Adultery suffrage

I doubt that Australian conservatives have a more thoughtful commentator than Paula Matthewson. Certainly, there are other conservatives who wear their learning less lightly than she does (e.g. Christopher Pearson), or who are more bombastic (Bolt, Akerman), or simply nasty (Paul Sheehan, Miranda Devine), or who are just toe-ing the line (any Coalition MP). Unlike those people, in her articles for The Kings Tribune and her blog and elsewhere, you have to think about the issues that Matthewson raises. She cannot be lightly brushed aside as those others can. The fact that conservative publications don't publish her is an indictment on them.

She raises some good points in this article, but some of her assumptions about politicians, the media and voters simply cannot be sustained.

Media coverage of politics and government is facile and inadequate as it is. There is too much focus on politicians at a time when individual MPs have never been more tightly controlled by their party machines than they are today (and therefore, the behaviour of the individual MP is less important than Matthewson might imagine).

It is no longer true that parliament is the only aperture between the opaque and arcane workings of government and the people whom they regulate and govern. Journalists concerned with public policy need not be parked in the press gallery processing gossip, which is much of what they do today. They would serve their employers and the public better if they reported on issues and then weaved political announcements/actions into that narrative, rather than presenting politicians in all of their flaws and pettiness and attempting to represent that as "the national debate".

There are two things Matthewson is saying in her article: firstly, that there should be more coverage of politicians' sexual infidelities, and secondly that Australians should not vote for adulterous politicians. I think both are happening anyway. I question whether that's necessarily a good thing for all concerned.

When I started as a staffer at the NSW Parliament in the late 1980s, I mixed with experienced staffers and journalists who would furtively tell me over a drink who was rooting whom, who was gay, who was a drunk, who was a nightmare to work for, who was flat-out weird and creepy, etc. The gossip covered not only politicians but staffers, lobbyists and journalists. Over time different people would move between those classifications, as well as in and out of particular relationships. I would be surprised if Matthewson did not experience something similar in her days at the Federal Parliament.

In the case of Thomson and Slipper, Abbott is ramping up the pressure on them because he regards them as weak links standing between him and the Prime Ministership. If the country fails to collapse utterly after 1 July, if the government develops a reputation for being not too bad and getting things done, he's finished. Abbott's tried the noble agree-to-disagree, we're-all-human thing, he even tried some feeble attempts at policy - now two he has less than two months to bully two guys into dropping the ball, or his chance will have passed. I wish journos would report more on that, and less on what Matthewson would have them cover.

Experienced reporters falling on each morsel of scuttlebutt about Peter Slipper diminish themselves by their admission that they've known what he was like for years. The HSU shenanigans are five years out of date and took place outside Parliament: never again does a journalist have any excuse for refusing to cover a story because of "old news".

As to the question of whether or not people should vote for adulterers, the evidence is clear that they don't. Two prominent examples, happily from either major party, bear this out.

When it was revealed that Cheryl Kernot and Gareth Evans had been having an affair, both were diminished. Evans, the more powerful of the two and a man, had left Parliament and was a private citizen living abroad. Kernot had passed her peak and would go on to defeat by a man who played up his family credentials, but who has little else to recommend him. This story must have been well known at the time within the politico-media context and it is possible that the career arc of both would have been different had the affair been disclosed earlier.

Consider how political history might have been different had Gareth Evans been leading the ALP in 2001.

Ross Cameron had the air of an up-and-coming politician when he was elected in 1996. He had closely studied US Republican politicians and inherited his father's commitment to the rhetoric of "muscular Christianity", family and conservatism. I heard rumours at the time that Ross was a pants man, and it all came out before the 2004 election. Cameron invited his electorate to take him as he was: someone who talked about family and faith but didn't practice much of either. He had trashed the central idea of who he was. Re-electing him threatened to be confused with validation, and he lost his seat just as Kernot had lost hers.

There is a case to be made that infidelity should only become a public issue where there is a clear double-standard. If a politician preaches faith-and-family but doesn't practice it, as Cameron did, that would be grounds for exposure - but not if the same happened to someone who wasn't such a tub-thumper in this regard, who refused to use their family in campaign literature and otherwise played down their private lives. This would mean that conservatives would be held to a higher standard than non-conservatives, and some might regard that as unfair. Would a conservative even recognise the breakdown of a gay/lesbian relationship, with or without legal marriage?

There is, of course, the issue of where an extramarital relationship has an impact on the decisions or perceptions surrounding a senior politician in the execution of their duties: the Profumo Affair in 1960s Britain is a prime example of this, but a) I've had to go back fifty years to another country to get a cogent example, and b) the press gallery have no ability to do investigative journalism (unless you consider 'investigative journalism' to be clicking 'Send/Receive' on your email to check whether minister's office has sent you a press release).

Consider also long-standing relationships that are not concluded in a legal marriage, but which are no less real and which break down as surely as marriages do. Are they worthy of reporting? Consider the politicians who are single, hooking up here and breaking up there - are their personal lives to be covered in the same vacuous way as those of celebrities (at the expense of public policy reporting)?

The tangled but non-adulterous relationship of Michael Lawler and Kathy Jackson is far more interesting right now than any MP. As one of the commenters on Matthewson's article said, where does it end?

One weakness of Matthewson's piece is that she makes no mention of those who are intimately but incidentally involved in a relationship breakdown, but who are not public figures. The role of spouses and families in the lives of politicians is fraught when it comes to public exposure, but with the breakdown of a relationship their public role and a "right to know" becomes tenuous at best. Consider the following individuals involved in recent incidents of the type Matthewson refers to:

• Professor Merran Evans (wife of Gareth)
• Gavin Kernot (Cheryl's then husband)
• Genevieve Cameron (as she then was)
• Edna Campbell (wife of David, former NSW Transport Minister)
• Dawn Coulson (wife of Mal)
• Zoe Arnold (Craig Thomson's wife)
• Inge-Jane Hall (Peter Slipper's wife)

None of those people appear(ed) prepared for the storm of publicity surrounding the infidelities of their spouses. None of those people has to answer to me, you, Paula Matthewson or any journalist about what does (not) go on within their family lives. It would be glib to declare that being subject to the odd media cyclone at a time not of your choosing is simply part of the lives they had chosen for themselves. It would be the mark of a cynic to declare that such people don't matter.

I still think that would-be candidates for public office should, with their spouses/partners, be led to a quiet room and be forced to sit through that scene from The Right Stuff where the astronaut's wife refuses to speak to the press pack surrounding her home. After watching the scene, the couple should be left to discuss what they had seen and relate it to their own lives; and if the candidate chose to withdraw from nomination, any application fees should be refunded in full.

The motives of a journalist in going after a politician would be as opaque as they are today. After the revelations from the UK, and after my limited experience in dealing with journalists, I am not sure there is much value in them exposing and picking over the messy lives of other people.

Matthewson's link between political infidelity and sportspeople taking performance-enhancing drugs is not strong. Her portrayal of Julia Gillard's position on the carbon price as a uniquely bad breach of faith with the electorate is laughable, particularly when the main alternative admits that he too runs off at the mouth and can't always be trusted.

If you're going after US examples, never mind Anthony Weiner - what about David Vitter? All the publicity anyone could want but still got re-elected, and by conservatives. Clearly, the US is not a strong parllel to Australia in that regard: maximum publicity, wrong result.

Infidelity is a failing among people; not universally, but common enough for it to join the ranks of human flaws. How people deal with it such weaknesses forms part of their character. It isn't true that she's trying to solve a non-problem, but I suspect Matthewson is trying to solve a problem that is either less than she imagines, or would do so in a way that would make the situation worse. Voters are better judges of character than people such as Paula Matthewson credit them; but that failure of credit and trust is part of being a non-populist conservative, I suppose.

Limited abilities

The Joe Hockey I knew twenty years ago would have looked for ways to make the NDIS work, rather than undermining it in the sneaky and gutless way that he did in his address to the NPC.

Hockey's first references to the NDIS makes it clear he regards it as a problem, not a solution:

The four year Budget died just seven days after its delivery as the Minister for Finance flagged new tax increases for the NDIS ...

Julia Gillard has ... allocat[ed] only minimal funding to expensive new programs like the NDIS ...

Of course the NDIS is one item in the Budget, and any criticism of the Budget from a macroeconomic or wider political perspective must include anything on which the Budget does or doesn't spend money. Even so, he might have chosen something else. More than two-thirds of the budget is spent on existing health, welfare and education measures; could he not have used another example of growing expenditure? Anything?

Matthew Franklin shows that modern journalism is all about getting the quotes right but the story wrong:

Mr Hockey yesterday accused Labor of executing "a cruel hoax" on disabled people and their families by announcing an accelerated launch for the scheme without having secured funding ...

And despite the Opposition Leader's enthusiasm for the scheme, Mr Hockey said: "I will not make a commitment to something I can't fund."

He said he supported the NDIS, but "you've got to live within your means and the government is engaged in a cruel hoax in saying that it's getting on with the job of the NDIS and then underfunding it".

"A number of state treasurers have said to me that they haven't got the money the government is claiming they may have for the NDIS."

Since when does a national initiative have to wait for state treasurers to agree? Would Howard or Costello have wrung their hands and delayed anything on the basis of what Kim Wells or Christian Porter might or might not do? Hockey is looking for excuses not to make the NDIS happen.

When he said "I will not make a commitment to something I can't fund", the worst interpretation is that he won't commit to anything initiated by the incumbents. He'd only commit to an NDIS if he or Abbott could cut the ribbons and have their names on the plaques. This is right out of the US Republican playbook and even if it is effective in creating the impression that people will have to vote Coalition to get anything done, it's still absurdly dishonest and unworthy of any politician with even the faintest commitment to public service that comes with their role. Given that people need better disability services now, it's incumbent upon Hockey and other politicians to make this happen, even if it means swallowing his pride and letting Gillard get short-term credit for this measure.

The best interpretation is that he's timid. You can't wait until all the ducks are lined up before you can make reform happen. You can't put it on the never-never, as Abbott initially tried to do with his initial reaction about doing it all in good time, when government could afford it and all the money hadn't been frittered away on anything else.

Playing politics with the NDIS would be understandable if it had come out of the depths of Labor branches, like Medibank/Medicare did. It came out of a recommendation from the Productivity Commission, for goodness sake. The whole idea of the NDIS is that it reduces disability costs going forward while improving outcomes for disabled people and their carers. It makes a nonsense of high-concept declarations from Hockey like this:

Well, enough is enough. The Coalition is going to keep them to their promises.

If that had a scrap of truth behind it, the Coalition would support the NDIS, and acknowledge that the government has reduced the initial outlay by more than a third and is being tentative, evidence-based and risk-averse in its initial steps down this road - as a responsible opposition would have them be in such uncertain times.

Matthew Franklin was being dopey and/or dishonest in adding $8b of future cost projections onto the $7b that government spends today on disability services:

[The NDIS] is expected to cost $8bn a year, on top of the $7bn now spent on disability services.

See what he's done there? Made the NDIS look like a fat slab of icing "on top of" an already rich cake. There's plenty of information available to journos on the NDIS, both at the general level and in detail on how carers, disabled people and government will get better outcomes for less money. Never mind all that, though - here we are all hostage to Matthew Franklin's inadequacy in reading and arithmetic.

The good news for Matthew is that he is capable of getting the story. The bad news is that he buries it and stumbles on as though nothing has happened:

Disability Reform Minister Jenny Macklin said Mr Hockey's comments showed the Liberal Party was divided on disability.

"We don't want to wait while they battle it out," she said. "We think people with disability have waited long enough. We've put $1bn on the table to get on with this work. Our funding is a sign of good faith to all the states and territories that we are serious."

Enough of Franklin: it's Hockey who is the real worry here.

The Coalition are starting to realise that they have trashed Abbott with his perception of negativity. What they think is the smack of firm leadership looks like bloody-mindedness. He just looks disingenuous with a stunt like this:

Mr Abbott, who completed a 1000-kilometre fund-raising bike-ride for Carers Australia last week, spoke about his admiration for carers and the many gaps in the support provided by the Disability Services Commission, in what he termed a "litigation lottery".

He pledged bipartisan support for the NDIS and said he would defy accusations that he always took a negative approach.

"I am sometimes accused of being Dr No ... When it comes to the NDIS, I am Dr Yes," he said.

That was three weeks ago, easily available from a Google search.

First of all, I'd be interested to see how much money Abbott actually raised for Carers Australia, how much they have actually received to date, and what they plan to do with it (compensating for some measure that Abbott plans to kybosh? Any Craig Thomson types running that outfit?).

It would appear that the Coalition are trying to switch Abbott's negative perception, and loading onto Joe Hockey the "Dr No" persona in the name of economic responsibility. The trouble with that is, by undermining the budget with talk about "cooked books", they cast doubt on whether they or anyone can set the budget to right.

A focus on numbers also undermines the idea of what a government budget is for. It's hard to imagine a better use for taxpayer's money than the provision of not only ad-hoc help but long-term security for the disabled and their carers, especially when government can save money by doing so.

Relying on the US Republicans for strategy overlooks the fact that the US government is in decline in terms of what it can deliver to a growing nation; this is not true for this country, our growth prospects and grounds for optimism, and our very different attitude toward government.

By sending mixed messages over the NDIS, and using it as just another political football rather than a real policy that people really need, they send the message that nothing is more important than a commitment to "economic responsibility", always shimmering out of reach, in a land where the budget is always balanced and politicians shake the hands of disabled people whose lives they will make harder rather than easier.

Greens Senator Rachel Siewert said people would be holding their breath on budget night next week to see what the government announced about the NDIS.

"An NDIS is essential. It's not a question of whether we can afford it, it's that we can't afford not to do it," she said.

I've been waiting for a member of the government - Gillard, Macklin, anyone really - to put the NDIS in such a pithy way. And people wonder why the government relies on the Greens.

The business case for the NDIS has been made, and it is strong. Because Hockey will not support it he can no longer bellyache about the NBN, the submarine program, or whatever other big-ticket item of government expenditure apparently lacks analysis. Not only is this an invidious position to be in, it's stupid that Hockey has allowed himself to be boxed into it.

So we have a situation where Hockey submits to being diminished by carrying a leader whose image is more negative and less flexible than that of the Prime Minister. He puts himself in a position where the Coalition depends utterly upon his economic credibility, and that such credibility as he has might make up for the opprobrium that comes from taking on Abbott's persona of no, no, no. On one hand, it's something I can't fund and won't support. On the other it's hard not to have sympathy for Hockey's position - until you realise what it means for other people with fewer options than he has, in which case there is no other hand.

Chris Kenny hates Australia

It's a weakness that I read too little pro-Liberal commentary. It's been twelve years since I went cold-turkey on Liberal Party membership, and it isn't quite true that I've seen it all before or that such commentary is all illiterate and dodgy. This article by Chris Kenny is about 50% bullshit, 40% standard Coalition talking-points long-since leached of any real information or interest, and 10% value that challenges you to justify your position afresh.

The early part of any News Ltd article is a stale blast of straw man work and bluster, and so it is with this article. It really only starts with the first two sentences in the third paragraph, and even that assumes an open question (that Gillard won't be re-elected) is actually closed. Because of that, Kenny's reluctant focus on Abbott's shortcomings fails to address the important point that to deal with those shortcomings is to minimise the risk that the Coalition will lose, while ignoring or even wallowing in those shortcomings open the real possibility (more than a possibility, but hey let's humour them) that Abbott will pull up short in the next election contest.

The Left's critique of Abbott ... deliberately self-serving ... alleged flaws and failings ... political lines ... Duly parroted by many in the media ...

The only thing that can release Chris from all this squirming discomfort is a bit of Straw Man Knockdown. Once he gets that out of his system he seems much happier.

He carries unnecessary policy baggage, and the worst is one that was deliberately formulated to counter the personal attacks. Abbott forced on to his party the extra-generous paid parental leave scheme, announcing it without shadow cabinet or party room approval. Clearly, he wanted to make a grand gesture to women in order to combat the misogynist assault. To be fair, it probably worked to some degree at the time.

To be fair, it wasn't well thought out and has been overtaken by events. The first of these was the 2010 election that has been run and, er, won. The second was the government's own offering that makes this a marginal offering at best, possibly negated by the means for which the revenue is to be raised.

But now he has a scheme that undercuts his platform in two ways: it bolsters the culture of entitlement he aims to confront and it adds an effective tax burden on business when his main pitch is to lower and repeal taxes.

The $3 billion scheme is funded by a 1.5 per cent company tax levy on the nation's largest companies to fund an extra eight weeks' parental leave, paid at the parent's normal salary (up to $75,000 for six months).

Another of the events that has overtaken the PPL proposal of two years ago was Abbott's shrieky insistence in his reply to the budget that people on $83,000 p.a. weren't wealthy. Why the cap at $75k for 6 months, then nothing for the other six months of maternity leave, rather than $83k? It looks sloppy, like you've just pulled these figure out of the air. A party with access to the resources of government can hang a scare campaign on this and flip a strength into a weakness. Saying something like "it just is" simply won't do.

The above pretends that Hockey's speech against the culture of entitlement somehow took Abbott by surprise, rather than it being part of a managed strategy that informs his whole approach to government. I wouldn't mind policies not being costed to the nth degree if there was some sense of joined-up government going on, especially when you consider that the weight of cabinet experience on the Coalition side is about equal to that of the government.

One of the most important insights of the Henry tax review was the notion that those earning slightly above the median income have a greater proportion of their income deducted by government (both in tax and lost welfare transfers) than the wealthy who are merely paying the top level of tax after deductions. These are the people who are complaining about not being able to get ahead, and who are most fearful of the "carbon tax". These are also your swinging voters today; your cashed-up bogans and your mid-career professionals adapting to an outsourcing world, the people who voted Maxine McKew into Parliament and out again. They're not poor enough to have direct empathy with those who are doing it tough and not wealthy enough to splash out on that niche area of conspicuous consumption called noblesse oblige, which is why foreign aid and welfare measures don't get a lot of traction from either side these days.

In order for government to relieve cost-of-living pressures on the middle class, on small businesses and even non-small business outside the mining sector, a responsible party of government has two choices. It can slash spending or it can raise expenditure from elsewhere. During its last period in opposition it tried both, promising to slash Medicare and crack down on welfare without necessarily being explicit about cutting taxes for the wealthy. These days, the Coalition's commitment to abolishing the mining tax and pussyfooting around means-testing welfare transfers for those earning well above average incomes means that cost-savings can only come by cutting services, and possibly cutting certain subsidies (no details, so don't hold your breath).

Given his standing in the polls now, and the increasing doubts about economic prospects, Abbott has the political capital and rationale to simply drop this scheme.

Sure, like Rudd had the political capital to drop the ETS. If Abbott drops paid parental leave, the whole family-family-family rhetoric which is core to his political persona goes by the board. So Abbott has children, so what? He has that in common with Mark Latham, Simon Crean, Kim Beazley, Alexander Downer, John Hewson, Andrew Peacock and Bill Hayden. You can laugh and shake your head at NSW state politics, but Bob Carr saw off four Liberal leaders who, unlike him, were all married with kids.

If [Abbott] is particularly wedded to [his 2010 paid parental leave scheme], he could leave it on his list of aspirational policies, for later.

Where is the sorry clown who thinks this "aspirational" bullshit is going to work? You either promise to do it, or you don't; nobody is going to believe this "aspirational" crap. If Labor introduce a policy and the Libs airily put it on the never-never (e.g. the NDIS), Labor look like doers and the Libs like bullshitters. If that happens often enough, Labor are back in and Abbott becomes the biggest joke in Australian politics since John Hewson. Kenny does the Liberals no favours by pretending "aspirational policies" are to be confused with smart politics.

Likewise, given he opposes the mining tax, Abbott ought to reject all the cash handouts and family payment increases the government intends to fund from it. None of them were mentioned in the case for the tax -- which was supposed to fund a company tax rate cut. Abbott talks a good fiscal discipline game -- in his budget reply speech, he said "the only sustainable tax cuts are based on a permanent decrease in the size of government" -- but he hasn't matched the rhetoric with hard commitments.

No, he hasn't. He's had three years, including the searing experience of a so-close-but-yet-so-far election loss (yes, it was a loss. Close enough isn't good enough in binary high-stakes contests). If he won't get off his arse after all that, when will he do it?

The last hung parliament was the 16th Parliament of 1940-43. It was elected on 21 September 1940 in a time (to say the least) of global upheaval and uncertainty. John Curtin came out of that election as Opposition Leader, but 13 months later had won over key independents and become Prime Minister, cutting deals and learning on the job and holding it together until the following election, which he won in a landslide.

Abbott's 13 months were up last October. All the independents think he's not suited for the office he holds currently, let alone higher office - and they work closely with the guy. Since last October, Gillard has reshuffled her ministry a couple of times and buried a leadership challenge. She has cut herself off from a couple of sleazy scandals to a greater extent than Abbott has been able to; it's almost as though Abbott is at sea with all that economics and policy stuff, but he goes in hard at the first hint of sleaze.

Hell, given that Asian languages was the one big set-piece of his budget reply, where are the details? In any decent policy/media strategy, there would be more and more detail released on that until we were all convinced that Abbott was the only one who cared about Asian languages teaching, that the only way to get some of that Asian language goodness was to vote Coalition, and that anything offered by Labor was inadequate. None of that has happened.

Apart from parental leave and a penchant to keep Labor's family handouts, Abbott wants to keep Labor's increased compulsory superannuation payments and touts a dramatically expanded Green Corps scheme. When you couple this with his commitment to Renewable Energy Targets and the direct action plan that aims to match the government's 5 per cent carbon emission reduction target, it becomes difficult to envisage a small-government agenda. Whether he keeps these policies or scraps them, they are so marginal in the political debate that they are unlikely to have an impact on the looming Abbott landslide. But if he keeps them they could have a stultifying impact on his first term in government.

He should scrap them. He should kybosh the pretence of an environmental policy and the various payments and just say he'll run a no-frills government. He should stand or fall on a four-word environmental policy: "climate change is crap". Just imagine the electoral tsunami of libertarian preferences that would sweep away dozens of Labor MPs.

Seriously though, by concentrating on Abbott's first term agenda and brushing off the need to engage Labor in a contest, Kenny demonstrates the sort of hubris necessary for a Labor victory. Twenty years ago I remember heated discussions about Carolyn Hewson having to resign directorships when she went to The Lodge, and witterings about GST on chocolate cakes; a sign, then and now, of strategists losing sight of the main game. They practically invite the voters not just to stultify, but to head off, such a government.

Abbott was right in his budget reply to point out the absence of a plan for economic growth from Labor.

No he wasn't. He drew attention to his own inadequacies in that respect.

... the private sector will want more, including a mandate for greater workplace flexibility. Sadly, given the ogre of Workchoices, that might have to wait for an Abbott re-election campaign.

See what I mean about the hubris? Re-election my arse.

The "ogre of Workchoices" will have to be dealt with now. In 2010, Abbott had the momentum necessary for outright victory until the first week of the election campaign, but Workchoices killed it.

The parallel is the way Howard dealt with Medicare. The Coalition were committed to repealing Medicare during the 1980s and '90s, including under Howard's first term as leader. By 1995 being anti-Medicare was a non-starter, so Howard repeatedly and strongly affirmed Medicare would be preserved and reinforced under his government. By the time the Labor scare campaigns were rolled out nobody but rusted-on voters believed them.

The Coalition needs a workplace relations policy. It has three former ministers on its front bench, plus another one (Peter Reith) who is clearly underemployed. If they have no cogent and coherent policy by this time next year, you'll know that the Coalition are not serious about winning government.

If "the private sector" wants reform, then "the private sector" will have to vote for it. The Coalition were largely abandoned by "the private sector" in 2007, so Workchoices died. Business then set about kicking Labor hard and often over pretty much everything they did, and couldn't work out why they missed out on a tax cut. When it comes to politics, "the private sector" can be pretty stupid. Insiders like Chris Kenny make their money from that stupidity, but even so they have a role in educating and not indulging that stupidity.

All this makes life difficult for his economic team of Joe Hockey and Andrew Robb. Both have been strong contributors in different ways, but in their current roles they haven't worked well together. They have become emblematic of a broader problem -- that Abbott is not fielding his best team. Hockey and Robb would always be in Abbott's best dozen, but their stumbles have served to highlight the under-utilisation of Malcolm Turnbull's economic nous, and of the wise head of the new senator and former chief-of-staff to John Howard, Arthur Sinodinos.

In reality, Turnbull has excluded himself from the Treasury portfolio. He could be considered for it only if he acceded to the party's carbon policy and came to a public and private accommodation with Abbott over leadership. It is genuinely a pity for the nation, let alone the Liberal Party, that this cannot happen.

It would give a Coalition government the best of both worlds -- Abbott's retail politics with Turnbull's economic insight; Abbott's shop-floor ease with Turnbull's corporate schmooze; Abbott's conservative instincts with Turnbull's liberal credentials.

There would be tensions, but they would be the creative tensions of liberalism and conservatism that should be at the core of Coalition success.

Still, the logical move is for Abbott to slip Sinodinos into the finance portfolio, so the economic jobs are split between the chambers. A Hockey-Sinodinos team would be impressive and Robb could easily slot in to a range of other portfolios.

Again, Kenny is getting ahead of himself in talking about government when the campaign is not yet begun, but it's hard to disagree with the above - save the fact that it is the Coalition that will have to develop a climate response rather than the climate that has to accommodate the Coalition. Again, hubris lets the analysis down to the point where it could get in the way of a sound election strategy.

Elsewhere, generational intransigence is holding back a mediocre frontbench team. People like Kevin Andrews and Bronwyn Bishop are holding back opportunities for tyros like Kelly O'Dwyer and Josh Frydenberg.

Here we come to the central flaw of Kenny's argument.

Abbott is all about restoring the Howard Government - well, the perceived positives of that government anyway, except without John and Peter and more than a few others. Andrews, Bishop and any other frontbench duds you care to name are inextricably part of that approach. If you start getting rid of those people and replacing them with those who weren't Howard Government ministers, you have to start wrestling with issues that weren't settled in 1996-2007, and then you have differences of opinion, and LIBERAL SPLIT SHOCK and Gillard re-elected. Do you want that, Chris? Then stop denying the dream of the Howard Restoration.

Why do hate the Liberal Party, Chris? Why do you hate Australia?

O'Dwyer and Frydenberg come from the wrong state, which is why dills like Dutton and Cormann are on the front bench at their expense. Everyone knows that the next government must focus on the challenges of the future rather than the past, but if you let that light in on the magic of the Howard Restoration, it may not survive: so I ask again, Chris Kenny, why do you hate the Liberal Party and Australia (as if there were a difference)?

Abbott, wisely, has rewarded loyalty, and it is understandable he doesn't want to upset his team with a reshuffle before an election. But the cost of leaving promotions till government will be the lost opportunity to build experience.

It might stop him getting into government at all, Chris.

Kenny has repeatedly pointed out examples why Abbott can't get out of his own way. If you add them all up you have to start asking whether he really is the guy to lead you to victory. Kenny is kind and diplomatic in his remonstrations but there will come a point where he and his will have to wake the contestant he's backing to win a race that is far from won.

Who robbed Ken Ticehurst?

Ken Ticehurst feels robbed of a job and of a lifetime parliamentary pension, and apparently he blames Craig Thomson. If I was Ticehurst I'd be looking a little closer to home.

I hold no brief for Thomson. It was always bogus that he should just waltz in from Melbourne and take a seat in a complex and fast-evolving area with which he had no connection, but people voted for him. It was interesting that the committees in which he got involved did not relate at all to the sorts of issues that his former union purports to cover. There is no trace at all of the current Labor government doing anything for health services workers specifically, compared with manufacturing workers or other workers whose union-Labor connections can be demonstrated to have borne fruit. It isn't credible that an organisation should put him through hell and then give him a leg-up into a job where he could exert power over his tormentors. All that stuff about "I don't recall" or signing off expense approvals in his sleep does not indicate innocence but an absence of care and focus that makes him unfit for any purpose at all.

LIBERAL MP Ken Ticehurst, who lost the seat of Dobell in 2007 to Labor's Craig Thomson, plans to sue Mr Thomson for lost earnings, claiming he was robbed of his seat, costing him a lifetime parliamentary pension of $85,000 a year.

First of all, it's inaccurate to call Ticehurst a "Liberal MP" when he hasn't been one for some time. Peter Costello was an MP more recently than Ticehurst was, but nobody refers to him as though he were a sitting MP.

Secondly, Ticehurst's assumptions are worth considering here:

• In the 2007 election, many Liberal MPs lost their seats. Had Labor selected another candidate than Thomson it is entirely possible that candidate would have beaten Ticehurst. It's one thing for bloggers, journalists or others to play psephological what-if; but I don't want courts to second-guess how people might or might not have voted. The people are sovereign in Australian politics because they vote on the composition of parliament, which forms legislation that is interpreted by the courts. If the courts start second-guessing the franchise, the whole separation of powers has to be rethought.
• Being a Member of Parliament can be compared to a fixed-term employment contract between elections. It cannot be regarded as other jobs for the purposes of wrongful dismissal, or lack of consideration in not having his contract renewed. Is he entitled to sue anyone who didn't vote for him?
• Is Ken Ticehurst entitled to be a Member of Parliament just because he had been one in the past?
• If Ticehurst had been re-elected in 2007, he would have become eligible for a parliamentary pension in 2008. Should voters - or judges - be expected to vote Ken a pension, regardless of other considerations of people for their representatives?

More interesting though is this quote:

Mr Ticehurst said then treasurer Peter Costello's office had informed him of allegations about Mr Thomson, including his use of prostitutes, before the 2007 election. "If we knew, Labor must have known," Mr Ticehurst said.

If you knew, it was in your interest to do something about it at the time. There is nothing in what Fair Work Australia uncovered that any half-decent journalist could have produced; an injunction could have been procured to disqualify Thomson as a candidate or force a byelection.

He said David Gazard, then a political adviser to Mr Costello, showed him a file containing allegations against Mr Thomson.

There are two possibilities here:

• Ticehurst is wrong and Gazard would never have done something like that. If so, what does it benefit Ticehurst to bag Gazard like that?
• Ticehurst is right and Gazard held out to him the information that might have saved his political career. Why didn't the NSW Liberals run the campaign against Thomson? Why wasn't a journalist set up with this information on deep background? If those running the NSW Liberals had the ability to save a seat, and failed to so, does this reflect on the competence and prudence of those charged with winning the seats that will lift the Coalition into office?

I have no idea whether Ticehurst is or isn't accurate about Gazard. What is interesting is that Gazard has not been subject to the scrutiny that forced one of Julia Gillard's former press secretaries out of his job earlier this very year.

Mr Gazard said he did not recall specific allegations from that time.

Why on earth people think they're being clever or even adequate with a statement like that is unclear. Abbott and Pyne have rendered "no specific knowledge" a national punchline. Gazard is an experienced and highly-regarded Liberal staffer-consultant in Canberra, despite his disastrous foray into practical politics (he was Liberal candidate for Eden-Monaro in 2010, a seat regarded as an indicator of the national result; it swung hard to Labor as very few other seats did. The Liberals have preselected a candidate for 2013 who's very much like Gazard). For all that, Gazard is more highly regarded in politics than two-time winner Ken Ticehurst, and nobody in the media other than a state politics reporter have even questioned Gazard on this (never mind turning up the heat on the guy; what other dirt does Gazard have on Labor figures?).

Mr Ticehurst, who still lives in Dobell, said he would seek legal advice. "There could be a case and I think it's worth pursuing. If he gets charged with anything, which seems inevitable now, I will be taking action."

There have been a plethora of threatened lawsuits used to pressure people into silence - Chris Mitchell and Julie Posetti, Melinda Tankard Reist and Jennifer Wilson, George Pell and Catherine Deveny - without taking the financial and reputational risk of testing their claims against the law of the land. It is tempting to lump Ticehurst's proposal in with this same gutless bunch. In any case, a lawsuit is commenced with a writ, not a press release.

Ticehurst could have deep-sixed Thomson himself, but he chose not to. If he is right about then-staffers of the Liberal Party (including Gazard), then they have squibbed the chance to retain a seat that they could ill-afford to lose at any of the last two elections.

Until recently, Abbott's office was accused of managing media too tightly. They may think they're being clever in refracting their message off dead satellites like Ken Ticehurst, but all that's happening is that they're losing control over the narrative. An old chancer having one last pitch for his pension is just another complicating factor in what should be a simple bad-news story for Labor, playing the same role that James Ashby is to Slipper. Factor in Kroger-Costello on top of that and the unravelling is at hand; the Coalition never understood why it lost in 2007 or 2010 and thinks that anything that denied it can only be illegitimate. Any action Ken Ticehurst may take against Thomson will draw publicity and attention away from the Liberal candidate for Dobell. The Coalition isn't ready for government at the next election, and Dobell is just another example why they will botch it between now and election day.

Adding value

Tony Abbott made a lazy speech in reply to the budget last night. He thinks he's going to cruise into office. Against a dispirited and disorganised government, and given a lazy but powerful press gallery, he may be right; but the government is showing some fight and the press gallery are less than they were.

Lenore Taylor points out that Abbott is relying on a set of lazy assumptions, and she's right. What she doesn't point out is that it's fair for Abbott and Liberal strategists to make that assumption.

Taylor and her colleagues have demonstrated over the past few years - not over the past couple of "24 hour media cycles", we're talking years, including before Abbott became leader - the press gallery will not call Abbott on it. They won't question him, they won't impose conditions on his access to their media space or add value in their own right. Apparently it is better for the press gallery to perpetuate a low-value existence than to take a chance on adding value for media consumers but irritating politicians and their staffs within Parliament House.

The lowest value journalist is the one who merely reports on and broadcasts what a politician says. The ABC's Latika Bourke has become a national punchline for her tweets that begin with "Tony Abbott said ...", as though we'd have no idea that the man had spoken without her tweets, as though reporting consisted of merely passing on his words unmoored to any facts or data or alternate perspectives; as though Abbott were paying her salary, and that his interests were hers. This is the lowest value journalism because it rests on the assumptions of an age that has passed, that a politician must rely wholly upon journalists to get their message out, and that the message is best reported when a politician is taken at his or her word.

Only in political reporting is a participant taken at their word. When business leaders talk about the competitive environment in which their company operates, business reporters put the announcement into context of the company's performance against its competitors, the exchange rate, and other related issues. When a sportsperson says something like "the boys really put in the work, we done real good", this is reported in context of how the speaker's team actually fared, the hard cold reality of the score, and their prospects for the season given patterns of actual performance to date.

No politician is entitled to be taken at their word. No quote makes sense out of context. The value of journalism lies in contrasting a politician's words to observable reality because therein lies the value of the words, and of the politician. Merely broadcasting their words might make a politician feel important, but it's not enlightening or helpful really.

Taylor's journalism is the next worst to the mere broadcasting of quotes. Taylor would have you believe that lack of scrutiny of Tony Abbott's words is like bad weather, something to be noted but something mere mortals can't do much about. Why she wants to advertise her own indolence to an employer with a yen for cutting costs is a mystery.

It falls to someone like Stephen Koukoulas to do the work that journalists can't and won't do. This is what added value looks like. Yes, it's pitilessly unsympathetic to Abbott and it leaves him looking merely negated, rather than wondering what Abbott really is about with such a major speech full of holes. This is the foundation of a story (or several) rather than a media story in itself, but in terms of valuable journalism it knocks anything Bourke does and most things Taylor does into a cocked hat.

I am sympathetic to Koukoulas' analysis of the numbers but even if you disagree with him, the following is designed to be numerically agnostic. What follows is a detailed look and what Abbott said and how he said it; it's the kind of thing that journalists should do but can't be bothered doing, because see you down at Kingston and mine's a Mai Tai!

The job, Madam Deputy Speaker, of every member of this parliament is to help shape a better Australia.

It’s to listen carefully to the Australian people, respect the hard-won dollars they pay in tax, do our honest best to make people’s lives easier not harder, and honour the commitments we make to those who vote for us.

If that’s how we discharge our duties as members of parliament, politics is an honourable calling, the public can respect their MPs and MPs can respect each other even when we disagree.

The first thing that occurred to me on hearing this soaring opening was: who are you and what have you done with Tony Abbott? Where is the hot blast of negativity? It didn't take long for the dog to return to his vomit:

The fundamental problem with this budget is that it deliberately, coldly, calculatedly plays the class war card.

It cancels previous commitments to company tax cuts and replaces them with means-tested payments because a drowning government has decided to portray the political contest in this country as billionaires versus battlers.

It’s an ignoble piece of work from an unworthy Prime Minister that will offend the intelligence of the Australian people.

Why have respectful disagreement when you can have: deliberately, coldly, calculatedly, drowning, ignoble, offend the intelligence of the Australian people.

Abbott could have lifted the tone if he'd wanted to - but don't blame him, it's our unhealthy democracy:

In a healthy democracy, people need not agree with everything a government does but they should be able to understand its purpose and to appreciate why it could be for the long term good of the nation as whole.

A democracy which puts Mr Abbott out of government is inherently unhealthy, it would seem. This is a contemptible attitude and he ought not be rewarded for holding and asserting it.

Government should be at least as interested in the creation of wealth as in its redistribution.

Government should protect the vulnerable not to create more clients of the state but to foster more self-reliant citizens.

The small business people who put their houses on the line to create jobs deserve support from government, not broken promises.

People who work hard and put money aside so they won’t be a burden on others should be encouraged, not hit with higher taxes.

This is the sort of stuff the Liberals said during the 1980s, which inspired me as a Young Liberal. I had no idea that they lacked the policies to realise those statements. John Howard used to say that sort of thing often, then he became Prime Minister and insisted on creating as many clients of the state as the Australian transfer payment system would bear. This is an example why Abbott isn't entitled to be taken at his word.

And people earning $83,000 a year and families on $150,000 a year are not rich, especially if they’re paying mortgages in our big cities.

Nobody but the Murdoch press said they - we - were. In a time when we all have to be careful about spending, it is understandable that the gravy train will pull into the station and some of us will have to get off, and that's what happened in this budget. The idea that we should shriek about our entitlements is nonsense, as Joe Hockey pointed out. I spent many years in the Liberal Party being confused about the rhetoric against entitlement and the reality in favour of it; now I just wish they would just decide which way they're going to go and stick with that.

Madam Deputy Speaker, from an economic perspective ...

Abbott has no right to claim such a perspective. Never mind what follows, this is simply not a perspective that he has.

Without a growing economy, everything a government does is basically robbing Peter to pay Paul.

But we aren't "without a growing economy". The economy is growing at about 3%. It should be possible for the standing orders or convention to interrupt Abbott with a point of order to point this out. Abbott is warning about a problem that doesn't confront us.

With a growing economy, it’s possible to have lower taxes, better services and a stronger budget bottom line as Australians discovered during the Howard era that now seems like a lost golden age of prosperity. It seems like we were being set up for the great fall that was the GFC. Some places fell harder than others, and I have more sympathy for this government than many do because of that. There is an implicit idea that Abbott can bring back the good times is a lie. It isn't charming, as his fans think. It isn't a fact to be reported, as Bourke or anyone at Sky News thinks. Nor is it the sort of thing you just have to put up with, as Lenore Taylor would have it.

As this budget shows, to every issue, this government’s kneejerk response is more tax, more regulation and more vitriol.

Sounds just like Howard. Seriously though, fancy Abbott complaining about vitriol: anyone who dishes it out like he does should be better at taking it.

The Treasurer referred just once on Tuesday night to what he coyly called the carbon price ...

What was coy about it? It's not a tax. Remember how Joe Hockey goes on about how it's designed to decline in revenue terms over time? Taxes don't do that. It's designed to impose a price to encourage low-carbon outputs: much like the Howard government's policy in the 2007 election, way back in the golden age.

Look at Peter Costello's 2000 Budget speech: he didn't labour the point about the GST because he didn't need to. The then opposition's screeching about A Great Big New Tax and promising to roll it back did them no favours.

If the carbon tax won’t hurt anyone why is the government topping up compensation in this budget?

If the carbon tax won’t hurt anyone, why did the Prime Minister promise six days before the last election that there would be no carbon tax under the government she led?

If the carbon tax won’t hurt anyone why are Labor members of parliament now frightened to go doorknocking even in their heartland?

Let’s be clear about this: no genuine Labor government would be hitting the families and businesses of Australia with the world’s biggest carbon tax at the worst possible time.

Let's be clear about this: why would the Liberals seek to compete with a Labor government about who's more genuinely a Labor government?

When I was in the Liberal Party, moderates like me were blasted hard and often by people like Tony Abbott, who asserted that moderate policies and beliefs were not really Liberal and that people who held them should go and join the Labor Party. Now all the moderates have gone and Abbott is fighting Labor over who's more Labor. It's funny how things turn out.

It doesn’t matter how many times the Treasurer refers to a Labor government with Labor values, the real Labor people with whom I mix beyond the parliamentary triangle despair of the politicians who have sold their party’s soul to the Greens.

The "people with whom [Abbott mixes] beyond the parliamentary triangle" include Clive Palmer, Ray Hadley and Cardinal Pell, all of whom have disparaged the Greens and Labor's association with them. Even so, it's hard to determine how such people might be considered "real Labor people". Abbott would have a hard time mixing with people who don't substantially agree with him, or at the very least won't challenge him, which would make any of his muckers who might fairly be described as rusted-on Labor few and rare. It's unlikely such people would do much mixing with our Tony anyway because, y'know, he's a busy man.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I applaud the Treasurer’s eagerness to deliver a surplus – but if a forecast $1.5 billion surplus is enough to encourage the Reserve Bank to reduce interest rates, what has been the impact on interest rates of his $174 billion in delivered deficits over the past four years?

Hmm, not sure. What about all those countries that have deficits bigger than the Australian government's budget, and whose reserve banks have interest rates at or near zero? I'll leave this to economists, but basically Abbott's assumption that government deficits = high interest rates isn't strong, and if someone's economic assumptions are dodgy I won't vote for them.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I know what it’s like to deliver sustained surpluses because I was part of a government that did

You helped lead us into the GFC? Is that your idea of economic credentials? You're going to manage the budget so that walk smack into another disaster, unprepared? Thanks for the warning.

I challenge the government to stop hiding this massive lift in Australia’s credit card limit in the Appropriation Bills and to present it, honestly, openly to the parliament as a separate measure where it will have to be debated and justified on its merits.

If they did that, it would sail through just like every other piece of legislation this government has put up.

Madam Deputy Speaker, just two months ago, the Prime Minister said that “if you are against cutting company tax, you are against economic growth. If you are against economic growth, then you are against jobs”.

In dumping her commitment to company tax cuts...

Business could've had a bigger tax cut had the mining tax been bigger, but they didn't support the mining tax at all. They elected Graham Bradley as their spokesperson, the man who ran Bluescope while ignoring rising Chinese self-sufficiency in the product which he was increasingly less successful in selling them. Business has kicked the government unrelentingly, and not so much as asked the Liberals to vote them a tax cut. It's to the government's credit that they gave them nothing: self-respect at last.

... the Prime Minister has reinforced her trust problem: why should this year’s budget commitments be any more reliable than previous ones, especially when so much is such obvious spin.

Every Opposition says this. Even the ones that are no mean spinners themselves.

He hailed the delivery of the National Disability Insurance Scheme but neglected to mention that it was short-changed $2.9 billion from the Productivity Commission’s version.

Abbott should have mentioned that he regards the NDIS as an optional extra, to be introduced at some undetermined point into the future as and when he felt like it. That would have been the decent thing to do.

The Treasurer insisted that military spending could be cut, breaking more commitments in the process, without harming our defence capability even though defence spending, as a percentage of GDP, will soon be at the lowest level since 1938.

I am so sick of the idea that more money = better defence. If Abbott is seriously making the case that our country today faces the same threat that it faced in 1938, he has a duty to let us know and make a case against it, like Churchill did at that time, not just fling it across the dispatch box like some verbal booger.

Madam Deputy Speaker, the Australian people deserve better than this and they’re looking to the Coalition for reassurance that there is a better way.

Notice how Abbott buttresses his more dodgy assertions with unrelated but sturdier claims. That "the Australian people deserve better" is unarguable; that "they’re looking to the Coalition for reassurance that there is a better way", less so.

The Coalition has a plan for economic growth; it starts with abolishing the carbon tax and abolishing the mining tax.

So big mining companies can rake it in and hopefully it will trickle down to the rest of us. That's how it starts, so the rest of it would want to be a doozy.

Abolishing the mining tax will make Australia a better place to invest and let the world know that we don’t punish success.

Where is the investor holding off investing in this country because of the mining tax? It's one thing to stand up for one interest group over another, but standing up for an interest which doesn't exist is not necessarily a winning strategy. Standing up for mining companies isn't standing up for families.

Abolishing the carbon tax would be the swiftest contribution government could make to relieving cost of living pressure; it would take the pressure off power prices, gas prices and rates; it would prevent more pressure on transport prices.

If we keep emitting carbon at the rate we are, cost of living pressures will increase. The campaign against carbon emissions is not just another environmental campaign, like those for whales or koalas; it is economic policy at its most hard-headed. Going ahead with the carbon price avoids compensation to the big emitters; Abbott may bristle at the whole idea that he's taking money off battlers to give to billionaires, but that's what would happen if the carbon price were to be repealed.

It would help to ensure that we keep strong manufacturing, vibrant agriculture, growing knowledge-based industries and a resilient services sector – as well as a mining industry – in a vigorous five pillar economy.

Pillars aren't vigorous, they have to be still and inflexible and separate in order to hold up, uh, whatever it is they're holding up. I know the difference between agriculture and manufacturing but I'm less clear about the difference between "knowledge-based industries" and "services". You need a bit of knowledge to be successful in agriculture or mining. Again, I'd want Abbott to explain what he means, given that his understanding of the economy depends on it. It would be nice if one of those professional journalists he mixes with inside the parliamentary circle would step up and put this to him, rather than leaving it to scruffy unprofessional bloggers.

Under the Coalition, there will be tax cuts without a carbon tax because we’ll find the savings to pay for them ... The Coalition identified $50 billion in savings before the last election and will do at least as much again before the next one.

Government is smaller today than it has ever been under the Coalition. The Coalition didn't identify anything like that amount of saving before the last election, one reason why it is not in government; Abbott is wrong to assert that they did, not only to avoid rewriting history but because it won't help him change to get a different result next time. Before and since the last election they did, however, burn a vibrant knowledge-based industry provider in the process.

Why should the government commit nearly $6 billion to power stations that the carbon tax would otherwise send bankrupt rather than just drop the carbon tax?

Because dropping the carbon price won't help. The electricity sector in NSW was in trouble before the carbon price and only a carbon price will lift the thinking about our power needs above the half-witted political fixes that we saw from Egan et al.

Why spend billions to put people out of work rather than into it?

Good question. Then again, carbon-intensive industries were putting people off long before carbon price.

Why does the Defence Materiel Organisation need 7000 bureaucrats especially when major equipment purchases are being put off?

Ah, but that would mean "DEFENCE CUTS", you see. I see what you're doing there. Why not retrain them as submariners, or teachers of Asian languages?

Why does Australia need to spend millions to join the African Development Bank?

Much more cost-effective to wait until their economies collapse and welcome them in as refugees. Oh, wait ...

Why spend $50 billion on a National Broadband Network so customers can subsequently spend almost three times their current monthly fee for speeds they might not need?

This is an address in reply to the budget. The NBN isn't in the budget. Future generations will laugh at the very idea of "speeds they might not need". Indeed, contemporary Liberal MPs whinge loudly that the NBN isn't coming to their areas now.

Why put so much into the NBN when the same investment could more than duplicate the Pacific Highway, Sydney’s M5 and the road between Hobart and Launceston; build Sydney’s M4 East, the Melbourne Metro, and Brisbane’s Cross City Rail; plus upgrade Perth Airport and still leave about $10 billion for faster broadband?

Great ideas all; how are you going to pay for all that? Why not jack up the mining tax?

And why spend another $1.7 billion on border protection cost blow outs because the government is too proud to admit that John Howard’s policies worked?

Worked at what? Was there really a correlation between punitive detention and reduced refugee numbers, or were other factors at work? If reintroducing those policies would make the country less proud, let's not.

Madam Deputy Speaker, the Treasurer boasts that our economy will be 16 per cent bigger by mid 2014 than it was in mid 2008 before the Global Financial Crisis.

What he doesn’t mention is that over the previous six years growth was 22 per cent ...

Yeah, anyone can achieve growth in an overheated economy.

We’ll cut business red tape costs by at least a billion dollars a year by requiring each government agency to quantify the costs of its reporting and compliance rules and delivering an annual savings target.

Public service bonuses won’t be paid unless these targets are met.

A recipe for Canberra fudge, right there.

There’ll be a once-in-a-generation commission of audit to review all the arms and agencies of government to ensure that taxpayers are getting good value for money.

Like Kevin Rudd, he'd hit the ground reviewing. That, and the pantomime surprise of it all being "worse than we thought".

We will respond carefully but decisively to the problems that the community has identified in the Fair Work Act so that small businesses and their staff can get a fair go and our productivity can increase.

What community? Is this a definite policy, or a placemarker that doesn't bear scrutiny?

... unlike the government, we didn’t need the Fair Work report into the Member for Dobell to realise that some unions are corrupt boys clubs.

Proof? I've blogged on sloppy governance in the union movement but I make no allegations as Abbot does. Why unions have let this pass is a mystery.

We’ll work with the states to put local people in charge of public schools and public hospitals because they should be as responsive to their patients and to their parents as businesses are to their customers.

What Abbott wants to do here is appoint busybodies who think all health policy involves abortion/euthanasia and all education policy is about sex and/or religion. This would be an accountability nightmare with no improvement in outcomes.

Where unskilled work is readily available, unemployment benefits should be suspended for fit people under 30 – as recommended by Warren Mundine, a former Labor Party National President.

As long as there's an hour a week somewhere, no unemployment benefits for anyone. Remind me why Warren Mundine is any sort of expert in anything?

And yes, there will be a fair-dinkum paid parental leave scheme, giving mothers six months at full pay with their babies, to bring Australia into the 21st century, finally, and to join the 35 other countries whose parental leave schemes are based on people’s pay.

Parental leave is a workplace entitlement not a welfare benefit so should be paid at people’s real wage, like sick leave and holiday pay.

Ah yes, the Great Big New Tax.

Plus there’ll be a Productivity Commission inquiry to consider how childcare can be made more flexible and more effective, including through in-home care, so that more women can participate in a growing economy if that’s their choice.

This is why public servants hate politicians.

There has been enquiry after enquiry into publicly subsidised nannies, and every one of them has said it's a crap idea. The PC will almost certainly return the same finding. Then there'll be another enquiry, and another one, until Abbott says: we had the inquiry, promise fulfilled, and everyone who voted themselves a nanny will feel cheated. Ever since the Women's Land Army there have been career opportunities for women in this country other than nannying. In an era of 5% unemployment it isn't clear where these nannies will come from, unless ... nah, as if Immigration Minister Ray Hadley will let us have Hazara nannies, I mean come on.

I will continue to work with Noel Pearson to help shift the welfare culture that’s sapped Aboriginal self-respect and with Twiggy Forrest to get more Aboriginal people into the workforce.

More than what? Forrest's employment program has been embarrassing window-dressing at best.

I will keep spending a week every year volunteering in Aboriginal communities and I hope that a tribe of public servants will soon have to come with me to gain more actual experience of the places we are all trying to improve.

Do you want people to develop self-respecting communities or do you want a Potemkin village with a "tribe" of public servants on allowances? You haven't thought this through, have you.

The Coalition will reward conservation-minded businesses with incentives to be more efficient users of energy and lower carbon emitters.

Our policy means better soils, more trees and smarter technology ... There will be a standing Green Army, an expanded version of the Green Corps that I put in place in government, to tackle our landcare problems so that beaches and waterways can be cleaner and land more productive.

That policy, not the market-based mechanism of the ALP, is "socialism masquerading as environmentalism". It's more expensive and less effective.

The next Coalition government will fund infrastructure in accordance with a rational national plan based on published cost-benefit analyses.

We’ll also find the most responsible ways to get more private investment into priority projects so that the new roads, public transport systems and water storages that we need aren’t so dependent on the taxpayer.

All infrastructure is dependant on taxpayers. They're going to do the cost-benefit analyses, aren't they? Well, aren't they - or are merchant banks proposing the projects also going to do the CBAs, like those expensive and ill-used road tunnels in Sydney?

Madam Deputy Speaker, too often, government’s focus is on the urgent rather than the important; on what drives tomorrow’s headline rather than on what changes our country for the better.

Abbott shows he'll keep this going. An Abbott victory is a victory for the idea that the media stunt is the only way to run this country.

We are supposed to be adapting to the Asian century, yet Australians’ study of foreign languages, especially Asian languages, is in precipitous decline.

The proportion of Year 12 students studying a foreign language has dropped from about 40 per cent in the 1960s to about 12 per cent now.

There are now only about 300 Year 12 Mandarin students who aren’t of Chinese-heritage.

Since 2001, there has been a 21 per cent decline in the numbers studying Japanese and a 40 per cent decline in the numbers studying Indonesian.

This is because the Howard government axed the Asian languages program. There were six more years of Howard government following that, including with the now Shadow Foreign Minister as Education Minister. There is no demonstrable Coalition commitment to Asian language teaching.

If Australians are to make their way in the world, we cannot rely on other people speaking our language.

Starting in pre-school every student should have an exposure to foreign languages.

This will be a generational shift because foreign language speakers will have to be mobilised and because teachers take time to be trained.

Still, the next Coalition government will make a strong start.

The only way to get that generational shift happening is to import graduates from Asian universities who are native speakers and willing to train as Australian teachers. If you're going to do this there would have to be thousands involved ... see, the Coalition aren't as visionary as they need to be, In their current configuration the Little Australia mob will hold them back.

My commitment tonight is to work urgently with the states to ensure that at least 40 per cent of Year 12 students are once more taking a language other than English within a decade.

This is Abbott's clearest promise, and his least credible. He doesn't have the money and nowhere in his past is there any sort of commitment to Asian languages - not a semester of Japanese, no post-graduation trek through Thailand, no Hong Kong girlfriend. Nothing.

Rudd's scheme had credibility because of his own studies in Mandarin and his lived experience. It is flatly untrue that Abbott could or would introduce such a scheme. To see his contempt for Education generally, look at his shadow minister, look for any evidence of policy.

Madam Deputy Speaker, there is little wrong with ... our cities.

The same bogus wishlist, reasserted but not costed or put into any context about what our country wants or needs.

Every day, with every fibre of my being, I would be striving to help Australians be their best selves.

Not with that list; you can't even be your best self.

Madam Deputy Speaker, as someone whose grandparents were proud to be working class, I can feel the embarrassment of decent Labor people at the failures of this government.

Maybe this is another legacy of taking too much notice of pinheads from the US Republicans: embarrassing attempts at reverse snobbery and insinuation into a working class that no longer exists and doesn't include that speaker. Those "Howard Battlers" who elected Liberal MPs from seats they'd never won before know now that Abbott is jerking them along, that he isn't one of them/us and can't deliver Howardism redux.

I regret to say that the deeper message of this week’s budget is that the Labor Party now only stands for staying in office.

Only if you ignore all the policy and economics and stuff, and if you can rely on a lazy and stupid media to present your view as much more valid than all that.

Everyone knows that the Prime Minister is a clever politician but who really trusts her to keep any commitments?

Change the pronoun and you could have said that about Howard. Abbott does this when he gets frustrated that the government won't just lay down and die like he wants it to, that he has to fight a tough and shrewd opponent - and who instead can only gut an already-dead fish with an already-sharpened knife until the cameras switch off and he hands that work back to working-class people who do that sort of work every day.

Then this parliament can once more be a proper contest of ideas between those who see bigger government and those who see empowered citizens as the best guarantee of our nation’s future.

In such a debate it isn't clear which side Abbott would be on. Maybe a journalist might ask him, one who'd know big government when they saw it and who understands why it's an issue.

As budget week has demonstrated, minority governments are too busy managing the parliament to manage the economy properly.

Seems they're doing both. Labor has demonstrated the ability to turn minority government into majority government; Liberals can't make the transition, which is why Abbott is having problems with his so-close-but-yet-so-far predicament.

With each broken promise, with each peremptory change, with each tawdry revelation, with each embarrassing explanation, the credibility of this government and the standing of this parliament is diminished.

Abbott can't promise or deliver decent government. James Ashby is proof of that.

At least half that speech is the same old shit Abbott says at any occasion where he is called upon to speak: journalists have heard it so often they don't question it, but if Australia deserves better as Abbott says, then the scrutiny has to be applied - to his face, and by cross-checking what he says against what actually happens.

It doesn't need Peter Costello shouting speechlessly at Abbott's flukes of thought to see that the guy is cruising to irrelevance. This week showed the government can stand its ground when it has no choice. The politics was settled with the Rudd burial, now the policy is in place with the NDIS, carbon price and a surplus budget. If the experience of senior press gallery members was worth anything, they'd spot this shift and tell us more than what I could see.

Abbott will not collapse in a hurry but already his momentum is not what it was. His attacks have an increasingly cracking-hardy air and the faces behind him on the Coalition benches last night were grim. They were not the forward-leaning, grinning and urging faces you see from an opposition that can smell government approaching. I doubt the faces of government MPs opposite them had the beaten look that they needed to reinforce them and their leader. They seemed to be doing what Liberals do best: keeping up appearances, and waiting for a real leader to come along and sort them out.

Costello's Radetzky March

Peter Costello furiously denies wanting to re-enter Parliament, and rightly so. The whole thing has made him look like an amateur. If he was going to do it, he'd be in a press conference with the MP who was going to cede their safe seat to him, smirking. For the media it would be a complete bolt from the blue, as all big game-changer stories are; someone like the witless Katharine "I'd love to write about policy but ooh, shiny shiny leadershit" Murphy would never have got wind of it.

Costello might dream of Kooyong for its Menzies legacy, and certainly the wish to rid Australian politics of Josh Frydenberg is admirable if premature. If you're going to get into the House of Representatives you need to focus on one seat; I knew the push for Costello was non-existent when Heather Ewart, on last night's 7.30 Report, started rattling off the names of Melbourne seats where he might run, including knocking off his former staffers Kelly O'Dwyer and Tony Smith.

Costello relied utterly on Michael Kroger to do the bastard work of knocking off incumbent MPs and getting preselection. He outflanked Kroger by building up his staffers to take positions in Parliament: first Tony Smith replaced the retiring Michael Wooldridge in Casey, then Mitch Fifield went to the Senate, and before long the Victorian Liberals began to resemble Costello's personal fiefdom. For Costello to do over his own proteges would undo the work of a generation.

If Costello really wanted to mess with Abbott, he would have chosen two seats either side of Kooyong, and his old stamping ground of Higgins:

• Goldstein is held by Andrew Robb. Robb wants to be Finance Minister, and his ideas on economic policy regularly differ from those of Abbott and Hockey. Robb was a successful Federal Director of the Liberal Party, in contrast to the incumbent, who is married to Abbott's chief of staff, who drops Robb off invitation lists for meetings on economic policy ... a challenge from Costello would clarify things for Robb. Either he'd pack it in, or he'd fight for it (and to do that he'd need to cosy up to Abbott's office).
• Menzies is held by Kevin Andrews. In prestige terms holding the seat named after Menzies would be the next best alternative to the one he actually represented. Andrews was a plodder at best and a menace at worst (and his worst, with Haneef and the 457 visas, was very bad indeed). Andrews is the Liberal Party's ambassador to the court of Labor conservative Joe de Bruyn; not since Billy Hughes has a trade unionist been so intimately involved in conservative politics in this country, and de Bruyn has done it all without having to give up his powerbase in the ALP or do demeaning publicity work. Andrews helps keep Abbott consistent, as far as the right are concerned; knock off Andrews and you kick a support strut out from a leader who will have to be replaced anyway. There is almost no way Andrews would go quietly.

There is a third option. It would involve a bit of rustication for Costello, and place him closer to Canberra. Apparently, the incumbent has a weakness for superannuated ex-barristers ...

Costello would be unlikely to lower himself to the unusual position taken before Queensland's recent election by his current employer, Premier Campbell Newman, and run for a Labor-held marginal while campaigning as leader from outside Parliament. Newman got along well with LNP powerbrokers and was prepared to do their bidding; Costello is unlikely to take riding orders from Loughnane, Minchin, Cormann et al, or chance his arm in somewhere like Corangamite (toward which he'd share the patronising tone of this article) or LaTrobe. Even if the Prime Ministership was in the offing, he'd want a less precarious ride to the Lodge.

There was a time when a safe seat in Victoria was the best option from which to lead the Liberal Party, and from there the government. From 1949 (when Menzies led the Liberals into office) to 1983 (when Fraser lost) Victoria contributed more than any other state to the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party. The Victorians took candidate selection much more seriously, and with a view to providing cabinet-level quality in safer seats, than other states.

McMahon was treated as an aberration in his time, but in hindsight he was a harbinger. By the time Howard came to office NSW provided a majority of his MPs, but still his cabinets featured a Victorian plurality: Costello, Reith, Alston. Howard competed with and was compared to a state government that rivalled his for energy, initiative, and scope of reform. Howard managed the decline of the Vics and South Australians over time and gathered around him those from other jurisdictions whom he could trust: that's why Petro Georgiou never served our country as a minister, but Santo Santoro did.

During this mid-to-late Howard period Michael Kroger and/or Jeff Kennett might have stepped up to restore their state at the heart of national affairs, but they chose otherwise. Hopefully the fate of their respective AFL clubs have made up for what they missed out on politically.

After the turn of the century Melbourne became dormant as a centre for new money, ideas or personnel for the Liberal Party. Just when Costello needed his power base to rally and push him toward the Prime Ministership, it let him down.

In 2010 the Victorians fell to third place in the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party, behind NSW (which held its own) and Queensland. SA and Tasmania provided MPs who readily accepted the assumptions of the Melburnians, having been educated and done business in that city; Minchin and Abetz have ensured there are as few such representatives as possible. The Liberal vote in Victoria, in itself and relative to the rest of the nation, is in longterm decline.

State government gave Labor the confidence to match it with the Liberals in Victoria, only to find the Liberals withering and retreating within themselves, which has emboldened Labor. It has increased its vote in Victoria at every election since 2004 and has not yet fallen apart over its loss of state government. If Labor continue their advance in Victoria Costello's would-be power base will be weaker than it is already.

One luncheon in a crass and glitzy hotel in Perth or Brisbane would provide more support for the Liberals' federal campaign than a year's worth of subtle fundraising from within the Melbourne Club. You'd learn more about today's Liberal Party tooling around with Clive Palmer in his G6 than you ever could have hoped from claret and boiled mutton with Sir Magnus Cormack. This should illustrate how delusional the Victorian Liberal born-to-rule assumption truly is, but it doesn't.

Even so, it's hard to blame the current crop of Victorian Liberal MPs for thinking that way. With the exception of Helen Kroger, all have worked as senior staffers for senior ministers and been part of policy development at a high level from a young age. The sorts of careers that Costello and Liberals from previous eras built their parliamentary careers upon - business, grazing, law - would represent a step backwards career-wise from where those people had been before 2007. They find themselves in character-building mode, biding their time and cutting their teeth behind lags from the Howard government desperate for another go-around (e.g. both Bishops, Andrews), Howard Restorationists who were never really part of the Howard government and know precious little about how government actually works (most MPs/Senators from Queensland and WA), and yobs from Sydney who wouldn't care if the entire city of Melbourne slid into the Bay (Hockey, Turnbull, Abbott).

Costello, and his former colleague Peter Reith, were not only born too late in the wrong state. They represent a failure in the new-model politician. Traditionally politics was an occupation taken up by Liberals in middle age, after reputation and financial stability had been achieved, and children raised and educated; political careers ended in old age, with varying degrees of achievement, and were followed by a short retirement before death and a minute's silence on the floor of the house.

Malcolm Fraser was the first modern politician to suffer the end of his political career in his early 50s, where good works and corporate boards provided less than a full-time occupation and engagement. Costello and Reith are in the same position now. They raise their profile because they've been conditioned to do it for so long that anything else is dull or anathema. Neither man's life is so narrowed by the advancing years that pruning roses, quaffing with the chaps at the Melbourne Club or dandling grandchildren on creaking knees is enough to make their lives full and complete.

The idea that you can start your career in public affairs in parliament, first as a staffer then a member, representing numerous people with vaguely defined interests before moving on to lucrative careers where you represent the more clearly defined interests of fewer people, is clearly a mirage. Nick Greiner is the only politician who has done it, with Bob Carr a close second, but both men have been drawn back into the public carnival to get what they deeply need. Hundreds of intelligent, ambitious and well-educated people are devoting their lives toward that mirage, shaping the way we are governed for better or worse along the way.

Peter Costello has more economic policy credibility than Gillard, Swan, Abbott Hockey and even Turnbull put together. Many economists regard this with chagrin, if not slack-jawed horror, but it's true. What he lacks and needs is a reputation for guts, which we will all need to make best use of such fortune as has befallen us now. If he is going to announce his run for Prime Minister, Costello has to announce it from atop the prone but warm body of a leading politician (from either side). Until he does that he'll be a bits-and-pieces person for the rest of his life, like most of us.

Abbott delenda est

There was a Roman Senator named Cato the Elder (no relation) who ended every speech he made, on any subject, with the phrase: "Carthago delenda est" (Carthage must be destroyed). Carthage was the main superpower rival to Rome at the time, and once the Romans finally got around to destroying it Rome became the dominant power in its region for hundreds of years.

For anyone who wants the Australian political system to be different to the way it is, this is the attitude that you have to take: Abbott must be destroyed. Abbott is the problem with our political system: not Gillard, not the independents or the Greens, and not even the dead-men-walking Slipper and Thomson.

Certainly, Liberal numbers men know this. Political parties appoint whips to ensure that MPs/Senators vote in line with their leader's wishes. The Deputy Liberal Whip in the House of Reps and the Liberal Senate Whip have each been rolled, a direct attack on the authority of the leader and a sign that real power in the Liberal Party is exercised by rightwing factional bosses, not the leader. That's why Abbott is not the solution to the Liberals' problem, but part of the problem itself.

Today of all days, Liberal powerbrokers with any sense for their party would hold off with the minor task of replacing Helen Kroger as Liberal Senate Whip. To delay would keep media focus on the government, its budget and attendant scandals, and Kroger could have stood down after the Budget. The fact that she has to be replaced now can only mean that the powerbrokers want Abbott to be seen to be dancing to their tune rather than the reverse.

Senators Cormann and Bernardi and non-members of Federal Parliament like Nick Minchin and David Clarke have usurped the role of the whips in the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party. Time was that Chris Pyne played a similar role for moderates, but there are two problems with this: a) moderate liberalism is essentially meaningless in the modern Liberal Party and b) Pyne is a bit too busy with Jamie right now to play intra-party games.

Every difference of opinion between Abbott and the factional bosses has been resolved in favour of the latter - every one. This was true of John Howard in the 1980s, but by the time he came back in 1995 he demanded, and got, the factional players to bend to his will. Once he did that Howard had the combination of goodwill and awe from the Liberal Party that a leader needs to achieve big things (like beating Paul Keating). Abbott is no Howard ad is not entitled to be taken at his word, but it suits Liberal factional leaders to use him as a merkin. Once the media realise that they will cover him differently.

When Abbott complains that Labor has "cooked the books" with the budget, it is part of a campaign to make the nation feel the way that Liberals feel - that they ran a good government that was swindled out of office by trickery. Part of this is imported tactics from the US Republicans and it will be fascinating to see what the Liberals learn from Mitt Romney's (ultimately unsuccessful) campaign this year.

Liberals are pleased that the polls are good but Abbott gets no credit for that. If they slip even slightly, Liberals will turn on him and he isn't big enough to demand that everyone pull in the same direction.

One of the reasons why Hawke and Keating did so well was that they messed with the heads of their opponents. Hawke had the measure of Peacock and '80s Howard. When Hewson outflanked him in economic policy, and without Keating by his side, he was finished. Keating got on top of Hewson, he toyed with Downer and he made Howard work and sweat for everything he got. Labor had the ability to mess with the Liberals' heads, and once they lost that ability they lost everything.

Howard had the measure of Beazley, Crean and (eventually) Latham. Rudd had his measure, never the reverse. Rudd had Nelson's measure too, but so did plenty of others: it was part of his charm.

Gillard can fend off Abbott, as her legislative and policy record demonstrates. Lawyers are taught that they have to work with whomever the other side puts up, and must maintain a veneer of professional cordiality with those against whom they engage in professional conflict. She doesn't realise that she doesn't have to just accept whomever the other side put up; she has to destroy whoever would lead the other side against her to take her job. She has to take it personally: there was a brief flash of that when she was annoyed at Abbott for accusing her of siding against Ashby's rights at work, but she can't only react.

Labor people can fret about their party's polling results, and whether or not this or that policy might be trimmed or reframed, but this will not bring about the change that all the "W(h)ither Labor?" witterers are seeking. What will bring about that change for Labor is for Abbott's gibbering critique to be invalidated, and that can only happen if he is denied the platform that he currently has.

A good budget tonight will be part of that, with grown-up economic and other policies outflanking the adolescent gibbering to which the Coalition is reduced when confronted with real policy debate that can't simply be flicked away. The slowly-building wider narrative that Abbott is going to cut social services and shovel money at billionaires in "compensation" is a good start, but what may eventually become the crush of a constrictor looks now like a swish of a feather boa. Time to ramp it up against Abbott.

Those who think the Liberals' problems will all be solved by a switch to Turnbull, Hockey, Brough or whomever else have to factor in the tightening factional grip over who gets admitted to the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party, let alone what they do there. Whether the title of "leader" is held by Abbott, or by any of the guys in the preceding sentence or whomever else you like, is only of interest to journalists and other dilettantes. The next Liberal Prime Minister will be the one who stands on the forecourt of Parliament House, picks up the likes of Cormann and Minchin (not just their delegates) by the ears and drop-kicks them into the lake. Anyone else is just a seat-warmer. Abbott has proven already that he can't and won't do the job; he has already failed, and any polls to the contrary can be safely ignored.

Labor need to develop the ability to mess with the Liberals' heads. Craig Emerson comes closest to this: he niggles the Liberals and can outflank them on economic policy, but talking points hold him back; he should be liberated from the lines in order to land some telling blows. Greg Combet has flashes of it when he's particularly irritated but this happens all too rarely. Albanese is not quite dormant but he is past his most intense. Conroy and Shorten can do it but they'd rather an internal Labor stoush any day. Gillard has to be both Prime Ministerially above-the-fray and, as part of the sexism that hasn't been worked out of her role yet, has to be whiter-than-white Calpurnia-style. Swan made a start with the billionaires but he hasn't really chained the Liberals to them; again, he's a factional player and despite a long career in politics he hasn't got any Liberal scalps to speak of.

Labor people need to demonstrate mastery over the Coalition. There is no better demonstration of dominance than to see someone like Helen Kroger, recently a major player in Melbourne, limping and bleeding at the hands of lesser operators like Fifield and Ryan. Complaining, like Gillard does, won't do it; only shirtfronting them, publicly revealing that the Coalition don't know what they're talking about and can't do a better job than Labor, will get the desired effect.

It's often said that Tony Abbott is Labor's greatest asset, but he isn't. Labor's best assets have to come from within its ranks or there is no point voting for it, no point joining it or in any way supporting them. The Australian economy is doing better than most but not as well as it could; and Abbott's self-seeking cloud of FUD is a depressant on the economy like this country has never seen. Lift that cloud and watch the country come to life.

This isn't something you can delegate. If Whitlam had been brought down by Snedden, or any Liberal other than Fraser, then Fraser would never have been PM. If Hawke had dispatched Hewson as he had his two more politically formidable predecessors, or had Dawkins/Beazley/someone else stepped up and done so, Keating might never have become PM. A Prime Minister who can see Rudd off twice - more than John Howard could ever do - lacks neither the wit nor the courage necessary to deal with The Situation. Abbott fans know it in their bones and dread the possibility that this - and they - might be exposed.

A Prime Minister who sets about wiping Abbott off the political map will not only have the power to get things done but be seen to get them done, and get credit for them, and lift the polls against a demoralised opposition that would not be able to set the agenda as it does today. The fact that the Coalition agenda consists almost entirely of Craig Thomson (blowback ensures they can't talk about Slipper) is a testament to Abbott and an indictment upon the rest of his party.

Gillard has to step up, otherwise, all the hard work of government becomes hostage to dreadful, Walkley-winning shite like this, over and over again; people will do something desperate like voting for Abbott just to make it stop. If Gillard pole-axes Abbott all the comments about her fashion sense disappear: she could wear whatever the hell she likes, and what's more she'd be copied. Polls, challenges, all that crap goes by the board once Abbott is removed from the equation. The only way to change the game is to make voting for Abbott a non-option, persuading even people who hate Gillard that the Coalition would be worse, rather than the benefit of the doubt it gets (and relies upon) now: Abbott delenda est.