Seeking refuge

Peter Costello has produced another of those columns that give some comfort both to those who admire him, and those who don't; which have at their core a desire for self-justification, with attempts to disguise this with a bit of partisan swingeing. This one is about border protection.

If they are admitted to Christmas Island and the passengers are successful in their claims to enter the country, the number of boats and the number of passengers will only increase ... The volume of the traffic is in direct proportion to the chances of successful entry.

The number of people seeking to enter Australia by whatever means is not solely a function of how easy it is to get in.

Costello does himself no favours by ignoring the push factors, reasons that cause people to abandon their homes and communities in search of better lives. The sheer hardship of a seaborne journey with internment along the way, not to mention persecution beforehand, suggests that this is not done for the light and transient reasons that might cause Australians to seek "a change of scene" from time to time.

It is also true that those who arrive by boat are judged to have legitimate grounds for refugee or asylum-seeker status 70-85% of the time. By Costello's own standards, this alone should mean Australia would be inundated by refugee/asylum applications. Why would anyone arrive by plane, where refugee applications are much less successful? Why would people consent to stay in refugee camps, where dithering bureaucracies are flat out providing food and shelter let alone information on emigration and professional processing of applications? Why would anyone stay at home and suffer persecution from a hostile government? Back in the day, Costello used to talk about private enterprise and individual effort.

One day, someone is going to come ashore off a cruise liner or a merchant ship and claim asylum, and the whole sea-versus-air distinction will be seen for the nonsense that it is. Either your claim is legitimate or it isn't.

Costello is trying to create the impression that any issue not mentioned by him is unworthy of his gaze - yet it is also possible that he has overlooked it from a vantage point no less comfortable than those he ascribes to his opponents. It's one thing to follow a party line in government, particularly when it affects issues outside your portfolio; to stick to the same line in Opposition suggests a lack of perspective, an unwillingness to embrace new ideas, and an inability to read a popular mandate.

Critics of the Howard government complained that its policy was too harsh, inhumane and brutal. If only the government were more welcoming, they suggested, the whole problem could be managed. The claims were of course nonsense - the kind of claims only people with no responsibility for the outcome could make from their comfortable vantage points.

The second sentence reveals Costello's view that nobody outside of government can legitimately criticise policy. If you think like that, you've been in Canberra too long.

The fact that Australia has an immigration program at all means that, to some extent, this country and its government welcomes new migrants. In tourism and other promotional campaigns (including the response to in 2005 tsunami) we present ourselves as a generous and inviting people. Our history is one of accepting migrants in significant numbers. Against all that, the idea that we might not be welcoming to some people is incongruous.

When presented with incongruous information the first temptation is to ignore it. When you have experience of overcoming insurmountable odds, you will be tempted to try your luck.

The most humane way to assist asylum seekers make claims in Australia would be to use Qantas to airlift claimants from Sri Lanka or Iraq or Afghanistan direct to Christmas Island. That way no one would have to board a boat and everyone would get their asylum claim dealt with in an Australian territory.

But I have never heard anyone argue for this.

This is a standard Costelloism: set up a straw man and blame others for not helping prop it up. He's trying to ignore those who fly to Australia (on whatever airline), not to Christmas Island but Sydney, Melbourne or elsewhere, and who either blend into the community or who seek refugee/asylum status and fail. His argument is the weaker for that, a deficiency that could have been remedied with less straw-man work.

If an airlift is out of the question, the next best thing to do is to stop the sea trade and insist all claims for refugee status be made offshore, with humanitarian visas granted to those who have observed the rules and waited for lawful entry.

The next best thing to do, as I said earlier, is to redirect foreign policy to address the movement of people around the region. This will also improve the speed of information flow - and hence of applications (successful or otherwise), which will reduce internment expenses (monetary and otherwise).

There are people still interned in our region who were forced to flee the Vietnam war and the idea of getting in line behind those who have waited for decades is appalling, to refugees/asylum-seekers and those who sympathise with them. There is no queue to jump.

Why "humanitarian visas", anyway? Why not straight-up, come-and-join-us get-a-job residency? I'm not going to accuse Costello of callousness for proposing this, just a dull-witted lack of imagination of what refugees'/asylum-seekers' predicaments must be like.

Hannie Rayson even wrote a play designed to show how ministers in [the Howard] government had connived in the tragic deaths [of those aboard SIEV-X].

This isn't some by-the-by, he's been waiting years for this: nursing the grudge and burnishing it until he could sling it back - not just at Rayson directly but at all those Age readers who helped stage Two Brothers, who paid to see it, who wrote articles on it in The Age, etc. Hopefully he's gotten it off his chest now and won't descend into some Nixonian abyss of bitterness over this. Hopefully he's not there already. It wasn't that good a play and persists only for political reasons.

No Australian minister would welcome having to deal with this issue. There is no easy or soft solution. The public has an instinctive understanding of that. The object must be to dissuade people from attempting to reach Australia by unauthorised boats.

Stuff the boats. People who are not acceptable to this country must not come, and everyone else is most welcome to - as we say in Australia - have a go. That's what the objective must be: part of a consistent and overarching policy on immigration, tourism, defence and foreign policy. To use such language might make you sound like Kevin Rudd, but he's not exactly putting such a framework together.

It's just a pity that Costello was not big enough to see, let alone pull off, such a policy. Neither is Rudd: this is one for the statesmen. This is one tragedy you can sheet home to the man, and the others whom he leaves behind in the various "camps" from which Canberra correspondents report.

Sussex Street Circus

The journosphere has focused on the hapless Nathan Rees as Premier of NSW, how unpopular he and his government are, and how they have a kind of reverse Midas touch where everything they touch turns to dross. This is seen as some sort of contrast to the all-conquering feds. This reflects poor framing of the issue, and poor framing will make it harder for people to understand important features of our political system and what looks likely come from it.

However unwittingly, it is Imre who, like an old-school journalist, parades his contacts while keeping them hidden from outsider view. People who care about NSW Labor politics can guess who Imre's contacts are, I can't be bothered: it's just pathetic that he's the world's only Glenn Milne wannabe.

A SENIOR Labor official in NSW was recently heard to observe that "Nathan Rees is one bad Newspoll away from a crisis".

This could be it.

In all pertinent respects, this poll is as bad as those that were seized upon early last year by party and union bosses at Sussex Street who were bent on fatally damaging Morris Iemma - and ended up inflicting more damage on the Labor brand in NSW than anybody since Jack Lang in the 1930s.

The first three paragraphs of Imre's story tell you the real problem with it. Rather than focus on Rees - who never promised anything more than he has delivered - the real focus here should be on the geniuses who comprise the once-mighty NSW ALP machine. The rest of Imre's article rehashes every other article over the past year, another example of zero-value Murdoch content.

"Whatever you might say about the folks at Sussex Street" - what about that they, rather than Rees, are the real story here? These are the geniuses who thought that too much Bob Carr was barely enough. They are the same people who thought that Iemma was an ideal replacement - and when proven wrong, still think they have the right to pop the bonnet and tinker with the engine while considering changing driver. These are the same geniuses who think there's mileage in taking Imre out for a Chinese meal now and then.

The folks at Sussex Street are clowns. All of them.

If Rees is going to avoid a tap on the shoulder, he needs a big policy win, or a spectacular few weeks in parliament between now and Christmas ...

There are no "policy wins". Anyone who knows anything about State politics knows that, and it does no credit to a parliamentary roundsman to pretend otherwise. Nobody gives a damn about "parliamentary theatre".

This can't help but affect the coming federal election, especially given that it will occur before the next state election. There will be a lot of nonsense about state issues interfering with federal issues, when in reality the NSW ALP will stuff up the most promising political environment for Labor in a generation.

NSW has lost a seat in the redistribution; it's a Labor seat. In the olden days, NSW ALP hard-heads (the sort of people who wouldn't piss on Imre) would sort something out and chuck out some dead wood. Instead, the clowns at head office are being upstaged by a jobsworth with a severe case of born-to-rule syndrome: the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia has had to take time out of her schedule to sort this out.

Mr Ferguson served six years in state politics before joining Federal Parliament. It is highly unlikely he will ever serve in the ministry.

You can understand why they thought of him as political roadkill: but did they not count on the Deputy Prime Minister? What else are these clowns not counting on?

Barry O'Farrell has rebuilt the NSW Liberal state office largely in his own image: he's a former State Director, knows where the bodies are buried. If Turnbull keeps going the way he's going then O'Farrell will basically use the federal poll as a test run for the State Election in 2011. Certainly, the money coming into Liberal head office is predicated on state success, and any money coming to the ALP to curry favour with the federal government will go to national head office rather than Sussex Street.

Going by Antony Green's assessment of the next Federal election, let's look at the NSW seats and see just how badly the Sussex Street clowns could balls this up:

• Macarthur: had Pat Farmer been re-elected under the traditional Liberal Reverence For Dead Wood rule, Labor would have a real chance at that seat. Russell Mathieson is a serious candidate and all Labor have are the deadshit councillors they always run in that area. Prediction: Labor FAIL


• Macquarie: Louise Markus will win that, factional squabbling and the Greens will do for Labor. Prediction: Labor FAIL


• Robertson: Belinda Neal. Need I say more? She'll do enough to sail past preselection with the most unlikely Princess Di act ever, but will run out of puff into the new year as her husband no longer has the heft to pull her out of problems she causes. The Libs will choose a local bloke who wears polyester ties with shortsleeve shirts and a $10 haircut. Neal will court the national media, which Coasties don't give a damn about, doing glossy pics that make her look like a rouged-up front-end loader. Prediction: Labor FAIL


• Gilmore: Should be there for the taking, but isn't. Prediction: Labor FAIL


• Paterson: Like Gilmore, except you'll have to pry the seat out of Bob Baldwin's cold dead hands and the Hunter Valley ALP are even more useless than Sussex Street. Besides, anyone who's any good will go after Joel Fitzgibbon rather than Bob. Prediction: Labor FAIL


• Hughes: Oh come on, the redistribution has given a chunk of southwestern Sydney to Labor and Danna Vale is retiring. Even David Hill could win this seat now. Prediction: Labor could still stuff this up.


• Cowper: Held by the Nats, but demographics favour Labor if the economy stays on an even keel. Prediction: Labor could still stuff this up.


• Calare: Held by the Nats, a strong local candidate backed by a well-regarded state government could tip this into Labor's column: but where would they get some of that? Prediction: Labor FAIL


• Lindsay: Might be interesting if Whimpering Troy Craig stays out of it, otherwise it might not be. Prediction: Labor could still stuff this up.


• Bennelong and Eden-Monaro: Will be quarantined from Sussex Street influence. Libs will run no-hopers. Prediction: Labor will not stuff these up.


• Wentworth: Nah. Doesn't swing. Labor's next candidate is likely to be a hack rather than a McKew-style game-changer. Prediction: Labor FAIL

Labor will go backwards in NSW at the 2010 election: you read it here first. Like Andrew Peacock in 1984 it is possible that Turnbull could perform creditably against a first-term Labor government - but only within NSW, apparently.

Dennis Ferguson

Perhaps now it may be possible to speak of this person and the issues surrounding him without being part of a lynch mob.

Dennis Ferguson has spent most of his adult life in Queensland prisons, convicted six times of sexually abusing children. He does not participate in rehabilitation programs. He attempted to settle in communities in Queensland which included children, and was hounded out of them. All of a sudden he popped up in a public housing facility in Sydney, where he was hounded out again, and was last heard of at Coogee and in a homeless shelter.

For the first time since 1840, New South Wales has accepted responsibility for a convicted felon from another jurisdiction. Yes, he has to live somewhere and it was clear that the Queensland government found it difficult to locate him in any community within that state without a storm of protest.

He did not have to live in NSW, and was not obliged to be a government responsibility by being accommodated in this state's public housing. He was not entitled, let alone obliged, to vault ahead of others in the long and time-intensive queue for public housing. Those who advocate more low-cost housing in Sydney have a harder time of it because of this stunt.

Ferguson's lack of remorse and his lack of rehabilitation means that children in the community wherever he might live are in danger. This is the pattern he has set and that pattern is unbroken. It is true that he has served his sentence, but this is no reason why he should be given the benefit of the doubt going forward. It is those people living in the community, going forward, who deserve the benefit of the doubt: Ferguson represents a real risk that children in that community might be abused.

There was a time when the rights of a freed convict might have trumped those of others in the community, and no amount of jowl-wobbling outrage from lawyers insisting that procedures known and practicable exclsusively by them vincit omnes will or can change that.

There was a time when sexual abuse of children was tolerated more than it is now. Those times have changed: people are acutely sensitive to the possibility of child sexual abuse to the point where children no longer play in the street or have unstructured play time to the extent that they did. The very prospect of child sexual abuse has caused far-reaching changes in the work practices of those who deal with children, even on a voluntary basis. It erodes people's faith in one another, and even in religious institutions that have not cottoned on to the implications of child sexual abuse as a serious, faith-destroying issue for people today.

Rehabilitating offenders and having them return to the community after their sentence is over is one of those issues that could always be done better. To the extent that it does happen, public housing communities perform an unheralded role in quietly facilitating this. It would be a mistake to assume that all public housing facilities contain all necessary facilities and goodwill required to effect prisoner rehabilitation; more could certainly be done generally, but for an unreconstructed and unrepentant offender there is little to be done. It is cynicism to use the publicity surrounding Ferguson to lobby for more resources: the worst type of cynicism, one where the means won't justify or be justified by the end.

Ferguson can only be accommodated in a community without children. He does not have the right to live where he pleases; the rights of children to grow into communities free of likely harrassment trumps those of this recidivist. Prison is one such; if there are others, then Ferguson must go there. Any community with children in it is a community of which Ferguson is unfit to be part. If there is no such community in NSW, then the NSW government can take no further responsibility for Ferguson and he must be returned to Queensland. If he is harrassed from Coolangatta to the Cape then this is an indictment of Queensland.

It was wrong of the Rees Government to think it was clever helping solve a problem for their neighbours by shunting this serial offender into a Liberal electorate (while I have no proof that this is its motivation, such is the position of the NSW government that nobody should believe any denials).

Fancy taking on a problem that couldn't be solved! What clowns.

The slow tsunami

Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, amongst other places, will see cause thousands of people to seek better lives elsewhere. The Australian government should be more proactive in addressing this problem.

When the tsunami struck in 2005 the then Australian government was extraordinarily generous to stricken nations and communities. It's not a snark against the Howard government to suggest that it was proactive policy: the more it could do to stabilise those communities the less likely any transmigration would occur, and thus it was less likely that Australia would be besieged with migration and asylum applications. It seems to have worked (in a national-policy sense rather than a party-political sense): the Howard government went to the 2007 election claiming responsibility for having stemmed a flow of asylum-seekers and refugees.

What has to happen now is the recognition that it is in Australia's foreign policy interest to do all it can to avoid, minimise and resolve conflicts that cause social displacement.

If Tamils believe they can no longer live in Sri Lanka after the defeat of Tamil Eelam, as appears to be the case, this is a foreign policy issue for Australia.

It's one thing for Australians to participate in military action with allied forces and what passes for the national government within Afghanistan; but there is an additional and distinct interest for Australia to limit emigration from the AfPak region. The Howard government was wrong to close the immigration desk at the Australian Embassy in Islamabad, but it was also wrong to limit it to a passive administrative role, waiting for applications. Instead, a role exists there for a proactive person, working with local communities and international agencies, to limit the number of people who feel unable to live in their own country and compelled to seek refuge/ asylum elsewhere.

Rather than reacting to events and displaying the limited focus that might have made him an effective staffer, Stephen Smith should be proactive and start wading in to these disputes. Backbench MPs seeking either promotion or a post-retirement diplomatic post should start volunteering to act as emissaries on the ground, in much the same role that Richard Holbrooke plays on behalf of the US government.

Such a role would involve tough and dirty work though, dangerous but hopefully not thankless, which may explain why nobody appears to have put their hand up for it. The sort of role that Alexander Downer is playing in Cyprus is a model for what could happen here.

This isn't about Australia being a global do-gooder; it's about solving a problem for Australia in a way that minimises cost to Australia.

This isn't about being a global cynic either, just focusing on stopping the outflow of refugees/ asylum-seekers (as with Rear Admiral Thomas' trip to Sri Lanka). A government responsible for war and social dislocation on a mass scale can hardly be relied upon to cut a deal to block the reffos (short of slaughtering them, perhaps).

Australian foreign policy should be about maintaining strong relationships with stable countries in our region; a country with mass social dislocation is not stable and incapable of providing much in the way of trade, pro-Australia votes in international NGOs, or anything else really.

There is a increasing understanding that the problems of our neighbours are our problems too, and that we need not consider ourselves obliged to sit and wait until the problem ends up within our borders, however they might be defined. The fact that there are thousands upon thousands of people throughout the world who'd like to come here, more people than we feel we can accommodate in a short time; that is our problem. Countries like Indonesia have their own refugee problems. Countries like Australia can do the hair-shirt rhetoric of "we decide who comes to this country" (this is what John Howard will most be remembered for in fifty years' time - discuss), but we need rhetoric to resolve complex social and international issues.

Far from being nakedly self-interested in seeking to solve displacement problems before they hit our shores, and without pretending to have the means to enforce "gunboat diplomacy", Australia could develop a reputation for helping bring about practical solutions to problems that cause social and political dislocation throughout the Asia-Pacific. We can overcome perceptions of self-centredness or blithe racism through ongoing, active on-the-ground diplomacy, practical action to prevent exoduses.

If we have to build a school here or a hospital there, this is better than having to build detention centres here.

This is the kind of foreign policy we could have if we didn't have such muppets, like Smith and Bishop, running the country's foreign policy. It's what could happen if Rudd wasn't so starstruck by bit-part acting in big-power politics (which is part of foreign policy, but need not be all of it).

This sort of engagement would also work its way through other areas of society and help avoid ignorant nonsense like this. Our options ought not be limited to one poorly thought out and morally expensive policy versus another. It is not so appalling being an Indonesian, or a Sri Lankan for that matter - people locked up on Christmas Island don't have the option of showing how well they could integrate with the Australian community, until they are dumped in it following successful "processing". The whiteness thing may be fairly levelled against Howard but it seems irrelevant when levelled against Rudd.

I agree that the distinction between people who arrive by boat and those who arrive by other means is bogus. Frankly, I would like to see "plane people" sent to detention centres to mix it with genuine refugees/ asylum-seekers in order to get them past their self-indulgence. I would like to see refugees/ asylum-seekers "earn their keep" by doing the sort of agricultural work Australians seem reluctant to do. You may say I'm a dreamer, etc.

A little quirky

Dr Peter Phelps has hit the headlines again for all the wrong reasons. For someone with so much experience of political campaigning and media, he regularly makes the cardinal error of backroom advisors: he makes himself the story.

That said, this is a poor article. You have to get two-thirds of the way down to find that Turnbull's office received the email in question rather than generated it - none of us would wish to be judged by the emails we received. Matthew Franklin should have quoted Phelps' email more fully up front than he apparently did, explained who Phelps is in relation to Opposition staff and his background (yes, including his attempt to shirtfront Mike Kelly on "the Nuremberg defence" in 2007). If this is your idea of valuable content, Mr Murdoch, your paywall proposal is in trouble.

"You don't get news stories by trying to change perceptions, you get them by reinforcing stereotypes," said the email, penned by Peter Phelps, media adviser to opposition cabinet secretary Michael Ronaldson.

I have always hated the neologism "penned" but it's particularly inappropriate here: emails are not written with a pen, Matthew. Yes, I'm being a smart-alec but so were you by implying that the email had been written by Turnbull or one of his staff.

What follows here is not an assumption that Franklin has quoted Phelps fully, or fairly summarised his contentions. Where quotation marks have been used I will assume that they come directly from Peter Phelps' email and that Phelps himself wrote them, however inconvenient it may be for him to admit it: Franklin may be a hypemongering fool but let's assume he's honest.

It's precisely at the point where the stereotypes fail that you get real news. You can get through life with your stereotypes if they work for you: you don't need to read a newspaper at all if you live in a world where your stereotypes exactly match reality. While it's true that lazy journalists basically write stories that fit their stereotypes, it's also true that readership of newspapers that engage in this are in decline. The idea of the mainstream media as the conduit to the people (the stereotype, if you will) is unsustainable. It may be that the Rudd Government is among the last to be elected by courting "media proprietors".

People turn to the media for information as to why those stereotypes no longer hold, or situations that are so broad and so fluid that stereotypes are hard to establish in the first place (property prices are an example of this).

Some of us read more widely than the Australian mainstream media can provide in order to keep ahead of settled opinion that may not be appropriate; we might not be many, but we're not an "elite" and we used to be the very sort of people newspaper proprietors built their businesses around. There are more of us in marginal seats than you might realise, and by refusing to be patronised by dumb media we are regarded as "elusive" by both that same dumb media and those no brighter who second-guess them.

The stereotype is that the Rudd Government is doing a good job, and that Malcolm Turnbull is stumbling from one crisis to the next. The stereotype is that Labor is stronger than the Coalition on the economy, the environment, and all those other issues that change votes. If those stereotypes hold the Coalition won't win, can't win the election, Peter. You have to bust the stereotypes. This may mean that Glenn Milne might not want to lunch with you, but that need not be a great loss.

Stories worth pursuing should cover: "Fat cat public servants not caring about taxpayers, pollies with snouts in the trough, special interest groups getting undeserved handouts from tax taken from hard-working Aussies, a favoured pro-Labor contractor who seems to be getting all the work for a particular job etc," the email said.

The first thing that came to mind when I read this was the bipartisan support for polluters getting compensation under the CPRS.

The media might lap this stuff up, but the question is not what's in it for them: the question is, what's in it for the Coalition to point this out? There has to be a clear implication that the Coalition would do things differently, and better. Michael Baume wittered and jibbered away for a decade on this "wastewatch" stuff without shifting a single vote. Same with Labor: nobody recoiled from the Coalition at the last election (or the one before that, etc.) because some minister spent $20,000 on lunch. No such implication can be sustained without a clear policy directive from Turnbull himself about clean and transparent government, or using his backstory for good (e.g. "I'm so rich I don't need inducements").

In other words: policy, Peter, is what is needed here. Yes, Labor might pull it apart - but if you're scared of Labor you shouldn't contest elections at all (which is the position Peter Dutton appears to be taking).

As to stereotypes, Canberra fat cats (elected or not, Labor or Liberal) squandering tax dollars is politics as usual. Politics as usual means the incumbent government is likely to be returned. If the incumbent government is returned the media will go on as it has, but the Liberal Party will suffer, Peter (ultimately I think it will be for the best, but that's another debate to be had later).

"While policy discussions are nice, the simple fact is that in opposition, the majority of our successful news stories are going to be ones which are a little quirky and which draw the attention of journos."

For the Federal Opposition, policy discussions are "nice" in the way that it's "nice" to have a blood transfusion should you ever find yourself bleeding to death.

When an opposition releases policy (whether in the form of a speech, a discussion paper, an online forum or whatever) it is inviting people to consider how the country could be run differently, and better, than it is now. It dares the incumbents to assert both that a) things are as good as they can be, and b) that you can rely on the incumbents to make things better. Rudd himself and other senior members of his government get rattled when they have to defend themselves: putting the agenda back on the government would seem like a smart move for the Liberals.

Depends what you mean by a "successful news stories", though - successful simply in getting into the paper/being mentioned on electronic media at all? The Rudd Government shows that where it has nothing to say, it says nothing: the Howard Government also did this to effect when required. Compare and contrast with the dog-and-pony stunts of Stephen Fielding that have made him a national punchline (and even if they have raised his profile, he's not a serious candidate for government either).

A story that "draw[s] the attention of journos" is not enough for anyone other than the journos: some might ask you hard questions about policy that cannot be simply brushed away, followed up later by accusations of bias. Most of them won't ask hard questions: but all of them will report a failure to address a simple and relevant question as to how a policy proposal might (not) work. Yes, policy: everything else has been tried.

The definition of a successful news story should be one that positions the Liberal Party ahead of Labor as the most suitable government: not just one that creeps into a dying organ and is gone from sight and mind the day after it runs. Why bother with journos when you could be, should be appealing to voters?

Q: What do you think about Liberal policy?

A: I think it would be a great idea - and, in the current environment, a little quirky.

None out of three

The next election will be called at some point within the coming year. It's becoming clear that the three issues for that election will be climate change, the economy and refugees. The Liberal Party is floundering on all three. On none of the key issues of the day can the major opposition party convince anyone but its rusted-on supporters that it has a better policy than that of the government. It has no basis to win the next election.

On climate change, Labor's policies (if you can call them that) on carbon trading and the Murray River is inferior to that shepherded by Environment Minister Turnbull to the last election. Turnbull can't normally be accused of lacking confidence in himself, but he should be more assertive on those positions. Even though they were rejected by the voters, those positions represent the kind of political groundedness (I can't think of a better word either) that a five-year blow-in just doesn't have: that kind of groundedness would be an antidote to the perceptions arising from Grech. The fact that those policies came through under Howard would have been enough to fend off disquiet from within the Liberal Party, and could yet be. Oh well.

On the economy, debt is a slow-burning issue as we saw in the 1990s. It wasn't enough to turf Labor in 1990, and it wasn't enough to prevent Labor getting back in '93, but by 1996 it was a dead weight that Labor was unable to shake. The same might happen this time: by the middle of the decade government debt might be a huge issue, but it was never enough to send Labor spiralling out of contention for the coming poll. Not yet, not enough - Whitlam had to work on his economic death-wish, as long as Rudd and Swan are perceived to be doing their best then they'll be right. Even a big infrastructure spend won't cruel Labor's poll standing if it sounds reasonably responsible.

Why has Turnbull sat on all those tax reform proposals that he sprayed Costello with in 2005? Why is he allowing Ken Henry to outflank him on tax reform - and worse, sending only dickheads like Abetz and Ronaldson to question Henry?

On refugees, anyone can "call for an inquiry" - it's the mark of a political amateur, if not a pissant, to call for an inquiry without knowing where it might lead or what it might recommend. Every other official inquiry into Australia's refugee intake, including those commissioned by the Howard government, has concluded that mandatory detention is (I paraphrase) stupid, counterproductive, barbaric and absurdly costly. It is doubtful that a Turnbull-commissioned inquiry would conclude much differently, more doubtful that they'd deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Turnbull can't convincingly turn back the clock to hardline Howard-era policies. Nor can he come out and say that refugees have the very sort of tenacity, initiative and guts that we want in this country, and that the boat/plane dichotomy is nebulous. The latter has the potential to snooker Rudd; he looked shaky on this question but the Liberals are in the business of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory at the moment.

The Liberals can't create a clear difference from Labor on any of the big issues, and it's hard to see where any distinction might come from on the smaller issues - the Liberals have no Kate Lundy or Lindsay Tanner daring to grapple with big issues poorly understood. You might expect Greg Hunt to chart a different course, but he seems to be following the Peter Garrett route into docile oblivion.

Malcolm Turnbull has misled Liberal supporters with his claim that he could put them into, or within striking distance of, government at the first election after the 2007 loss. A barely competent government can only get less so in its second term, especially if rewarded with the big majority that appears likely: an incompetent opposition could stumble around indefinitely.

Even on telecommunications, a second-order issue handled supposedly by the Liberals' best policy-political brain - the party's position is a mess. A ragged defence of an indefensible status quo, championing the environment that was used as a picnic for American carpet-baggers and saying nothing about what telecommunications could be for this country - this is the worst strategic ineptitude since the rise of SA's Olsen Government. Minchin hasn't laid a glove on a vulnerable minister, and don't get me started on Abbott.

Liberals should not have accepted being put in a position where they could not put forward coherent and credible positions on the major issues of the day. They have not done the hard work in articulating what such positions might be, and how best to outwit a government that can be rattled if only it had an opposition worth the name. The quietism that led to victory remains in defeat. Because they haven't done this work, and because they've accepted less than the best (i.e. they've been conditioned by Howard to cop whatever they're bloody well given, and smile for the cameras), Liberals have nobody to blame but themselves.

Fly away Peter

Updates to previous posts:

Update to post of 3 Oct: Dutton is starting to overplay his hand, it would seem. Gutless little prima donna! No self-respecting organisation should have to put up with this treatment, not from someone who has taken more than he has given back.

If he's such a scrapper, if he really was PM material, he'd fight for his political career. He'd take on beef-witted yokels like McIver, Slipper and Somlyay and leave such a trail of carnage through the LNP that it would have to be fundamentally reorganised. Stamping one's foot like Veruca Salt is not on.

The Rudd Government is vulnerable on issues like health, but I suspect it will take Liberal Health Ministers in NSW and WA a few years to establish credibility in this area. Right now, any exchange in Parliament - an irrelevance that only Annabel Crabb and "parliamentary theatre" junkies care about - would go like this:

The Shadow Minister for Health (Mr Dutton): Would the Minister inform the House about [very serious health issue, highly embarrassing to government]?

The Minister for Health (Ms Roxon): Oh yeah well at least I fancy my chances at preselection.

Guffaws from government benches, such wit! Squeals of delight from Annabel Crabb and Christian Kerr that their next columns have been written for them and they can get to the Holy Grail early, Michelle Grattan starts working into the night to give this some gravitas and fails, debate continues in a similar vein other issues until House adjourns.

Update to post of 6 Oct: Peter Costello has thrown his "weight" into this debate. First, there's the learned helplessness that catapulted him into the Lodge. Then there's the undergraduate "boo-ringgg!", in which he unwittingly invites comparisons with the next-biggest reform of its type, the GST. In describing the carbon credit exchange he sounds like a horseman out of Banjo Paterson trying to explain the motor car.

The thing about the bet is not just that it's a straw man (as if it won't change after the event - preparations always change after the event). It completely destroys the idea that Peter Costello was fiscally prudent. Talking about gambling big money like that also goes down well with abstemious Liberal voters in Melbourne's conservative eastern suburbs, and with anti-gambling campaigners like his brother. Way to go out: trash what little you ever stood for. You've really set up Fifield, too.

Worst of all is the flat-out denial of any need to deal with the issues surrounding Copenhagen until they come at us after the event: it's that engagement which must start before and during Copenhagen, so that our political system is better able to develop a comprehensive Australian response that doesn't cause or lead to social and economic upheaval. The whole idea of the climate change issue is that you prepare for events before they happen, not afterwards.