No message is the message

Every pinhead in PR/media who wants a veneer of gravitas and relevance is churning out articles about what a great communicator Abbott is: so punchy. Silly editors think mistakenly that they are doing their outlets and these people a favour by providing a platform for such drivel. Where this falls down is his success in conveying how the country would be different if he were Prime Minister.

Apparently, there'd be no mining tax*, and there might be a bit more money for people who take parental leave*. Most people don't pay the former or enjoy the latter. Most people do pay electricity bills, and Abbott has offered no reason to think that electricity prices would go down. He can parrot all that focus-group stuff about rising prices; he knows there's nothing he can do to actually reduce those prices, and to his credit he hasn't committed to any policy that would do so.

At this point committed Liberals rhapsodise about how successful he is at getting his message across, that the few policy positions he has are so well and widely known. People who are most keen on this tend to be people who have little understanding of political history. Most failed Opposition Leaders have one or two well-known positions:

• From John Howard's first term as Opposition Leader in the 1980s, a male hand squeezing blood from a stone;
• Kim Beazley's GST rollback; and who could forget
• Mark Latham's slogan "ease the squeeze", catchy but so what?

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Tony Abbott is running on pretty much the same theme that Mark Latham did in 2004, with about the same degree of success. I'll leave it to you to work out who's the bigger boofhead, but emulating a proven failure is not conducive to "almost inevitable" electoral success on the part of "authentic" Abbott. Your guess is as good as mine about what we might expect from an Abbott government. This means the messaging has failed, not succeeded.

In the past two years of the Gillard government - yes, it has been that long - there is no example where the Opposition has forced a reassessment of and improvement to policy by its drawing attention to it. Abbott told Alan Jones that he was holding the government to account. Nobody would expect Jones to embarrass Abbott by asking him for an example of where he's actually improved the way taxpayers' money is spent - but nobody would expect any self-consciously "professional journalist" to do so either (and if any did, Abbott would avoid being interviewed by them). There is, in short, no reason why the country should look to Abbott as a better leader to Prime Minister Gillard, and nor will it do so.

Much is made of Abbott's Rhodes-scholar intellect, and his fans claim he's a tolerant person against all the evidence - but he is not a leader who can cope with "split advice", either.

Any other promises (actually, I'd include paid parental leave in this) is negated by the commitment to cut in service of a budget surplus. That confusion over priorities is a failure of communication. If there is no message to get across it is nebulous to talk about "getting your message across" or "dominating the media space" at a time when the space has largely been abandoned as a forum for public debate on real issues.

Let's conflate the issue of the carbon price, the Coalition's need to combat the historically high vote for the Greens, and the negotiations over the Murray-Darling basin into a single overarching narrative of "the environment". Let's look at the Coalition's message on "the environment", which is no better or worse than its narrative on "the economy" or "working families" or whatever.

If he's going to establish a clear position against the carbon tax, Abbott needs to do one of two things:

• Declare the carbon-climate link is "absolute crap" and run on that basis, from a position of conviction and the kind of clear distinction from Labor that conservatives hanker for constantly. In fact, it is a symptom of weakness by the party's membership and the adroitness by which they can be manipulated by party officials that grassroots Liberals do not push for outright denialism as Coalition policy. It would succeed if a vote were held, but not such vote would be held; or
• Acknowledge that the carbon-climate link is a problem to be managed, explain how he'd manage it better than the incumbents, stop letting Monckton and Reinhart define his message for him, and lift the debate.

What he's doing - or trying to do - is bits of both. There has never been an instance where a tax has been wholly rescinded, and there can be no confidence that Abbott will stand against accepted political wisdom about what is either right or feasible. His position is muddled.

 Any fool can get their picture taken in a picturesque place, but this does not equate to a demonstrable program rooted in a real commitment. People will forgive dropping this element of a promise or postponing that, but where there is no commitment the PR/media overestimate their own abilities by substituting it for fluff.

The whole idea of a policy that's more expensive than the government's (i.e. the Coalition's current policy) is stupid. Greg Hunt should realise that he will have more credibility if he resigns. He is working within the parameters set by his leader, and he should be bigger than that. He should have more faith in himself and his party's future than to be stuck advancing the absurd. Messaging professionals should recognise that either Hunt needs more scope to work with, or the selling of such a policy is best done by somebody other than Hunt.

The one environmental issue where the Coalition has a clear narrative is the campaign for commercial fisheries against a proposed network of marine reserves, which is more a pro-fishing than an anti-environmental policy necessarily, but still germane to the Coalition's whole "environment" narrative. The Coalition has a Shadow Minister for Fisheries; it's John Cobb, who holds a landlocked seat in NSW. Cobb failed as a shadow minister with the issue of New Zealand apples, and he was absent from the debate over live cattle exports to Indonesia. Whenever the Coalition talk about agriculture and food security, Barnaby Joyce or Bill Heffernan or even Andrew Robb talk over Cobb.

In any real analysis of politics Abbott should be asked why he hasn't replaced Cobb, and who it is that speaks for the Coalition on core national issues related to land, water and food.

The designated leader of the Coalition attack on the marine reserves proposal is Senator Ron Boswell, a backroom fixer with no grasp of environmental detail and scant respect for science or urban electorates. Boswell wins no votes for the Coalition on any issue anywhere south of Noosa. He appeared on television florid-faced, belligerent and arrogant, saying no and offering nothing, like the worst stereotypes of the Coalition. Making Boswell the Coalition's point-man on this issue was a tacit acceptance that they have given up on it, a momentum-killing tactic if ever there was one.

Joe Hockey admitted last week that he has no grounds to criticise the government other than wistfulness; he wishes Swan were scarier than he is and that he got the credit for Swan's work. The only way Hockey's comments make sense is if he's aditting that he's scared of Swan, underestimated by the Coalition as some latter-day Frank Crean. It was sloppy messaging to put Hockey in front of the media when he had nothing to tell them.

If Hockey repeats such poor performances and errors of judgment he'll be a latter-day Peter Shack: accepting that he has no alternative to offer and slipping into obscurity as a could-have-been. Hockey, like Hunt, should be bigger and smarter than Abbott and his handlers would allow. Hockey has to show that he's not a threat to Abbott; but if you make yourself too small a target you can't ramp it up when you need to, as Costello discovered.

Tony Abbott isn't unpopular because he is the bearer of bad tidings. Tony Abbott is unpopular because he has failed to convince people what he and the Coalition would do differently to Gillard. The only member of the Coalition who seems to believe that sound media depends on sound policy is Andrew Robb, and he's not a good advertisement for either. The idea that you can have a smart media strategy instead of sound policy is foundering now that people are looking to Abbott for post-Gillard leadership, and finding him wanting. There is a real question to be asked as to whether Abbott will be tapped on the shoulder, and whether he will give up if asked. He is a prophylactic on the prospects of a Coalition government.

Yet, the reality is that he is the last real prospect for a Howard Restoration: to give up on Abbott is to give up the long-standing Liberal fantasy that the Howard Government was as good as a government gets, that it lost because of trickery, and that the good economic times of 2003-07 can be restored simply by voting Coalition as soon as possible. That's why the Coalition stick by him and forgive him, they are hard-wired to compensate for and explain away his shortcomings because hey have been doing it for years.

Punting Abbott and taking a chance with someone else would mean rethinking the way the Coalition would govern this country, and even their conception of the country itself. It would mean squabbles over policy - squabbles that can currently be resolved within the party by simply turning the clock back to 2005, a time when all Liberals agree everything was just fine. It's easier for party powerbrokers to punt the leader than examine their own role in positioning the Coalition to govern a country that they don't really understand.

Abbott's pig-headedness means that he would not give up his position lightly, but he is not immovable in the way that Howard was because Abbott cannot command the factions as Howard did (even after being "leader" all this time). Next year he'll be 56 - what else would he do with his life, wear white-flannel trousers and walk along Queenscliff Beach? He's got no head for business or charity, and his kids are adults. If the Coalition were led by someone else Abbott might become a Cabinet Minister but he's been there and done that, and the next Liberal Prime Minister would not indulge him like Howard did. Yet, if Gillard continues her slow and steady ascendancy over him Abbott will become a national laughing stock, and he won't stick around for that. Those profile-writers who love boxing metaphors can talk about him diving in the eighth round.

Abbott is all tactics, no strategy, and the tactics are failing: the suspension of standing orders, a potent political weapon used to great effect by Curtin, Menzies and Whitlam, gives rise to sniggers under Abbott. The cudgel language that the government is "hopeless", "a disaster", etc., has lost its cut-through (when commentators applaud Abbott for a quality he no longer possesses, their own judgment is in doubt, which means a loss of revenue and ooh let's convene a talk on digimedia).

Julia Gillard will lead Labor to victory at the next Federal election. The government has a message and she is starting to give her voice to it. People are wary, holding off for some consistency that will lead to a bigger picture, a picture in which their own role becomes clearer. Messaging professionals who turn away from Labor's recently poor record and who admire Abbott's "cut through" are themselves missing the point, and failing in their own role as communicators.


* This is crap. Abbott hasn't thought this through, he couldn't get it past a hostile Senate, and there would have to be about four elections over the next six years in order to get all the ducks in a row for Abbott, as outlined here - during which time voters would have to maintain both a burning hatred for Labor and absolute forgiveness to the Coalition for breaking any promises. Good luck with that.

On drugs

The series of articles on drug laws and the need for reform in The Sydney Morning Herald has been positive, arising from the Australia21 report on the issue. The SMH have much to show their News Ltd colleagues about fostering a debate rather than running a campaign. While it's telling that so many major figures have come out against prohibition, with Mick Palmer not the least of them, this has been a debate that's been part of our lives more broadly. Drug law reform can't and shouldn't succeed until its scope is broadened; it is a shame that both Australia21, and the SMH, have overlooked that.

There's more to the drug debate than just prohibition vs decriminalisation. You can see that in the debates going on elsewhere that both Australia21 and the SMH has rigorously quarantined from its coverage of drug law reform. Perhaps they have done this in an attempt to bring clarity to what everyone agrees is a complex issue. I disagree that it will be effective or desirable in either securing drug decriminalisation, or in mapping out what might or should happen once drugs that are now illicit become legalised.

People want drug addiction to be seen as a public health issue. Let's do that, and in so doing let's look at a public health campaign that has been hard-fought and almost won, and which is not at all unrelated to the debate on other drugs: tobacco.

The first thing to remember is that tobacco is a more serious health problem for Australians, in themselves and in terms of costs to taxpayers and the economy more broadly, than illicit drugs. The cost of prohibition should take account of the averted costs of its alternative, rather than simply being written off as some sort of dead loss.

The second is that, just as the tobacco industry faces the prospect of sinking to its knees under the weight of plain packaging, it faces the prospect that decriminalisation will not just throw it a lifeline but open a cornucopia of commercial opportunities. All of those charges levelled at tobacco and alcohol companies about marketing to minors will come back with a vengeance when tobacco growers get a licence to grow cannabis, and when smaller companies that form part of the tobacco distribution network see the opportunities in now-illicit drugs as compensation over the government's war against tobacco. Big companies will sneak their special-treatments in with the smaller ones, and government will give them. Those hoping for additional funds to be spent on healthcare can only watch the money flow away from them as "incentives" for those who have waged war on public health campaigns.

You may think that your local neighbourhood drug dealer sidling up to the kids after school with a collection of little baggies is A Threat To Our Children, if not to Our Way Of Life. Wait until the perfectly legal, expensive and sophisticated marketing campaigns hit full stride. Look at the success that junk food has had over a younger generation, and imagine how successful similar campaigns for illicit drugs would be. Now contrast that against the odd junkie scuttling into the shadows for their hit in terms of the length and breadth of a real social problem, and ask yourself whether you are really making things better.

These companies will make the case that they can take the illicit trade out of the hands of thugs - subjecting them to taxation and regulation - just as legalisation did for gaming and abortion. They will be right, too. Do not doubt that those interests will prevail over those who would tightly regulate those drugs that are now illicit, as per the Australia21 report.

Purists will maintain that illicit drugs should be reserved for medicinal purposes only, e.g.:

• Pure heroin for use in safe injection environments, as part of programs to work addicts off the drug, or
• Distillation of those chemical compounds within cannabis that stimulate appetite and create feelings of well-being to counter the ravages of chemotherapy.

Setting up this new regulatory environment will require a great deal of expenditure on the part of government with little or no offsetting income. There will be adjustment difficulties that make government look stupid. It will still require the enforcement of prohibition against those who desire drugs and have the means to pay for them, but who have no need for them as determined by medical programs operating within government regulation and budgets.

Peter Baume was a moderate Liberal who was Health Minister in the Fraser Government for less than a year before it lost office, the last Federal minister in that portfolio who didn't have to deal with Medicare. He was a factional opponent of John Howard and the Liberal right and he retired from the Senate ahead of the boot as the party changed around him. Many of the arguments that appear in the Australia21 Report are those which he tried to push through the Liberal Party in opposition, including trying to push through the Young Liberals during my time there. The moderates were under such sustained attack that to support Baume was a factional stand in favour of a pluralism that has now gone. Baume became tetchy when challenged, even by moderates, which detracted from messages like this:

Heroin was legal and could be prescribed by doctors in Australia until 1953. That is, heroin became a problem after, and not before, it was prohibited.

In 1953 authority had a greater hold over the population than it does today. The campaigns against the non-medically sanctioned use of opiates in the nineteenth century still applied in 1953: it was something that was the preserve of Asian people and was proof, for those who sought it, of their inferiority to White Australia.

Baume has been impeccable against race-baiters, and I defer to his understanding of the dimensions of heroin addiction as a real public policy problem; but in an age where Authority in general is much diminished there is no equivalent social repellent to turn Australians away from a dangerous drug. Public health campaigns against addiction have the appearance of make-work schemes, doing worthy work but too little against a problem that can only grow.

The first group of Australians to experience heroin addiction as a significant problem were much overlooked in their time, especially in terms of their health. They were the first Australians who travelled to and from Southeast Asia in their thousands: Vietnam veterans. They had problems with alcohol and Agent Orange exposure too, and these problems were simply and flatly denied. The fact that heroin was illegal, that alcohol wasn't and that nobody went out sculling DDT is to ignore the lessons of that time.

Simply legalising and containing heroin addiction within health programs is an inadequate response to a much wider problem. It's foolish to graft on yet another health program to the ragged patchwork already in place and expect any benefit beyond the marginal, at a cost that will have to be massive in order to be realised. Let's not even talk about co-ordination of other policies beyond law-and-order and health (e.g. housing, welfare payments).

Baby-boomers weren't politically powerful in 1953. Decisions were made on their behalf by a waste-not-want-not people, in the parliament, in the bureaucracy, in pharmacies and doctors' clinics and police stations, and in the community more broadly. They pushed for drug decriminalisation in their youth for lifestyle reasons, and now as they enter their dotage they appeal to medicine and palliative care. The political question is, do baby-boomers still have the power to command public resources for a policy that suits them, and won't necessarily benefit the rest of us? Will they tolerate health funds being diverted toward younger people, away from them?

It's a basic flaw of the Australia21 report that it focuses on heroin overdoses and other drug deaths. It refers in passing to incidental crimes committed by addicts to fund their habits, but there is more to the drug problem than that and costs from widespread, normalised drug use should have been factored in, even if funding for the report did not allow for detailed modelling. I'd be fascinated to see the soil degradation, runoff and other environmental impacts from an industrial-sized cannabis crop (what do you mean, no modelling has been done?).

Australians in particular mix drugs. Australian policy must relate to Australians. "Social smokers" who consume tobacco when under the influence of alcohol, and who combine alcohol with drugs of varying legality and chemical composition, show that demarcating illicit drugs in the name of 'clarity' or 'focus' are chasing a mirage and doing the country a disservice. The report skates over mental illness in drug use, particularly for those abused as children, but it needs to be part of a bigger solution than decriminalisation. Anyone who thinks that illicit drugs is so different to pokies, alcohol etc. can shove their apples and their oranges; those issues are more similar than different.

The other fundamental flaw with the Australia21 is a misreading of the political system. The report is predicated upon an assumption that bipartisan support for their position is desirable and even achievable, despite a sop of realism to the pressures on politicians to avoid controversy. This is so wrong that it completely undermines the report, and is puzzling from a board that has operated at the highest levels of government.

Led by Tony Abbott, the Coalition have trashed bipartisanship. The changes to the Liberal Party that forced Peter Baume into retirement have continued to the point where a latter-day Baume would flee from his first branch meeting, and would have no hope in a preselection. There is no way that the Coalition as currently configured can or will consider legalising now-illicit drugs. Any individual Liberals who might have considered it are keeping their heads down and toe-ing the Abbott line (e.g. Joe Hockey, Marise Payne), or are marginal figures (e.g. Mal Washer), and put together they couldn't actually change policy and spend additional money.

Consider that Peter Dutton has been shadow health minister before and since the last election, and this is the nearest thing he has produced to a policy. His most substantial policy after all that time is reaction and denial about an issue from the fringes of significant public health issues affecting this country.

If ever there was a field where the status quo of 2004 is inadequate for 2014 (which is the central message of the whole Howard Revival), health is it. Dutton has not contributed in any meaningful way to health policy debates: the former health minister was promoted, whereas if Dutton was an effective shadow she should be political roadkill. A new minister is firmly established in the portfolio free of any challenge from her "shadow".

Dutton seriously regards prohibition as a good idea that has never been fully tried. This is a clear indication of:

• His ability to address issues in the community;
• The quality of the man as a future minister; and
• The sheer futility of expecting, or even hoping for, bipartisanship on this issue.

The Coalition clearly regards illicit drugs as a law-enforcement issue (supposed concern for addicts is so much mealy-mouthed bullshit waiting to be scythed in expenditure review - c'mon people, am I the only one who has learned how Abbott works?). Like Dutton, Brandis grew up in Queensland under Bjelke-Petersen; he'd know all about drug prohibition. The silence from the alleged shadow attorney general on this issue - a normally voluble man who goes on and on about much lesser legal issues - is deafening.

Forget the Coalition. Forget bipartisanship.

The only hope for an enlightened drug policy, with a carefully thought-out public health response and a sound communications strategy, rests entirely with Labor. It would have to be led by a strong and progressive leader such as we have not seen in a generation, and the prospect of which is indiscernible to those who watch federal politics closely. That leader would have to be prepared to go all out to secure their policy against both internal opponents (who would want scarce health resources spent on anything else). That leader would need the courage to prevail against nervous nellies inside their party (including those armed with polls and conference-floor delegates), go the polls with a consistent policy, defeat a prohibitionist Coalition and divert health funds away from baby-boomers in order to ease druggies off their addictions.

Nope, me neither.

I'm sure that the Australia21 board and supportive contributors to the SMH are aware of the current political situation. I share their optimism that it is a passing phase - not only the defeat of an Abbott government but also President Obama defeating the US Republicans this November will hopefully break reaction as political strategy. However, I've been wrong before, and so has Peter Baume; the prospect that the future of Australian politics lies in the major parties emphasising their differences (while "playing it safe" with the status quo in drug law) should not be discounted.

Look, I dare you, at the shambles that is the regulation of poker machines and alcohol in this country. Know that this is the fate for the regulation of drugs. Listen to the cries of alcoholics and pokie addicts in their more lucid moments, and of those who care for them despite everything. Know that those travails can and shall be compounded by the direct and indirect victims of legalised drugs. Forget policy that makes things harder rather than easier.

For those who like the personal touch injected into this debate, my late brother was an alcoholic who died in a motorbike accident. Readers can take comfort in my assurance that this is not the start of a campaign to ban alcohol, nor motorbikes for that matter; as the report points out, alcohol is also a much greater issue than all illicit drugs put together. I realise that piecemeal efforts against drugs that are now illicit are inadequate, but the alternative is worse because it hasn't been thought out properly.

Proponents think they are being clever by separating drugs off from other problems like pokies, alcohol, tobacco etc., but I'd suggest they are not being clever enough. Like the republicans of the 1990s they are mistaken in thinking that they are being clever in proposing a small reform and selling it as a big one. There should be linkages across disciplines among people doing good work and making whole-of-government NDIS-style solutions. I am just not interested in any policy that will detract from efforts against real problems, and the prospect that they might add to them leaves me cold. I am sick to death of rallying behind well-meaning but ill-considered policies and getting run over by the foreseeable.

Politics, the media and you

Two articles today by Jonathan Green and Tim Dunlop and the prospect of no articles by Fairfax staff tomorrow set me thinking about how useful the media could be and are, for those of us who don't own it but who are more important in many ways than its owners. Without committed, active consumers the newspaper proprietors are just left with a whole lot of propagandistic arse-wad. Without committed, active citizens Australia would be harder to govern effectively than it is, to the point where the shortcomings of today's politicians would be more obvious than they are. They need us, we need them, and we all need to be more on our toes than we are.

Politicians need media space and media organisations give it to them. The question for the media is to set the conditions for granting that access.

The problem with current affairs programming is its circular, self-referential nature. Morning radio picks up what was printed in the papers, questions are asked in parliament about what was in this morning's paper/radio, and the grabs of that debate make it into the TV news. Rinse and repeat, well beyond the point of mere nausea.

It defeats the purpose of electing politicians to shut them out of public debate, and media debate is part of that public debate (not all of it, as arrogant/frightened journalists would assert). For all politicians' engagement with the media, they have never been more disconnected from the communities they are supposed to represent. This is not just the politicians' failure, but the media's too. What should happen is that media organisations should play more of a role in setting the terms under which politicians take up time and space within media content.

Cows go moo, the sun rises in the east, the Pope is a Mass-going Catholic and politicians make announcements. Of this list of equally mundane events, the first two never make the news, the third does occasionally, but the last is always considered the very essence of what news is and should always be forever no matter what.

It ought not be a news story that a politician has made an announcement. Part of the poverty of media in totalitarian states is the simple and uncritical reporting of announcements - as though the execution in full on time/budget of the announced plans, and the satisfaction of the public at large resulting from said announcements was given.

Media organisations should limit politicians to participating in actual debates on actual issues. Take the chance on people in the street and on experts of different levels of articulateness, but if they "don't work" on radio/TV don't rely on them too heavily - then, and only then, wheel in the politician to ask what they are (not) going to do. Then, have them back and back again as the announcement works its way through the system and explore the effects (intended and unintended).

In the absence of that context, political debate is just so much argy-bargy. It's hard to distinguish a debate on how best money should be spent for maximum effectiveness given agreement about the aims of a proposal, and a fundamental disagreement about whether the proposal is even necessary, and again from a debate between two people attempting to dress up their mutual dislike with reasons drawn from public policy. Media's value lies in making the distinction.

There is an argument that context-free argy-bargy is "good radio/television". This seems to be a self-referential and hard-to-define quality among people who have worked in media a long time.

There is another argument that worthy media of the type just described is and must be dull. To believe this you have to accept the idea that media people are bound by cliches and incapable of arranging elements in an engaging way. There is scope to reconsider just how much viewer/listener/reader engagement there is in context-free argy-bargy, too, or the simple passing on of assertions not backed up by evidence. "The devil is in the detail" is the signoff of the lazy and worthless journalist (the ABC's Mark Simkin is just one example), as though anything with a lot of detail must be devilish and is to be shunned. The detail is where the stories are, and while there are no doubt devils to be found they need not be the whole story.

Many things happen all the time and people turn to the media to make sense of those things, drawn together and put into context. Sometimes that involves politicians and other times it doesn't. Just because a press secretary is eager to get their boss onto the media does not mean the media are obliged to comply.

Chris Pyne is the Shadow Minister for Education and the Member for Sturt. There is no reason why he should appear in the media unless he is discussing his portfolio or his electorate. Everything he says outside those matters is vapid, fatuous and utterly unmoored from any content. Of course he thinks Nicola Roxon isn't up to being Attorney General, but he would say that wouldn't he? How would he know anyway, and why just accept his word at face value? If he gives the predictable answer, why bother asking him? Where is the fool who thinks predictable-question-predictale-answer is "good reporting", and can we sack them without everyone going on strike?

Green gives the example of Q&A. The show is not like other media events involving politicians; the dullest moments of that show occur when less imaginative politicians trot out the same lines they would on any other current affairs program, or when Tony Jones inserts himself in proceedings as he would on Lateline. The whole point of Q&A is the unscripted moments between guests that yield the kinds of insights that interviewers rarely succeed in drawing out.

An example of that is the interchange between Joe Hockey and Penny Wong on gay marriage. The question on gay marriage is whether or not you regard gay relationships as real and as valid as heterosexual ones, and thereby deserving of that package of social recognitions tied up in marriage. When Joe Hockey and I were in the NSW Young Liberals, we knew plenty of gay people and there is no reason why he should not support gay marriage as I do; no reason, that is, other than the fact that he's a shadow minister on Tony Abbott's frontbench.

It's all very well for Hockey to spout the nonsense that he spouted on Q&A in the party room, or before some other audience where e might receive support for it, or in the abstract; but when he confronted Penny Wong with it, the empty words of policy came up against the reality of an Australian lesbian in a stable relationship into which a child was born. I'd be surprised if Hockey hadn't congratulated Wong privately and genuinely over the birth of her child, but all sorts of things happen in Canberra that don't translate into policy, and unless they call a press conference the supposed newshounds of the press gallery never find out.

Hockey could have applied the policy to the reality, or announced that he was open to consideration on the topic. On Q&A he was stuck, and he reverted to the context of the modern Liberal Party, which is set by the far right and Tony Abbott. He was subjected to a test of character that simply would never have arisen in other current affairs formats, and he was found wanting. I rarely watch Q&A but it's valuable for all that.

The questions surrounding Craig Thomson's behaviour at the HSU are not a debate, and they are not news. I don't have all details to hand of what I was doing five to ten years ago and I doubt that you do (I wasn't doing any prostitutes with my money or anyone else's, I hasten to add, but then again I didn't have to work with Kathy Jackson either). These are matters for investigation and some of those investigations are underway right now. Katharine Murphy thinks it's her job to ask the same questions everyone is asking and get the same answers everyone gets, and pass them on like everyone does. As I pointed out in the comments attached to that article, she's wrong. Her job is to anchor statements to objective fact, as her colleague Kate McClymont is doing; once you look at the context of the media as a whole Murphy's role looks redundant.

Dunlop's article deals with the question of engaging with government as citizens. In other articles he has a lot to say about the media and the way that it engages with politicians and citizens.

Part of that answer lies in Government 2.0/Govhack work, where media organisations, interest groups and individuals will be able to crunch huge amounts of data and produce results that may lead to action that can't be foreseen today. This will mean that politicians lose control of the narrative, because the current model of the media advisor will become inadequate. In Australia, control over data will be a huge issue, clouded with privacy and security concerns that may not be entirely bogus, and such progress as there is will involve baby-steps down paths trod in the US and Europe.

Part of it, however, doesn't. Local members have a role in explaining how government works at the community level, rather than just pictures of them cutting ribbons &c. Major party MPs are monitored for how much money they raise and get into trouble if targets aren't met. This leaves little time for genuinely working where people are at, only the sort of tokenistic bullshit that only fosters disengagement.

A media that focused on policy, from the high-level to impact at community and individual level, could be more than just a conduit for bullshit (monkey-house behaviour and talking points from parliament and vapid vox-pops straight back at ya!). It would lift the political system and add the kind of value to people's lives that would make the media more compelling and more valuable than it is, much more so than bean-counters could ever make it. It's the media that has to change first, mainly because it is subject to the speed and heft that IT and money can give to capitalist organisations (yes, Virginia, the ABC is a capitalist organisation). The politicians would come last, with one eye on the media and the other on those who vote for them.

People, we need a better media and a government that is worthy of us. Now we need to be clear about what that means ...

On the way out

Sometimes I feel I've got to (thump thump) run away
I've got to (thump thump) get away
From the pain you drive into the heart of me ...

- Soft Cell Tainted Love

At a time when the government is vulnerable, the Coalition are finally starting to realise that Abbott's limitations are those of the Coalition: they've realised that it really might not win. Abbott is not a tough guy, he's gutless; for a long time that must have seemed counter-intuitive to people who weren't paying attention.

Abbott was right to tell his party room that the Prime Minister won't lie down and die, but he was wrong to draw attention to the fact that this has pretty much been his whole strategy all along. All that Battlelines stuff was so much bluster and fluff, only mugs like Ross Cameron believe in it. Coalition MPs and Senators are the people who have most at stake for the success of both his strategic judgment and execution. Many of them will now realise that Abbott has sold them a dog, and will start to wonder whether or not he can keep the Coalition ahead of Labor for much longer.

Polls are all very well, but they're abstract, and people in the Coalition regard themselves as practical folk impatient with abstractions. Why hasn't he pushed the government out by now? Every day you open The Australian and it's full of Labor people governing, and that doesn't look like changing soon. Since the last election the Coalition have kept their people in line with the belief that any minute now, the government will crack and political fortunes will go the Coalition's way, and all that will be undone should anyone step out of line. People can only spend so long on tenterhooks. A quick chat with the independents would have shown that Abbott is further away from office than he was in September 2010, not closer as he would have them (and the media) believe.

Labor apologised to Aborigines, but unapologetically maintained the Northern Territory intervention with "income management". Labor fought so hard for the ETS, then gave it up. Then they gave up the Prime Minister who beat Howard, and replaced her with that woman. Misogyny aside, it is understandable why they think that Labor is weak. The real trick lies in convincing the press gallery that they're the answer, against all evidence.

The love we share
Seems to go nowhere
And I've lost my light
For I toss and turn I can't sleep at night ...

No Coalition MP on a majority, or needing a swing, of 5% or less can run the risk of having Abbott waddle around their electorate, shaking hands with too tight a grip and generally reminding people why the economic performance of the Gillard government isn't so bad. There is a real risk that the next election could end up as a tit-for-tat exercise like the last one, where the Coalition wins one here and loses one there and before you know it Gillard has negotiated herself back into office.

Rudd served as a stick to beat the government with for a long time, but the stick looked more like limp lettuce after the 31-71 loss to Gillard. Abbott floundered, and Slipper and Thomson were not initially worthy opponents, but for a guy who'd go ten rounds with a revolving door he backed himself to punch through them into government. Abbott took the risk that he could take them quickly, easily, and from the high ground. Abbott gave his all in pursuit of Thomson and Slipper. Every day for weeks and weeks he went in hard.

It turned out Our Lady of the Health Services Union is neither as pure nor as clever as she needed to be, for her sake, for Abbott's, and for a Coalition which has been made to look stupid. Ashby, the honey-trap IED launched at Slipper, has turned and blown up in the face of Christopher Pyne.*

Yes, that indefatigable strategist who made possible the governments of Costello and Turnbull has himself slipped. Even though Pyne's failures are not those of his leader, Abbott cannot get over them. Pyne could and should drop the righteous fury that Abbott dare not show himself, lest he make Mark Latham look about as threatening as Bill Hayden. He should admit his flaws re Ashby and render his life an open book, in the hope of being courageous and even endearing in his chirpy and flamboyant way. If he did that he might win Sturt and have a political career that appears more durable than it does today.

When he appeared on Annabel Crabb's cooking show I didn't watch it because I expected him to come across like Bernard King: as saucy and cheesy on the stove-top as off. By hiding behind Auntie Mandy and admitting that he has no friends in Parliament he seemed as much of a try-hard as his leader. His beetroot-faced exertions in Question Time show that Pyne persists in pushing against a door that's closed to him now. Nobody expects him to distinguish between good government and bad, only what works for Pyne. The case has not been made that what works for the buttoned-up facade he puts forward will work for the rest of us. Watch Sturt on election night.

Part of the reason why you don't engage in gutter attacks is the sheer degree of risk. If you win, your victory is tainted and if you lose, your credibility is shot. Those who had a Christian education, as Abbott and Pyne did, will be aware of the exhortations of Luke 6:37 and Matthew 7:1. Abbott has taken the risk that he will be able to waddle away from it into the arms of those who love him, but the rest of the Coalition will be left no closer to government than they were in 2008. The fact that Thomson and Slipper are not political roadkill mean that the best efforts of Tony Abbott (and Pyne) simply aren't good enough. Those with an interest in the future of the Liberal Party must question whether they will ever be good enough.

Once I ran to you (I ran)
Now I'll run from you
This tainted love you've given
I give you all a boy could give you
Take my tears and that's not nearly all ...

When Thomson approaches Abbott, Abbott flees as though he can simply outrun his failures. It takes a fool to bleat that the nation's defences are insufficient and then entrust them to a shit-happens runaway. Gillard will start getting points for trying to grapple with the big issues once people realise the alternative is Brave Sir Robin.

Hey, the media lap it up. They shrug when he runs away from the odd piercing question at press conferences and are content to let Tony be Tony. Why doesn't everyone else? What is wrong with you people? Michelle Grattan looks stupid both in overestimating the effect of all-but-uniform media framing and in the utility of asking those who made him leader what's wrong with their decision. You can bet that Abbott butters up the old girl something fierce, in the hope that the public is as happy to let the media to do the framing as it was in the 1970s, when Grattan and Abbott learned the trade and what were then its tricks.

People who admire Abbott's toughness and commitment need to contrast it against his judgment, and yes his effectiveness. The jury might have been out in early 2010, or even after the close election result later that year, but enough chickens have now not only hatched but come home to roost that it's well past time to judge Abbott.

Those who blame the media for the unpopularity of the Gillard government cannot explain why Tony Abbott continues to be unpopular. The media love Abbott and have given him a more favourable run than any Opposition Leader, with the possible exceptions of Malcolm Fraser or Kim Beazley. Abbott bends over backwards to ensure that press gallery journalists all have a story to run each day, and to encourage them to run that story instead of whatever the government is putting up. The polls have increased the incentives for journalists to keep in sweet with what they perceive to be the next government, particularly as the incumbents don't flatter them in the same way. No amount of media framing can or will change the perception that Abbott is a jerk, to the point where he'd just fuck anyone and everyone in government except the far right.

Don't touch me please
I cannot stand the way you tease
I love you though you hurt me so
Now I'm gonna pack my things and go ...

The only way the Liberals could win is if they were to stage an intervention. East-coast heavyweights would have to wipe Minchin, Bernardi and Cormann off the map and overturn such preselections as they have won. They would have to punt Mr and Mrs Loughnane and replace them with Tony Nutt, and that would mean that the Baillieu government would lose its main sheet-anchor. I can't see that happening either, everyone who could have made that happen has now gone, and the current federal leader lacks the clout to bring it on himself.

The sheer blind faith within the Coalition and the anti-Gillard media that Abbott has Gillard where he wants her and that his victory is assured is gone now. It will not return. On a human level you have to feel sorry for the guy, like a sprinter cramping up halfway through a marathon. He can't turn up the heat because that only singes him. He certainly can't flick the switch to policy, either. Don't let the door impact you on the way out! As I said on the radio, Labor was never going to smash Abbott but it can wear him down. This isn't the end for Abbott but you can see it from here.

Tainted love, tainted love
Tainted love, tainted love
Touch me baby, tainted love
Touch me baby, tainted love
Tainted love
Tainted love
Tainted love

* No, that's not what I meant. Stop it at once.

Guest post by Lachlan Ridge: The Adjournment Debate

There is plenty of parking, which is rare for Canberra, but it’s late, after eight o’clock on a Tuesday night. Fucking freezing middle of May. The problem with dealing with climate change is that, for Canberrans – a few of whom are in significant decision making functions for public polity - global warming strikes them as not the worst old idea in the world. At the least it’d stop those mad skiers being Highway Patrol fodder on the Monaro from June till September.

I take security buy surprise after my cloaken and beanied stride up over the gravel on the Parliament House forecourt. I am scanned, including the steel capped boots. The canary yellow high-vis shirt I am wearing throws them. I am obviously worthy, but arrive uninvited and unsuspected, so due suspicion is accorded. The story that I am killing time until I start night shift at the Mail Centre, which is true, barely washes in the security entrance, this place without humour.

I am escorted to the Public Gallery, but am not allowed in until I surrender my mobile, for which receive a chit for redemption, later. I have the gallery to myself. About six members in the chamber, but the government must always provide a minister. The Ministers take it in turns , Nicola Roxon is using her shift to correct a draft of some things, later she is replaced by Health Minister Tanya Plibersek (more on her another time).

Half of the Hansard team is pretty cute, while the Clerk is embroiled with some stern matter with the Acting Deputy Speaker. None of this stops the Member for Bradfield, the former Optus executive Paul Fletcher, delivering a polished and fiery denunciation (to the sparsely populated theatre) of letting unions anywhere near the boards of superannuation funds.

I opposed super when it came in because I thought then, and still believe now, that it will be the instrument by which a great deal of currency is extracted from the household sector and then Gen X hits retirement age and all of a sudden the big super funds go all Mother Hubbard. Capitalists better pray to Hell that super holds together, all they will all die with their throats slit in the middle of the night. If it wasn’t for industry super most working Australians today will spend their final years living in a cardboard box behind the tip. But Fletcher sticks like araldite to the Abbott HSU narrative; keeping equal representation of employees on superannuation boards will lead to Craig Thomson pimping your daughter.

At nine thirty the house moves that it do now adjourn and we move into the Adjournment debate. This is where an MP can go about anything and all sorts of libellous gossip can be dumped onto the public record; but tonight we get a mawkish speech plumbing the depths of pathos by the very Christian Louise Markus, Member for Macquarie and one time shill for the Hillsong Corpora...err...Church. Tragedy strikes as Sarah Frazer and Geoff Clark are killed on the Hume Highway south of Mittagong and Markus attaches herself limpet like to Sarah’s parents' grief. My deepest and sincerest sympathies to the Clark and Frazer families and all who knew them, but this stuff makes me puke.

They alternate government-opposition-government-crossbench-government-oppoisition in order of preference for adjournment speeches, like a taxi rank, so thankfully Deb O’Neill, the Member for Robertson (well, Woy Woy really), tells us how they’ve cured Cancer, then there are a few more medical ailments held up by other MP’s before the Member for Hindmarsh makes a more lively contribution on the SANFL Club Glenelg getting lighting at their home ground.

By this stage the attendant (well, technically he’s a security guard, but Al Qaida are safe from this septuagenarian) comes over and asks if I’m asleep. Damned impertinence.

I catch a smile from a most unlikely source; the Member for Chifley, Ed Husic, swaggering in to deliver a structural address on some activities in his electorate. Husic, Australia’s first Moslem MP, bogged down in the politics of incorporated identity, was secretary of my union in 2006, following a career as an executive with Integral Energy. Such, such are the joys of ALP membership. Back in the day Husic worked for the previous Member for Chifley, another household name, Roger Price. Now Husic’s the boss. It’s safe to say he has never held a real job.

He was done over badly by Markus for the seat of Greenway in 2004 when they used the same tactics that Liberal MP Jackie Kelly tried in Lindsay in 2007. Basically smear shit and run. This is what happens when you let student politicians be the brains trust behind the people that run the country. Vide Thompson et al.

They are doing this in your neighbourhood. And your silence, your vitiation, begs consent. Luckily Luke Foley (More on him too later) sprung this shit when Kelly tried it on three years later, but Markus still won Greenway by the skin of her teeth and Mark Latham was never Prime Minister of Australia.

Anyway, then there was some guff about the Member for Moreton saving Nemo before Warren Entsch got up and castigated capitalism, which was strange coming from an Abbott acolyte. Daryl Melham talked about how hard it is to afford to go to the dentist then the Liberal Member for Moncrieff (on the Queensland Gold Coast) got up to talk about crime and, as much as I love Laura Norder, I’d had enough. The freezing bite of the Canberra night was not so fearsome after all.

So I left, and went to work.

- Lachlan Ridge, Country Gentleman

The right room for an argument

After Craig Thomson made an unexpectedly robust defence of his position to Parliament on Monday, the truth has finally begun to dawn on some of the more sensible members of the politico-media complex. There are no easy answers to the problems before this Parliament. Stunts, planned quickly and executed quickly and endlessly discussed by a press gallery consisting largely of easily impressed and dull people, are not that useful over the long term for those who perform them. Those who put the hard work in are increasingly taking the initiative from those who are fully occupied with stunts.

This is a reversal of the way politics has been practiced over the last two years and a departure from the trajectory of US politics, where the far right set the initiative and the rest of the politico-media complex follows them down the rabbit-hole.

By "the problems before this Parliament", I mean:

• The question of whether Parliament can choose to reject those who were elected to it; and
• The fact that the government might prefer not to associate with one of its members who, however unwittingly, represents all that it would seek to avoid; taking workers for granted, being less than frank with the truth, casting further doubt on the overall competence Fair Work Australia;
• The fact that the Opposition would prefer be in government, and will trash and subvert due process in order to secure its preference, and
  
• That the Coalition really needs to force a change of government before July.

The people elect representatives to Parliament. For the Parliament to decide that it won't accept those whom the people elect places them above the people. Parliament is where legislation is passed and policy is reviewed. It does not have the ability to investigate the activities of its members in a disinterested and discreet way. If it had that capacity, inherited from nineteenth-century Britain (in an age where what united members was ultimately more important than what divided them), it doesn't have it now. What you sacrifice in a stop-at-nothing lunge for office is that understanding that we're all human, and that you have to back off a bit sometimes. The Coalition are less prepared for that than they might appear.

To determine whether Craigs Thomson or Kelly have done anything sufficient for them to be suspended or expelled from Parliament is a matter for the courts. The Parliament will simply have to wait for the courts to plod through its procedures of sifting, hearing, considering and weighing evidence. This will probably take more than two months: too bad.

The idea that Parliament might develop a Code of Conduct is a classic Canberra make-work scheme. Jack the Insider said that the law that applies to everyone else should be a sufficient code, and I agree: imagine if a parliamentarian were found in breach of the Code but not of the law, or vice versa; any such Code would be vitiated straight away. Surely the law applies to us all, including - if not especially - our representatives. This is why Laura Tingle is wrong to regard the situation as "murky", looking at the situation as a political one that can only be solved politically. If the Coalition are to govern this country they must do so within the law, and people like Laura Tingle should call them to account for wilfully refusing to do so. They can smell government, it's so close and it's driving them crazy.

It's driven George Brandis, Thomson's Javert, crazy. He believes that Thomson has to prove his innocence with documentary proof according to rules of evidence. To confuse the role of parliaments and courts shows that Brandis understands neither. He does, however, want to be Attorney General and could see himself in that role within weeks, if only he puts his shoulder to the wheel that he hopes would crush Thomson, and through the gap would rush a Coalition government. His temptation is understandable, for himself and his team, but his succumbing to it is pathetic to behold.

The process of getting to the truth of what did (not) happen is more important than the fact that the Coalition are pretty much left without an agenda for government if the economy fails to collapse once the carbon price starts in July. The carbon price will require a lot of adjustments, and some of that will mean jobs are lost faster than they are being created. There will be a lot of devil in that detail, and the Opposition will play up that devil to the point where many which consider the whole carbon price scheme to be infernal. Overall, however, the idea that it will be a complete disaster for the country (Whyalla being wiped off the map, &c.) is an idea that will probably have more potency before it is introduced than afterwards - remember what happened when the GST was introduced, all those scare campaigns about price hikes and "rollback" from the then-Opposition looked mighty silly in the cold light of day.

In much the same way that Cinderella's presence at the prince's ball was time-limited, with the risk of the magic wearing off after a given point, so too the prospect of a Coalition government demands that its proponents punch through a weak link in the alliance that keeps the Coalition out of government. Thomson is that weak link now that the Pyne-Ashby affair increasingly negates whatever the Coalition might bring against Speaker Slipper. That's why the Coalition is going after Thomson unrelentingly.

That's also why Abbott's profession of concern for the man and his family are so much cant, and why people who insist Abbott is a nice guy misunderstood are, frankly, wrong. Craig Thomson stands between him and the Prime Ministership; whatever Thomson may or may not have done, Abbott will screw anyone at any cost who stands in his way. Thomson showed once again, as did Albanese in his response, that standing up to the Coalition yields positive results for the government in terms of its standing and morale. The Coalition fully expect this government to give up the ghost. A bit of effort on their part is revealing of how they would fare, not only in government but in a contested campaign.

Albanese was shrewd to throw Craig Kelly in with Thomson and warn Sophie Mirabella that she's next. If Labor drag the Coalition down to the gutter, they are finished. Once the mud has cleared, Labor has a record to run on while the Coalition has a record of saying no on which to stand still.

The Coalition is starting to ease up on Thomson and going after the Prime Minister because they fear a poll backlash, not because the good sense and decency of people like Mal Washer have carried the day. Hammering Thomson makes them look weak; the more they do it the weaker they look, and so they cut their losses. They are picking on someone their own size when they pick on Gillard.

I'm against Abbott becoming Prime Minister, it's true; but if he goes about it in the right way then my objections count for little.

Jonathan Green is right to say that the whole thing is unedifying, but the fact that it is playing out as it should. In the political theatre the Coalition are pushing and pushing, and just a little adjustment to legal conventions (innocent until proven, &c.) will see them over the line, whereupon the country will be well governed and all will be forgiven. Politics is where public disagreements are thrashed out, and where parties of government are put under pressure in order to show how they would bear responsibilities of office.

In this environment the Coalition have shown themselves to be determined, but unsuccessful. The visual image that demonstrates this best is Christopher Pyne in full apoplexy, crimson with rage, so close to a state of calm ascendancy as a senior minister and so determined to push the last little bit between where he is and where he would be. He's been there before, when Slipper became Speaker last year and now again with Thomson - not just in declaring that he didn't believe Thomson's statement, but in the umbrage that his word was not sufficient to send Thomson down. This is a test of character, and Pyne is both passing (for those who would like to see a Coalition government) and failing (for those who wouldn't, and non-partisans who don't want government won or lost over dirty tricks), Schroedinger-like, in public.

Green's insistence on parliament as moral authority is weakened by the fact that voters in Dobell returned Thomson in 2010 with knowledge of the allegations against him, and with a greater majority than many other better-behaved MPs received at that election. I doubt that Dobell would necessarily return a Liberal if a by-election were called; the prospect that they'd choose the wrong candidate, and/or that Abbott and the gang would over-egg the pudding that he'd serve up to the good voters of that electorate, cannot be discounted.

Parliament is where political debates should be thrashed out. Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott insist that parliament is working when all this stuff comes out in the open rather than being fixed behind closed doors (or not fixed, in this case). The debate over Thomson and Slipper is a proxy for a wider question: that the Coalition would govern better than Labor is doing given the predicament it is in. The high dudgeon over poor, poor health workers funding degeneracy &c. assumes both that the party of Payne, Ashby and Heffernan would do better, and that the nation is right to expect better from its representatives even though it is insufficiently fussy about who it chooses to fulfil that role.

Once you start expecting Parliament to have moral authority, it will start exercising it. This is why it's in such a tizz over gay marriage: can't decide whether to endorse homosexuality, or by rejecting it also rejecting the embourgeoisiement of a once-radicalised and fringe group.

Abbott is the candidate of low expectations while Gillard the candidate of muddling through and moving on. No wonder they rate about the same, and while it might be unedifying, the first one to demonstrate that their method yields results for the rest of us, wins.

Under investigation

For five years now, the press gallery has flogged and flogged the idea that Craig Thomson is a sleazebag who misappropriated union funds, to the point where it really is the only way you can talk about him, or the position of the government generally. Events later today may give the press gallery permission to change the way it looks at and reports on the whole business of what Thomson with HSU resources, and what he may have said or done about those resources to various parties investigating him.

It is an indictment on the entire profession of journalism in this country that the story of the year was broken by a blogger named MadWixxy. To summarise:

• Tony Abbott, when he was Workplace Relations Minister, appointed a guy called Michael Lawler to what is now Fair Work Australia (FWA), where he attained the position of Vice President (and because it isn't a merchant bank, the position of Vice President is actually a real position) ...
• Lawler and Abbott get along well, even though ...
• Lawler's partner is Kathy Jackson, head of the Health Services Union, who succeeded ...
• Craig Thomson in her current role, where ...
• Thomson's ally, and Jackson's ex-husband, was also accused (with seemingly solid proof) of having spent union money on what looks like highly self-indulgent expenses (prostitutes, meals etc.), but unlike Thomson he isn't an MP in a hung parliament so nothing has come of it ...

None of that makes Thomson more pure than the pure. It doesn't explain why Thomson may not have regarded FWA as the fair umpire it is meant to be under law (a law that he, as a legislator, helped shape and enact). Nor does it necessarily explain why Lawler's organisation took three years to investigate Jackson's union. It is, however, worth more investigation than it has received so far.

In 2009, Thomson sued Fairfax after it raised allegations about his behaviour with union money. Fairfax has since settled with Thomson, yet it has not shared with us the reasons why it did so. Thomson appears done for no matter what he does. He may as well tell the truth and let such legal action come what may, but he'll probably pull his punches and die wondering.

To get an idea of the conventional wisdom in the press gallery on this, you have to go straight to press gallery drone and Fairfax company-man Phillip Coorey:

In April 2009, Thomson's aspirations went pear-shaped when the Herald received a leak and published the allegations of credit card misuse, cash withdrawals and the use of union funds for electoral purposes.

It's amazing that no reporter who covers industrial issues would have a look into the HSU. That leak could have been an opportunity to explore the whole Jackson-Lawler-Abbott nexus, but they squibbed it.

If Kevin Rudd had inquired about the suitability of preselecting Thomson for the 2010 election, he was assured by the NSW Right there was nothing to be worried about.

If Coorey's experience in the press gallery was worth more than it is, he would have realised that this was the very period when the NSW Labor Right were plotting to get rid of him. As if they would give up one of their own to that prick!

Thomson was preselected again and on February 17, 2010, the local paper, the Central Coast Express Advocate, ran a piece clearing him of all allegations.

The week before, the Australian Electoral Commission had cleared him of breaching the Electoral Act for not disclosing as donations the union money used to fund his campaign. It made the same finding again last week.

... The article concluded, without attribution, with two stunningly incorrect statements.

"Fair Work Australia, which was investigating the union's claim that Mr Thomson misused union money, has also said he was no longer under investigation."

And: "The union branch which made the initial allegations has gone into administration and a new executive has been appointed."

Do I have to do the investigation myself?

The first statement is attributed. It attributes to FWA the fact that he was not under investigation. Who knows what was going on inside FWA at the time? As with the NSW Police declining to investigate the HSU, then launching a highly publicised raid on their offices, it's clear that there is more to the question of an FWA investigation than Coorey will allow.

As to the second: the HSUeast branch, which is the focus of all the attention on this matter, was formed in 2010 from a combination of the union's NSW branch and the Victoria No. 1 branch. So, at the time Thomson gave his interview, he was right in making that statement.

Time for Thomson to ring his lawyers back and pump some more money out of Fairfax.

On August 21, 2010, in defiance of a national trend against Labor, Thomson romped home in Dobell with a swing towards him.

Even though Labor was reduced to minority government, the opposition was still not interested in Thomson. By the end of 2010 and into early 2011, as uncomfortable details were beginning to emerge from the defamation hearing, Tony Abbott was fixated on the carbon tax.

The Liberal frontbencher and Victorian senator Michael Ronaldson pushed the issue and he ramped it up a year ago when Thomson dropped the action against Fairfax.

First of all, Thomson didn't drop the action against Fairfax; they settled, which means that both sides agreed to "drop" it for consideration between themselves and Thomson not revealed to us.

Second, Abbott should be called for playing a double game, attempting to take the high ground over this issue while shunting it off to his party's attack dog for the purposes of deniability.

By August last year, the shadow attorney-general, George Brandis, was warning colleagues to watch their public comments on the matter to avoid prejudicing any potential trial should action be launched.

That, too, is no longer a concern for the opposition. Brandis recently stated Thomson, who has been charged with nothing yet, had committed crimes.

They are that desperate, and they know the press won't call them on it.

He was thinking of contending, as he has in the past, that Kathy Jackson, who succeeded him as the Health Services Union national secretary, destroyed the paperwork that would have accounted for the expenditure by Thomson during his five years at the union's helm.

If he does raise this, Jackson will deny it as she has in the past.

She would say that, wouldn't she. The fact that she says it is the starting point for further investigation, not the end as Coorey would have it. The fact that the Coalition have become unhinged the closer they get to victory is worth examination, and may tell you what they'd be like if they actually got into office.

The opposition's position is already clear. It believes the civil findings of Fair Work Australia are a sufficient basis to drum Thomson out of Parliament, either temporarily or for good, thus bringing the minority government to a premature end.

The independents are not so sure and the constitution most definitely is not.

We come back to the central political question of this Parliament, and again Coorey's judgment bears examination here: how is Abbott going in persuading the independents to get on side? He has no words, because there are no words.

More likely, there will be a censure against Thomson at most, a symbolic but ultimately benign gesture.

For the government, this saga, which could have been avoided years ago, will become a dull ache that will plague it until election day.

After more than fifty failures to suspend standing orders, at what point does that gesture lose its symbolism? At what point do you blame the media for not actively looking into this "saga" and just waiting for various interested parties to drop things into their laps?

Thomson may be able to shift the media narrative onto FWA and the Jackson-Lawler-Abbott thing, but even if you leave the gate open the sheep won't necessarily run out. There is no reason why they should continue to run a five year old story other than sloth and butt-covering on their part. It is possible that a thorough investigation of FWA will increase pressure on the legislation that made it possible: legislation that was the crowning achievement of the current Prime Minister before her ascent to that office, legislation that goes to the core of what this government, and Labor, are about (if they can be said to be about anything at all).

There is more to this story, and of course the fact that Peter Wicks is ahead of people who fancy themselves as professional journalists is cause for the entire profession to rethink the way it works. Wicks has broken the story, give him the Gold Walkley or have it rendered as a sub-Logies joke. The fact that there is so much at stake should increase the pressure to broaden the scope of this story, not decrease it as the stress-bunnies would have it. Thomson may tell Parliament enough to force a reconsideration of his situation, or his words (and silences) may be hammered to fit a pre-existing narrative.

When Thomson rises at midday to give his much-anticipated statement to Parliament, what he says should not matter so much as the reaction he receives.

Indeed it will, and those who do the reacting will be judged accordingly: can Fairfax be trusted to report this issue given that it is a participant? Will there be any follow-up on Heffernan, will Abbott refuse to accept his tainted vote, can a broadsheet newspaper focus on more than one issue ...