By ABC's Marius Benson Thursday 1 January 2015

Photo: The earnest hope of the Abbott Government as it steps gingerly into 2015 is that the new year will be as unlike 2014 as possible. (AAP: Lukas Coch)

If a "ragged" year saw the Government reaching for the reset button in December, will another bad 12 months see them turning to the eject button, asks Marius Benson.

The earnest hope of the Abbott Government as it steps gingerly into 2015 is that the new year will be as unlike 2014 as possible.

Whether they will succeed is unknowable, but the balance of evidence indicates that the coming year is likely to see the current downward trajectory confirmed rather than reversed.

The old year began with promise and promises - open for business, adults in charge, governing for all, tough but fair economic management. It ends with the Government looking with surprise and disappointment at a political path that has seen the glory days immediately post-election transformed into poll figures that through the year had the Government trailing Labor by significant margins.

The troubles of 2014 saw Tony Abbott hitting reset buttons at the end of the year, policies trimmed, the ministry reshuffled and his own office rejigged. If the Government's fortunes don't improve over the next 12 months, December 2015 could see that final month regain its recent standing as the political "killing season".

Andrew Robb, the Trade Minister, put his finger on a key political truth when he was reviewing the defeat of the Coalition government in Victoria in November - and explaining why the federal government could not be blamed for that loss. The polls, he told Barrie Cassidy on Insiders, had been running against the state government for a long time and he knew, as a former campaign director, that when that pattern is set it won't be changed in the short term or in an election campaign.

Exactly the position you are in now, said Barrie Cassidy. "What do you mean?" asked a genuinely puzzled Robb. When it was pointed out that the Abbott Government had been in a polling trough for a long time Robb laughed a little uneasily and said there was a long, long way to go till polling day. True enough, but if there is to be a change of fortunes where will it come from?

On policy there has been some change. The paid parental leave policy, the leader's call, the signature policy, is friendless, diminished and fading from view. A tax review will provide a basis for a rethinking of the tax system but the Government has already ruled out changes to superannuation taxes and the GST and other key areas in this term. The temporary 2 per cent levy on top incomes is held up as evidence that the Government is spreading the pain in its measures to bring spending and revenue into line.

But the overall measures, like cutting family tax benefits, the GP co-payment and fuel indexation hit low and middle incomes hardest, because high incomes don't rely on government support in those areas. Voters do not believe the pain is being evenly shared, because it is not. John Hewson put the impact on lower income households of the May budget at 10 per cent and more, while high incomes suffered a temporary sting of just 2 per cent on incomes.

The announced changes of policy could bring a change of view from the voters but the Government shows no sign of taking significant measures to look at taxing assets or superannuation differently - changes that could address the unfairness charge.

In fact, on New Year's Eve the newest member of the federal ministry, Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, was repeating the Government's determination to stay on the course it has set. He told Simon Santow on AM: "We are very conscious that we need to improve our message next year ... I understand is that some of the reforms have not been popular, but that doesn't mean they haven't been right. And it is our responsibility and our opportunity to convince the Australian people why we believe we are on the right path going forward."

Mr Frydenberg and other Government representatives point out that the Howard government was at times as far behind and still managed to come back. But many governments who have been trailing have not come back. Just ask Denis Napthine.

In addition to selling the policies that are still in play, Mr Abbott stresses the policy achievements of his first 15 months: the boats stopped, the carbon tax scrapped, the mining tax gone and then a medley of references to repairing the roads and the budget. The boats issue has been a plus, but its importance is likely to fade with time and it is an achievement of varying importance in different parts of the country; Queensland and NSW care much more than Victoria. In fact Victoria is now quite a problem for the Coalition, but more on that in a moment.

The carbon tax saving is priced by the Government at $550, an annual improvement per household. But it is a well tuned household that will notice a $10 a week change in its fortunes, and its effect is dwarfed by other budget measures. As for the mining tax, by the time Labor had finally come up with a form that was achievable even the miners didn't mind it.

On the Labor side in 2015 they are likely to continue conducting their politics in line with the Tony Abbott playbook. That is, attack the Government on a few issues with endlessly repeated slogans: "Unfair, broken promise, internal discord" - and toss in a bit of a scare campaign on the GST as well.

Mr Abbott's greatest weapon in achieving power was Labor disunity, but that resource is unlikely to be provided again. The trauma of the Rudd-Gillard four-year death-roll is entirely fresh enough to keep any internal Labor dissatisfaction contained. And Bill Shorten, while far from embraced by the Australian electorate, will enjoy the harmony that goes with improving polling numbers. The reverse is true for the Coalition, which has already seen tensions manifest as public support dwindles.

So if Labor is not going to co-operate and polices are not going to change, what else can improve the Abbott Government's fortunes?

What outside event, what deus ex machina, can change the political settings? It has happened before. In 2001 Kim Beazley looked set for The Lodge, but 9/11 and asylum boats rose up to save the Howard government.

The same could happen again, but so far one-off events have had no lasting impact on the fall and fall of the Abbott Government's standing. The APEC meeting in Brisbane, which brought world leaders to our shore and to Mr Abbott's side, had little effect beyond a blip of approval for the promise to "shirtfront" Vladimir Putin. When MH 17 went down in Ukraine in July, approval for the Prime Minister's and the Government's response saw support rise, but only briefly.

Nothing has had a lasting impact on a growing public disenchantment with the Government, evidenced by polls, by anecdotal evidence, by party polling, focus groups and by the seemingly universal agreement of politicians and pundits. And at the end of the year The Australian pointed to a specific worrying trend for the Government. It is losing the South. Victoria is shearing off from what is seen by many, including Victorian state Coalition MPs, as a NSW operation. South Australia too, according to the Australian's Newspolls, is a state where Government seats stand to be lost as voters worry about the loss of industry.

Toss into that the complexities of the Senate and a dawdling economy and Mr Abbott and his Government find themselves in a tougher position at the beginning of 2015 than they did at the start of 2014 - and it is easier to see reasons to believe that for the Coalition things will get more difficult rather than easier.

If a "ragged" year saw the Government reaching for the reset button in December 2014, will another bad 12 months see them turning to the "eject" button in a year's time?

Marius Benson can be heard covering federal politics on ABC NewsRadio Breakfast each weekday morning. View his full profile here.

Can Abbott go from 'ragged' to riches in 2015? - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Ben Doherty Wednesday 31 December 2014

‘Have the boats stopped reaching Australia?’ is the wrong question to ask. A better one by which to judge the success of its policies is this: are more people safer? Or fewer?

A comic produced by Australia aimed at deterring asylum seekers. Photograph: customs.gov.au

The boats have not stopped. They have stopped reaching Australia but people are still drowning in seas in our region and across the world.

More than 350,000 asylum seekers boarded boats in 2014, the UN has found, leaving their homeland to seek protection somewhere else. Of those, 54,000 people boarded a boat in south-east Asia – Australia’s “neighbourhood”, in the words of the foreign minister.

At least 540 people died on boat journeys in that neighbourhood – starved, dehydrated or beaten to a death by a crew member and thrown overboard – or drowned when their unseaworthy vessel sank.

The great majority of those travelling in Australia’s region were Rohingya, a persecuted ethnic minority from Burma, who are brutalised by their own government, denied any rights to citizenship, to education, banned from having more than two children and from work in certain industries. Regularly, Rohingya villages are torched and their occupants forced into remote tarpaulin camps, where malnutrition and disease are rife.

Australia has signed an agreement with Burma with the aim of “boosting Myanmar’s immigration and border control” – essentially to prevent Rohingya from leaving.

In 2014 Australia stopped 441 asylum seekers in 10 vessels, the UN says, forcing them back to the countries they last departed.

The government regards these figures as evidence its policies are working. Thanks to boat turn backs, offshore processing and regional resettlement, the argument goes, boats are no longer able to reach Australia. The people smugglers no longer have a product to sell: the “sugar is off the table”.

But that view fails to look over the horizon. It ignores – because Australia knows they are there – all the unseaworthy boats, and their desperate passengers, still looking for a safe port to land or dying in the seas to our north.

Even allowing (almost certainly over-generously) that several times that figure of 441 were deterred from trying to come to Australia, this country’s boat arrivals remain a tiny fraction of the world’s figure.

The number of people in our region still boarding boats bound for somewhere else is demonstration of the irrelevancy of the “stopping the boats” shibboleth. It is not a statement of policy, it is a tool of political rhetoric.

“Have the boats stopped reaching Australia?” is the wrong question to ask. A better question by which to judge the success of Australia’s asylum policies is this: are more people safer? Or fewer?

Has the sum of protection for people who need it – against sectarian violence, against ethnic discrimination or political oppression, against arbitrary detention in a transit or destination country – increased as a result of Australian policies?

The answer is no. There is less protection in the world for people who need it as a result of Australia’s policies.

Australia voluntarily ratified (in fact helped draft) the UN refugee convention. It willingly accepted the treaty’s obligation to offer protection to those who need it. But Australia’s policies now consistently place it in breach of that convention.

In announcing the Burma partnership, the then immigration minister, Scott Morrison, proclaimed: “Assisting our regional partners in building stronger, more effective borders is a priority of the Coalition government.”

But Australia is neglecting this obligation. Australia’s regional neighbours, its “partners” in addressing the asylum issue, are more overwhelmed than ever.

Malaysia has 41,000 registered “persons of concern” and thousands more unknown. Australia and Indonesia are locked in a long-running spat over boat tow backs and Australia has announced it will not resettle any more refugees from Indonesia.

It is, instead, looking to move refugees with claims for protection in Australia to third countries: Papua New Guinea, Nauru and Cambodia. Australia’s concern, it seems, ends at the edge of its territorial waters.

Two year-end speeches have highlighted the growing divergence between Australia and the rest of the world on the issue of asylum.

In Geneva, the UN high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres, urged countries to work more cooperatively to address the issue of irregular migration. He said dealing with the number of displaced people could never be as simple as stopping boats and shutting borders.

“Focusing only on border control and deterrence will not solve the problem,” he said. “It is the duty of any government to ensure security and to manage immigration but these policies must be designed in a way that human lives do not end up becoming collateral damage … an exclusive focus on security and targeting criminal activity only risks making these journeys even more dangerous.”

Australia has a different attitude – a different world view – on asylum. In a speech barely reported (it was given the same day as the government’s temporary protection legislation was being debated by the Senate), the head of the immigration department, Michael Pezzullo, said border protection, along with military power and diplomacy, formed the “trinity of state power” essential to any country’s existence.

While recognising it was “beyond the capacity of any one country … to tackle the global problem of refugee flows and numbers”, he emphasised that Australia must, alone, “control our maritime approaches”.

“The ocean around us is the crown jewel of our border protection system, and we must do everything reasonable within law, resources and government policy to ensure that this remains the case.”

Given the long-running antagonism with Australia’s most significant neighbour over boat tow backs, the actions of his department reinforce this emphasis on the unilateral over the cooperative.

Pezzullo’s speech was largely a dissertation on the continued primacy of sovereignty even in an increasingly interconnected, globalised world. It also made broader allusion to the new secretary’s view of the role of immigration in Australia’s development, and the country’s future population. He suggested Australia had enough people.

“When we transition from our current state to the new department next year, and commence on the path of the next phase of our journey, we should take a moment to reflect on what has been achieved since 1945. I contend that we will be able to declare the original mission of 1945 – to build the population base – to have been accomplished.”

It is a significant departure from the tone of his long-serving predecessor, Andrew Metcalfe, who urged a continued drive to populate Australia. “Our job as a department is to help build our modern Australian nation ... we have been extremely well-served by our migration programs,” he said. “Economically, our migration program has been, and continues to be, a backbone to many of our industries. People migrate to succeed, not to fail.”

Ordered migration and seeking asylum are separate issues, and should not be conflated, but Australia cannot fail to recognise more people are moving now than at almost any time in history. There are more displaced people in the world – 51.2 million – than at any time since the second world war: continued conflict, discordant economic opportunities, climate change – all will force more people to move, and more often.

As the world urges closer cooperation on the issue of mass and irregular migrations, Australia grows ever more isolationist. Moving the problem over the horizon is not the same as addressing it. The boats have not stopped.

'Stopping the boats' a fiction as Australia grows ever more isolationist on asylum | Australia news | The Guardian

By Chris Berg Tuesday 30 December 2014

Photo: Billy Hughes record is dismal. His support for conscription is bad enough. (ABC Archives )

Billy Hughes was an inept leader who benefited from the patriotism of wartime. There are some lessons there that we could file away for the future, writes Chris Berg.

Tim Fischer, deputy prime minister in the Howard government, thinks John Monash, the legendary Australian military commander during the First World War, deserves a promotion.

Fair enough. But Fischer has stumbled upon a bigger issue in Australian history - the mendacious jingoistic hopelessness of one of our most famous prime ministers in one of the most important times in the development of the nation.

In his new book, Maestro John Monash: Australia's Greatest Citizen General, Fischer argues that Monash was denied the rank of Field Marshal because Billy Hughes, prime minister between 1915 and 1923, was both jealous and anti-Semitic. Monash had both German and Jewish ancestry.

A promotion is not the only honour Fischer would like for Monash. He would like the main street in Monash's childhood home of Jerilderie to be renamed John Monash Parade. He'd like a bridge Monash helped build in Benalla to be renamed the John Monash Bridge. He'd like London's Imperial War Museum to recognise Monash's contribution, and some newspapers that downplayed Australian war efforts a century ago to rectify that error. Along the way he'd like some WWI battles renamed, for clarity.

(Yes, Maestro John Monash is a very policy-oriented biography.)

Fischer says the idea of promoting Monash to Field Marshal has precedent. The cause has been taken up by the Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.

But the real spotlight here has to be on the bad guy in Fischer's story - Billy Hughes.

Historians tend to be most impressed by active prime ministers. Usually those that govern during war do well on that measure. Testing times make for great leaders. Take John Curtin, who has been the subject of more hagiographic praise than any other PM. (John Hirst makes the case against Curtin's greatness in his 2010 book Looking for Australia.)

Billy Hughes benefited in his lifetime from the patriotic enthusiasms of the First World War. Now he's largely faded into old Labor legend as the archetypal "rat". Otherwise he's best remembered for his two failed referendums on conscription during the war.

But in retrospect it is hard to think of a worse Australian Prime Minister than Hughes.

Hughes' record is dismal. His support for conscription is bad enough. (Ronald Reagan once described conscription as the "assumption that your kids belong to the state".)

Hughes fostered a split in the Labor Party and created an alliance to hold government united by nothing except aggressive wartime patriotism. This Nationalist coalition represents the final death knell of classical liberalism as a political force in Australia.

As an administrator he was a failure. Even as sympathetic a biographer as Donald Horne had to say that Hughes was an "incompetent wartime prime minister".

At the Versailles peace treaty he was the most extreme supporter of German reparations. He even wanted Germans to compensate Australians who had financed their purchase of war bonds by taking out mortgages. The final harsh reparation settlement contributed to the later German economic collapse and the rise of Nazism.

Just as consequential was his aggressive and passionate support of the White Australia Policy. A Hughes biographer, W Farmer Whyte, writes that "nobody had fought harder than Hughes to place Australia's immigration laws on the statute-book".

When Japan proposed in 1919 that the covenant of the new League of Nations should have a clause defending the principle of racial equality, Hughes was the clause's most aggressive critic. He was worried it would threaten White Australia.

The historians Geoffrey Blainey and Margaret MacMillan have both argued there is a clear relationship between the defeat of the racial equality clause and subsequent Japanese belligerence towards the West.

Either way, there is no doubt that thanks to Hughes, Australia's contribution to world peace at Versailles was an unmitigated disaster.

Poor old Billy McMahon is regularly pummelled as the worst prime minister in surveys (Wikipedia has an overview here). Left and right like to argue that either Robert Menzies or Gough Whitlam was the worst.

But none of these leaders' flaws can possibly stack up next to Hughes - who was incompetent during the First World War and the biggest supporter of mistakes which led up to the Second World War.

Hughes' incredibly poor leadership is the embarrassing counterpoint to the Anzac heroism we are remembering during the WW1 centenary.

Australians don't have a deep political memory. We don't debate our political past as, say, the Americans do. Our newspapers aren't filled with comparisons between political events and their historical precedents.

But our political history matters. Hughes was an inept leader who benefited from the patriotism of wartime. He was sustained by a political class who valued his populist touch more than good government. There are some lessons there we could file away for the future.

So should John Monash be promoted to Field Marshal? Monash was a great military leader, and deserves to be judged on his merits.

But, then again ... if by doing so it further exposes our worst prime minister for the failures of his time in office, it might be worth it.

Chris Berg is a senior fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs. His most recent book is In Defence of Freedom of Speech: from Ancient Greece to Andrew Bolt. View his full profile here.

Testing times make for great (and awful) leaders - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By political reporter Naomi Woodley

Wednesday 31 December 2014

Photo: Opposition parties want Tony Abbott to make changes to his policies in 2015. (AAP: Alan Porritt)

Related Story: Budget deficit for 2014-15 forecast to reach $40.4 billion

Related Story: 'Budget is burning' as ore price continues to fall

The Federal Opposition and Greens say the Prime Minister must change policies, and one key crossbench senator is warning Tony Abbott to drop his "confrontational" style, if he wants to have more success in 2015.

The Government heads into the new year with political capital at a low, and about $30 billion of 2014 budget measures still to pass the Senate.

Mr Abbott has again urged the Senate to act in "the national interest" and pass the remaining budget bills, but that call has received a frosty reception.

South Australian Independent Senator Nick Xenophon said while the Government got key measures through the Senate, Mr Abbott appeared to not understand why other bills were being blocked.

"Of course we need to act in the national interest, but I think the Prime Minister's interpretation of the national interest appears to be a very narrow and partisan one," Senator Xenophon told the ABC's AM program.

"It seems to me that this Government in the last 16 months has done to its political capital what Nero did to ancient Rome.

He really is the author of his own misfortune given that the budget contains so many broken promises, and that the Government did not foreshadow any of these changes prior to the last election.

South Australian Independent Senator Nick Xenophon

"I just think it's a bit curious that the Prime Minister's approach appears to be identical to his approach as Opposition - that's one of confrontation, it's one of being incredibly negative," he said.

Senator Xenophon said in 2014 the Coalition Government did get key policies like the carbon price repeal, and temporary protection visas through the parliament by undertaking detailed negotiations and offering concessions.

But he said it appeared Mr Abbott did not understand why the Senate was blocking other bills, and why that would not change next year.

"He really is the author of his own misfortune given that the budget contains so many broken promises, and that the Government did not foreshadow any of these changes prior to the last election," Senator Xenophon said.

The South Australian senator used the Government's shifting language on where Australia's new submarines will be built as an example of a broken promise which was causing particular grief in his home state.

Before the election the Coalition promised 12 submarines would be built in South Australia, but now it said the Australian work on the fleet would be carried out in Adelaide.

"If the PM wants to declare economic war not just on South Australia, but on the rest of the country by exporting billions of dollars worth of defence jobs then good luck to him because I think that there will be a significant backlash at the next election," Mr Xenophon said.

'Senate will stand up for disadvantaged'

Greens leader Christine Milne also said her party would not be changing its tune in the new year.

She warned the Government against pursuing even harsher changes to social services if it could not get its 2014 budget measures through the Senate.

"If the Prime Minister thinks he is now going to use the unemployed and the sick and try and use those as hostages, then he's got another think coming," Senator Milne said.

"I think the Senate will stand up for the disadvantaged and I think it's time that the Government recognise that it's going in the wrong direction, and recognise that we need to go after those who can afford to pay."

Next year should represent the middle of the electoral cycle, and a chance for the Government to consolidate on its first year in office.

I think the Senate will stand up for the disadvantaged and I think it's time that the Government recognise that it's going in the wrong direction, and recognise that we need to go after those who can afford to pay.

Greens leader Christine Milne

It will be looking to focus on long-term and strategic questions, with reviews into the way the federation works, Australia's taxation system, as well as a defence white paper.

Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen said the Opposition would engage in good faith with those reviews.

"Because there are big questions facing the nation, there are big possible federation reforms. There is a need for a further discussion about tax reform in Australia. We want to be proactive in those discussions and we will be," Mr Bowen said.

In the wake of West Australian Premier Colin Barnett's comments about expanding the GST to include fresh food, Labor called for the Federal Government to rule that out.

But Mr Bowen said that did not mean Labor would not support other changes to the tax system.

"People should come to the discussion based on a considered position, a position based on values, and that's what we've done," he said.

"We've indicated what our position would be on some of those questions, but I've also indicated in other areas of tax reform that we're up for a very serious discussion going forward about insurances taxes, the corporation tax rate, the number of taxes etcetera. There is a serious discussion to be had.

"The mistake the Government is making is they are suggesting their ideas are the only possible way forward and we'll be making the point over the next 12 months that is completely not the case," Mr Bowen said.

He also argued that the Senate had been acting in the national interest, and he said 2015 would be the year for Labor to outline its own policies.

"There will be a real choice for the Australian people at the next election based on an alternative vision for the nation underpinned by detailed policies on behalf of the Labor party as the alternative government," he said.

The next election is due in 2016, but Mr Bowen said Labor would be ready whenever the Prime Minister decided to call it.

PM Tony Abbott urged to drop 'confrontational' style as year ends with $30b still blocked in Senate - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Shalailah Medhora Monday 29 December 2014

Prime minister admits he did not expect the budget sell to be easy ‘but we are on the right track’

Tony Abbott: ‘I don’t think the Australian people want to surrender when it comes to the task of fixing our economy and strengthening our budget. And to go back to Labor would be a surrender.’ Photograph: Tom Compagnoni/AAP Image

Prime minister Tony Abbott has acknowledged that 2014 was always going to be difficult for the Coalition, as it floundered in the polls following May’s tough budget.

Abbott spoke to 2GB radio on Monday afternoon, saying he did not expect the budget sell to be easy.

“We always thought 2014 was going to be a tough year because we always thought that the job of budget repair would be incredibly difficult. It’s proven to be every bit as difficult as we expected, but we are on the right track,” Abbott said.

Newspoll surveys show support for the Coalition has tumbled from nearly 46% at the last federal election to 37% now. Primary support for Labor is up five points to 38%.

“It’s always better to be up than down in the polls. Any politician who says he or she doesn’t look at the polls is telling a fib,” Abbott said.

“In the end, what’s important to me and my ministers is not passing popularity, but doing the best job by the people of Australia.”

He has accused Labor of sabotaging budget measures, and said crossbenchers are being “populist”.

“My message to the crossbenchers is, sure there might be individual measures that you don’t like, but you’ve got to look at the big picture as well as the small picture. If all you’re willing to do is point to small things you don’t like, and reject the message of budget repair, you’re part of the problem, you’re not part of the solution.

“I don’t think the Australian people want to surrender when it comes to the task of fixing our economy and strengthening our budget. And to go back to Labor would be a surrender.”

Abbott points to the recent ministerial reshuffle as a sign of good things to come in 2015.

“Every day I’m trying to be the best prime minister I can be, my ministers are trying to be the best they can be, and collectively we’re trying to be the best government we can be,” Abbott said.

Abbott will go on leave from early January, leaving deputy prime minister Warren Truss to hold the fort until his return.

Tony Abbott says 2014 was always going to be difficult for the Coalition | World news | The Guardian

By Mark Rolfe  Monday 29 December 2014

Photo: Opposition Leader Bill Shorten: are we laughing with him, or at him? (AAP: Dan Himbrechts, file photo)

Will 2015 see Bill Shorten rejuvenate his stale collection of one-liners, or will he remain the Lord of the Lame? Mark Rolfe considers the role of humour in politics.

Another Christmas is over in the Shorten household and I can imagine the excitement Bill felt on the day. I don't think it would have been only for the festive spirit with his loved ones. It would also have been for the chance to stock up on another year's supply of Christmas-cracker jokes against the government.

What could he use? Let's see:

Q: What's the difference between Abbott and Santa? A: Santa gives you presents you want.

Some people think Bill's humour can be traced to Dad jokes but I think these little Yuletide traditions have the same jocular DNA as this ripper from Bill:

Once upon a time, I thought denial was a river in Egypt. It's actually the attitude of the Abbott government.

Bill should be careful lest his jokes are carbon-dated and found to be older than the quips of Weird Al Moses who led a tribe of Jewish comedians through a parting of the Red Sea to their first comedy club.

Despite Shaun Micallef applying a comedic blowtorch to Bill Shorten's zingers in his TV program Mad as Hell, it seems the Labor leader is high-fiving staff in his imagination. Since that attention, says Bill,

people have been paying more attention to my metaphors. Which is pleasing, because all of us put a lot of work into them, whether it's writing them, delivering them...or explaining them afterwards.

He then finished with enough mixed metaphors to cause Shakespeare to chew off an arm and die of internal bleeding:

as I have consistently said, if you think we're not going to rule out never not being some kind of blank stamp or a rubber cheque for this government's broken lies and their smelly bag of fish budget...then you need to move into a house with mirrors and have a look at yourself - because a crocodile wouldn't swallow that.

I'll give you a moment to let your head stop spinning.

Apart from this typical display of his contorted style, Bill's reaction shows he can't tell the difference between people laughing at him or with him. The common thing to the jokes of both Bill and the Christmas crackers is the groan factor, not the laugh meter: we prepare ourselves for the badness of the joke rather than for its side-splitting hilarity.

If Bill continues down this lonely path to Pun-land, then people may prepare to groan when he appears rather than laugh at what he says. They may even run and hide their kiddies for fear of damaging side effects.

Bill should not be the target of ridicule; rather, his political victim should. That was the deft skill of more accomplished orators. Of course, Paul Keating comes to mind with his description of John Hewson in 1993 as "a shiver waiting for a spine to run up".

Gough Whitlam derided Liberal leader Billy Snedden with:

I want to assure honourable gentlemen that the bodyguards they see accompanying the Leader of the Opposition are not to prevent other people shooting him but to prevent him from shooting himself.

In other words, a good politician employs humour as a weapon to assert his superiority over an opponent who is thereby discredited as hapless and to persuade Australians of his fitness for political office. For a range of reasons, humour really is a means of persuasion, if people are laughing with you.

For the moment, Bill can get away as Lord of the Lame because in humour as in politics, it's a matter of context. He doesn't look so bad now because the Government isn't doing any better. Currently, it's looking like it desperately needs the services of a charity night from Comic Relief, or a SWAT team of emergency satirists.

Our Prime Minister's best conscious attempt was his description of the Gillard government as 'like the Irishman who lost ten pounds betting on the Grand National and then lost twenty pounds on the action replay". This had the same effect as the fiftieth replay of Are You Being Served?

His best unconscious joke was a 28 second vow of silence when asked by a reporter about his comments in Afghanistan.

For my mind, Christopher Pyne is the David Brent of Australian politics, oblivious to the shock-waves emanating from his statements.

Then, there is Kevin "Chuckles" Andrews who is to humourists what Death-eaters are to wizards.

The only government minister who competently wisecracks is Malcolm Turnbull, who has also derided the tendency to denial of opponents. In one committee meeting, Senator Stephen Conroy declared that Operation Sovereign Borders left us living in a movie and accused its head, General Campbell, of being another Colonel Jessup, the Jack Nicholson character in A Few Good Men. "Well of course", cracked Turnbull, "this meant he was the incredibly handsome Daniel Kaffee, played by Tom Cruise. Well we can all see the resemblance". Turbull continued:

I think the better movie analogue is in fact Colonel Kurtz leading the Labor Party further and further up the Conrovian River into delusion and denial. And we remember the last scenes of that movie...what does he say as he's dragged from the ruins? He says: "I had immense plans, I had immense plans, I was on the verge of greatness!" Madam Speaker, the real summary of Colonel Conroy's performance are of course the most famous lines of that movie: "The horror, the horror!"

If others on the Coalition side could equal Turnbull, then the summation of public reaction to Bill as "Not laughing, groaning" could leave him "Not waving, drowning".

Mark Rolfe is a lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales. You can read his full profile here.

Bill Shorten and the funny business of politics - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By Mungo MacCallum Monday 29 December 2014

Photo: Tinkering with the Senate crossbenchers is not the answer. (AAP: Lukas Coch)

If the next budget is seen as a reprise of 2014 - second verse, same as the first - then Tony Abbott will be in real, perhaps even terminal, trouble, writes Mungo MacCallum.

Just for a fleeting moment, it appeared that the spirit of peace and good will had peeped through the gloomy façade of the Abbott Government.

The Christmas Eve headline on page 5 of The Australian read: "Soft focus order of the day as PM presents new line-up."

True, it was only a puff piece about the swearing in (at?) the reshuffled ministry. But perhaps there was glimpse, just a glimpse of hope.

But alas, no: it turned out to be the same old Ebenezer Scrooge, unashamed and unrepentant. The adjacent headline read "Anger at festive welfare axe falls", a rather more substantial yarn about hundreds of millions of dollars being stripped from community groups as a result of budget cuts cynically scheduled for the silly season, where it was presumably hoped they would not be noticed.

The toughest measures were aimed at the growing army of the homeless: no room at the inn for those leaners. The newly minted Minister for Social Security, Scott Morrison, defended the slashing saying the funding (or lack of it) "supports the areas of greatest need" - perhaps tax avoidance for the multinationals was what he had in mind.

Morrison had already sent out his yuletide message: he would be focussed on outcomes, spin for the mantra that the end justifies the means. And he was determined to ensure that the welfare system was sustainable, meaning he would chop the bejesus out of it.

His only positive note was that he regarded the National Disability Insurance Scheme as his holy grail - at the least he had the tact to use the imagery of Easter rather than Christmas. This was of course the equally fervent goal of Julia Gillard, where it was immediately derided by Abbott and his minions as an unaffordable fantasy, no more than a thought bubble. Morrison apparently regards it as a sustainable reality, but only if existing programs can be cut from the existing social welfare budget to accommodate it.

Rebranding, 10 out of 10. Net benefit, nil. A bit like the entire overhyped reshuffle, really.

There can be no doubt that the team of 2015 has the potential to be more attractive than its predecessor, at least at the margins. David Johnston is gone, but then, until he imploded, few people realised that he was there in the first place.

At least Sussan Ley will be noticed, although her challenge will be to forge an identity as someone more than just the other woman in cabinet. And Josh Frydenberg can and must be a convincing voice in Treasury matters: the gaffe-prone Joe Hockey is no longer credible and Matthias Cormann, while persistent and coherent, remains forbidding.

But it isn't just the medium, it is the message, and Tony Abbott will still have to give the spruikers something to convince the public that he has more than rhetoric to say to them. It is not enough to endlessly reiterate the now out-dated cliché that the budget is in trouble and it was all Labor's fault.

The remedy - a fresh remedy - has to include a fix which is dramatic, equitable and above all plausible. Tinkering with the Senate crossbenchers is not the answer: the so-called reforms to the universities highly dubious, and the GP co-payment, whatever it is called, is not only electoral poison but is frankly silly. And fudging the allocations of the GST, while it may appease some of the cantankerous states, will only infuriate the others, and in any case will have little to do with punters' already itching hip pocket nerves.

On the expenditure side all the big ticket items are on the welfare sector and they will hurt the middle income masses on which survival in the polls depends. They can be sold, but only if there is a balance: the wealthy must suffer too.

Hitting the aforesaid multinationals is a start, as is the obvious solution to removing some of the other perks of the greedy and affluent, notably superannuation concessions. But it will take more than that - given the traumas of the last eight months, the voters will want to hear the fat cats howl.

Hence the next budget will be crucial. If it is seen as a reprise of 2014 - second verse, same as the first, a little bit louder and a little bit worse - then the government, and more particularly Tony Abbott, who is now teetering perilously close to the point of no return, will be in real, perhaps even terminal, trouble.

Logic dictates it is time for decisiveness and even daring; but we are unlikely to get either from Tony Abbott. Despite all the bravado and bluster, history reveals that our Prime Minister is actually a cautious soul, disinclined to shirtfront the rich and powerful - and if there is to be in any doubt, a quick glance at the polls will confirm that he does not need to make any more political enemies.

Moreover, as he has already tacitly admitted, his government is caught in an irreconcilable contradiction. On the one hand he needs to pursue the message of an economy left in a parlous state, requiring firmness and austerity, but on the other he has to encourage a return to consumer confidence because if we don't keep spending we may slide into a recession.

Don sackcloth and ashes, and then splurge like buggery. The public will remain both sceptical and confused, rather like the backbench and, one suspects, not a few of the ministers.

What seems inevitable is that 2015 is unlikely to be any better than 2014: basically grim. The only real question is just who ends up bearing the cost. It may be Abbott himself and it may be the government as a whole. But one way or another we are all going to cop at least a bit of collateral damage.

So Happy New Year, or should that really be, Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot...

Mungo Wentworth MacCallum is a political journalist and commentator. View his full profile here.

It all hinges on the 2015 federal budget - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Australian Associated Press Saturday 27 December 2014

Labor now leads Coalition on two-party preferred basis in every state except Western Australia, analysis reveals

Bill Shorten serves up a coffee at the Salvation Army cafe in Melbourne last week. Shorten is ahead of Abbott as preferred PM in every state except Queensland and WA. Photograph: Joe Castro/AAP

Voter support for the Abbott government has plunged across all states over the past year and is significantly behind Labor in two-party-preferred terms everywhere except Western Australia, a Newspoll analysis shows.

The analysis, published by News Corp Australia on Saturday, shows that the Coalition’s primary vote has tumbled 10 points in Victoria and South Australia, nine points in New South Wales, eight points in Queensland and seven points in Western Australia.

In two-party-preferred terms based on preference flows in the 2013 election, Labor leads the Coalition by 60% to 40% in Victoria, by 54% to 46% in both NSW and South Australia and by 52% to 48% in Queensland.

Only in WA does the Coalition have a two-party preferred lead – of 53% to 47%.

Tony Abbott is considered the better prime minister in WA, with a nine-point lead of 43% to 34% and in Queensland with 41% to 39%.

But the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, is ahead in NSW by 40% to 39%, in Victoria by 45% to 33% and in South Australia by 43% to 34%.

Newspoll shows support for Coalition plunged across all states in 2014 | Australia news | The Guardian

Oliver Milman Wednesday 24 December 2014

Labor says national disability insurance scheme being used as a cover for cuts while disability group says minister is deliberately conflating state and federal spending on welfare

Scott Morrison has been accused of deliberately conflating two separate welfare funding structures. Photograph: Denis Closon / Rex Features/Denis Closon / Rex Features

Scott Morrison has been criticised by disability advocates after indicating that welfare spending would have to be wound back to fund the national disability insurance scheme.

Morrison, the new social services minister, said the government was fully committed to the NDIS, but people “taking a lend” of the welfare system would be targeted to make the disability initiative sustainable.

“Everyone supports the NDIS, but making it work is the hard part. It will cost $10bn a year,” Morrison told the Australian.

“The NDIS can’t just fall from the sky. You have to embed it at the heart of the system. To achieve sustainability of the safety net – of which the NDIS is the holy grail – you need sustainability in other parts of the system.

“To relieve the burden on the system it is about getting people off welfare and into work, and to work as much as they are able. This is the goal we are working towards. I would hope it is a goal the opposition shares. They support the NDIS, but are they going to support what needs to be done to fund it?”

Mary Mallett, the chief executive of the Disability Advocacy Network Australia, said Morrison was “deliberately confusing people” over how welfare spending related to the NDIS.

“They are conflating two issues where there is no connection between them,” she told Guardian Australia. “The NDIS replaces the care and support provided by the states and territories, money that is already being spent. The majority of people who have a significant disability will be on the disability support pension [DSP], but that’s the only relationship to welfare.

“I don’t understand why the government would deliberately blend the two. It feels like the NDIS is being used as an emotional blackmail tool so the government can say: ‘We will have to cut everything to make the NDIS happen’.

“That puts us in a very difficult position because we want the NDIS to happen but we don’t want people kicked off the DSP and onto Newstart, when it offers so little money.”

Mallett’s organisation has been stripped of $165,000 in federal funding in a government move to shrink the number of disability peak groups it supports from 13 to seven.

Morrison compared the implementation of the NDIS to measures he brought in in his previous role as immigration minister to prevent asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat.

He said: “The NDIS has bipartisan support. People wanted to see people stopped drowning at sea, it’s a goal everybody agrees with, but it’s of no value to anyone if it doesn’t turn up.”

Morrison said he was concerned about effective outcomes for the welfare system, rather than getting praise from the “latte set” that would criticise any crackdown on payments.

The NDIS, a national insurance safety net for disabled people, is at the trial stage in each state and territory apart from Queensland. It will not be fully implemented nationally until 2017-18 at the earliest.

Mallett said: “There are a lot of games being played around the NDIS. I don’t think it is at risk, but I think the government wants to play this game so they can take a large number of people off the DSP.

“The proportion of people in disability support is the same in Australia as other western countries. We don’t have a significantly worse situation of people abusing the system but the government is desperate to convince people that’s the case,” she said.

Labor said the NDIS was “fully funded” by a 0.5% increase in the Medicare levy, which it said would raise about $20bn by 2019.

“Any claim by Mr Morrison that the NDIS isn’t fully funded is just plain wrong,” said Jenny Macklin, Labor’s disability reform spokeswoman.

“This is a disgusting and cynical attempt by Scott Morrison to use the NDIS as a cover for the Abbott government’s next round of savage cuts to vulnerable Australians.

“Mr Morrison should think twice before trying to use the NDIS to advance his own political interest.”

NDIS: Morrison says welfare clampdown needed to fund disability scheme | Australia news | The Guardian

By Tim Dunlop Wednesday 24 December 2014

Photo: Despite his cabinet reshuffle, Tony Abbott is still facing the same problems. (Alan Porritt, file photo: AAP)

Reshuffling the cabinet is like changing who wears which colour skivvy in the Wiggles: it doesn't make any difference, and they all end up singing the same old tunes, writes Tim Dunlop.

The Abbott Government won office in 2013 with a fairly decent majority. Not spectacular, and certainly not as large as many had predicted, but decent.

Once the votes were counted, Mr Abbott and his cheerleaders in the media congratulated themselves on a job well done, acted as if a natural order had been restored - there was much talk of the adults being back in charge - and everyone settled in and waited for the so-called greatest opposition leader of the past 40 years to grow into the job of prime minister.

Trust me, Godot will get here first.

In fact, rather than growing into the job, Prime Minister Abbott has done a pretty good impression of the incredible shrinking man.

Even the media cheer squad that hailed his every three-word slogan in opposition as some sort of cross between Winston Churchill and David Ogilvy has been pouring out their broken little hearts in piece after piece, telling us how disappointed they are in him.

And maybe we shouldn't be surprised. It's not just that his track record in politics was hardly of a standard that would inspire a Netflix miniseries (or even an Aaron Sorkin one), it's that weak leaders are almost built into the fabric of our two-party system.

Labor swapped leaders three times between 2007 and 2013, despite being in government for two of those changes. The Libs went through Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull before settling on Tony Abbott by a single vote, and he was chosen in the end more or less out of desperation.

He was installed, not because he offered the people of Australia anything in particular in the way of personal qualities or a policy blueprint for the future, but because his election helped settle an internal party argument about climate change.

As I noted last week, as disappointing as Tony Abbott has been, he isn't in and of himself the problem: he is a symptom.

The underlying issue is that both major parties have drained the office of prime minister of authority by converging on an economic program that subsumes economic sovereignty into the vagaries of a globalised economy. Control over key aspects of social and economic policy has shifted from the Treasury benches in Canberra to the stateless instrumentalities of so-called free-trade agreements and organisations like the G20.

The office of prime minister is thus less about leading the country than about managing the electorate's disappointments within that system, and Mr Abbott inherited an electorate hip to the tricks of a political class who have been selling us moonshine - privatisation, deregulation and the rest of it - for the best part of four decades now.

But even allowing for these structural problems, and the electorate's well-founded scepticism, Mr Abbott has brought his own special brand of stupid to the role.

Having sworn black and blue that he would restore trust and integrity to the office of prime minister, on gaining office he set about breaking promises like crockery at a Greek wedding.

...even allowing for structural problems, and the electorate's well-founded scepticism, Mr Abbott has brought his own special brand of stupid to the role.

He compounded his problems with a budget that attacked not just programs and spending but Australia's idea of itself as the land of the fair go. The burden of his "reforms" fell on the poorest, and even in this neoliberal inflected era, the unfairness of that sat badly with many Australians.

Plus, you know, he's just sort of creepy. It's a vibe thing.

Anyway, the net effect of all this is what Mr Abbott himself has helped christen a "ragged year". It's what the rest of us call a train wreck.

And so, in response, the PM has now reshuffled his cabinet, the political equivalent of shouting, "HEY! LOOK OVER THERE!"

The columnists have been out in force telling us all what it really means, who the winners and losers are, and I don't dispute that there is some value in all that. But I can't help but feel it isn't what we should be focussing on.

The problem is, without a fundamental policy rethink, reshuffling the cabinet is like changing who wears which colour skivvy in the Wiggles: it doesn't matter, they all end up singing the same old tunes.

Tony Abbott can swap his team around as much as he likes: it doesn't un-break his broken promises, nor does it take the stink out of his stinky Budget.

And you only have to look at what the Government is already signalling for next year to realise we are simply going to get more of the same.

We've been promised an inquiry into work practices, which everyone knows is just another way of cracking open the chest and massaging the heart of WorkChoices.

Joe Hockey has said, "We are going to give it [economic reform] a red hot go in 2015," and everyone knows that doesn't mean we are going to get, say, a more equitable approach to university funding, let alone something inventive like a guaranteed basic income.

It's hard not to share Ross Gittins' frustration:

Really? One more time? That's the best advance you've been able to think of? That's the best the whole nation has come up with? Another argument about the GST? Another argument about bringing back Work Choices?

...It reveals the limits to our ambition, the incestuous nature of our policy debate [and] the limits to our imagination....

Meanwhile, the new Minister for Social Services has already announced funding cuts to housing advocate groups and other community organisations, including to Blind Citizens Australia, while the Treasurer has reneged on his promise to go after tax avoidance by multinational corporations.

Doesn't exactly sound like the government has been poring over definitions of fairness.

Various ministers and commentators have said that the Government's problem has been one of communication, but I doubt Mr Abbott and co. really care about that.

Despite their earlier insistence that Vocational Education Training (VET) would stay with the Industry Department, that has now been shifted to Education (which adds Training to its title). Child care has been moved from Education to Social Services.

These are potentially significant changes, but what explanation has the Government offered for either beyond some vague yammer about a workplace participation agenda?

Far from being intent on better communication, then, the thrust of their approach looks less like being upfront about their overall intentions and explaining exactly what they want to do, and more about sneaking through changes and hoping we don't notice.

To put it plainly, "better communications" is a euphemism for spin and neither has anything to do with telling the truth.

Yes, we've had a reshuffle, but big deal.

Tony Abbott is still the Prime Minister. Joe Hockey is still the Treasurer. They are still committed to their budget and its underlying philosophy of market liberalism and a wholesale attack on the pillars of the welfare state.

Let's focus on that, not which Wiggle is wearing which skivvy.

Tim Dunlop is the author of The New Front Page: New Media and the Rise of the Audience. He writes regularly for a number of publications. You can view his full profile here.

The more things shuffle, more they stay the same - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Sean Nicholls Sydney Morning Herald State Political Editor

December 23, 2014

ANALYSIS

• Robertson resigns over letter for siege gunman

John Robertson was always going to replaced as Labor leader before he had the chance to become premier, but few could have predicted it would end like this.

Only a few days ago the ALP was gearing up to take the man who had slogged it out as opposition leader for the past four years into the crucial 2015 election campaign.

True, the polls were showing Robertson was not personally popular but party bosses were reasonably satisfied with the direction they were heading.

Labor was on track to achieve a swing in the order of 10 or 11 per cent and claw back about 15 seats. This achievement, although modest, would put it in a competitive position for the 2019 poll.

Under the ALP rules, Robertson was certain to face a leadership spill after the election, assuming a Labor loss. He was expected to lose.

But then came the revelations about Man Haron Monis and Robertson's fateful decision to sign a letter of request to the department of community services.

Incredibly, it seems Robertson volunteered the information in a bid to show that he had done nothing wrong; that he had treated Monis as he would any other constituent.

That might have washed with any other figure, but not with a man who has become such a reviled character.

Any legitimacy in Robertson's actions was swept away by the opportunity the story presented to those who have long been dissatisfied with his leadership. They quickly took the opportunity to strike, forcing him to jump before he was pushed.

So how will the decision to effectively topple yet another Labor leader play out for the ALP?

The Monis revelations meant Robertson had become a liability in the looming electoral contest.

The Baird government would never be able to use them directly against him for fear of being accused of politicising a tragedy.

But there's little doubt it would have sought to dog whistle on the issue by questioning his "judgment" – the same questions which motivated his own colleagues who lost faith in his leadership.

The more positive view is that – like Barry O'Farrell before him – Robertson's demise gives the ALP a much-needed chance to present a rejuvenated leader and party to the public at the election.

If Labor chooses its new leader wisely it has the chance to wrong foot the government. Who knows? As Mike Baird has demonstrated a change of leader can work wonders for a party. But only, of course, if it can find the right person.

John Robertson resignation: ALP may find a silver lining

Shalailah Medhora Tuesday 23 December 2014

The NSW opposition leader stepped down after pressure from colleagues over a letter he wrote conveying a request from Sydney siege gunman Man Haron Monis

John Robertson has stepped down as NSW Labor leader. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

New South Wales opposition leader John Robertson has resigned as Labor leader, following revelations he passed on a letter to a government department on behalf of Sydney siege gunman Man Haron Monis.

In 2011, Robertson forwarded an appeal by Monis to the Department of Family and Community services to have a supervised visit with his children on Fathers Day. He had an apprehended violence order out against him at the time, and was the subject of family court proceedings.

In stepping down, Robertson said: “It has become clear to me that I have lost the confidence of some of my senior Labor colleagues.”

He said he was “disappointed” that he wouldn’t lead the Labor party to the state election, on 28 March, but said stepping down was vital to make Labor a “genuine alternative” to the governing Coalition.

“I was never motivated by politics or high office … I just wanted to make a difference to people’s lives,” Robertson told reporters at a hastily convened media conference on Tuesday afternoon. “I accepted the challenge of helping Labor find its best self.

“Because this fight is bigger than all of us, I’m pledging my support to the next Labor leader.”

Likely contenders to replace Robertson include treasury spokesman Michael Daley and Luke Foley, Labor’s leader in the upper house.

Robertson said when he took on the role of state MP, he vowed to represent everyone in his Blacktown electorate, while not necessarily advocating for them.

He said he understood in hindsight how it looked to have passed on the letter on behalf of Monis, who died with two hostages when the siege in the Lindt cafe on Martin Place ended.

Robertson has been opposition leader since the 2011 state election, when former premier Kristina Keneally resigned after Labor’s crushing defeat.

He has been a member of the legislative council since 2008. Before that, he worked for a number of trade union groups.

Labor’s deputy leader, Linda Burney, will step up as acting leader. Burney said in a statement she took on the role with “enormous sadness”.

Robertson had been a “committed and hard-working leader” who had taken on the job at the “lowest ebb” for NSW Labor, she said.

She said the state parliamentary party would meet on 5 January to select a new leader.

John Robertson quits as NSW Labor leader, citing loss of support from senior colleagues | Australia news | The Guardian

By Norman Abjorensen  Tuesday 23 December 2014

Photo: Julie Bishop's ramped up publicity profile is no mere coincidence in light of the Liberal leadership. (AAP: Alan Porritt)

The ministry changes are clearly aimed at shoring up the Prime Minister's own stocks, and this can be read as code for heading off any possible challenge from Julie Bishop, writes Norman Abjorensen.

An eerily familiar scenario is starting to take shape in Canberra - admittedly fanciful but not entirely implausible.

It runs like this: persistently poor polling for both the prime minister and the government creates anxiety over the next election, especially among those in vulnerable seats; a path is beaten to the door of the hitherto loyal deputy leader, who just happens to be a woman; the message is blunt: you have to challenge or we are gone.

The ministerial changes announced at the weekend are about heading off just such a possibility. It is in itself a curious rearrangement, and is by no means the "significant reshuffle" claimed by the prime minister.

Abbott simply has no room to manoeuvre to effect sweeping changes, and this is really just tinkering around the edges. Abbott's own position is far less secure than that of his immediate predecessor as Liberal prime minister, John Howard, who could operate from a position of strength that Abbott does not have.

It is worth recalling that Howard returned to the party leadership unopposed in 1995 after the failed Downer experiment, was swept into government the following year and was never challenged. Abbott, by contrast, scraped into the leadership by a single vote in 2009 and, while delivering government in 2013, has probably lost support since then, according to some Liberal MPs.

What this means, in effect, is that Abbott cannot risk alienating what support he retains - but sacking ministers always entails such a risk. Other balancing factors that constrain his freedom include powerful regional interests - most notably the big donors to the party coffers from the west - and the big business donors generally, which appear to exercise much more influence on the Abbott Government than on the Howard government.

The two vacancies were easy shots. David Johnston's tenure at defence was unsustainable after his injudicious remarks about the Australian Submarine Corporation not being trusted to "build a canoe" and his removal was a no-brainer. The other change, replacing the long stood down former assistant treasurer, Arthur Sinodinos, is another gift, with Sinodinos now likely to face criticism from the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption over, if not his business dealings, then his judgment.

A lingering question is why Abbott appointed him in the first place when the ICAC investigation was already known, and it was public knowledge that Sinodinos had chaired a company controlled by the corrupt former Labor politician, Eddie Obeid.

Two of the subsequent changes have seen seriously under-performing ministers - Peter Dutton who failed to make a case for the patient co-payment for a doctor's visit while health minister - and the funereal Kevin Andrews, who suffered from a generally lacklustre performance at social services - shifted into other key portfolios rather than being demoted. Importantly, they are both strong Abbott supporters.

Andrews to defence is an interesting call, the job generally regarded as one of the most demanding in government. Two things are suggested by this move. One is that Abbott is besotted with all things military - his appointment of Peter Cosgrove as Governor-General is a prime example - and the military is happiest with a non-intervening minister, which they now have.

The second point is that the important defence white paper is due shortly, and this is almost certain to emerge largely from the prime minister's office rather from a defence minister, such as David Johnston, who fancied himself as a strategist according to one MP.

The big problem areas for the Government are right at the top, however. Abbott could not demote himself - but perhaps the party might have a reshuffle of its own down the track if the dismal record of 14 consecutive Newspolls becomes 15 and more.

Then there is Treasurer Joe Hockey, who was once laughably seen as a future leader, and is shown in the polls as the most unpopular minister and as the least regarded treasurer in the past 40 years. He is a poor communicator – always ready to deflect a hard question with a smirk or a sneer rather than an answer - who has palpably failed in framing a budget that he is unable to negotiate through parliament. This violates the cardinal rule of politics: that it is all about the art of the possible.

It would have taken courage for Abbott to sack or demote Hockey - but at least one powerful member of the business lobby has privately advocated just that and suggested Malcolm Turnbull or Andrew Robb as more acceptable alternatives. The question is whether his leadership could withstand whatever fallout such a bold move would almost certainly generate, although Hockey's stocks are now considered lower than in 2009 when he was, surprisingly to some, the first candidate eliminated in a three-way ballot against Turnbull and Abbott.

Quite clearly, the changes are aimed at shoring up the Prime Minister's own stocks, and this can be read as code for heading off a possible challenge from Julie Bishop, whose most vocal supporters have been largely, though not entirely ignored, in the changes.

There is little doubt that the Bishop push has taken on all the hallmarks of an offensive now. The ramped up publicity profile is no mere coincidence and the angry public spat over the climate change conference in Lima, where she was initially denied permission to attend, and then only on condition that she took with her as leading Liberal "dry" in Trade and Investment Minister, Andrew Robb, was extraordinary in itself.

When the Prime Minister tried to hose it down as just "gossip", Foreign Minister Bishop, instead of going to ground as an obedient minion would do, then gave the Financial Review chapter and verse, that just fanned the flames. Make no mistake: this was defiance.

Barring something cataclysmic, the party room won't meet until February. All indications point to a tense gathering that any amount of festive season cheer is unlikely to dissipate.

Dr Norman Abjorensen, from the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy, is the author of three books on the Liberal Party and its leaders. His book on all 27 former prime ministers, The Manner of their Going, will be published in 2015. View his full profile here.

Ministry changes to stifle any Bishop challenge - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By Mungo MacCallum Monday 22 December 2014

Photo: Liberal Senator Arthur Sinodinos is no longer the Government's assistant treasurer. (AAP: Daniel Munoz)

Finally one barnacle has been removed from the Abbott Government, and just in time for Christmas: Arthur Sinodinos is gone as assistant treasurer, writes Mungo MacCallum.

After months of procrastination, Arthur Sinodinos has been informed that his resignation as assistant treasurer has been accepted, whether it was offered or not. And to seal the compact, the resignation was leaked immediately, just in case there could be any second thoughts.

The embattled senator, it will be recalled, was invited to the ICAC to shed some light on the shenanigans involving Australian Water Holdings (AWH), the dodgy company promoted by disgraced entrepreneur Nick Di Girolamo and his ally Eddie Obeid. The Commission was particularly interested in the fact that large sums of money had been remitted from the firm to the federal Liberal Party, and felt that Sinodinos, in his joint role of AWH director and Liberal Party Treasurer, might be able to help.

But alas, Sinodinos knew nothing - an important qualification for a front bench position within the Abbott Government. And he is convinced that, in the end, he will be vindicated and indeed reinstated. He may be right: the only certain things against him are plausible denial and insensate greed, the latter from the hope and expectation of a multi-million dollar windfall from a shonky deal he was pushing on behalf of AWH. As far as his political colleagues are concerned, these are certainly not serious offences - indeed, they are more matters for congratulation.

But in the meantime Josh Frydenberg takes over as back up for Joe Hockey, recently crowned in the polls as the worst treasurer in a generation: something of a poisoned chalice, but a chalice nonetheless - prospective ministers can't be choosers. And Sussan Ley gains promotion, but mainly through headlines reporting her as a second token woman as female company for Julie Bishop - Abbott has played the gender card again. There is some movement among the junior ranks, but at the top it looks more like a case of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. The big loser is David Johnston, dumped in spite of Abbott's fulsome (in the correct sense of the word) praise just a fortnight ago. Kevin Andrews and Peter Dutton have been moved to Johnston's political death zone of Defence and Scott Morrison's demolition area of Immigration respectively and Morrison himself gets Social Security with an opportunity to prove that he can be as brutal with welfare recipients as he has been with refugees. And so the ship founders on.

There is some movement among the junior ranks, but at the top it looks more like a case of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

Sinodinos must be hoping to emulate Julia Gillard, who has now been officially cleared not only of criminal conduct but also of knowledge of criminality by the Heydon Royal Commission into trade union corruption. And this, in the words of The Australian's chief prosecutor Hedley Thomas, is where the Australian Workers Union slush fund saga reaches its natural end.

Or at least where it should end. But Thomas, who has pursued the former prime minister with an obsessive diligence worthy of a better cause, is still reluctant to let it go. There will be great differences of opinion, he avers, among voters, lawyers, politicians and journalists about Gillard's role and knowledge. Well, among some journalists and politicians, certainly, and perhaps even among some lawyers. But among the voters? I very much doubt it.

If they considered the 18-year-old case at all, it was probably in the context of a stitch-up by the Abbott Government. The Royal Commission into the unions was in itself seen as something of a witch hunt used to damage the ALP, but at least that could be justified in the light of thuggery and bullying in the workplaces - although it also needs to be said that many of the employers were willing accomplices in paying out the money allegedly extorted. After all, they could, and usually would, pass the cost on to their customers.

But to attempt to embroil Gillard in the process was naked spite and vindictiveness. And after all the sound and fury, all the accusations and innuendo, it failed: the worst Gillard was found guilty of was a bit of "casual and haphazard" work as a young solicitor - a bit of legal jaywalking which, she admits, she would, in retrospect like to have had her time again. No doubt she would; no doubt she now regrets hooking up with Bruce Wilson, who was the instigator of the apparently illegal slush fund, in the first place. But a romantic misjudgement is hardly a criminal offence either.

Gillard also says that she would like and apology from Abbott and his ministers who, under parliamentary privilege, accused her of committing a crime. She is unlikely to get one, which might be a matter of premonitory concern to Sinodinos. After all, if political payback is to be the norm, what is to prevent a future Labor government from setting up its own Royal Commission into Liberal Party rorts and fronts to launder political donations which, the ICAC found, were administered during the time Sinodinos was the Party's federal treasurer?

And we cannot finish the week, or indeed the year, without a mention of the Martin Place siege. For my money, the police behaved impeccably. All too often they can be impetuous, even reckless: a matter of shoot first and ask questions afterwards, and if there any accusation of impropriety, lock the bastards up and throw away the key. But this time, they did it by the book: secure the area and try to wait it out. And for 16 long hours, it seemed to work.

In the end, of course, it ended in tragedy - but it probably always would have. At least the cops did their level best. If they had stormed the place immediately it might have come to a climax sooner, but it would almost certainly have produced the same result, if not a worse one.

There is now, inevitably, a series of inquiries and soul-searching, including arguments about whether or not the gunman was really a terrorist, and whether he was insane. Frankly, it hardly matters. He was an evil and dangerous man who was never going to become reconciled with the country in which he had chosen to live. Whatever his motives and psychology, he was always going to end badly - as it does with all of those nurturing hatred, bigotry, delusion and a lack of human empathy.

For all of them, bah humbug. For the rest of us, season's greetings: I'll ride with you.

Mungo Wentworth MacCallum is a political journalist and commentator. View his full profile here.

Sinodinos and the shuffling of deckchairs - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

By Paula Matthewson  Monday 22 December 2014

Photo: Tony Abbott's reshuffle is characterised by concessions to antagonists and throwing competitors in the deep end. (AAP: Lukas Coch)

Tony Abbott's ministry reshuffle may appear to be a reset in preparation for 2015, but in reality it is more about the PM's paranoia and tenuous leadership than it is about his Government's rejuvenation, writes Paula Matthewson.

A full 12 months earlier than it's customary to do so, Tony Abbott has reshuffled his ministry. This is what governments usually do one year out from an election to prove they're not stuck in a rut but capable of the regeneration that brings vigour and fresh ideas.

PM Abbott brought the activity forward a year as part of his attempt to scrape off the Government's barnacles before Australian voters turn their attention to the beach and the barbie.

The move finally brought to an end the PM's insistence that the ministry's continuity was necessary to create a sense of political stability, a stubbornness demonstrated by 20 members of Abbott's ministry having served in the last ministry of the Howard government.

The most intriguing thing about the reshuffle is not Abbott's belated recognition of the need to do it, but his concession to the demands of critics while handing poisoned chalices to dud ministers and potential competitors.

The young guns in the Victorian Liberal MPs have essentially been rewarded for their years of agitation and complaint about having to cool their heels on the backbench. This group is responsible for a proportion of the grumbles about the PM's chief of staff Peta Credlin, particularly her reported resistance to an early reshuffle.

While it could be argued that NSW Liberals benefited most from the reshuffle by getting another MP into Cabinet, they also lost a spot in the outer ministry with the resignation of stood-aside Assistant Treasurer Arthur Sinodinos. In fact, the Victorian young guns gained more than any other state, with two of their MPs being promoted.

Victorian MP Josh Frydenberg was elevated from parliamentary secretary to Assistant Treasurer, while his Victorian colleague Kelly O'Dwyer was brought from the backbench to the rank of parliamentary secretary. In doing so, the PM has made considerable concessions to the ambitious Victorians, even going so far as to make Frydenberg Assistant Treasurer instead of Hockey's preferred candidate, the Queenslander Steve Ciobo.

Whether this will be enough to quell the Victorians' noisy agitation over Credlin is yet to be seen.

Many of the other ministerial changes are better understood if viewed through the lens of Abbott's leadership.

While the PM made no changes to the stellar Foreign Minister Julie Bishop's portfolio, he did remove her friend and ally, the poorly performing David Johnston, from Cabinet. That leaves Bishop with only one Western Australian colleague, Mathias Cormann, at the big table.

No changes were made to Turnbull's portfolio either, suggesting Abbott is content with leaving the former Liberal leader to disappoint his progressive fan-base with the Government's cut-rate NBN.

And then there is Scott Morrison's promotion from Immigration and Border Protection to a revamped Social Services portfolio, which the PM says is essentially a ministry for economic participation. Morrison is also tasked with producing a holistic families package that Abbott described as being "an important part of our political and economic agenda in the first half of next year".

Political commentators are calling this a big win for Morrison, who is keen to broaden his experience with an economic portfolio, thereby strengthening his leadership credentials. But a closer look at the appointment does not bear out this interpretation.

Much of Morrison's success in the Immigration portfolio was built on the Australian community's antipathy for asylum seekers. His willingness to do whatever it took, and unwillingness to talk about it, essentially gave Australian voters permission to turn a blind eye to the human cost of border protection while giving him kudos for "solving" the asylum seeker issue.

However, Morrison will not be able to deploy the same tactics in Social Services. While asylum seekers are for most voters a distant concept, pretty much everyone knows someone who is dependent on the welfare system. As a result, the impacts of welfare reform are seen, felt and known, and there will be no glory for Morrison having "stopped the dole" in the way he "stopped the boats".

It's therefore likely Morrison's promotion is a poisoned chalice, and a way for Abbott to push through one of his toughest reform agendas while also reducing the appeal of one of his competitors.

Curiously, Morrison was not the only minister to receive a dubious and potentially career-limited promotion in the reshuffle.

Kevin Andrews' move to Defence will likely see him begging to be let go by the next election, for the Department is known for chewing up and spitting out their civilian "masters". The future doesn't look particularly rosy for former Health Minister Peter Dutton either. Dutton may be a retired policeman but it's difficult to see him bring the same steely resolve that served Morrison so well in the Immigration and Border Protection portfolio.

And then there is the welcome appointment of NSW's Sussan Ley to Cabinet, thereby doubling the number of women to two. Clearly the representation of women in the Cabinet is unacceptably low, and not due so much to a lack of merit as the arcane balance of states, factions, and parties that make up the Coalition's ministry. Abbott at least did the right thing in appointing two more women as parliamentary secretaries, so they can become ministers-in-training.

Prime ministers usually reshuffle their ministry to provide a fresh aspect on their government while hopefully also evoking a sense of stability through the regeneration. But with one or two exceptions, like the promotion of Ley, Abbott's reshuffle is characterised by concessions to antagonists, throwing competitors in the deep end, and leaving the deadwood to atrophy.

Abbott's reshuffle may superficially appear to be a reset in preparation for 2015, but in reality it is more about the PM's paranoia and tenuous leadership than it is about his Government's rejuvenation.

Paula Matthewson is a freelance communications adviser and corporate writer. She was media advisor to John Howard in the early 1990s. She tweets and blogs as @Drag0nista. View her full profile here.

Ministry reshuffle built on paranoia, not progress - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)