taliban are not a factor to be managed; they are a noxious force bent on killing the host organism. You don't manage that, you stand up to it and kill it off.

Labor, which has a bitter history of the destructive effects of internal factional warfare, has in recent times been able to portray the factions as a benign influence in the party.

This was nowhere more obvious than in the public announcement by Rudd that he, and not the factions - as had traditionally been the case - would determine his ministry, even if his choices effectively reflected factional preferences.

Once again, Colless has undermined the premise of his article. Rudd's ability to choose his own ministry was a defeat for factionalism, not a vindication of it.

David Clarke has to realise that he is landfill for the Liberal Party's road to victory. The sooner he realises it the better, and the better for the one able to confront him with that realisation.

As to Queensland, that's just too hard. There is a case for a unique solution there. It may include Mal Brough, unless the NT intervention is so completely reframed that he looks like a throwback. Please, though, spare the Queensland coalition crocodile tears like this. One can have too many Queenslanders, just as a generation ago there was an unnecessary number of Victorians running things, and an unhealthy (and unproductive) concentration of South Australians in the Howard cabinet.

The least likely of these potential leaders, Hockey, is best placed to take the indirect but surest path to the Lodge. It won't be quick and it won't be easy. Only dills like Minchin think there's some alternative to deep and broad reform (such that might tip his minions out of rotten boroughs in NSW, Tasmania and SA). They need to be isolated and either starved into submission, or else become ridiculous like those bedraggled Japanese soldiers who stayed in the Pacific after ignoring their Emperor's order to surrender.

In the end, a dose of old-fashioned, Labor-style federal intervention may be what is needed. But, alas for the Liberals, their constitution does not permit such roughhouse tactics.

Not while the Federal Liberals are full of clueless goobers like Loughnane and Minchin. The NSW Liberals have to reform themselves from within. So do the Vics, and the Queenslanders, and those from the other states too. The next Liberal Prime Minister will have to stoop to the rubber chicken circuit of Liberal branches before taking on and beating Rudd.

Colless at brink of irrelevance

In the thin gruel of a Malcolm Colless article, we rarely see a substantial chunk of fact. Paranoia, wild surmisings and seizing on something trivial and irrelevant and squeezing it to death is standard. This doesn't disappoint fans of bare-minimum journalism, where a little bit of useful information serves as a launching pad for doom, gloom and four-year terms.

The little bit of useful information is the Last Stand at Traralgon. Colless accepts without question the idea that three-cornered contests (where both the Liberals and Nationals contest an election against one another) represent political death for the Coalition. Normally three-cornered contests depress the Labor vote, but in the aftermath of defeat the two parties could only enhance their image of weakness by running against one another.

Then, at the end, there is this genuinely marvellous piece of imagery:

"There's no light on the hill, just the sound of crickets in the dark," was how one despondent conservative powerbroker summed it up.

Brilliant!

In Gippsland, both parties would produce two mediocre candidates who'd pussyfoot around one another, while Labor would choose a candidate with nothing to lose and keen to give it a red-hot go. The latter qualities would impress people not swayed by party affiliation, rubbing salt into Coalition wounds. You can have all the polls you like, but the Liberals will ignore them and then yell at their scrutineers for "being negative": the Minchin Principle, never tell me anything I don't want to hear. The Minchin Principle put the Coalition where it is today, and will keep it there for some time yet.

The obvious joint-Coalition candidate for Gippsland is Julian McGauran. He's got the name, he's keen for a continuing political career, he has experience of both parties and they're both desperate enough to overlook his past.

Ironically, a fond belief within the NSW Coalition that it will win the next election is driving a resistance to any change in the status quo.

Because what you need to do is cruel the chances of the best chance for Coalition victory. The NSW Coalition is busy building a credible agenda for government - what they need is for Bill Heffernan to come and grandfather them and usher in the Meagher Government.

... veteran Liberal numbers man Bill Heffernan, who sees Gippsland as a watershed in the battle for reform inside the Coalition. He is pushing for a merger in which all existing Coalition positions in the House of Representatives and the Senate would be grandfathered. In other words, sitting members would not be caught in an internal preselection wedge.

What a brilliant strategist that man is: cementing dead wood in place is just what's needed in the face of defeat.

Nelson desperately needs some serious political traction if he is to survive the mounting internal grumblings over the lack of inspirational leadership in the Coalition. Failure to make headway on the Liberals' historical strong suit of economic management could well be the final straw.

There's also the degree to which this response is at all informed by the Listening Tour. Didn't work for Hillary Clinton, didn't work for Andrew Peacock in 1989-90, and I doubt there is a single successful politician anywhere who has bounced back from the ignominy of a Listening Tour to win office, hold it and achieve anything of note.

Malcolm Colless had a factoid handed to him, and promptly dropped it into a festering vat of foolishness. It would be a mistake for the Coalition to regard this man as a trusted intermediary with the public. Get the factoid, ignore the dross - but is Malcolm Colless worth the dross?

What are you doing here?

What does it mean to be a member of a branch of a political party? This is the sort of thing that the Liberal Party needs to think through over the long term, but will instead settle for a short-term fix ... if only one were available.

Members of political parties used to:

1. raise funds for political parties at election time


2. hand out how-to-vote cards at polling booths


3. have a substantial say in who the party would choose as candidates


4. contribute Liberal candidates from their ranks.

This is the traditional role of the party member, but it is not the contemporary reality:

1. Political parties raise much more money from donations and fundraisers than party members are capable of raising. A Millennium Forum function at a major hotel can raise sums in the tens or hundreds of thousands; a function run by a branch might get twenty people along to a dinner with $10-20 a head profit going to the administration of a branch, or making a small contribution in an electorate that might not prove decisive in a wider campaign.


2. The average age of a Liberal Party member in NSW is well into their sixties. They are not physically capable of standing around a polling booth from 8am to 6pm in all weathers, then scrutineering afterwards, then going to the after-party to watch the result and congratulate/commiserate with the candidate for whom they have worked. The Liberal Party increasingly pays people to hand out how-to-votes, which doesn't make for much commitment at the very point of engagement with the wider public.


3. Partly as a reaction against branch-stacking, and partly to facilitate the imposition of head office candidates, the input of local branch members is diminished when it comes to preselections. Branch members find candidates foisted upon them who have no idea what they do, and who are not grateful to them because they didn't help them get preselection. A Liberal MP experienced in the ways of the party relies on his or her local branch members to smooth over problems or bring them to the MP's attention; the Liberal MP inexperienced in party affairs has no idea and assumes that stuff gets taken care of with the same assiduousness as their own preselection.


4. As above: Brendan Nelson, Jackie Kelly and other Liberal MPs had been party members for less than a year before they were first elected. Part of the difficulty of duchessing people into becoming Liberal candidates is that the experience prepares them poorly for the hard graft of political life. They do not relate to their local branch members, which demotivates them.

All of the above applies to the ALP as well. Anthony Albanese might be enjoying his boot-on-the-other-foot moment but it doesn't contribute much to the wider debate. When it comes time to get rid of duds like Morris Iemma or Julia Irwin, we'll see who's sick.

The recent kerfuffle over Scott Morrison's foray into political homelessness illustrates how the changing nature of political parties encourages cluelessness. Morrison was a former State Director, he should have made it his business to get to know Liberal branch members in the Cook electorate and find out which were good branches, which weren't. His performance in that job shows he has a talent for sucking up to those with status and ignoring those without. Simply plumping for a branch "near his home" was an act of such pissant carelessness that he deserves being shown up by someone like John White. I hope White has moderated his views on white Australia from when I knew him, and that he no longer holds branch meetings at Audley Weir on Christmas Day to test people's loyalty.

The latest contribution from Malcolm Colless is not well-informed or well thought through. The speculation surrounding Greiner is nothing but hype and is used as a hook to re-state the bleedin' obvious.

It is widely believed that the road back to the Treasury benches in Canberra must begin in NSW if for no other reason than it has traditionally been the breadbasket state for Liberal Party funding.

That, and the fact that 49 of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives are in NSW, and it's hard to form a majority therein without lifting your vote in NSW. On the state level - well, a win anywhere would be nice for the Liberals. It's possible for a party to have heaps of money and still pull up short electorally: the goal is to achieve the latter, Malcolm. A bit of digging on your part would have revealed that the Liberal Party's treasurer is not a well-connected Sydney person but some Melbourne grandee who probably can't operate a push-button telephone.

As the Liberal Party continues with the grim task of reviewing its future in the wake of last November's federal election defeat, it is abundantly clear that internal structural reform to break the stranglehold of any self-interested faction is what is needed ahead of any moves towards mergers or takeovers within the Coalition.

No shit. When that faction takes over state executive, however, it creases to be self-interested and its interests become inseparable from those of the party organisation. That's the whole idea of why they're doing what they're doing. Those who stand against them simply haven't stood up.

O'Farrell needs to send a signal that he is in charge and is taking the party forward because, while having a field day attacking the chronic mismanagement by the Labor Government of Premier Morris Iemma, the Opposition cannot seem to capture the imagination of the electorate.

Maybe this is because the electorate doesn't know what the conservatives have in mind to make this better, if anything? And the electorate is quite justified in asking what is their plan to remedy the crises in the public hospitals and transport systems, to curb the frightening surge in urban violence and to restore respect for a police force undermined by years of Labor-imposed political correctness, just for a start.

As things stand, Liberal strategists are grimly pessimistic about the Opposition's chances in the next State election, due in 2011.

While people are working on policy, the Taliban are addressing weird religious cults and getting their 500 members to stack out hardworking Liberal branch members. Having Peter Phelps in any role, even handing out how-to-votes, would be politically suicidal. Colless is a little hysterical about Laura Norder but his analysis of the problem is commonplace. Readers don't need a newspaper to reinforce what they already know, they need to be told what is happening but not widely obvious. One phone call and he could have had an interview with O'Farrell to answer some of these questions, and have a better article as a result.

I was an active Liberal for 14 years and tried to avoid the kind of stupidity that has come to pass. The best way to avoid such stupidity is to get out. Let's hope that those who would rush toward the flames are actually doing good work for party, state and nation.

What are AWAs for?

Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) exist to enable employers and employees to trade away workplace rights and obligations that neither want, in favour of those they do.

It was silly of the Coalition to seek to impose AWAs on the very battlers (those earning average incomes or less) whom they relied upon to stay in government. The mooted compromise of extending AWAs to those at or above average incomes, such as those earning top dollar in labour-starved remote mining communities, was sensible and made the bureaucratically cumbersome no-disadvantage test unnecessary.

You could argue that Julie Bishop is going into bat for AWAs because she's from Western Australia, and is acutely aware of how necessary they are. Forcing highly-paid tradespeople in the Pilbara into the Edwardian machinery of awards is silly, and diminishes those from the labour movement who think they're doing workers a favour by insisting that all working arrangements must involve them. The mining companies can fight their own battles with the government.

It is more than understandable, it is to the good that Bishop would seek to both lend her support to positive policy, and to make the Government feel clumsy in its management of the perennially politically sensitive area of workplace relations.

That said, stories like this just don't help readers understand what's going on. Malcolm Colless hasn't thought about what has happened in federal politics over the past year or so, and he hasn't thought about what he's written. On that basis, it's not worth reading and it isn't worth having Colless report to Australian readers about a phenomenon he just doesn't understand.

Hopefully it also signals an end to the attack of the guilts that has gripped the Opposition since its defeat in last November's Federal election: guilt over losing this poll, guilt over its policies and it seems even guilt over having a majority in the Senate.

So any reassessment by a political party newly turfed into opposition is an "attack of the guilts", Malcolm?

Sensing this and capitalising on the despair within the Coalition the Rudd Government, and Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard in particular, has been taunting it with claims that it has no right to exercise this power because the electorate voted with its feet on Work Choices.

How does that compare with the caring and sensitive way that the Howard government dealt with its Opposition, Malcolm?

Brendan Nelson, who is giving a very good impression of a transitional opposition leader ...

No disagreement there, but a fairly barbed aside in the current context. Let's hope there's a point in this sentence:

[Nelson] ... muddied the waters early on by rushing in to announce that Work Choices was dead. This ill-timed move played into Labor's hands and effectively pulled the rug from under the Howard government's industrial relations reforms that go back to 1996 when it introduced AWAs to enable more flexibility in negotiations between employees and employers on a one-to-one basis.

I'd suggest that having a majority of seats in the House of Reps and a sworn-in ministry "played into Labor's hands" more than anything Nelson could or couldn't have done. What is meant by "rug", exactly? I've heard legislation referred to as a "raft", or a "package", but a "rug"? Is workplace relations legislation like the Wizard of Oz: you have to believe, believe, believe to make your dreams come true?

The simple fact is that this system worked very effectively until the Howard government decided to remove no disadvantage provisions

Worked very well for whom, Malcolm? There is something pathetic about grubbing $100/week off a long-serving and lowly-paid employee. No wonder the business community did not rally to Howard's call to support WorkChoices by donating to the Liberal Party.

Does the role of WorkChoices in the Howard government's loss of office in a time of plenty warrant no examination at all, Malcolm? Nothing, only utter abandonment or strapping oneself to the mast?

Howard believed that in a situation of full employment workers had the upper hand in market negotiations.

is it possible that he was mistaken? Just possible?

... a fear campaign driven by Labor and the unions that created a perception of across-the-board exploitation of employees, particularly young people.

What it created was dissonance, the perception that one might not share in the economic bounty that Howard had apparently worked so hard to bring about. It's understandable that those who work in the media should overestimate its importance, but it does not make it any more true that your fellow citizens are sheep.

It now emerges that, faced with the increasing likelihood of election defeat, the Howard government considered an industrial relations rescue package that included a proposal to effectively scrap junior wage scales by removing discrimination on the basis of age.

This no doubt would have won applause from young voters who had been marching away from the conservative government in droves but employer organisations were unimpressed and forecast economic disaster if it went ahead with the strategy that was then abandoned.

Thank goodness those turkeys are no longer governing us, eh?

As a teenager on the NSW Central Coast, I saw my peers competing for the only jobs going in that area - retail jobs - with women in their twenties and thirties who were more motivated and had better understanding of customers and stock control than your average teenager. All the teenagers had going for them was junior wages. Many employers decided to wear the extra expense to get more reliable employees.

Far from being "no doubt" aimed to attract young voters, this policy threatened both to cut the first rung off the employment ladder for young Australians, and to hope they wouldn't notice until after polling day. The "marching" imagery is silly, as younger voters are the most difficult people to organise and control in the manner implied by "marching". 2007 was not 1968. It is probably more accurate to say that the conservative government marched away from young Australians and their future. Applause is fleeting, Malcolm; you can't take it to either the bank or the ballot box. It was silly for conservative strategist to seek "applause" from people who were ignoring them, assuming that's actually what they were doing.

Whatever the merits or pitfalls of this strategy, born out of despair, the result was that Labor was able to wreak maximum electoral havoc on the Coalition over Work Choices.

The merits of the strategy are determined by how well it prevailed, given the advantages of incumbency enjoyed by those who formulated it, as well as the multi-million-dollar advertising campaign funded by the then government (which Colless, strangely, does not mention).

Killing off AWAs will simultaneously undermine democracy in the workplace by stripping away individual rights while bestowing disproportionate power on the unions that have become increasingly irrelevant.

"Killing" is a bit emotive, isn't it Malcolm? Did individual rights in the workplace not exist before 2005 (when WorkChoices was first passed) or 1996? Is it not possible for the government to come up with a compromise in which unions are present, but neither omnipresent or excluded? Surely placing power in the hands of the irrelevant is a temporary measure, as we have seen.

Bishop is correct when she says that Labor's claim to have a mandate to roll back Work Choices does not give it the right to disregard all of the Howard government's industrial reforms, including AWAs.

No, she's not. Labor's claim to have a mandate (much like the Coalition's in times past) enables it to abolish all, or some, or none of the measures introduced by previous governments. There may be merits for retaining or amending certain measures, but debating these merits is not the same as denying any right to make the changes for which a majority of the electorate has voted.

The Opposition cannot allow itself to be intimidated by Labor on this issue.

And even if it did, how would the result be different? How is sticking to a failed and rejected policy evidence of non-capitulation? John Howard was boxed into unsustainable positions because he didn't want to appear weak, when defending the indefensible was actually the weakest thing he could have done. Why should the Liberals defend the indefensible, and how will this help their claim of being able to govern Australia going forward?

the risk of a wages explosion driven by increasing inflation will rise sharply once AWAs are ripped away.

Again with the emotive language, "ripped away". What about the proposal for AWAs above average earnings, Malcolm? What about Gillard's statements about a common-law instrument that might fit this purpose, Malcolm? A press gallery correspondent with your experience has no excuse for ignoring these things. Clearly, you don't have to be part of the labour movement to run a scare campaign.

It is a depressing reality for the conservatives that, having lost power after 11 years in Government, they almost certainly have further to fall before the tide turns and they will probably face at least two terms in the political wilderness.

Depressing for whom, Malcolm? Do you think that clinging to demonstrated failure will make a worst-case scenario more likely?

But while they struggle to bring about internal structural reform they must shake themselves out of their state of denial and get on with the business of being an effective Opposition if they expect to be taken seriously. And taking a leaf out of Kevin Rudd's me-too policy book is not the way to do it.

What about John Howard's me-too policies that so infuriated Keating in 1995-96? They work, and given that the Coalition haven't put a foot right since Rudd became leader, it might be best if you stop undermining your own positions, stop trying to ignite damp squibs, and tell us what's going on.

Malcolm Colless: your analysis of the political situation needs to improve for your credibility to survive beyond the end of the Howard government. If Milney can do it, you can too.

Not getting it

The Liberal Party believes at its core that as long as you grow the economy, nothing else matters. The reason why the 2007 election is so devastating is that it's clearly possible to lose an election despite positive economic indicators.

The Coalition lost the 2007 election because they weren't using the economic bounty to good effect, in terms of infrastructure and education. People had jobs but WorkChoices made them feel insecure. People voted Labor because they were convinced that they could do so, for the first time in a decade, without either voting for that prick Keating or sending the economy down the toilet.

This piece by Malcolm Colless learns nothing from the last election. In this particular case, Colless is providing the very sort of advice the Liberals can't afford to follow, and is making the same mistakes they are making.

This follows the wholesale attack Labor made on the Coalition's economic management of the country during the federal election campaign.

Not being an insider, Malcolm, the Labor message I saw was that the Coalition wasn't managing the economy in a way that was sustainable, whether you talk about skills or the environment or in terms of people's feelings of general well-being. To set up the straw man (that the Liberals were crap economic managers) and knock it down is a complete waste of time.

With the banks starting to lift their lending rates to offset internal cost pressures ahead of a much anticipated further rate hike by the Reserve Bank next month, Treasurer Wayne Swan is giving a good impression of a novice skater slipping and sliding on the ice as he finds himself in the same delicate position as his predecessor.

Two things need to be said here: first, the newly-elected government will be given some latitude. Second, it's not clear that newly re-elected Treasurer Costello, with his eye on the takeover, would have surfed the subprime thing any better than any other government anywhere in the world is.

Two questions then need to be asked:

• Do you remember what Costello was like as a novice Treasurer?



• Do you think that Wayne Swan is a fast learner?

If your answer to both questions is positive, Colless' thesis starts looking sick.

Another major downside for the Government is the fallout from its promise to scrap the Coalition's Work Choices industrial laws, which it exploited successfully during the election campaign.

While it is undeniable there were serious flaws in the way the Howard government managed this policy, there is also no doubt that it contributed significantly to the record low unemployment that Rudd inherited from the Coalition.

What fallout? The Liberals said that WorkChoices was dead, and now they are seeking to preserve some elements of it. This kind of mixed messaging is politically fatal.

Rather than fine-tuning this, Rudd has effectively decided to throw the baby out with the bathwater by opening the door for militant unions to replace flexible individual working arrangements with broad-based, complex and anachronistic award conditions.

He has effectively done nothing of the sort. Militant unions played no role in helping Rudd get elected. He and Gillard have done well in hosing down both their expectations and the kind of fear campaign Colless still regards as viable.

But as recession bites and demand falls, business will come under increasing pressure to lower its costs, with the obvious impact on jobs.

Ironically, these economic issues throw a tactical lifeline to the conservatives as they battle to climb out of the pit of despair at their devastating loss in the election. This is because the issues can be seen as a vindication of the economic management policies adopted by the Coalition in government.

The tactical lifeline to the Liberals depends upon Brendan Nelson being seen as credible as John Howard in his prime. Good luck with that, Malcolm Colless. Your whole article rests on this pathetically weak premise.

At the same time, though, the issues also will heighten tensions within conservative ranks over the readiness by some to jettison key Coalition policies in the wake of the election defeat. In particular, Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson's public announcement that Work Choices is dead is seen as short-sighted, populist me-tooism that has not helped the fightback.

"Of course we need to be forward looking. But we also need to maintain our credibility," one senior Liberal close to the review into the party's future told The Australian. "We ought to be able to handle a changed situation - namely going into Opposition - without throwing out our past.

Whose fightback? Why the token concession to "forward looking" if your main focus is rearguard actions?

It was easier for the Coalition when they lost in the past. They were able to ditch the entanglements that dispatched them to opposition, develop a new narrative, and take advantage of Labor mistakes in order to return to government:

• 1983: Fraserism died as the tears rolled down his cheeks. Nobody was fighting to maintain Fraserism in the early '80s, not even Fraser himself.



• 1972: The Liberals rushed to distance themselves from Billy McMahon and the Vietnam War.



• 1941: The UAP became so discredited that the whole party organisation was scrapped and rebuilt from the ground up.

In 2007, Brendan Nelson is not smart enough to realise that he's strapped into burning wreckage. Those who put him into the leadership, little-state troublemakers like Nick Minchin and Eric Abetz, are precisely those who are stopping him jettisoning those aspects of the Howard legacy that would give him tactical advantage in taking on Rudd.

"The Howard government's success in minimising the impact of the Asian financial crises in the 1990s on the Australian economy, for example, underscores our credibility and experience in economic management," he said.

Yeah, I bet that polled really well, right up there with the credit crunch of 1961. That'll work in 2010 for sure. Good on you Malcolm Colless for unpacking and examining that statement, too.

The immediate challenge for the Liberals is to come up with practical structural reform that will make the party attractive to membership from the broader community while stomping on those who use minority self-interest to marginalise change.

Using what force to do the stomping, Malcolm? Those who resist change and insist on maintaining failed policies - like the person you quoted - should be among the stompees, and not the stompers as your article would have them.

With troubled times seemingly closing in fast, its relevance in Opposition as it builds the long road back to government will greatly depend on whether the new leadership team can convince the electorate that it should be taken seriously.

Seriously unable to face up to past mistakes? Seriously deficient compared to Rudd?

The flaws in this article reflect those in the Liberal Party today. Despite this article's hopeful and resolute tone, it is therefore unable to help transcend them.