Greg Sheridan: bad for Australia

Greg Sheridan's analysis of the world in which we live is poor. Readers of The Australian are poorly served in understanding the United States, and Australia's relationship with it, because of this poor analysis.

He presents his opinions as "respectable" because he interviews someone with an impressive-sounding title, prints what they say as fact or otherwise laudable, then when Greg parrots their own opinions back to them, that's "respectable".

This piece on the possibility that Barack Obama might become US President plumbed new depths in silliness and showed that - far from being a shrewd observer of the world beyond our shores - Sheridan is some sort of gimp who's trussed up in the abandoned building of neoconservatism.

The case for Obama rests on the fact that greater US power and prestige directly benefits Australia.

The "greater US prestige and power" Sheridan refers to is the notion that after Bush, the only way is up. They're trapped in a silly mindset which has led to a range of silly foreign policy positions, from the sheer absence of any adequate response to post-Castro Cuba (an inevitability for 49 years), the absence of any rethinking of Iraq now that so much has changed. Obama promises a new and fresh way of looking at these and other issues, and these inspire hope.

That, and the fact that "the case for Obama" will be made by millions of Americans who do not give Australia a second thought.

Obama’s soaring rhetoric seems to serve no purpose beyond itself.

This doesn't explain why he is the frontrunner to become the next President. This criticism was valid when made against other candidates, like Mitt Romney or Joe Biden, who have since fallen by the wayside.

The same criticism may be made of JFK, or George W Bush in 2000 (except for the "soaring" bit).

That explanation is Sheridan's job. His failure is not some inadvertent slip, it is endemic.

This is bad for Australia in four ways. It has led Obama into protectionism, he campaigns against Clinton because her husband passed the North American Free Trade Agreement. Second, the Left of the Democratic Party has no interest in Asia and can barely find it on a map.

Most important, Obama steadily increases the stridency of his opposition to US troops in Iraq.

First, Greg can't even count to four. Second, his assertions about Obama and Asia are directly refuted by this, a striking piece of intelligent thinking that might not come off - but wouldn't it be great if ...

The fact that a rival publication gazumped Greg is no excuse for him ignoring it. In fact, it's a dereliction of duty on Sheridan's part.

Members of the Bush administration are worried that the Democratic primary has gone on so long.

So what? They would, wouldn't they. This sentence shows that Greg Sheridan is not smart enough to do his own stories but has to have some fathead Yank with too little to do in a government job spoon-feed Greg his stories.

This has resulted in both Obama and Clinton appealing only to the Democratic base on the Left, and not yet tracking back to the centre.

This is what happens in American politics: Democrats track to the left and Republicans to the right until their respective conventions, whereupon they track to the centre as far as they credibly can until polling day. If I was a foreign policy expert, I'd point this out to my readers rather than leave it hanging there, giving clowns from the Bush Administration credit they don't deserve.

Iraq has faded as an issue because the US strategy there is now working. There is a real chance the US could prevail in Iraq ... But Obama, playing not least for the Hollywood Bush haters, has left little room to manoeuvre as president on Iraq.

The "Hollywood Bush haters" aren't much of a constituency, as Al Gore and John Kerry found to their cost. What Obama has done is transcend the frame of the Iraq debate; that takes skill and courage, and Sheridan should at least describe these qualities for readers, however little he shares them.

Obama is all over the place on foreign policy. He has threatened to bomb Pakistan to kill terrorists (imagine if Bush or McCain had said such a thing) ...

Yes, imagine. It would be an admission that Bush's policy of treating Musharraf with kid gloves has failed, which it has. Fuck them, a few nasty little madrassahs go up in smoke, and no harm done.

... but also to journey to Tehran to fix a grand bargain with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Not ruling out meeting the guy doesn't constitute "a grand bargain", any more than Nixon meeting Mao constituted a defection.

Finally, the Left of the Democratic Party cares least for the military and for alliances.

What about all those "Democrat wars" in American history, and their pleadings about the UN and Bush's running roughshod over traditional alliances? I have trouble forgiving Sheridan's ignorance of the field he claims to cover, but I won't forgive dishonesty on that scale.

But the chief way Washington conceives of Australia is as an ally, and the chief US thinkers about us are the military.

That free trade deal was a waste of time then!

In my view the best candidate from Australia’s point of view is McCain ... Because he has been such a fierce critic of the way the Bush administration initially mismanaged Iraq, and the war on terror more generally, he can plausibly represent significant brand change from Bush, while still being from the same party. Though he cannot compete with Obama in the celebrity stakes, he has a sincerity which many people internationally might well respond to.

McCain has moderated his opposition to Bush to the point where their policies are identical. Even those who despise Bush agree that he's sincere. Sincerely perpetuating the mistakes of Bush-Cheney would be appalling for America and those who admire it still.

One reason McCain would be good for Australia is that he would stay strong in Iraq. He would not let the Middle East spin out of control.

The chief criticism of US policy in Iraq is that the more you continue current policies (or, as Sheridan puts it in his insecure way, "stays strong"), the more it spins out of control. This has been a long-standing criticism, backed p with much evidence over many years. Greg Sheridan betrays himself, his employers and his readers by whistling past that graveyard.

So why do I think an Obama ascendancy could cause war in the Middle East? It’s a simple calculation ... Many Israeli leaders say that a nuclear armed Iran represents an existential threat to Israel. If they really believe this, they have no alternative but to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. If they believe McCain will win, they will have faith that the Americans, one way or another, will try to handle the Iranians. If they believe Obama will win, they not only believe he definitely won’t handle Iran effectively, but he might even stop them from doing so.

It's not a "calculation" when you're spooked by unnamed Israelis.

If Bush believes Iran will go nuclear, he might have faith that McCain could handle it. He will have absolutely no faith that Obama would handle it.

This is the guy who sat back and did bugger-all when North Korea and Pakistan went nuclear. Who cares what he thinks?

The odds are against a US strike on Iran under any circumstances, and I would say the odds are even against an Israeli strike. But either or both are much more likely if it looks like Obama will win.

Sounds like they're inevitable no matter what happens. And aren't those National Intelligence Estimates a load of rubbish! Wish you'd told us that six years ago, Greg.

At a time of political change at home, and far-reaching change abroad, this is no time to have Greg Sheridan at The Australian.

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans everything

My piece in New Matilda showing why the Liberals are pretty much stuck unless they grow some brains and get over themselves.

Polly filler

John Roskam doesn't understand the sovereign role of the majority of voters in setting the direction of government in this country, apparently.

Keating had dragged reform of economic policy along at a cracking pace. Issues such as Mabo, the Redfern speech and the republic threatened to do so with social policy. The whole idea of John Howard was to ease the pace of social reform and see which elements really were unsustainable, and which were just victims of Keating's sharp tongue.

Howard showed that the republic was not an issue that burned in the national soul, and that Australia wasn't so desperate to be shot of the monarchy as the old Fenians in the NSW ALP Right. Howard thought that 1950s paternalism was an idea not properly tried in Aboriginal policy. He thought that unions could be legislated out of the employer-employee relationship. He thought that processing a refugee application required the refugee him/herself to be "processed". He thought that if the Americans went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, Australia should send a deployment that was big enough to attract political attention from Washington yet small enough to minimise monetary and casualty cost.

Howard has now outlived his usefulness. He was wrong not to apologise to the Stolen Generation, those who were removed from Aboriginal families for no reason other than they were Aborigines. He was wrong about refugees, the incarceration of people within a legal void is a poor preparation for life in Australia or anywhere else. He was wrong about Iraq and Afghanistan has developed to a point where Australian forces are no longer required.

Good policy doesn't turn into bad policy overnight.

No, but an idea that upset a majority of the population was never sustainable. The Rudd Government's policies on the matters Roskam identifies as the core policies of the Howard government surprise only those who dismissed the very prospect of a Rudd Government until it actually came about.

If key policies can be ditched so quickly after what, in the end, proved to be a relatively narrow election loss, voters will inevitably ask whether Liberal MPs ever believed in those policies in the first place.

Those policies were imposed on Liberal MPs, who did not question them closely. They accepted Howard's assurances that they were both good policy and that they would lead to electoral success, and are now bearing the consequences of his failure of judgment. Roskam feels that they should bear this and other failures of judgment in perpetuity, like the rock of Sisyphus.

There's also the problem of what replaces the old policies.

This is a pressing problem for the government, which promised to replace them but was less than precise about what; they are responsible for governing, and responsible also to their Labor base. They have to replace WorkChoices with legislation that is acceptable to the Labor base but which is also sustainable across a diverse national workforce in a growing, changing economy. Good luck!

The Liberals have been excused the pressing responsibilities of government. They have to come up with a policy before the next election, and can learn from the mistakes that Labor are making. They needn't be hurried as John Roskam would wish, and indeed Roskam does himself no favours by urging them to do so. This lot are busy exercising the freedom to think for themselves, a precious quality that must be nurtured over time.

None of this is to say that policies cannot ever be changed. When circumstances alter, policies should be altered.

This assumes that WorkChoices adequately addressed the challenges facing Australia in 2005, much less in 2007-8. It didn't, and doesn't. It was a policy for 1985, when the ACTU and the H R Nicholls Society were at the peak of their influence.

What's notable about each of the Liberals' recent policy changes is that each was done in a hurry and each was done in reaction to something that Labor did.

Sounds like the Liberals are getting used to Opposition, John.

The Liberals can't afford to be put into such a position again.

This is why they shouldn't have frittered government away, and should act as an incentive for them to get it back again.

But at the moment there's every chance that the Liberals will respond to Labor's moves on the republic in the same way as they responded to Labor's initiatives on the apology and the Pacific Solution.

This is true, they run the danger of following Kim Beazley into reactive, crumbling opposition. It took Beazley ten years to get to that point, not ten weeks.

Many Liberals would say that the very last thing they need is a divisive internal debate about the republic. But if you can't have a divisive internal debate when the party is in opposition, federally and in every state and territory, then it's legitimate to ask when would be a better time.

Well said. Some debates cannot be fobbed off an it is poor political management even to try.

The best thing for the Liberal Party would be if the decision on the republic were taken out of their hands: if the voters decided on a republic, Liberals would have to decide whether they really wanted to be part of a governmental process from which the Crown was absent. Some Liberals feel they should take an active role in shaping the republic, but it would be extraordinary - too much to expect, really - for any Liberal leader to do that and keep a united party at the same time.

It will probably take three years for the Liberals to arrive at some sort of position on the republic. The advantage of starting the debate now is that they'll have the time to engage in analysis and reflection.

This assumes an environment tolerant of differing opinions, and the Liberal Party is the opposite of that. Moderates found this out in the late 1980s when they started losing preselections, political death being the ultimate form of censorship. Roskam has no excuse not to know better.

It's something the party hasn't done enough of since November 24.

Nor for the decade-and-a-half before that. There's the flaw in your argument John. For some time yet, debate within the Liberal Party will lumber and lurch like awkward teenagers learning to dance (the presence of cretins like Sophie Mirabella won't help). Clapping your hands in annoyance and insisting they all bounce and glide like Nureyev might make you feel better, but any sensible person knows it will be a slow process - until the next Leader comes along, with a gang of enforcers compelling everyone to shut up.

Roskam's despair of the political process is echoed by his colleague Chris Berg, and reflects a tendency of denigrating democracy itself - not just the odd dodgy decision, but the very idea of having government policy responsible to and reversible by the popular vote. Insofar as the Eye Pee Yay warrants concern, this is a worry and deserves close attention.

Rain dogs

Dogs navigate their way around by patterns of odours. From American cities comes the phenomenon of "rain dogs", where a sudden downpour washes away the patterns of odours and leave dogs stranded wherever they find themselves, without any sense of how to get home.

The Liberal Party are a bit like rain dogs at the moment, with all their familiar reference points gone and no sense of direction. This is why Gerard Henderson has demonstrated his firm grasp of the wrong end of the stick by using the media to attack the media. The headline writer of this piece has framed Henderson's article as though it is the Liberals, not the media, that is being criticised.

The headline writer has it right. It is the Liberals who need a new sense of direction and purpose. They, and Henderson, also need to understand that sometimes the media will be critical of them, if not outright unfair.

Bongiorno put it to Pyne that he should not raise the issue of Kevin Rudd's past dealings with the West Australian operative Brian Burke since this was "raking over old coals" ... can anyone imagine Bongiorno telling Senator Bob Brown three years ago that he should not raise the children overboard affair against John Howard since this had been adjudicated at the 2004 election? The Bongiorno question provides just one example of how some journalists apply different standards to the Coalition as distinct from Labor.

Burke is "old coals" because we are talking about a minor political issue - not at all equivalent to the life-and-death magnitude of children being thrown into the ocean and a group of people, if not Australia's entire humanitarian migration program, vilified by implication. The Coalition are working themselves into a state over nothing, and journalists do us a favour by bumping them off their talking points.

The cartoonist Michael Leunig, The Age's house leftist, set the tone recently when he bagged the Prime Minister's apology speech as being both "feeble" and "banal".

Henderson might tilt at Leunig out of habit, having spent four decades doing so, but criticism from Leunig is to be expected. Henderson asserted but did not establish that Michael Leunig sets the tone - in The Age or anywhere else. Does Paul Bongiorno, or anyone else "bagged" by Gerard Henderson, really take their cues from Michael Leunig? Honestly. Certainly not worth complaining about, Gerard.

How about that?

There are no prizes for nailing whimsy, Gerard.

The left's critique of Rudd will not help the Coalition. All the Liberals and Nationals can do is to perform as well as possible in a difficult environment. So far, the evidence indicates that they will need to enhance their political skills.

Well, no shit! After a penetrating insight like that you'd expect Henderson to set some performance indicators, and at least show us what political skills might look like. After twelve months of frittering away a strong incumbent government in a time of economic prosperity, you'd expect that Henderson would have identified this lack of political skills a lot earlier.

But there was no obvious reason why [Joe Hockey] saw fit to tell [ABC reporter Liz] Jackson, who is hardly a fan of the Liberal Party, that his colleagues were ignorant about the details of key legislation. A senior Liberal should be able to find a place to download somewhere other than in front of an ABC camera.

This does not go to the question of political skill. Hockey did keep his criticisms to himself, or within Liberal circles, before the election. Fat lot of good it did Hockey or his party, Gerard. It is now fair to question the utility of that tactic.

Some Liberals in the last Howard Cabinet have already gone, having lost their seats. Others, such as Nick Minchin and Peter Costello, won't go and won't stay to make a useful contribution, either. Hockey is right to be frustrated with such people, and right to put this in the forum they can least effectively manage: the public record. The Liberals need to recast their image and insiders have a role in that by putting hitherto unknown facts into the public record.

Jackson doesn't have to be a dyed-in-the-wool Liberal to be worthy of an interview. It is a measure of political skill that Hockey should use an experienced, possibly antipathetic journalist so effectively to his own ends. There may come a time when all journalists are to the right of Gerard Henderson, but until then one must do what one can with what one has. Jackson did not - and could not - dictate how her interviews are received by viewers.

Meanwhile, in the Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee, the Liberal backbencher Concetta Fierravanti-Wells has decided to focus on the domestic pets of the Prime Minister and his wife ... As with her past hyperbolic criticisms of the ABC, Senator Fierravanti-Wells's critique of the Rudds is completely counterproductive and, as such, worse than a mere waste of time.

Now if a journalist - any journalist - made the simple observation that Fierravanti-Wells is a hack and a waste of time, Henderson would hop right into them and onto the bandwagon of lefty journalists. The mistake here is to believe that Fierravanti-Wells is capable of better, and that she has a useful role to play both in holding the Rudd Government to account as well as in shaping the next Liberal Government.

I realise that Henderson hasn't said that Fierravanti-Wells isn't a waste of time - but I'd say that you can't produce any evidence of any contribution she has made that would mitigate such embarrassment to self and party.

... the high employment record of the Howard government will look quite impressive.

Not when you consider the jiggery-pokery used by the Howard government to redefine unemployment.

The Prime Minister and the key economic ministers (Gillard, Wayne Swan and Lindsay Tanner) are well aware of the potential difficulties in [wages-driven inflation]. The problem for Rudd Labor is that it sent out a message before the election that working families had suffered as a result of Work Choices ... it would be reasonable to assume that working families expect that they will receive higher remuneration under Rudd than under Howard. This could put greater pressure on wage growth.

The reason why the Liberals lost the last election was because of the jarring dissonance between its two main messages. On one hand, they said that the economy was doing well; on the other hand, the message of WorkChoices is that individual employees may not share in the general prosperity. The message of the Rudd Government is that all that economic sunshine has now led to a spate of economic sunburn and economic melanoma. The idea of interest rate rises is to curb inflation, and it is too early to blithely deem this the failure that Henderson would regard it as. Some of the assumptions that Henderson makes, such as an aggressive and powerful union movement and a centralised wage-setting system, no longer apply.

... it is likely that Labor will suffer some political cost if fuel and electricity prices rise as part of the solution to climate change as envisaged by Garnaut. Such an eventuality should put the Coalition back into the political debate - even if the majority of journalists remains hostile or indifferent to its message.

The quality of state-provided facilities provided by Labor governments has fallen inversely to the costs of maintaining them. Yet, the Liberals are only in the debate as naysayers, for piss-weak parliamentary tactics and internal turmoil. The idea that Kevin Rudd will grow weary and drop government back into the lap of the Coalition is fanciful.

Opposition is invariably difficult.

Many things are difficult, Gerard. Journalists can be sympathetic or unsympathetic, but just as they should be judged as to whether they are applying the appropriate scrutiny, members of the opposition should make sure they measure up to the business of government before deeming the Australian media beneath their dignity. Uncritical support just gets filtered out, which is why Glenn Milne (and, indeed, Gerard Henderson) has not swung a single vote anywhere or anything.

... it is somewhat easier if those in opposition do not trash their own policies (past or present)

They need to do this, Gerard, to demonstrate that they have something to offer voters other than nostalgia. Some people may get hurt in the process, but that's politics.

Da G-dog has complained once again about the existence of leftists in the media, and equated political skill with his own wishes. He thinks the Liberal Party should settle into opposition as one would settle into a comfy armchair, controlling the media remotely. Henderson is being unreasonable about the media - there is no friendly or unfriendly coverage, only different degrees of scrutiny - and setting fanciful and absurd standards for the Liberals. This makes him no better than those he criticises; worse if they take his advice, and worst still if people ignore him.

One for Chris Berg

No wonder The Sunday Age is getting a new editor. The genius who gave us a double serving of Jase (it is still only a fortnight since his last Pine 4 Pete) and Chris Berg needs to move on as soon as possible.

ANYBODY who remembers that photograph of Peter Costello gleefully surrounded by newborn infants knows one thing:

... you are a political tragic from Melbourne who needs to get over your Costello fetish.

Let's fossick through this train smash and see what, if anything, we can pull from the wreckage.

Chris says the baby bonus is poor policy, and he may even have a point. It has come in mighty handy here at PoHo. The general and the specific collide once again, a dilemma bedevilling both governments and institutions analysing public affairs. Does Chris Berg face this challenge squarely? You have to be kidding. All we got was this lazy piece:

Costly, blunt and poorly designed policy instruments have just as many unintended negative consequences as benefits.

Pathetic.

So when the Federal Government this week announced an inquiry into the possibility of paid parental leave, it was tough to remain optimistic.

Oh no, the Federal Government has announced an inquiry! Better for the current government to keep on keeping on and avoid all those costly inquiries, surely.

... most proposals for paid parental leave would require the Government to pay a nominated parent roughly the minimum wage for a dozen or so weeks.

Certainly, this is far better than simply requiring businesses to pay the cost of the leave out of their own pockets. The biggest risk that government-mandated workplace entitlements pose is that they make it more costly to hire workers — and the unintended consequence is that employers are reluctant to hire in the first place.

Have you learned any lessons at all from similar proposals for compulsory superannuation, Chris, and if so what were they? At a time of skill shortages and NAIRU, could this be any more than a scare campaign?

Paid parental leave could also break a fundamental principle of good welfare policy — the most effective policies are means-tested policies.

I'd have no trouble with the baby bonus being means-tested, but we're talking about paid parental leave - which looks like becoming a condition of employment rather than a transfer from the state. As a working condition it is partially determined by my own ambitions, talents and capacity for hard work, rather than arbitrarily-defined means tests from the dead hand of the state.

It is the sort of campaign that used to come from the union movement, and the fact that it is now coming from a government inquiry gives an interesting insight into the role of the union movement under a Rudd Labor Government.

At least the issue of parental leave has been referred to the Productivity Commission — the government's independent research department that can claim much of the credit for advancing the cause of economic reform since its inception. This contrasts with the worrying reluctance of Labor to trust the commission with anything else important.

Inquiries into climate change, car manufacturing and international trade have all been established separately — Kevin Rudd may not trust the government's experts to give him the answers he wants.

One would have thought that putting the Productivity Commission to work on the Australian car manufacturing industry would have been an exercise in cognitive dissonance, similar to driving a Mercedes Benz into a lake. To have the PC take on these many weighty matters would require of it the kind of bloat we have seen from the various security organisations, an increase in quality not necessarily matched with quality and decried by people not dissimilar to Chris Berg.

But the biggest problem with a paid parental leave scheme is how it encourages the redefinition of our relationship with government.

No it doesn't. There have been enough examples of poor outcomes resulting from the absence of parental leave, plenty of kite-flying and submissions from various organisations - this is a clear example of government responding to community concerns as it should.

The baby bonus has already established in the mind of Australians that having children is more than just a personal decision — it is part of a long-running negotiation between parents, the Federal Government and the tax office.

Rubbish! It was a policy determined by a political party which won an election. The Tax Office did what it was told - no negotiation there. The Federal Government that introduced his policy was voted out. That just leaves parents - if there's money available by filling out a form, then fill out that form!

This poor framing leads Chris to an inevitable bout of silliness which could have been avoided:

soon no one will start a family without lengthy consultations with the Australian Taxation Office and Prime Minister's Department.

Oh dear. Put down that copy of Brave New World and take a serious look at the community in which you live, Chris. Only then should you be assessing policy against that. Instead, it's once again with the silliness:

But the people whose decision could be influenced if they are given a few grand by the government may not actually be the best parents.

Who are these people? Where are they? If the government taxed people every time a child was born to them, would this really - no, not in theory - discourage irresponsible people from becoming parents?

We can't have government policy hostage to figments of your imagination. That's probably why there's an inquiry. Is the Eye Pee Yay making a credible submission to that inquiry, Chris, or are you going to slap something together in your careful way?

And the problems of ageing populations and skills shortages don't have to be resolved by funnelling subsidies to young families. It would instead be better for children if individuals were allowed to come to their own decisions about parenthood uninfluenced by politicians desperate to pay their way out of the latest political crisis.

I always thought the link between the baby bonus and the skills shortage was fairly tenuous. Your article would have been better had you stuck to that, Chris.

Who are these individuals whose decisions about parenthood depend upon a sum of money that doesn't begin to meet the medical bills associated with childbirth, let alone the costs of child-rearing? Who are they, Chris, and why do you flay imaginary people for bending weak politicians to their will?

Perhaps if the government really thinks that we have a population problem, it could be looking carefully at increasing immigration — skilled and non-skilled — and relaxing the high costs of work visas.

Considering that Australia has one of the world's largest migration programs - skilled and unskilled - already, this off-the-cuff suggestion might not be the thunderbolt you seem to regard it as. Plenty of studies have examined the pros and cons of that in the current context - go review some and stop wasting everyone's time.

Nevertheless, introducing subsidies to new parents conveniently supports Rudd's working families narrative. It's politically savvy to pay off your supporters.

Considering that the whole idea of the baby bonus was to forestall the very idea of a Rudd Government it can't have been that savvy. You wouldn't know political savvy if it bit you, Chris.

The fundamental question that the Labor Government's proposal for parental leave raises is whether parents should have children for themselves, or for society.

No, the question it raises concerns the nature of remuneration for labour, Chris.

what parent spends time thinking about how starting a family could help Australia's OECD rankings? Hopefully none.

You've lugged this straw man through your whole article and now you've finally let it drop. How much better if you'd set fire to it and gone and done some research instead.

Jason Kissofdeath

Jason Koutsoukis was wrong about Peter Costello, and there is no reason why he has any more authority on Brendan Nelson in not one, but two articles in today's Age.

"It is certain, absolutely certain, that Brendan Nelson will not be leading the Liberal Party at the next election," said one Liberal frontbencher. "He is held in contempt by most senior people. People simply do not respect him."

If this had been made known before last year's ballot, it might have changed the result.

While no Liberal MPs were prepared to criticise Dr Nelson on the record, the leadership talk nevertheless had the ring of the beginning of a campaign to oust him.

Well Jase, all that ringing you've reported on the imminent challenge from Costello must have given you tinnitus.

Favoured by an increasing number at the moment is the former workplace relations minister Joe Hockey.

Oh no! This is the hook for Jase's career over the next five years: Waiting for the Hockey Challenge. I like Joe and think he could do well, but what he - and the Liberal Party - needs is less endorsement from Jason Kissofdeath, not more.

As manager of Opposition business in the House of Representatives, Hockey has also shown early signs of being a skilled parliamentary tactician.

He looked a bit too responsible for that Cardboard Kevin debacle for mine. Your article would have been better had you addressed that, Jase.

As long as he doesn't rush himself, Hockey may well be the Liberals' best long-term hope.

This may be true, but it's not clear what you're asking of the Liberal Party here Jase. Are the Liberals in such dire trouble that they need to punt Mr 9% as soon as possible? If so, why stuff around with Turnbull or whomever else?

Turnbull ... misread the party room mood during last year's bid to win the leadership against Nelson, and has many of the overweening personality flaws that proved insurmountable for Costello.

At least he's actually contested the leadership, Jase. I'm not sure about Turnbull either, but he is the nearest thing the Liberal Party has to Bob Hawke: he is an itch that party just has to scratch. Hawke was also a man of overweening, but not necessarily overwhelming, personality flaws. It's Jase's job to consider the man in greater depth than he has. If Turnbull puts the wind up the Rudd Government's first Treasurer, why shouldn't he go up against Rudd? If Turnbull could do for a few other Liberal MPs what he did in his own seat, he'd be Prime Minister.

Jase's failure to think about what he says undermines his spot at kingmaking:

Hockey has an amiable and warm presence.

Just like Kim Beazley, Jase?

He is popular, moderate ...

How do you suggest he shake off the tag of Mr WorkChoices, Jase (unless Julie Bishop is doing that for him)?

... and from the key state of NSW.

As opposed to whatever state Nelson and Turnbull come from; a state which can't even decide on a State Director, can't get behind one of the two best Liberal leaders at state level, and which can't and won't purge the Taliban.

Nelson's a joke and part of being an ex-Liberal means I don't much mind who replaces him. Joe Hockey was a good guy when I knew him, but that was long ago and we've both changed. The issue isn't the Liberal leadership per se, it's whether readers of The Age are well served by Jason Koutsoukis. I'd be surprised if nine percent of the target readership of The Age would agree.

Shanahan's margin of hypocrisy on polls

One of the clearest examples of poor reporting from a senior Canberra press gallery
was Dennis Shanahan's reports in The Australian trying to interpret last
year's polls in a favourable way for the Coalition. All throughout 2007, polling
showed Labor with solid leads but ol' Dennis assured us that any day now, any
moment, John Howard would personally turn it around. Any day now ... after the
2006-07 summer ends ... after the Sunrise Anzac Day thing ... after the
Budget ... after the strip-club thing ... just you wait, all you lefty pundits you ...

It became a joke after a while, yet the biggest joke was that The Australian
kept him on their books. Now, he has the hide to have a go at his critics. Or try to.

Where is the margin-of-error school of polling now?

I know of no school, Dennis, but I suggest to you that gloating is not an activity
engaged in by losers like your good self.

Well done in getting away with an insignificant error without criticism, Dennis. I
hope it gets you through all those times when you feel besieged and put-upon. A
margin of 70% to 9% at a point when an election is hardly imminent is what it took
for you - yes, you - to stop fighting poll results and report them straight, rather
than try and keen for John Howard to come through once again.

A margin of 70% to 9% at a point when an election is hardly imminent is a lot
different to one showing 55/45 when an election is months/weeks/days away. Your
reporting of those polls was nothing short of disgraceful. You were basically trying
to tell the people of Australia that they were thinking something other than what
they were actually thinking, the very essence of poor reporting.

Dennis Shanahan is an experienced journalist, yet his experience was sidelined by
his yearning for more Howard. He was comprehensively shown up by people going
by names like Possum Comitatus, Poll Bludger and Mumble. People smarter than him,
people who knew more about voting patterns than he did, people who all but stole
the bread and butter out of his mouth.

Shanahan had no right to goad people who have rightly skewered him, or paint
them as politically aligned hypocrites. There was more to their criticism than
statistical quibbling; it was the repeated attempts to insert wishful thinking into
data whose framers try hard to position as impartially as possible. He disgraces
The Australian by refusing to slink away in embarrassment, then compounds
it by taking up company space by going ner-ner! at his critics (after first
misrepresenting them, because to accurately concede their point would end his
career).

Isn't it time you pissed off to Washington, Dennis? Heaven knows you're doing
bugger-all good here. Watching the death-throes of one conservative
administration isn't enough, surely.