The people have spoken

After the federal elections, the federal directors go to the National Press Club and give a self-serving speech about how clever they were, with token acknowledgment of faults compensated for by a degree of blame transference that borders on mental instability.

There was a time when people wouldn't know what powerful people said unless a journalist was there to transcribe it. This piece on Labor and that piece on the Liberals come from that time. It has no value here. If I wanted the words of Karl Bitar or Brian Loughnane I'm sure there's streaming video of it out there somewhere: someone doing shorthand in a notepad has much less value than the journosphere might imagine.

Straight reportage of an event like this gives these jokers the last word in a federal election, when the last word belongs with the voters. As a former party member myself, those speeches basically set the talking points which act as a prophylactic to debate and reform over the coming parliament, ensuring that all but the most searing lessons are completely forgotten in three years.

The real challenge when reporting on some staged, staid and stale announcement is to consider how much of it is valuable information people can use, and how much self-serving bullshit. Two articles doing the straight reporting thing sell us all short, and is merely filler until some real analysis can come later on (probably in this weekend's papers). We here at the Politically Homeless Institute remember the 2010 Federal election clearly and appraise these speeches as reported thus:

Karl Bitar, Labor

Labor went into this year's federal election with lead in its saddlebags - voters with high expectations of a new government.

Who created those expectations? Who fell short of those expectations? Who failed to make the case that having a go and falling short beats not trying and demanding a return to the torpid way it was?

"People were dissatisfied … because we didn't meet the expectations they had of us when we won in 2007," he said. "Unfortunately, people's expectations were well beyond what any government could possibly meet."

He said all of this boiled down to the perfect recipe for a high protest vote - a high level of government dissatisfaction and a high percentage of people thinking we would definitely win."

... along with a low number who actually thought the government had solid achievements worth defending and perpetuating. Sneaky little backroom operators who advise Prime Ministers to flee at the first sign of discontent must bear some responsibility for undermining their own campaign, much more than "the press club" clearly put on Bitar.

Mr Bitar said the leaks and the Latham intrusion created perceptions of disunity and diverted attention from Labor's campaign.

Latham wasn't much of a force for Labor's good, and there are two questions arising from this:

• Latham was a known quantity. Who expected that he would keep quiet? I can still remember when Channel 9 targeted Hewson in 1993 over the GST. Show me someone who never, ever expected that the boot would be on the other foot, and I'll show you someone with no political nous.
• Whose idea was it to complain to Channel 9 about Latham? This is not something Gillard did herself, and which backfired on Gillard and Labor by making them look like sooks. Again, why was the journosphere too gutless polite to put this to Bitar? You wouldn't miss out on any stories worth reporting by doing so.

On top of all that is a virtual admission of, if not failure, then personal inadequacy:

The problem was not with the substance of the policies, but how they were communicated and reported ... strategically the right call, but "tactically, it didn't come off as well as we would have expected"

This is the cry of political losers everywhere. It was what the Libs did in NSW after they lost in 1995, and they only stopped doing it once Barry O'Farrell took over. There are three points here:

• You know what, Karl (and you too Mark Davis, for just passing it on like some virus)? It was the policies, such as there were any after you numpties ran away fro them.
• A political pro doesn't have anyone to blame their stumblebum delivery but themselves. If you can't communicate effectively, or you don't know crap from chocolate, consider whether your party is not better served by your absence than your presence.
• When it comes to the nasty journos, focus groups should tell you they're not that significant. People tend to catch glimpses and snippets of news reports, and if they're inherently silly then no amount of po-faced reportage will add any value whatsoever, to the experience of the viewer/ reader/ citizen/ taxpayer/ voter, nor to the agenda of the transmitters of that message - and nor, ultimately, to the value and esteem in which the journosphere itself is held.

There are none so blind, etc.:

The rail link was good policy but it ended up "sucking oxygen" out of the campaign because the media reported it in an extremely cynical way.

How would Karl Bitar know what's good policy or not?

Why didn't Labor address the issue that the State Government had announced and re-announced that rail line over sixty times, and only a third of it was actually built. To turn such a sow's-ear of policy into a political silk purse, it was necessary to address that and make the case: no, this time we're serious, stop laughing. The Premier should have been nowhere near the announcement: the sight of Krissy & Jules palling it up was a negative for Federal Labor, not a positive.

The people of NSW are running down the clock, waiting to get rid of the State Labor government. No amount of whingeing about the media will change this. No amount of insistence that Keneally is political gold when she's actually political shit, will or can change this. Labor strategists should have known that Keneally would be a liability for Gillard. To contend otherwise is denialism, proof positive that the Labor campaign is run by someone with no clue about Australian politics today.

Given the essential vapidity of Labor's campaign, from what was the oxygen sucked?

Brian Loughnane, Liberal

THE strong swing to the Coalition in NSW at the election should have converted to more seats won, the federal director of the Liberal Party has said ... “It is very important that we understand precisely what happened,” he said.

“And the fact that we received such a strong swing and did not convert that to more seats obviously is something that is of concern to the party.”

Tony Abbott has previously conceded that the Opposition lost the election because of a failure to pick up at least three extra seats in NSW.

But Mr Loughnane today refused to admit errors had made been, defending the campaign in the state as “properly resourced”.

If NSW had been properly resourced, these seats would have been won:

• Robertson would have been won as Labor split over Neal-O'Neill;
• Banks was ridiculously under-resourced and a man from Manly was sent to contest it. The Liberals have had their eyes on that seat for twenty years, and Daryl Melham looks like going the way of John Howard - representing a safe seat that is slowly ebbing away - but without Howard's achievements (Melham has been in parliament for twenty years, Labor has been in government half that time and he's not been put into the front line. By contrast, when Melham was first elected, Kate Ellis was 13);
• The Liberals would have won Greenway had they run an adult to contest it, like the Mayor of Blacktown whom David Clarke vetoed, rather than a Clarkoid named Jaymz. Only yokels in Queensland elect adolescents;
• In Eden-Monaro the Liberals put up one of their sharpest politcal operatives, and he went backwards at a rate of knots, casting doubt over every jumped-up staffer and CrosbyTextorite who dared to offer political advice to any Liberal candidate;
• Dobell, Hughes, Lyne: coulda, woulda, shoulda.

Loughnane is out of line when he claims the state was properly resourced. Moving campaign headquarters to Melbourne is stupid when there are no seats in play there. The Federal President can get off his arse and shift to Sydney or Brisbane for the duration, or more properly go somewhere from which no harm can be done. Melbourne arrogance was stamped out of the Liberal Party in the 1970s and was too gutless to return a generaion later. If you want to hold and inquiry, hold an inquiry; if you want to impose your views, stand up and do that - but spare us the charade of an inquiry with pre-defined solutions and backsides covered all round.

Mind you, it's worth noting that Tony Abbott has not grabbed the NSW Libs by the scruff of the neck and shaken it until people like Clarke fell away. Howard would have done that before the election. It's a sign that Abbott is a boy doing a man's job when it comes to practical politics. A year from now Abbott will be going cap-in-hand to Barry O'Farrell, if he's still leader (Abbott, not O'Farrell).

“Firstly, in relation to the campaign headquarters, we always move from Canberra to Melbourne a couple of days into the campaign. We did exactly at this election what we normally do.” “It’s widely agreed that it was one of the strongest campaign headquarters that we’ve ever run in the history of the party.”

No need for an inquiry then, carry on, as you were. Complacency in defeat is not going to pave the way for victory, but then again what would Brian Loughnane know about increasing the Liberal vote?

Addressing the ousting of Kevin Rudd, which fundamentally changed the political contest, Mr Loughnane said the party was not caught off guard. “We considered the possibility of Labor changing leaders before the election. Indeed, we prepared for it,” he said. “Our campaign was able to quickly adapt to Julie [sic] Gillard,” he boasted.

Leaving aside the possibility that Loughnane knows the Prime Minister's given name and that the transcriber can't be trusted to get that right - this is bullshit. Abbott was freaked out at coming up against a woman. The Liberal Paty benefitted from Labor's mistakes (the fact that it had no policies to run on, the Oakes-Rudd leaks) to the point where deep unease among female voters toward Abbott did not result in any rush to embrace Gillard.

Loughnane is right to point out Labor's muddle, and wrong not to point out the Liberals' own shortcomings that thankfully saw them fall short of government. Had the campaign gone on for another week the Liberals would have been cruelly exposed over their economic (non-)policy. Loughnane ran his party into the ground due to insouciance and arrogance, which brought it up short of victory. Mind you, nobody in the Liberal Party wants to be Prime Minister enough to kick him from one end of Collins Street to the other; and no journalist wants to lose the prospect of "We reveal Liberal internal polling showing that ..." space-filla stories, valuable as they are.

Eyes without a face

I always thought it was funny that a guy who's never worked a day in his life got to be head of the Australian Workers' Union, but not only is this so but he got to be a published author too.

Just like Chopper Read.

But at least Chopper Read can string together a grammatical sentence. And apply a metaphor so that it makes sense. Because if you can't write a blurb, and if the blurb you do write casts a pall over your book, what the hell are you doing to AWU members and how can we work together so that your political career goes no further than it has.

THE implosion of the Rudd government has been something of an elephant in the room

An implosion is not an elephant. It is nothing of an elephant whatsoever.

The rivalry between John Howard and Peter Costello for the leadership of the Liberal Party was much talked about but little came of it in terms of policy outcomes. The rivalry between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard is much the same really.

But as the Gillard government settles into power, and gets on with the business of governing - passing legislation, working with the independents and providing stable leadership ...

Is that all there is to governing? Really? No policy issues to for Labor people to die in a ditch over, no pressing issues crying out for a response greater than the transactional politics described above?

... it's time to start looking at what went wrong during the period of the last government.

Why? Many in the journosphere are still hunting out their elusive Walkleys by looking for signs of awkwardness in the Rudd-Gillard relationship. What on earth can be gained, in policy terms, from Howes piling on? So he's got a book to sell, who hasn't? John Howard has a book to sell and he has some opinions on the Rudd government too.

And no one's going to forget 2010 in a hurry.

Great: no need to rake over it, is there? We were and are all there, not much left to say really.

If the saying, "A week is a long time in politics" is true, you can safely say this year seemed like an eternity.

If it's just a cliche for adrenaline junkies who can't handle big, enduring and substantive issues, then there's not much left to say and no reason to buy your book.

It's a year in politics that will be dissected, studied and written about for decades to come.

It will probably become a seminal turning point in the history of Australian Labor and domestic politics, alongside 1975 and 1955.

More like 1991, the last time the Labor Party rolled a PM who looked set to lead them to defeat. There were big issues in play in 1975 and 1955, the problems of 2010 were that the big issues kept getting shunted off the table by clowns like Arbib and your own self, Paul Howes.

And for those of us who identify with Labor ideas and values, the result of the 2010 election has been a gigantic wake-up call.

So the entire labour movement had governed the nation, and you had scribbled your diary, while being asleep?

Tomorrow, my first book will be launched ... it's my personal diary of the recent election campaign.

As opposed to someone else's personal diary, or a dollop of self-serving bullshit on par with John Hyde Page?

I wrote it because I wanted to document what I thought had gone right and gone wrong with Labor's campaign during the election ...

But you were asleep, Paul. Everyone was asleep, apparently. Someone who's awake enough to keep a diary does not need a wake-up call. Someone who's keeping a diary hasn't got time for quotidian representation of the interests of Australian Workers.

... I believe it's important for the Labor Party and the wider labour movement to be more open to different ideas and opinions.

You didn't get where you are by being Mr Different Ideas And Opinions. If Bill Ludwig found out you had Ideas, you'd be sweeping out shearing sheds out the back of Bob Katter's electorate faster than you could say boo, not lounging on a divan dictating your memoirs. Unvarnished and honest? Yeah, right. Brutal? Possibly, but not for the reasons you'd think.

The essential dilemma of Australian Labor was exposed by Doug Cameron a few weeks ago, for free. Cameron rejoiced that the Labor caucus was full of union officials, similar to himself and Paul Howes. Cameron then went on to say that the Labor caucus was full of zombies who wouldn't challenge Rudd, and Paul Howes says much the same thing (another reason not to buy his book). These two descriptions are linked. Union officials these days are as careerist as the most soulless corporate drone. They are not the tough, independently-minded and self-educated tinsmiths, French polishers and train drivers who built the ALP. They - you - are punished if they deviate from the Set Line, however stupid, and rewarded to the extent that the line is toed. Labor is not for the toey.

Ministers were not encouraged to debate ideas and Cabinet became a rubber-stamping committee. Those who did try to talk to the prime minister about the problems facing the government were so brutalised by their experiences that many never tried it again.

Awww, diddums. These people were happy to toe the line all the way up through the labour movement: Bill Ludwig, Kim Carr, Graham Richardson, Joe de Bruyn, all demanded loyalty and got it. Somehow, these battle-hardened professionals went up against Kevin from Nambour, Beijing and Brissy, and they collapsed in a heap. I sure wouldn't trust these delicate flowers with, say, the interests of Australian Workers.

I want real loyalty. I want someone who will kiss my ass in Macy's window, and say it smells like roses.

- Lyndon B. Johnson

If you think that a week is a long time in politics and that 2010 is some sort of epoch, then I should point out that Johnson was President of the United States during the 1960s and that Macy's refers to a department store in New York.

Rudd demanded power and got it. What he did with it is another question, and because your book is all about you then I doubt you'll be big enough to go into those issues. Never mind being smart after he event, did you agree with Rudd's decision to drop/defer the ETS? Did you, at the time, Paul Howes? No, I won't buy the book and chances are someone will serialise it anyway; hopefully you'll be big enough to outline your own position and what you did to make yourself heard, or confirm when someone else does it for you.

Some Cabinet ministers couldn't get a meeting with Rudd at all.

And this affected Australian Workers how?

As readers of this column know, I have something of a bee in my bonnet on the issue of refugees' rights.

It's not a popular stance, and I know this.

But back in 2009, when I spoke out, yet again, on the refugee issue, Rudd slapped me down in a very public way.

During Question Time, no less.

His message was very clear - he would not tolerate dissent in any way.

I was embarrassed.

Actually, I was mortified.

If it's nothing more than a bee in your bonnet, or more correctly a pose, no wonder Rudd slapped you down. If you're going to go public on an issue of public policy, isn't it going to be a public issue? Would you prefer to be plied with port and cigars in a quiet room, and then ignored? Would it be better if the nominal head of the Australian Workers' Union could waft in and waft out unseen, and leave no trace other than having his bonnet-bees enacted to the letter? If so, say so. You're no better than Rudd then, but at least it will be true.

And it became clear to me why others were not similarly taking Rudd on: nobody would dare.

That is not how democracy works.

The party became increasingly closed, and those within the wider labour movement who spoke out or disagreed on policy issues were marginalised and shut up.

Do you think the wider labour movement wanted deregulations, privatisations, tariff reductions etc.? No, it bloody didn't, and there wasn't time to consult them and win them all over. There was, however, time to cut the number of unions, restrict the staff thereon to clowns like yourself, and have them do what it took to put the policies in train. That culture has reinforced itself to the point where, regardless of the issue at hand (and it is regardless) no serious observer gives a monkey's what the wider labour movement thinks. Therefore, we are now at a point where there is no labour movement wider than Paul Howes and people not significantly or sufficiently different to him. And that, for all his protestations, is how Paul Howes likes it, and needs it to be.

That culture needed to end.

That's not a paragraph. Neither is this, really. The writing is. Appalling. Like a man who thinks that writing a book is like an extended press release. With ungrammatical sentences. That fail to add drama or gravitas where none were present. Brutal on the language. Annoying to the reader.

Besides, the culture you describe got rid of John Howard and got job upgrades for many labour movement zombies, including yourself Paul Howes.

I believe that, as Prime Minister, Gillard is keen to ensure that Labor returns to being a party of ideas and debate.

And I'm pleased to see that already many Labor ministers, MPs and supporters outside Parliament are working to ensure that debate is had and ideas are generated.

Give me one example, Paul. One example where Gillard is leading a public debate, and allowing the sorts of random inputs that drive press secs (people more similar to Paul Howes than your standard AWU member) crazy.

I'll give you two:

• the Minister for Sport supports gay marriage, the Prime Minister doesn't. For the government, it's end-of-story unless the Minister for Sport wants to make something of it, which he probably doesn't. To regard this as an issue at all, you have to widen the debate to consider those affected by such a decision; people like Paul Howes get where they are by narrowing debates, not widening them.
• Since Gillard became PM Howes has not uttered a word on refugees. Presumably the bee in his bonnet has been pacified in some other way, because the issues affecting the people themselves is pretty much the same, and while they won't forget 2010 either they could be forgiven for not knowing who you are. What could be more mortifying than that?

Do Australian Workers have opinions on gay marriage, refugees, or the rights of unions to prosecute employers - if so, what are they? Don't tell me that they don't care: the SDA reckon that their members are all up-in-arms about abortion and euthanasia, one would assume the AWU is similarly engaged on the issues with Mr Democracy at the helm.

But it does mean that supporters of the party should be able to make their voices heard without the fear of appearing disloyal.

After all, that's democracy.

Another example: recently, the Premier of New South Wales attempted to change an agreement so that people like Paul Howes would benefit. The Prime Minister insisted that the original agreement was good enough for people like Paul Howes. The Prime Minister criticised the Premier in public, during Question Time and elsewhere, the full Paul Howes nightmare. The silence of people like Paul Howes was deafening: they didn't support the Premier or the Prime Minister.

When it comes to loyal criticism of a federal Labor government, if a Labor Premier of New South Wales can't etc., etc., and oh what's the use.

And many people felt very angry that the Labor Party had treated a prime minister (seemingly) so badly.

They are the very sorts of people who used to feel part of the Labor Party until people like Paul Howes took over. Paul Howes got to where he is by ignoring such people.

It seems to me that because the election had to be held so soon after the change of leadership, there was no opportunity to properly explain to the Australian people what exactly had gone wrong with the Rudd government.

At the previous election, you were quite happy to say what was wrong with the Howard government, so why not? Election campaigns are all about communication, and as the campaign was run by people like Paul Howes they didn't want to explain ("never complain, never explain, never resign" - right Paul?). We're all moving forward.

Kevin Rudd is an able man, and will be a competent Foreign Minister.

How would you know? You couldn't get a meeting with him. On what basis to you judge a Foreign Minister anyway? How collegiate do you think H V Evatt or Gareth Evans were? How collegiate was the last Queenslander to be Foreign Minister, Bill Hayden?

The challenge for the government is not to go over old ground or even sell some books. The challenge is to get some debates happening and decisions made. In 1992, Paul Keating was not going on about how Bob Hawke was so totally crushing his dreams - he was introducing the sorts of policy ideas that Hawke wasn't introducing, vindicating by default those who'd backed him and forcing those who didn't to either change their minds or leave. This is precisely what Gillard isn't doing, or not doing enough, and what she should be doing.

The challenge facing Gillard is not the challenge facing Paul Howes, and long may this continue to be so.

The limits of partisan reporting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Someone else's problem

Updated 4, 5 & 6 Nov with Lenore Taylor's responses

Lenore Taylor reckons that regulating the financial system is someone else's problem, bless her.

Joe Hockey has clinched his interest rates attack.

Is this the same as saying that Hockey, and by extension, the Liberal-National-LNP-CLP-OMG-WTF Coalition, have a superior policy offering to the government in this key area of economic and social policy? If you read on, it doesn't say this at all: this sentence gives false hope of presenting you with useful information. It's just about day-to-day bullshit in Canberra, feints and media tactics that chew up a lot of effort and media space but actually amount to bugger-all when it comes to effects on people, businesses and other features of life beyond the concentric roads of Capital Hill.

The grand finale came yesterday when he declared the Gillard government and its "insipidly weak Treasurer" owned the interest rate rises.

The "grand finale"? Really? Looks like just another dollop of bullshit to me. What's grand, what's final about such an announcement? Will interest rates and their impact on the economy cease to be an issue now that Hockey has spoken? I doubt it, and Taylor was stupid to frame such a humdrum announcement in that way.

Of course, the government doesn't "own" the rises at all. The Reserve Bank is independent and the commercial banks even more so. (Industry sources say at least part of the Commonwealth Bank's motivation in immediately announcing a rise well above that announced by the RBA was to send a very clear message to politicians of all persuasions that political bullying was not going to become a de facto form of price control.)

The commercial banks are not independent of government. They are companies which hold government banking licences, and which are subject to a range of regulations, including on fair trading. Nobody who has any idea of the amount of lobbying they do would describe them as "independent" of government.

Banking puts the lie to libertarianism as a viable economic system. Show me a country with a weak system of government (e.g. a brittle dictatorship or post-dictatorship kleptocracy) and I'll show you a country with a rubbish banking system. Show me a country with a strong system of government (e.g. the UK, Switzerland, Australia) and I'll show you a country with a strong banking system. Strong regulation makes for strong banks (and no, pummeling banks and bankers at every turn does not constitute 'strong' regulation).

Taylor is wrong to regard all proposals for changing the regulatory system under which banks operate as "bullying", as she did there. Australia's major banks have power of their own, and the power they exert is not just over politicians but over their customers. When customers have restricted ability to find less onerous interest rates by switching banks, because they're all doing it, they are disempowered; and when their politicians don't exert regulatory power over banks that keep them solvent while preventing abuses of power, this sense of disempowerment at the hands of the banks is magnified.

Hockey's sheeting home of "ownership" ignores the fact the Reserve Bank statement is clear that government spending had little to do with its rates decision.

A valid point, well made (finally). Then she overdid it:

And actually "acting" on banking competition is a lot more difficult than making a considered speech with a "nine-point plan".

Hockey is a politician, in opposition. "Acting", however you want to define it in a non-thespian sense, is beyond him because he's not the Treasurer but the shadow. Hockey's nine points may or may not be what's needed right now in bank regulation, but they're nine points more than Swan put forward when he held the job Hockey's in now. Costello treated Swan with contempt; a little unfairly perhaps, given Swan's political success in Queensland in 2007 and in keeping the state government from defeat at the last election (a record undone by the debacle of August 21). Swan cannot afford to brush off Hockey and his nine points as casually as Taylor would hope to do. It's one thing to regard Labor and Liberal as equivalent, but it's a basic error to extend this insouciance to government and opposition.

Wayne Swan told the Herald last month he was looking at tougher powers for the competition watchdog and more help for smaller lenders to try to increase banking competition.

Did he really? What a shame the Herald just sat on it. Its readers could have used that information. Maybe there could have been a public debate on what forms those high-level measures might take. Taylor has admitted to an anti-scoop, the antithesis of what her profession claims to be about.

He now says he'll unveil a banking competition package in December - just in time to have an answer when people realise they have way less to spend at Christmas. It is likely to include more powers for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. It may coincide with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission finalising how it will penalise banks for charging excessive exit fees for mortgage-payers who want to vote with their feet.

As policy goes, that's all fine.

"As policy goes, that's all fine"? What a piss-poor effort, an appalling indictment of journalism that is! These are hugely complex areas of policy, and a senior parliamentary press gallery journalist waves it away with "As policy goes, that's all fine"! Keep that in mind for any future developments in public policy reported by this person (if there can be any, following the "grand finale"):

Asylum seekers coming by boat will be machine-gunned and left to die in the ocean.

Lenore Taylor: As policy goes, that's all fine.

The means of production, distribution and exchange shall be taken over by the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Lenore Taylor: As policy goes, that's all fine.

[insert any policy you like that's stupid and wrong, yet not unlikely in the current environment]

Lenore Taylor: As policy goes, that's all fine.

That attitude shows that journalists aren't equipped to tell us what public policy developments mean, and how we might evaluate them. Merely reporting what was said isn't enough - especially not if you're going to sit on it for a month or so.

But politically he's been too slow. While he's been thinking, Hockey has got the jump on him - taking on the big banks and outlining his own ideas that are in many cases quite similar to those being investigated by Swan.

How similar, Lenore? Isn't it politically smart to get journalists to sit on important information? Now that the cat's out of the bag, are you going to explore the similarities and differences, and foreseeable consequences of each? Why not? Surely this blithe crap of "that's all fine" won't do any more?

Being shadow treasurer does not have many advantages over being Treasurer, but it is a better place from which to feel people's pain on cost-of-living pressures, because you don't actually have to do anything about it.

Assuming you want to be shadow treasurer all you life, maybe it could be regarded as a cushy job. When you're in a job like that, all you can do is make a speech and hopefully come up with some ideas that stand scrutiny - if there's any scrutiny to be had, from any professional journalists that aren't too busy having cosy chats with the incumbents. Maybe Swan could get it done in less time if he didn't have to butter up journalists, just as Hockey hasn't apparently been sitting around hoping Lenore Taylor might drop by.

Just ask Wayne Swan. As shadow treasurer he ran a cost-of-living campaign advocating Fuelwatch and Grocerywatch. It worked a treat. Until he got into government.

Do you think that if we'd had some analysis of Fuelwatch and Grocerywatch, we might not have been taken in to the extent that we (apparently) were? Where would we turn for some of that, Lenore? Let us have no more of this 24-hour-media-cycle nonsense when you can sit on a story for a month and observe idly while it blows up around you. That's someone else's problem too, I suppose.

Update 4 Nov: @lenoretaylor tweeted the following:

@Crabbometer not sure where to start with this bizarre rant by @awelder- but I did not "sit" on swan story I wrote it on p1.

You wrote it a month after being briefed, and a week after Hockey made his nine points. If Hockey was really operating along 'similar lines' to Swan you should have said so at the time, and said why you thought that. Never mind this 'unveiling in December' rubbish - if you have inside information on changes to the country's fiscal regulatory regime, tell us.

Oh - and it is possible for people to disagree with you without this 'bizarre rant' nonsense. Keep it civil, Lenore.

Update 5 Nov: @lenoretaylor tweeted the following:

@awelder no i wrote it on october 5 page 1 "Treasurer's rates edict to banks"

The article is here (thanks to the estimable Crabbometer for digging that up not letting this issue go).

The only bits of Taylor's earlier article which deal with Swan's position are paragraphs 1 & 3. It's fair to say they're vague about what Swan actually intends to do about regulating banks, and that analysis on Taylor's part is non-existent. There is no basis in this article to sneer at Hockey's nine points, unless you're privy to information not yet disclosed publicly.

The whole weakness of the Rudd government, and increasingly that of Gillard, is that they promise too much and deliver too little. When they do make a decision they tend to spring it on people, rather than leading a community debate and coming to a position that works for a wide range of stakeholders. Swan must bear some responsibility for that.

What should be happening with bank regulation is that Swan should be leading a community debate. Hockey started doing that with his nine points but he seems to have stopped. If Lenore Taylor knows more about proposals for regulatory change to the financial sector than she has so far let on, she should stand up and tell us: find out what proper regulation looks like, and judge Swan, Hockey, the Greens and whomever else wants to stick their oar in against that.

What shouldn't happen is this assumption that the incumbents have got it covered. The public service throw ideas around all the time, and some of them pass over ministers' desks. From now on, any idea the Opposition come out with could be rebutted by someone like Lenore Taylor responding 'yeah, government already thought of that', because as policy goes, that's all fine.

Update 6 Nov: This is the article I wish someone like Lenore Taylor would have written earlier, and I'm glad has been. While there is some analysis to be done about the merits of these proposals, finally we have a sound article to work with. Congratulations Ms Taylor, congratulations SMH and congratulations to you too, Crabbometer.

Words used only by journalists

• Amanuensis
• Associated with/linked to (could mean anything really, A associated/linked with B however tenuously)
• Bandwagon
• Blogosphere
• Blogotariat
• Brushed off (you can brush off a journalist, but that doesn't necessarily mean you've addressed the issue. Usually refers to the point at which a journalist gave up on getting information)
• Bumper (meaning 'large')
• Crashed through the barrier/Crashed out of (initially an attempt at creating excitement on normal movements of events, now a cliché you have to fight in order to make sense of the story)
• Dearth (opp. of 'Windfall', see below)
• Doyen(ne), n. journalist who's been in Canberra so long that they no longer understand what's going on, can't relate to anyone outside Canberra or who doesn't think parliamentary politics matters much
• Estranged
• Languishing (meaning being at a disadvantage, rather than relaxing)
• Mantle (a disguise)
• Offing, in the
• Pooch (dog, usually preceded by 'lovable' or 'pampered')
• Punters (not referring to people placing bets, but letting slip that you have no idea what people think other than cod extrapolation of polling stats)
• Scourge (used to refer to torture, now any kind of annoyance)
• Slugged (ref. to levying taxes, not to actual assault)
• Tightlipped
• Tome (book)
• Windfall

Verbs:

• To cruel (to limit one's chances)
• To debunk
• To don (wear; when used with 'mantle', means adopting a position, or moving to - see below)
• To hold talks
• To jet (maybe this would have some allure when few, wealthy people travelled by a jet-powered aeroplane, but since the 1980s it's just silly)
• To laud (seriously, have you ever heard anyone say I laud that)
• To move to (to act but not necessarily succeed, e.g. 'IMMIGRATION Minister Chris Bowen has moved to appease Woodside residents')
• To pen (to use the pen to write with, or even to produce written material without a pen)
• To re-sign (opp. of 'resign')
• To sport (see 'to don')
• To upbraid

More ...

Why the Liberals should preference the Greens

Australia's two biggest states will go to the polls over the next six months. Labor will want the Liberals to preference them ahead of the Greens, while the Liberals will be tempted to mess with Labor for short-term gain. In both states, the Liberal position is strong: somewhat stronger in NSW but over the next term, even if Brumby scrapes back in you have to fancy the Liberals' chances over Labor's.

There is no reason why the Liberals should engage in a pas-de-deux with the ALP. Labor only do this in moments of weakness, and the Liberals never benefit. It becomes hard for a Liberal opposition to become a Liberal government when they've cut so many deals for quick, little wins; some Lib staffer gets a public sector job while Liberal frontbenchers never become ministers. If the Liberals preference Labor and Labor preferences the Liberals, how do they create a competitive advantage? Brumby's bellowing at the Victorian Liberals, demanding that they preference his government, reminds me of Morris Iemma demanding that Barry O'Farrell back him on electricity privatisation. For Baillieu to accede would be the end of him.

Andrew Norton wrung his hands over his local electorate before eventually deciding to preference Labor on particular Federal issues. What of the longer term, the bigger picture?

The reason why the Liberals should preference the Greens is because it is in its interests to shape the left in such a way that makes left governments structurally weak. A strong Liberal leader, one determined to be in power for a long time, would intone gravely that the Labor Party is in such a dire state that it cannot be supported. The Greens have the kind of political vigour that the ALP lacks, and to recognise this and build bridges over the long term is in the best interests of the Liberal Party. The future of the left in Australia belongs to both Greens and Labor, and it is a pragmatic recognition of this for the Liberals to preference the Greens.

Of course, this would drive Labor crazy. The foundation of the ALP is that it is the only political force on Australia's left capable of holding government. It has guarded this jealously, inventing the notion of the "rat" which has latterly been taken up by post-Howard Liberals. It has seen off international communism, sharply limited the application of Leo XIII Catholicism, and ran rings around the Democrats who threatened to deny Labor centrist votes. The Greens represent a force so substantial and so sharp that it can act as a pincer for Labor, if the wit is there for the Liberals to use it thus. The idea of putting the future of the left in the hands of the non-left is a political advantage for the ages. It threatens to break a generational cycle where Liberals have been equal or inferior to Labor in winning state elections.

In both NSW and Victoria, Labor MPs vulnerable to the Greens in inner-city seats are highly-regarded ministers. If they are beaten by Greens, local Labor branches will not be capable of finding quality candidates to run against them next time; they will be the usual random duffers Labor fields in other marginals. Labor won't be able to replace those people quickly from anywhere else in the short term. The Greens, meanwhile, will have political momentum and will therefore attract quality people not focused on money, continuing to put the lie to the idea that political competence is necessarily expensive. If Labor lose Melbourne or Balmain to the Greens, they will suffer a blow from which they will not recover easily or quickly.

Worse, the future for a proud party thus defeated would be to form a coalition with its tormentors. True, the Libs and Nats have their tensions but they also have a culture of symbiosis that is lacking in both jealous Labor and we-shall-overcome Greens. A future Green-Labor government would be fraught to the point where it will take ten, twenty years for each to learn to live with the other. For the Liberals, ten or twenty years is a long time in government.

Having forsaken the inner-cities, the future of Labor is taking on the Liberals in the suburbs and regions, engaging in law-and-order auctions and urban planning issues: issues that favour the Liberals, especially if they are the incumbent government or challengers to a tired, dispirited and exhausted government.

Five years from now, the baby-boomers will be gone from Labor, and with them the party's electability:

• The NSW Coalition government will be headed for re-election against a gutted ALP;
• If Victoria's Liberals don't win next month, they can't but win next time;
• Anna Bligh, Andrew Fraser and the brothers Dick will have slid into history - regardless of how bad a Langbroek government might be, Labor won't be able to regroup to take advantage of it;
• Colin Barnett is the supreme politician in WA state politics; fawning from his own side, and such opposition as there is can only be described as feeble; John Howard syndrome; and
• The wheels will fall off Rann, again with little prospect of regrowth, to the point where not even the Libs can botch it.

Tassie is anyone's game, though something tells me Hodgman could yet outwit Labor there - and of course the Feds speak for themselves. Gillard can keep Labor together long enough to fob off Abbott, but beyond that a sensible Liberal leader should be able to build a genuine understanding with the Greens that cuts Labor out of the game, leaving them with the sort of union-official zombies they have warned themselves of for a generation. 

I think it is one of the great tragedies that Deakinite liberals were replaced by dull-witted tinsmiths, autodidactic cabinet-makers, Billy Hughes and other randoms under the Labour League banner, many of whom would later desert the ALP anyway (there is nothing so traditional as trouncing Labor traditions). The Greens look set to give Labor the same medicine. All of your Freudenberg flatulence can't help Labor deal with the next few years; fundamental restructuring and accommodation with what now seems impossible is their only hope. The Liberals' only hope is to force these changes on their opponents before they're ready.

Joe Hockey and the banks

Joe Hockey was Minister for Financial Services and Regulation from 1998 to 2001. He put in place much of the ongoing CLERP reform process and did much of the preparation for what became the Financial Sector Reform Act 2002, key legislation that managed corporate Australia through a boom and maintained it through the rocky times recently. He took on an untidy boardroom brawl within AMP, fingering then-chairman Ian Burgess for his inept approach at managing both people and money. Burgess, a prominent and long-serving company director, went straight to then-Prime Minister Howard and whinged about the young whipper-snapper but Hockey was right and to his credit, Howard stood by Hockey.

Cut forward to now, and Hockey is a senior member of the Coalition in Federal Parliament. Howard, Costello and others with greater experience in corporate and prudential regulation have moved on. In fact, with the possible exception of Turnbull I can't see anyone in the Federal Parliamentary Coalition parties who has half as much experience in this area as Hockey. Looking at the Press Gallery, I can see plenty there who would have been all over the story MINISTER CRITICISES AMP SHOCK.

For all that, the journosphere consensus is that Hockey is just bagging the banks because that's what pollies in opposition do, in response to this week's polls and last week's focus groups. This is unfair to Hockey, but he's big enough to cop that. What's worse is that it's unfair to the debate on whether our financial system is well regulated. Hockey's proposals clearly don't work from the perspective of making disengaged voters sit up and take notice; but maybe they weren't intended that way, and (based on his record) we have no reason to assume they constitute idle kite-flying on his part. It's possible that they embody ideas he's been thinking about for a long time, and they deserve consideration by others who have done the hard yards without being self-interested.

Speaking of self-interest, these three did themselves no favours in light of Hockey's proposals:

• Abbott was weak not to stand by Hockey yesterday. I wish more TV outlets had showed Abbott opening and closing his mouth like a landed fish in response to media questions on a matter that is clearly too hard for him to understand. I'm so glad he's not Prime Minister;
• Swan too looks weak in clinging to the status quo, while 'calling for restraint'. He's the third Labor Treasurer from Queensland: the conservatives brought down Theodore (and in doing so intimidated Lyons into abandoning Labor) and they later brought down Hayden, whom Swan advised; reformers both. Swan, with his reforms behind him having stayed in the saddle during the wild ride of the GFC, has no stomach for reform and is hoping just to create FUD and muddy the waters. He is a lot like John Howard as Malcolm Fraser's Treasurer; and
• Michael Smith, CEO of ANZ, reminded me a lot of Burgess with his pompous and flatulent response to Hockey. He wouldn't know populism if it shot him in the leg. Rather than 'report the controversy', Smith's comments belong in the realm of 'he would say that, wouldn't he'. The journosphere should have asked Smith about the public that money that pumped up his results announcements, his share price (Disclosure: I'm an ANZ shareholder) and his reputation as a manager during tough times. If Swan quotes Smith in support of an attack of his own against Hockey, Swan will look be craven.

We media consumers, we taxpayers, we voters are not helped by a lack of focus on the issues under discussion - because unlike a lot of Canberra argy-bargy, there are real issues under discussion here. Tony Jones has got too much populism on board from Q and A to the point where his performance on Lateline is starting to suffer, as you can see from this. Maybe Hockey's nine points would do the country a power of good, or maybe they're a crock from a lazy mind desperate to be taken seriously; it's hard to tell and the media aren't doing their job of helping us decide either way.