And a time for every purpose under Heaven

The Families First party was created in a specific political environment in the early part of this decade. That time has passed and so too, FF will not have the effect on this election that its supporters might hope or its opponents fear.

Five years ago, the Howard government was shovelling money at Christian schools, and committed Christians such as Peter Costello, John Anderson and Howard himself talked volubly about their faith. Then-opposition leader Kim Beazley was also a man of faith. Yet ... somehow it wasn't enough.

Family First was born out of the Assemblies of God churches: protestations that the AoG and FF are intrinsically separate has yet to be tested by any serious divergence of opinion between the two organisations. In 2004 it experienced a surge in support after Mark Latham became leader of the ALP. Latham followed Whitlam in acknowledging no deity higher than himself, and attacked government grants to private schools.

Fred Nile was caught napping when the wave of support for Christian politics surged and ebbed without him. To his disgrace, he had to resort to neo-Hansonism to get up at the NSW election.

FF were strongest in Victoria, but not particularly strong there. Victorians were non-plussed about Howard but decidedly hostile to Latham. The preference trail that catapulted Stephen Fielding into the Senate were the result of FF being underestimated. Fielding replaced the committed Catholic Jacinta Collins, a zero-sum gain for people who vote on Christian/life issues. Collins is at the top of the Senate ticket for the Victorian ALP in this election, and Fielding isn't up for election. The major parties are well and truly awake to FF.

More than that, they've neutered FF entirely. Fielding hasn't lost that deer-in-the-headlights look, hedging his bets with the best of them but not doing anything apart from standard political stuntwork. His supporters might claim that he's got both innocence and passion like the Jimmy Stewart character in Mr Smith goes to Washington, but (by golly) that character achieved more in is first seventy-two hours than Fielding has or will.

On no issue has Fielding took a firm stand like Brian Harradine did over abortion, euthanasia or porn. On no issue has Fielding brokered a serious deal. He is no Don Chipp, no Bob Brown, no Barnaby Joyce; to drag his party into contention he'd need to be all that and something else again. Nobody believes that crap about fuel taxes. Fielding is a time server like any major-party backbencher, and it is doubtful that he'll be re-elected in 2010.

To come back from the wilderness, Labor had to claw back support from somewhere. The articles Kevin Rudd wrote for The Monthly about his faith, which mentioned Dietrich Bonhoeffer and other matters, was a start. Those Australians who want a Christian presence in politics such as we see in the US have been sorely disappointed in the do-nothing Fielding First, and it's now clear that Christians can vote for Rudd Labor without the affront to their faith that Latham represented. Perhaps it took a Queenslander to see that the Christian vote was not the preserve of wackos, but one that can be balanced with other parts of society.

Why was the Christian lobby unconvinced by Howard? Why are they not rusted-on supporters, handing out Liberal Party material in church and denouncing old-style Labor from the pulpits? Why is Pell, the vainest windbag in public life since Gough Whitlam, so ineffective in getting his policies through the political process? Someone other than Marion Maddox should examine this.

FF has two members of the Legislative Council in South Australia, but so what? Nick Xenophon has eaten both their lunch and that of the Democrats. FF has no discernible future, it won't win any more seats in the Senate and is a non-starter at any other state election coming up. FF may hope to feed on the carrion of the post-Howard coalition parties but there are others better placed to do that, others who can see them coming.

There is a space for religion in Australian politics but FF can't park in that space.

Prefer ability

I've already posted on minor parties in the Senate, but articles like this emphasise how wilfully the mainstream media are at missing the point.

In the next term of Parliament, there will come a point where vital legislation is held up by inter-party squabbling. If you've been around as long as Michelle Grattan has, you (should) know this. It ought be no surprise that minor parties are positioning themselves to best effect: indeed, as I said in August, now is the perfect time to put them under the microscope and find out how they plan to vote on particular issues. That's what's at stake here: elections are about the future, not nostalgia for Democrats of Olde or whatever.

THE big boys' contest is so riveting that inevitably the small fry, whose stamping ground is the Senate, don't get much of a look in. But this is a seminal election for them too.

Girlish glee, followed by condescention: you'd expect that from Annabel Crabb rather than Michelle Grattan.

"This is the first time in Australian history that a radical left-wing party like the Greens have been poised to gain such an unprecedented level of power in the Senate," Minchin said.

So much for all those red-scare ad campaigns in the 1950s and '60s, which you're old enough to remember Michelle. Minchin is not entitled to be taken at face value, and it's your job to provide a bit of context.

Steve Fielding looked uncomfortable yesterday when asked, "Have you spoken to Pauline Hanson (running for the Senate in Queensland) about preferences?" "We're talking to all the parties," he replied, in a comment that can be interpreted as frankness or evasiveness.

Fielding is easive because journalists like Michelle Grattan let him get away with it. Doyen(ne)s have no excuse for letting something like this go through to the reader unchallenged.

Needing a clue

We are in the middle of an election campaign where this country's government may well change. We turn to the media to tell us what's going on, and they can't get over themselves long enough to think about what's in front of them, and write about it.

Badly thought-out columns like this are doing Jase no good at all.

It's a long-standing beef of mine that negative ads only work where you have voluntary voting: they discourage your targets from turning up and get your voters riled up enough to vote against said targets. It is uncomfortable having Jase on board, but it's a relief that he's not here for any good or sensible reason:

The first was a restoration of basic standards. "Before anything else, we need to produce children out of schools who can read and write and spell and add up," Howard said. Where does he think we are? Botswana?

He's been in office for eleven years, Jase, and you've never asked him a single question about education: not preschool, not uni, not anything in between. He doesn't deserve to be taken on face value and neither do you.

Nothing wrong with that, but is having a country full of top plumbers what we really need?

10-15% of Sydney's water disappears through faulty plumbing: we have too few plumbers, but too many clowns in the press gallery making idle statements like that. Roll up your sleeves Jase and get stuck into some useful work.

The same can be said for pre-glasnost era propagandists Milney & Michelle, who might sound like a breakfast radio show but without the heavy analysis you get in that format:

THE Coalition's shaky election campaign was in danger of running off the rails last night with revelations of a serious split in Cabinet on the critical issue of climate change.

In a gift to Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister John Howard and Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull refused to deny reports that Mr Turnbull had made a desperate attempt only six weeks ago to change Mr Howard's mind on climate change.

Mr Howard and Mr Turnbull stonewalled over reports that Mr Turnbull had taken a submission to Cabinet arguing that the government should sign the Kyoto Protocol. Ratifying the protocol is Labor policy.

There it is, in the third paragraph: the Environment Minister thought it'd be a good idea to sign the Kyoto protocol on carbon emission controls: he took it to Cabinet and it got turfed. That's the story here, guys. But oh no, M&M are determined to miss the point, and they miss it together:

The political embarrassment in the small shopfront in North Parramatta was palpable. It was one of the bad moments of the Coalition's campaign, of which there are now a few.

Yeah, but what would happen if Australia had signed up to Kyoto, M&M? What costs, what benefits? That's what your job is, not trying to second-guess the kind of knobs who feed you the tidbits you turn into droppings on the page.

Angry Liberal colleagues immediately accused Mr Turnbull of jettisoning the Government's position in order to save his marginal - and green - Sydney seat of Wentworth.

One minister said Mr Turnbull was not a team player and described him as being "desperate" about his prospects in Wentworth.

Mr Turnbull has been under pressure in his seat not only on climate change but also over his recent approval of a large paper pulp mill in Tasmania.

Wentworth is a seat that Labor has not held in 106 years on Australian nationhood. He should have done this ages ago, so that he might have some credibility: vote for me and I'll stand up to the powers that be. The "minister" quoted by M&M has done nobody in the government any favours by suggesting that the way to getting back into government is to introduce positive and forward-looking policy. The "minister" should have shared Turnbull's concern about Wentworth: hopefully this minister isn't one of the ones who was so blithe about Hanson.

The PM soon made for his car ... Then he sped off. We are left to speculate about who leaked the Kyoto story

Yeah right, as if John Howard was going to announce at a press conference who leaked. Good one! Until press gallery "Doyen(ne)s" like M&M regard Kyoto as something other than a twitch in the body politic, they'll never fulfil their only legitimate role of helping us understand what our government is doing.

Repeatedly, Howard simply parrotted that what we need is a new agreement.

The fact that Howard can't identify what that agreement should be and hasn't taking a leadership role internationally after hanging Robert Hill out to dry means Howard has no credibility on this issue, and M&M should be exploring that. M&M should wonder what value there is, hanging around North Parramatta or Canberra or anywhere else, listening to politicians 'parrot' the same old uninformative garbage, giving them free pass after free pass, ensuring that smart and tough questions are never asked, and that government doesn't have to bring any discipline to informing people how they are governed (let alone in analysing information and making decisions) - no, the only discipline comes in parroting, M&M love a good parrot. If he'd departed from the script, nobody would be more down on him than M&M.

Other signs are also emerging in the Liberal camp suggesting MPs have lost confidence in the Prime Minister.

And what does your "minister" have to say about that, M&M? How does it gel with the rest of your article? Do you think Liberal candidates should have to sneak back in, making themselves out as quasi-independents? Either John Howard provides election-winning leadership or he doesn't.
Now there's this:

Campaigns are all about momentum and John Howard lost his last week, courtesy of a debate performance that failed to knock Kevin Rudd off his perch and the trip wire of an underlying inflation rate that points almost inevitably to a Melbourne Cup Day-plus-one interest rate rise.

Campaigns aren't all about momentum, though one without it is in more trouble than one with. I'd suggest that ten months of dire polls would have meant that Labor went into the campaign with more momentum than the government.

Besides, which is the greater departure from the official li(n)e: the sudden recognition of Aborigines or the signing of a treaty whose targets we're going to meet anyway?

And then along came Malcolm, once again in the middle of a dreadful muddle.

Why a muddle, why dreadful? That's your job, to tell us. On the issue of environmentalism Turnbull shows greater clarity of thought than doyen(ne)s.

Howard expended a lot of campaign ammunition when he loaded the starter's gun with $34 billion worth of tax cut bullets.

Starters' guns are not loaded with ammunition. They make noise but otherwise have no substance, a bit like you really. That's the peril of the mixed metaphor: it shows you're not thinking properly.

Turnbull says he didn't leak the story and I, for one, believe him. My understanding is that two other cabinet ministers were responsible. The motive is unclear, but there are only two alternatives here: malevolence, directed at Turnbull in the context of the future leadership of the Liberal Party; or gross incompetence. The trouble is both suggest the Government at the most senior levels is unqualified to continue in office.

There are plenty of other issues that demonstrate this government's unfitness for office, too bad you've missed them. Too bad you think that the future leadership of the Liberal Party is the only prism through which to view policy.

Turnbull hasn't got a phone box worth of votes in the Liberal caucus and is therefore not even a remote danger to Costello.

Yeah, that's what they said about Kevin Rudd this time last year.

Viewed that way, the drop, if it was aimed surgically at Turnbull, was a grotesque failure in that it has hurt the Government as a whole, including Costello.

What a grotesque train-smash of a sentence that is, more evidence that the writer isn't thinking about what he's saying.

The reason why this story was leaked was to protect Howard. Their intended message is that Howard stands firm against flip-flopping and wobbly thinking. That is all. When you've been observing politics for as long as I have, Milney, you pick that sort of thing up. It's interesting that nobody bothered leaking directly to you!

But if the election finishes up where it's clearly headed now, it's the third of these failures for which Howard might most resent Turnbull.

Howard may well blame someone other than himself for his own failings, but it's poor analysis to imply that such a silly opinion may somehow be justified.

The media convention in political campaigns is to judge them on a week-by-week basis. On this measure, the Government had a good first week and a bad second week.

Stuff the media convention, Shaun. We're little better off in terms of understanding how we would be governed, and therefore you and your profession have failed. You do realise those jaunts - now Bunbury, now Launceston, now Glenelg, now West Ryde, now Innisfail - are designed to create a sense of movement and broad-mindedness that political parties generally lack. Your job is to unpick them, not get caught up in them.

This laziness isn't just confined to political journalism, though that's where it's most toxic and urgent. The 'firestorm' over Elka Graham's drug comments is caused by lazy journalists who could've followed up if they wanted to, chose not to, and have been shown up for not doing their jobs. It isn't Elka Graham who's cheated us.

Sometimes you just have to call it as it is, and your analysis just isn't good enough because you're analysing the wrong things. The days when media consumers/ citizens/ voters/ taxpayers just had to put up with this sort of self-indulgence is long past.

Into the darkness

Greg Sheridan has posted the first in what's likely to be an avalanche of materials - articles, books, interviews etc. - with a theme of "W(h)ither the Liberals?". He identifies for the first time why the Howard government is not worth your vote on 24 November, and why conservatives were wrong to regard its flaws as small and its virtues as over-arching and generally wotrthwhile.

The appointment of Keith Windschuttle to the editorship of Quadrant is not so much a line in the sand as a bovine pawing the ground. It had to go to a man who'd accept (next to) no money, as Frank Devine points out:

Coleman, the longest serving Quadrant editor, says what's needed is a civilised and educated person, versed in political and literary matters, with "a sense of the crisis of our times and an ability to identify the issues to live and die for"

There'll be nothing collegial about Quadrant. Under Windschuttle it will be less quad, more rant.

He will have to define what he means about "culture wars": to regard culture as a battlefield, it means you require nothing of it but desolation and silence, where once the combatants move on the only beneficiaries are scavengers:

Consider Wagner's Tannhauser, that myth of the sacred and profane now on show at the Sydney Opera House. "There's a guy painted in gold (who) stands there with a giant erection - symbolises lust or something," Windschuttle said yesterday.

This is an attempt to conscript people who don't like opera and don't go out of their way to experience art in an attempt to cut the power of art to confront and question. If you see a fair bit of art, things like that aren't shocking and you can develop a response to it. If you heed the rabble-rouser's call, this sort of thing gives you apoplexy and will probably do so again. Like a vaccine containing that which it fights against, art can not only help you deal with other art, it can help you deal with life. Speaking of life, how does Windschuttle help you deal with Iraq, Muslim fundamentalist-nihilism, or infrastructure?

I'm not confident of Keith's ability to arm you with much: Fabrications was based on a feeble premise. I'm still not proud of violence against Aborigines. Windschuttle has been singularly ineffective at the ABC, despite a decade of the most conservative government since Lyons. I stand by what I said on Andrew Norton's blog about this: Windschuttle will need to be big enough to allow himself to be outshone by his contributors (which will be fine as long as he limits himself to refugees from News Ltd papers, such as Tony Abbott).

There are two broad areas that conservatives need to think about. It's too early to take positions: those who take positions now will be exhausted when the victory is won. Sometimes you just have to sit and think, once the pace and the burdens of office are taken away. Maybe art will help. Any position you'll take will be more defensible once you've done some thinking. The power of keeping your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut is greatly underestimated, particularly in building support.

First of all, the ridiculous numbers of old communists in their ranks. The "long march through the institutions" has taken them into the vacated ranks of the God-Queen-and-country mob, who have welcomed them with open arms and killed fatted calves etc., to the point where the old reds have the numbers and they've run out of fatted calves. What they haven't left behind is a) their Hegelian certainty that history moves like a train and they're in the van, baby; and b) that the left is a real and potent force, as they thought they'd been in their day: wrong on both counts.

Second, the division between free-market libertarians and ban-thrash-and-imprison conservatives is real. Foreign clowns like Grover Norquist and David Cameron think they can paper over this, and they're wrong. You can celebrate an environment where you work hard and reap the rewards, but if you get home and your daughter is behaving like Britney Spears then you've fucked up so badly that a tax cut just won't do.

Then there's the liberals. They have to bring together the remnants of the Democrats, the GetUp! and NotHappyJohn joiners and persuade them that their best hope is to join with George Brandis and Chris Pyne. The less said the better about that, the better.

At least Greg hasn't gone the full Albrechtsen:

THIS election campaign is far from over and John Howard could yet win.

Every other sentiment in that article rails against this figleaf. It calls to mind the mournful Bonnie Prince Billy:

Did you know how much I love you
There's a hope that somehow you
You'll save me from this darkness

Liberals should be made of sterner stuff and not simply yearning to be saved by Big Daddy.

Sheridan offers no contribution to the debate, other than shoulda/ woulda/ coulda. So while he sees the darkness approaching, he won't be able to sit by the fire and describe to any as might sit with him what the landscape might look like once glad confident morning comes again.

Granny Smith and Grandpa Howard

Half an hour before the Granny Smith Festival at Eastwood, the Epping North Public School band played Who let the dogs out and the Liberals seemed to own the Rowe Street Mall. Their blue-on-yellow balloons were everywhere, and handers-out were busy. People politely took balloons, some let them into the air.

Ten minutes before the parade started, Maxine McKew led a force majeure of about fifty volunteers armed with purple helium balloons with her message on it, right up the mall and stood in front of the podium. On the podium was the mayor, John and Jeanette Howard, State MPs and other dignitaries.

McKew's positioning meant that she was juxtaposed with the dignitaries, but not so remote. She and her volunteers handed out balloons to participants in the parade, so that a representative sample of dance-school students, Korean Christian women, rugby players, Girl Guides and other community groups all carried McKew's purple balloons.

A forest of purple balloons was positioned to block the podium. The Liberals' idea of countering this was to block the podium with their own balloons. This rush of political activists blocked the road and delayed the parade - as you read this, you can bet that the AFP is bagging the local police for their absence. Had McKew brought along a few angry ants from the CFMEU or the MUA, Howard could have been in real trouble. It also meant that the announcer could not announce the names of the floats as they came through, which didn't matter as they came out of order and some (such as the local Parents and Friends of Lesbians And Gays, P-FLAG) clearly made the announcer uncomfortable. Nonetheless, the announcer pleaded with the balloon blockade two or three times to move: both sets of balloons were equally placed to block the podium so neither moved.

The Liberals, who had dominated the morning before the parade, were neutralised. McKew waved to people like she was already representing the place. Her slogan, "A Strong Voice For Bennelong", is what you'd expect of a long-serving local councillor rather than a blow-in from Mosman and the ABC. When the trade union band came along in the parade, they stopped in front of her and she danced: not something you'd get from John and Jeanette, and not out of step with the light-hearted atmosphere of the parade. This held the parade up, which would have caused apoplexy had the announcer been able to see it.

The colour orange was prevalent too, on balloons and on clothing. The union band was festooned in orange as part of the "Your rights at work" campaign. In keeping with the spirit of the festival they had posters with Granny Smith apples, featuring the slogan "Your rights at work: the core issue in Bennelong". Also wearing orange were a surprising number of GetUp volunteers, mostly in their forties and fifties: they seemed to silently answer the question as to where all the moderate liberal and Democrat voters, the "not happy John" crowd, had gone.

The parade ended, and the mayor began a long-winded speech. The place cleared and spectators muttered that the event had been hijacked by politics. Indeed it had: this was the biggest event in Bennelong on the first weekend in the campaign, hacks and flacks had come from all over town and cared nothing of stealing the pale limelight from the Brush Farm Scouts or the local Christian outreach centre. Each major party would be horrified that their activists had turned off local voters, but at the time they were only concerned at neutralising their fellow out-of-towners from the other party.

When the incumbent local Federal MP rose to speak, he was met with chants of "How-ward! How-ward! How-ward! How-ward!", but obscured by balloons. When he's rattled Howard's voice goes up in pitch and volume, flapping his arms like an agitated cockatoo, as none but the activists would stay to hear him in his distress. This may explain why he stayed cheesed-off and rattled in the following night's debate.

Howard is the last of several generations of politicians who learned their craft addressing Saturday morning shoppers from the back of a flatbed truck, dealing with hecklers and attracting passers-by to give them a hearing. Rudd, Costello and others yet to come have only experienced politics through the media. This isn't to say that there was some golden age of speechcraft in Australian politics, or that Howard is some mighty orator - but it's clear that eleven years at the top, of cushy media management and framed settings, have dulled his ability to deal with a bit of chanting and a lot of indifference. He should've been out here six, twelve months ago; it's all too late now. McKew followed the crowds and mingled amongst the stalls: the St John's first aid volunteers, the jam-sellers, the soccer-players, etc.

The local Macquarie Shopping Centre had its balloons around as well, in purple and orange rather than yellow and blue. They knew their market.

Making a meal of it

Once again we have a JaseAttack to show us who the boy has been having lunch with, and whom he wants to have lunch with going forward. What we also have is a clear example of how the mainstream media can't help us understand how we are (and are going to be) governed.

This piece sees Jase all upset that a Labor MP won't stay in the box into which factional heavies have nailed him. The entire history of the Labor Party - and of the Liberals too, for that matter - is of MPs deciding they're sick of toeing a line that's not going anywhere.

Gavan O'Connor has decided that he's going down with middle digit raised, unlike the bought objects content to slump into the bin of history, pocket their pensions and keep stumm. He's not a socially-divisive extremist like Pauline Hanson, so if he finds his old party so intolerable why shouldn't he take a stand? If Jase was still in his Peter-Costello-bumsniffer mode he'd be cheering O'Connor, but now that he perceives the need to build bridges with Labor then he'll sing whatever tune his luncheon companions want to hear.

From a media perspective, there is a story to be told here about what sort of government Rudd is offering. O'Connor is the only member of caucus who has been a farmer, a constituency that must be heard in the future debate over water and land sustainability, and which Labor governments have always treated as adversaries largely through mutual ignorance. Speaking of ignorance:

THE vote was unanimous. The inaugural winner of the Mal Colston Medal for Treachery

Who voted, Jase? How does O'Connor compare to Colston, who was induced by the Coalition to turn his back on the ALP? Do you have any proof that O'Connor has accepted an inducement, and if so what is it? Why would O'Connor, or anyone else, believe that John Howard had any capacity to follow through on any inducement anyway? C'mon Jase, do your job, not some Labor staffer's (unless that is the job you're keening for).

Liberals everywhere have been falling over themselves in the stampede to congratulate O'Connor

Such as? Howard made a few comments about O'Connor but Hanson showed him that his party's not immune to this sort of thing. Abbott has been particularly quiet, as has Jase's old mate Costello - but isn't it typical of Jase to signal at the outset of his pieces just how badly he's floundering? Notice how Jase undoes his insipid introduction with a quote from Howard that clearly procludes the Coalition from making political capital over O'Connor.

O'Connor accused his former party of branch stacking, money laundering and of making grubby political deals.

O'Connor's transformation from a man of principle and integrity to one deluded by self-interest and greed is a salutary lesson in how politics can corrupt. Make no mistake, O'Connor destroyed himself last Thursday, and everything he once stood for.

He has chosen a road at the end of which he will find only bitterness and misery.

Jase just assumes that it is O'Connor, and not the ALP, who has become corrupted. When he was a Peter Costello bumsniffer Jase was more than happy to point out these and other faults, but in this piece he assumes that any such accusation against the ALP must always be false, and rebound on the accuser. Whether O'Connor wins or loses, the structural integrity of the Australian Labor Party is of major concern, especially as it will bear the eight of governing the entire country and its sub-national political divisions.

That last line in particular is the kind of bullying you might get in schoolyards or Williams-Moran-style crime syndicates, but if you were a real journalist, Jason Koutsoukis, you'd question whether this has any place in the governance of state.

Way back in 1990, O'Connor was a nobody. A local councillor from Colac, he was given a job in the electorate office of then Labor senator John Button, who had an electorate office in Geelong.

Have you looked at John Button's critiques of the modern ALP at all, Jase? If so, you'd find the position of O'Connor vindicated - but that wouldn't please your lunch buddies at all.

With a taxpayer-funded salary in his pocket (a largesse bestowed on him by the Labor Party)

Well, which is it? Do employees in public service owe their loyalty to taxpayers, or the Labor Party? C'mon Jase, a real journalist would have a field day with that, a couple of Walkleys if not a career. You just do a garbage-in-garbage-out regurgitation onto the page.

O'Connor would still be a nobody were it not for his party and its members, who sent him to Canberra in 1993 and kept him there at the four subsequent elections.

Yeah, forget the voters - or "punters" as Jase calls them.

One can understand the basis of O'Connor's grievance, and why he was so upset at being dumped.

A hard-working, likeable, generous person, O'Connor was a popular local member. But in the end, whatever the flaws of Labor's factional system, O'Connor lost control of his branches ... O'Connor may have been a perfectly able MP and a decent person, but his political skills and acumen have hardly set Canberra on fire.

First O'Connor is all these things, then when it comes time to sink the slipper he qualifies it with the weaselly may have been. Jase can't admit that a good man has been traduced because that would make him, and his lunchmates, look bad - and Jase can't get where he wants to go unless he does a few tricks for his would-be sources in the next government.

It is Jase who is "the venal hypocrite who waited ... [to] do the most damage possible to those friends and colleagues he has worked alongside for the past decade" (his erstwhile lunch buddies in the Peter Costello Fan Club). Examining the way the country is governed is more important than Jase trying to establish himself as a playa.

In 14 years, he has scored not one major political victory over the Coalition, and has made not a single policy contribution of any significance.

Yes he has, everyone in the ALP and quite a few outside it have praised O'Connor in educating his party about rural issues without getting sucked into the largesse mentality of the Nationals.

Nor is Marles without claim to represent the people of Geelong. A talented solicitor and assistant secretary of the ACTU, Marles grew up in Geelong and has lived in the city for the past 10 years.

All the while, enjoying the hard work of Gavan O'Connor. Marles could have had his pick of any Labor seat in Victoria. He seemed quite content to take on David Kemp back in the day, in far-off Melbourne, why not keep him there?

Former leader Kim Beazley was one of those whom O'Connor worked tirelessly to remove almost from the day Beazley took over as Labor leader.

Yeah, well that would explain why Beazley isn't taking Labor to victory - O'Connor was hardly on his lonesome there. Witness your own jihad against John Howard, Jase.

Former federal Liberal MP David Connolly lost preselection for the Sydney seat of Bradfield to Brendan Nelson before the 1996 election.

The loss hurt Connolly, who was a friend of John Howard. But he kept his mouth shut, and Howard looked after him once he became Prime Minister, justly rewarding him with a plum overseas posting.

OK, so no lame mock-outrage stories about "jobs for the boys" when the Labor MPs on this list "justly" line up for "a taxpayer-funded salary in his pocket (a largesse bestowed on him by the Labor Party)"? Why would any journalist praise someone who "kept his mouth shut"? Why would any member of the ALP have to live up to the standards of former Liberal MP (and fellow nobody) David Connolly?

The McManus piece quoted above ends with the line: "Mr Marles could not be contacted last night". If this is Marles' response to O'Connor, using Jase as his hand-puppet, then it is despicable. It will reflect poorly on Marles (Labor's Frydenberg?) going forward. If Jase wants to play favourites and suck up to Marles and his game-players, who can't tell the difference between taxpayer funds and Labor Party largesse, then he is just another leech in Canberra seeking to advance himself at everyone else's expense.

Gavan O'Connor has been enhanced by being slimed by someone like Jase, regardless of whether or not he loses to the lesser man on 24 November. Piffle like this is sadly typical of Koutsoukis' articles: those to whom you have sold your soul, Jase, have got a much worse deal than the man from Colac and Geelong (no, I'm not talking about Richard Marles).

Update: I wouldn't go so far as Milney:

If the Liberals do preference O'Connor, the former Labor member who has quit the party in disgust at factional heavying and union influence to run as an independent, he may be in with a chance of winning back the seat he's already held for 14 years.

Hype. Bullshit. Shows you why you don't read Glenn Milne to find out what's going on in Canberra, merely who Milney has been having lunch with.

The biggest trick to getting O'Connor up for the Liberals would be to ensure their candidate ran third. There are two intersecting currents here and they are both media driven. The Liberals' "problem" (defined as pushing O'Connor into second place) is that Corio, based on Geelong, has a very strong local media, particularly the Geelong Advertiser.

The Liberals are fighting off a strong Rudd-driven Labor challenge to Stewart McArthur, their sitting candidate in the neighbouring seat of Corangamite. Facing this adjoining challenge, there has to be strong Liberal branding across regional media, making it hard to run dead in Corio.

This is crap. All the Liberal Party has to do is deny oxygen to the Corio candidate (like Milney, I can't be bothered finding out his/her name) and focus all their energy on McArthur: McArthur this, McArthur that, and pretty soon it won't even occur to Corio voters that if they can't vote McArthur they won't vote Liberal at all. This raises questions for the Liberal Party as to whether they have the right to put someone up as a candidate and then jerk them around like that.

Said Marles: "The only winner out of this is John Howard and the Liberal Party."

He got that bit right.

No he didn't Milney and neither did you. If O'Connor wins Corio he'll support Rudd over Howard, and in the process will get more concessions for his local area than Marles could, as just another clamouring newbie owned by caucus.

Never mind the early jitters, Howard can't win

Kevin Rudd has followed the Labor Party's How to Win Elections playbook to the letter. Just as Bob Carr did in NSW, Bracks in Victoria, Beattie in Queensland, etc., Kevin Rudd is earnestly and conservatively putting his case for change without snarling at the incumbents or being overly radical, and waiting for the incumbents to grow tired of governing or get so rattled they basically drop their bundle.

The key question in this election is: can you vote Labor without sending the economy down the toilet? Labor has made the positive case on pretty much every field of policy except the economy and national security. This means that people are uncomfortable about returning the incumbent government on the day-to-day business of government, but they will vote Liberal-National if they must.

Labor will win because they have to make the positive case about their stewardship in these two areas and the Coalition have to make a radical case. Rudd only has to declare that he's competent, and the benefit of the doubt (reflected in solidly positive polling all year) will go with him. People know what Howard stands for (and doesn't); so in order for voters to give him another go, Howard has to up the ante, ad shake up perceptions of his abilities to shape the agenda going forward.

It's easier to be conservative and competent than it is to be radical. Incumbent governments know this: usually it is the government that is conservative and competent and the opposition are radical: this is what Mark Latham was driving at (hey, my guess is as good as anyone's). However, the incumbent government has been in too long and people are comfortable to the point of being bored. Scare campaigns are all very well when you're feeling under the gun, but if you're comfortable they're a little bit unseemly.

Howard is trying to be conservative and competent - but he's had a long record of being neither on occasion. Anyway, that doesn't get you noticed - it gets you taken for granted, which means that you lack the boldness and the sudden burst of energy necessary to pull out of the dive. With his polling, Rudd doesn't have to be radical to be noticed. Finally, the small target strategy is working: but only when the government has been goaded to a point where it is trying to be all things to everybody, and ends up only encouraging people to look for an alternative, which they seem to have found.

The tax policies released this week reveal half-hearted (and possibly "non-core") radicalism from the Coalition, and studied stolidness from Labor. Labor can't lose I tell ya, and all the rest is hype.

On 24 November we'll see Labor with 90 seats (currently 60), Liberals 50 (75), Nationals 7 (11), CLP 0 (1), Independents 3 (3). I'll be more specific about which seats later.

Senate:

• 3-3 in NSW, WA and Victoria and one each in the NT.


• Labor 3, Liberals 2 in SA and Tasmania, with Xenophon and Brown respectively getting up.


• Queensland: Labor 3, Liberals 1, Nationals 1, and Andrew Bartlett of what used to be the Democrats.


• Will the Greens beat the Libs in the ACT? Probably not.