Old devils

This blog has long been down on Alby Schultz and Bill Heffernan. With this, the idea that they might make life hard for politicians with more guts and brains than they do would be genuinely astonishing unless you understood where they came from. The whole culture of modern political parties depends on bullying, now that policy is too hard. Civilised disagreements can only be had over impersonal matters; when ego fills the void where substantive issues were, folks are gonna get hurt and those who limp away shrieking are confused with those who give up in disgust.

Labor started it with the idea that caucus decisions could not be departed from, and the culture of the 'rat' for the freethinker who slipped the surly bonds of backroom fixers. The Liberals used to be a lot more subtle in a private school-fragging way until Howard instituted the full Führerprinzip. It's not just the majors: the Democrats did a nice line in passive-aggressive control learned in staffrooms across the country, and those Greens who came out of the various communist organisations love a good pogrom; they can't measure their own progress by trees saved etc., there must be self-criticism sessions for fifth columnists.

Peter Debnam was a big fan of tough dumb campaigning and look where it got him: John Hewson without the charisma. They don't see the link between poor campaigning and poor electoral outcomes. Schultz and Heffernan are frustrated that young Abbott is blowing their last chance, and even more so that he's not consulting them. They don't understand that they are making a Coalition government less likely, not more so; they don't understand why anyone would think that way.

Now you can see why election ad campaigns are so negative - bullying works internally, it has to work on those who are so wishy-washy they can't get involved. If anyone within that party had any misgivings whether or not they'd work, would they speak up? On what basis would anyone kybosh a dull and negative campaign? Who can you persuade that such campaigns don't work, and what proof would be accepted?

Careering

This article from Andrew West has a lot of merit, so long as you don't think about it too much.

The most basic flaw is the assumption that the more money you pay for lobbyists the better the service will be. West also refers to mediocrities pulling in the large dollars, which doesn't fit with notions of cost decreases where the supply (of ex-pollies and staffers, with the prospect of staffers competing against their former bosses) exceeds the demand.

When the Coalition comes to office in NSW next year, one would hope that Labor ministers and staffers get short shrift.

1. West's first point overlooks a reality of particular relevance to Labor and increasing relevance to the Liberals, given their growing reach in areas like western Sydney and the Central Coast. Many labouring jobs and physical trades put such a burden on the body that people who start their working lives at 15 are all but forced into retirement in their forties. It is possible for someone to have done such a job with little to show for it in pension/ superannuation terms, enter Parliament for one term in a marginal seat, and be unemployed again by age 50.

One in four people elected to parliament becomes a minister, and thereby more likely to have the sort of marketable skills in lobbying: a two-term MP may be less marketable as a lobbyist than a staffer with eighteen months' intensive experience in a particular minister's office during the passage of a key piece of legislation.

2, 6 & 7. Well done - and the state-federal pension nexus in super should also be broken.

3. I don't want to pay for crappy ads and junk mail and shouldn't have to pay for them. There is no link between ad spends and market outcomes (in terms of votes won), and no incentive for party officials to improve that link if they have a guaranteed budget. You also end up shunting the kind of party operators you rail against away from public policy into backroom copy writing roles.

4. Let's wait for the outcomes of the experimentation, shall we? This needs further thought.

When I was a Young Liberal I'd have registered in Labor primaries and voted for the worst candidate running, someone who made Steve Fielding look like Pericles. I'd have backed Belinda Neal so hard that she'd have been Leader of her party for the past ten years, and the next ten. I doubt that I'm the only person who has thought of this.

It will be interesting to see whether politicians who have joined political parties and worked their way up through them are willing to vote for a system where future candidates owe little if anything to party structures, and where people who want to be politicians have to raise and spend their own money to fund their political careers (as in the US). The latter of these goes against West's aim of a broader representation of the community in parliament.

5. "... below a certain rank"? Really? I strongly doubt that a politician could return to a career as a police officer, for similar reasons to the military example that West himself gave. The very nature of many public sector jobs becomes impossible once parliamentary politics, with all the public exposure issues that go with it, become involved. Is this an anti-Rudd (former DG of the Qld Cabinet Office) thing?

8. I'm not sure about this, but in reading the example West gave I oppose it. If Roy doesn't perform, he's vulnerable to challenge from those who have the maturity and other qualities that Roy lacks, within the LNP or without.

The LNP have an understanding that sitting MPs will not be challenged, which also applies in the Liberal Party and probably also in the other right-of-centre parties that can actually win seats. This could well make these organisations vulnerable to restraint-of-trade litigation, similar to football players and the salary cap, particularly if you have a weakening of party loyalties as at 4. above.

You also have the phenomenon where people just get sick of politicians. John Howard became Federal Treasurer in 1977, and thirty years later people were just tired of the guy. Howard was of retirement age by then anyway, regardless of any feelings he may have of Relevance Deprivation Syndrome. Andrew Fraser is facing the same phenomenon today: if Anna Bligh is defeated he is the likely candidate to become the next Labor Leader of the Opposition in Queensland, but unless the Langbroek Government is spectacularly inept it is unlikely Fraser will lead his party to government. Likewise, Wyatt Roy is more likely to go the way of Bill O'Chee than, say, Robert Menzies.

9. Boundary changes could disenfranchise perfectly good candidates. Again, a nice idea badly thought out.

Thanks to West and others we face the prospect of much-ballyhooed public lobbying integrity legislation which is so compromised in the passing that it is easy for professionals those targeted to get around. If you think lobbyists work hard in acting for others, how much harder will they work in acting for themselves?

Stand up, Joe

The KOWs want party costings to be slotted into the wider context of the economy, and there's Tony Abbott playing silly buggers over Treasury. If he wants to be in government, Abbott will have to deal with Treasury at some point. Relying on the costings of some accounting firm was dodgy tactics during the election campaign but is starting to look silly afterwards (and, frankly, like some sort of warmed-over Maoism: there is no truth, only your perspective against mine).

Accountancy firms are like Treasury for those of us who aren't in government. Those who want to be in government have to shape up to Treasury and put their proposals into the forecasting mix. You can be as frustrated as you like with the KOWs, you can even resent the fact that they have slipped the surly bonds of party discipline - but the game has changed, and the smarter operators in the Liberal Party know this.

Stand up, Joe Hockey. Stand up for the Liberal Party. Stand up for economic credibility. Take the Liberal Party's figures to the Treasury and put the Liberal Party back in the game, in a way they simply aren't now and won't be the way things are going. Stonewalling didn't work for Will Hodgman and it won't work for Tony Abbott: people will turn away from the stone wall and find something else that needs doing.

Stonewalling is a non-starter, and so is dumping on the KOWs. These are the only tactics open to the so-called leader of the Liberal Party. There is only hope in action. Stand up and lead the way forward: engage with Treasury and the KOWs, rope in that non-National National from the west, and you've got a government. Only you can do it, Joe.

Abbott will never be able to lead a government. Even if you had a majority of twenty seats he'd still be shilly-shallying and ambivalent - and you didn't get a twenty-seat majority, did you, and you won't get closer than this while Abbott is still in office. Punt him, Joe. You're the only chance for a Coalition government, one with you as Prime Minister.

You wrung your hands when Howard steered the Liberal Party into the rocks in 2007: don't make the same mistake again. If you meekly back Abbott this time he'll make you do credibility-destroying stunts over the next two years, twisted by his own bitterness. When you finally get your chance at leadership Abbott, Minchin and Abetz will have so trashed the Liberal brand that it will be two terms back (and you'll be dumped after five). You know it, don't make it harder than it need be already: rip the band-aid off in one go, put Labor on the back foot just as they did by dumping Rudd.

Take on Henry and defend your costings: show him that you've read his report and that you'll give his shopping list more credibility and respect than Rudd, Gillard and Swan have or can. Show the yokel MPs what joined-up Liberal government looks like. Show everyone, for that matter. You are a better man than Abbott, so be the better man; be the person the Liberal Party needs right now, not a truculent worm like the incumbent. If your first task as PM was to win a by-election in Warringah, this need not be such a bad thing.

Don't be a Costello. Don't follow two generations of moderates into the kind of irrelevance I'm often accused of. You could be Prime Minister by the end of August - otherwise Gillard will be.

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

- William Shakespeare Julius Caesar Act IV Scene II

... but you knew that already. Go Joe. You're the Liberals' only hope, and only if you move now.

Spring cleaning

The Liberals should have cleared out the dead wood after losing the 2007 election. They did this in NSW after losing in 1972 and were back in office within three years. During the Hawke-Keating years they did this in dribs and drabs, and were out of power for a decade.

Peter van Onselen revives his reputation as the Liberal Party's favourite stenographer with this:

QUESTIONS are being asked inside the Coalition about poor decision-making that might have cost it the chance to win the election outright.

Whenever PvO uses the passive construction you know he's up to no good.

Late candidate preselections, poor funding for key seats and large-scale campaigns in safe conservative electorates between Nationals and Liberals made Tony Abbott's job of seizing the prime ministership much more difficult than it needed to be ... The Australian has been told, however, that the Liberals and the Nationals spent close to $2 million fighting each other in seven electorates across the country.

Money well spent: beats having the Liberals wring their hands as Labor picks the yokels off one by one, which has been the case at the past ten elections or so.

In the seat of Banks in NSW, which the Labor Party only retained with 51 per cent of the two-party vote, the Liberal candidate, Ron Delezio, told supporters he had only $20,000 with which to campaign, and the party didn't do a direct mailout of postal vote applications.

Liberals also did not direct mail postal vote applications in the key seats of Greenway or Lindsay, giving Labor a considerable edge when those votes are tallied.

The Liberal Party has been eyeing off these seats for twenty years. This is sheer incompetence. Rather than quote such people and protect their anonymity, now is the time to identify the dead wood that will have no future in the next Liberal government.

Abbott is believed to have been furious with the slow candidate selections, something that happened because of factional wrangling.

Ha ha ha! As you live by the factional sword, like Abbott has, so shall you die by the sword.

Lindsay had been held by popular Liberal MP Jackie Kelly for the entirety of the Howard government until Kelly's retirement in 2007. Yet the Lindsay campaign team did not seek her advice during the campaign and Scott admitted to The Australian she had not even spoken to Kelly.

Rightly so: after the Ala Akba Troy Craig debacle at the last election, it would be absurd to go anywhere near Kelly.

The disappointment with the performance of the Liberal campaign in NSW has led some senior Liberals to question whether state director Mark Neeham's position is tenable, with the state election only seven months away. One senior source at state level said: "He has to go because while the state election is hopefully unlosable, we want to win big ... and after a performance like this, how can we have any faith he'll make that happen?"

In NSW, the Liberals had a net gain of only one seat from their 2007 performance, despite the unpopularity of the state Labor government and concerns in western Sydney about Labor's policies on refugees.

Barry O'Farrell will basically run his own campaign, Neeham will perform the sort of mennequin role he has always performed. Each time the Liberals have won office in NSW, first under Askin and then Greiner, the State Director has been sidelined by the parliamentary party leaders. PvO should know that and should've been smart enough to seek it out.

Victorian Liberals are also disappointed with their performance, losing the seats of McEwen and La Trobe to Labor. Liberals thought Labor had reached a "high-water mark" in Victoria at the 2007 election, yet it won two more seats this time around and almost picked up a further two (Dunkley and Aston) ... The poor showing by Liberals is being put down to a home state advantage for Gillard, the unpopularity of Liberal state leader Ted Baillieu and the internal warfare that has broken out since the once-dominant Costello and Kroger faction split.

LaTrobe was lost because Mitch Fifield went and euthanased Jason Wood. The Victorian Liberals is comprised of clowns almost entirely. Their Senate representation would embarrass a suburban council. Tony Smith, Josh Frydenberg and Sophie Mirabella hold safe seats, and are liabilities. Kelly O'Dwyer is the only Federal Liberal MP worth the price of her food. They need another 1989-style cleanout but there's no-one there to do it. No wonder Tony Abbott cites Labor 'civil war' in pitch to independents. He must do this to hope that fissures in his own side - which the KOWs know well - don't swallow him whole and suffer in comparison with Gillard Labor.

In protecting his sources, PvO fails to make the case that the disappointment experienced by the Liberals is down to their failure to get rid of legends-in-their-own-lunchtime who are largely responsible for the party's post-Latham decline. This level of self-delusion among the Liberals needs serious examination, which will yield far bigger stories than is possible by traditional journosphere nonsense like quoting anonymous sources.

Update 25 August: It's worse than anyone could have imagined. If David Clarke really stood between the Liberals and Federal Government, David Clarke must go. Barry O'Farrell has isolated this malevolent scum but Abbott can't confront Clarke except as an act of patricide, not even if everything depended on it.

Lenore Taylor gets the Michelle Grattan Prize for assiduous research leading to the wrong conclusion:

Having ditched the emissions trading scheme because Labor was worried about losing a "carbon tax" election, then assassinating a leader because his credibility was destroyed by ditching the scheme, then thinking a citizens assembly was a good idea, then nearly losing the election anyway, a minority Labor government would most likely have to negotiate with four independents in the lower house and a Greens balance of power in the Senate.

And at least three of the independents appear to want a more ambitious carbon price than the one Labor proposed in the first place. The focus groups didn't predict that.

Never mind the focus groups: if people want to ask us questions, we'll answer them. The problem is the fools who (mis)interpret what we say, as well as others like Lenore Taylor who can't see their misinterpretation and call them fools, lest they lose their steady drip of, um, foolishness, which the journsophere apparently need to keep them in business.

Three reasons why the Liberals can't form government

The Liberals can't form government because the party that dominated Australian politics in the 20th century hasn't made the transition to the 21st. The Liberal Party can't form federal government in 2010 for much the same reasons that it came so close to forming state governments in SA and Tasmania, with one extra:

1. Nick Minchin
2. Eric Abetz
3. Tony Abbott

Yeah, they're all hate figures among the centre-left, what American bloggers call RWDBs (Right Wing Death Beasts). With regard to 'the centre ground' (I might be politically homeless but it doesn't mean I'm alone here), and with regard to established and growing movements such as rural independents and Greens, these guys are impediments to government. They are holding the Liberals back. Winning government will not be possible until they, and what they stand for, are removed from the Liberal Party's offerings.

People who never vote Liberal are every bit as focused on these guys as their fans are. They jeer at them while regarding them as inseparable from the modern Liberal Party. Those who do want to see a Liberal Government will be disappointed this time, but there's only so much disappointment you can handle before you start questioning whether it has to be like this. The only choice for Liberals is either to give up, as I have, or to remove the impediments blocking your party from government. It won't be easy: these guys and their followers are among the few active members the Liberal Party have. Their record is baked into the party's DNA: only time and a new tide of members can consign them to the scrapheap.

Eric Abetz. Abetz has isolated and picked off the moderates in the Tasmanian Liberals one by one. He is now doing the same to the Christian fundamentalists who helped him gain and cement his power, which is why Guy Barnett is bleating about his loss: Barnett isn't big enough to hope Abetz enjoys his thirty pieces of silver.

Abetz is the reason why Tasmania has no Members of the House of Representatives; part of demonstrating one's fealty to Abetz is that those ranted his endorsement must not be more active, more intelligent, more innovative or more charismatic than he is. This is enormously difficult, but it means that the Liberal candidate in the seat which encompasses his state's capital came fourth behind a Labor scion, a Green, and an ex-Greenie who is either a traitor or a moral giant, and who didn't even live in Tasmania ten years ago (and who used to be a member of the Liberal Party).

Abetz is the reason why Tasmania does not have a Liberal state government. After the state's elections last year Will Hodgman was well placed to form a coalition, or some other form of understanding, with the Greens. An overwhelming majority of Tasmanians had voted against the return of a complacent Labor government, but good old Eric would rather have the Liberals out and Labor in than try and work with a political force that must be accommodated to some extent by any party wanting to govern in this century.

Abetz was Workplace Relations spokesman even though he has never hired anyone outside his own parliamentary staff, and what miserable mice they must be. When Tony Abbott was trying to bury WorkChoices, good old Eric was applying the calipers and making it jump. If John Howard had been directly rebutted over a key policy like that (having done exactly that to every Liberal leader who led him), Howard would have flown to Tassie and strangled Abetz with his bare hands. Taking the attitude that he made Abbott and could do what he liked, Abetz ensured that swinging voters in marginal seats wrung their hands over a Liberal vote, and that the Liberal message was obscured in the vital first week of the campaign because Eric wanted to play silly-buggers over an issue he didn't really understand, except in culture-war terms.

Eric Abetz is in total control of the Liberal Party in Tasmania, but it is not clear why Tasmanians put up with him. I have visions of him addressing a Liberal conference in Tassie somewhere, the crowd starts slow-clapping him, they don't stop ... and then there's a series of events that leaves Eric and his loyal retainers running for their lives, like the Ceausescus or the travelling companions of Alexander Pearce.

It's foolish to wait until he retires. The guy won't give up and power like that can only be taken, so rise up liberal Tasmanians and drop him cold. If the Tassie Libs had contributed just one seat to the national total, Labor would be gone. They couldn't because loyalty to Abetz made the party repellent to the state it was established to serve.

Nick Minchin. Hey Minchin, I thought your boy was ill - why aren't you in Adelaide changing bandages, remodelling your house to accommodate a disabled resident, and doing all those things a whittled-down health system can no longer do?

The Liberals had to win this campaign to maintain any semblance of a Minchin legacy. Failure to win this time means the review and at least partial erasure of his legacy. There he was on election night, with that cold smile of a man whose only humour is sarcasm, but as days pass he must know that more than three decades of backroom politics haven't prepared him for the situation before us today.

Minchin's legacy is this: he could have effected a structural separation of Australian telecommunications that would have made for a vibrant and competitive industry, not only within the telcoMinchin, and our economy today is retarded as a result of this lack of vision.

Minchin believed that a large and widespread class of Telstra shareholders would form a political constituency biased toward maximising that company's returns and against public-sector solutions generally. He still believes it, and has encouraged a large chunk of the politico-media complex (e.g. political staffers, lobbyists, journalists) that it is so - but there is no evidence that anyone anywhere votes Liberal on account of their $500 holding in Telstra. It's a phantom class of people, like all those unwed mothers in the '60s who happily gave their illegitimate children away and gave them no further thought: the fact that powerful people held fast to this belief, and scorned those who doubted it, does not make this phantom class any more real.

The Coalition telco policy, such as it was, was a homage to Minchin - and I've already had my say on that. Andrew Robb might pretend there's wriggle room in dealing with the KOWs but, frankly, there isn't; you'd have to scrap the entire policy and start again, and there's no time for that (besides any pragmatism of this sort would Look Weak). At this point Abbott would convert fibreglass batts into optic fibre if it meant he'd become PM, but you know that Abetz or Minchin would pooh-pooh that out of sheer bloody-mindedness.

Bob Katter has always said that a deregulated Telstra would be disastrous for the bush. He's complained long and loud since, and in dealing with such a man the only option is a credible statist solution: if you can bend over for Harradine to save the Liberals from opposition, you can do it for Katter.

I doubt that a privatised Telstra will feature highly on the list of donors to the Liberal Party.

Never mind that Liberal telco policy during Minchin's time and since has been lousy policy, and put the nation at a disadvantage. The contemporary Liberal Party has a long ad inglorious record (which it is perfectly capable of maintaining) in support of lousy policy if there are money and votes for the Liberal Party in it, with the most dog-in-the-manger obstinacy that Minchin, Howard and others mistook for strength and determination. That said, there's no votes in maintaining Minchin's Telstra policy, and no money either.

Why maintain the Minchin policy? Because Uncle Nick will yell at you, that's why. Call you names, say you're not really a Liberal. Eric Abetz might sool his people onto you, too. The only option for the Liberal Party is to put itself into a headspace where Nick 'n' Eric don't call the shots any more.

In Paul Fletcher the Liberals have someone who can't be bluffed by Minchin's command of detail on telco policy. If Fletcher has a free rein to develop policy for the next election, in a way that Tony Smith didn't (and couldn't have taken advantage of, even with totally free rein), then we might see a telco policy that rendered Nick Minchin as irrelevant as all those Postmasters-General who ran the portfolio under Menzies (which is what Conroy's NBNCo does anyway). He won't be as innovative as Conroy but hopefully he may add constructively to what Conroy has done.

This leaves us with one reason why the Liberal Party won't and can't form government:

Tony Abbott. It just isn't fair (you lefties! Stop laughing at once!). Here was a man who was screwed down tight, who plugged and plugged his negative lines while deflecting questions about what he might do. Frustrated by three ex-Nationals. I mean, I ask you. It's like having to scrum down three metres from your try line, there's nothing to do but puuuuuuuush, puuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuussssssshhhhhhhhhhhhh - but sometimes all that sheer grunt, shackled down and blowing smoke, just won't get you anywhere in negotiations requiring finesse and a sense of managing longterm risk.

Some people just can't be impressed by "we'll sort that out after the election" or a boyish grin, like most Liberals are. Abbott might think he's tougher than Rudd and Gillard put together, but Oakeshott would run him ragged and Katter and Windsor would twist his silly head off. He's met his match here: while Truss and Joyce weren't helpful, they aren't the reason why there won't be a Coalition government.

Abbott and co will promise the world with no intention of delivering. Gillard and co will also promise the world, but can be expected to stuff up the delivery but sort of come through. That will be good enough for the KOWs, and it's why they will give the Gillard government first go. Tony Abbott was raised in a house of girls, he would have been taught: ladies first. It might frustrate the hell out of him but there's nothing he can do.

Having squeaked in, Labor will be scrupulous/ terrified. You might even see quality performances from ministers - maybe even from Billy Shorten unless he gets too far ahead of himself. Abbott can only keep the lid on the pressure cooker for so long - by the end of 2012 people will be looking askance at him, beaten by a girl, and start asking questions about whether he's good for that final push then.

He's no good for it now, he's no good for it then, he's just no good. Bye bye, Tony Abbott. You won by one vote and you'll lose by a similar margin. You might fade away like a gay churchy loser in Forestville, or you might melt down like your brother-from-another-mother, that one-man Chernobyl Mark Latham. Either way, you'll only go to the Lodge or Kirribilli House as a guest, like Hewson or Downer, Beazley or Hayden: losers all, but better men than you.

A piece of incredible unfortunateness

Two themes that were fairly minor for the major parties during the election could become very important for Labor in securing government: the whole issue of infrastructure strain in the perimeters of the capital cities, and broadband.

Labor can establish that they've at least thought about these issues. The Coalition have put their cards on the table and it's a busted flush, they're not going to come up with anything convincing in the coming fortnight or so. Gillard is an experienced negotiator, from her days as a plaintiff lawyer and an advisor to an Opposition Leader, and in managing unions as a Minister. Abbott is accustomed to dealing with people as mendicants, because once he recognises them as peers his competitive instincts come out. Windsor in particular has a chip on his shoulder over being patronised by smart alecks from the city, and he and Katter won't take a backward step. They have the capacity to do to Abbott's hopes and dreams what the Man from Ironbark did to the barber's shop.

A bloc of independents is enough of a contradiction to make your head hurt. Even though the KOW (Katter, Oakeshott and Windsor) came out of the Nationals, they have no idea how to handle these guys. Katter worked with the Coalition over the mining tax (Katter's electorate includes Mt Isa and other mining towns) but it's doubtful that any but Robb and Minchin learned much about that process. With the prospect of government at their very feet, the Coalition has nothing to offer but this and that. Abbott will talk a good game about gutting competition policy, but the KOW - and that bloke who beat Wilson Tuckey (yes!), no doubt - can spot a bullshitter. Gillard won't sacrifice productivity policy but will offer pork in sufficient volumes to put a credible case. Abbott will offer them bridges and roads and other dinky unconnected bits of infrastructure, but the NBN shows that he can't do joined up government (another reason to pole-axe Tony Smith).

This period of negotiation is the point where Abbott cracks. He's held it together, spouting his lines and riding his bike, but this period calls for nerves of steel and the flexibility of water. It calls for leadership in his own right rather than being a packaged product. If Abbott doesn't make it this time, he has to be in a position to keep up the pressure and exploit weaknesses among the incumbents at a later time, like Curtin in 1940-41. Something tells me it's now or never for Abbott, and now that Gillard is in her element I think she'll put the stronger case to the KOW, A. Crook from WA, her old mucker from Slater & Gordon and the underrated Andrew Wilkie. Abbott, meanwhile, has to keep his party together while it strains at the leash of so-close-but-yet-so-far.

The situation we find/put ourselves in will more likely be the making of Gillard than Abbott, which is why this is a disgraceful suck from another old journo who has outlived his relevance.

Mind you, who knows how things will pan out? Did you predict this? Looks like I'm being represented in Federal Parliament by a stuffed shirt: gotta laugh, eh.