By ABC's Jonathan Green Thursday 5 March 2015

Photo: A leadership challenge might have changed the way politics has been professionalised and out of touch. (AAP: Lukas Coch)

It's such a pity that circumstances appear to have dulled the momentum to oust Tony Abbott as PM. This could have been a moment to refocus political thinking, writes Jonathan Green.

There is a great opportunity going begging in Australian politics.

One side of the partisan divide or the other might well seize this moment, might make a decisive shift in thinking, platform and strategy. The reward could be significant: the enduring affection of a disenchanted voting public yearning for something better.

We are watching for a sign, a sense of altered thinking that will return to us some sense that politics has been refocussed on the needs and necessities that constitute the true national interest, a decisive switch from the narrow self absorption of the hacks, spivs and chancers who warm too many seats in both major party rooms.

The thing that's up for grabs at the moment, the golden ring of our politics, is the opportunity to be seen as the natural and inevitable party of government in this country.

A decade or more in harness. It's available. The first party to get its ideas and priorities in order wins.

Which is why it's such a pity that circumstances appear to have dulled the momentum behind moves to push Tony Abbott aside as Prime Minister. This could have been a moment, a pivot that carried the potential to draw our political class a little closer to the people it claims to represent.

This is not ideological. The perfection of opportunist oppositions that took Abbott to power is now being mirrored - albeit insipidly and with unexpected comic emphasis - by Opposition Leader Bill Shorten. Between both parties there is a strange and unspoken collusion, a shared faith in the narrow careerist, power-preserving merits of a perpetual Punch and Judy show. Result: no sign from either side of any desire to shift from what appears to be a successful and self-sustaining model of inwardly focussed professional politics.

The rules are simple enough: all that can be done to harness critical pockets of popular support will be done. Of late, there is a new twist to this tale, in which, perhaps incautiously, the need to secure broad popular appeal is placed second to the murky dynamics of internal power plays.

The techniques here were well rehearsed in the enclosed revolving door of the previous Labor government, a spinning glass vessel that simultaneously transported and trapped the pair caught constantly circling within it.

It's the conservatives' turn now, and perhaps this sense of disposable leadership is the natural consequence of a political culture that places the numbers before any principle: if politics stands for nothing then leadership is no more than the constantly monitored consequence of continuing success.

And maybe all this cross-party internal power play is a bridge too far. None of it means anything in particular to the rest of us, other than fuelling a growing sense that so much of what is done just now in federal politics has no aim beyond securing the numbers behind any given prime minister.

We send our troops to war ... to bolster internal support? We chop even the most resilient barnacles from last year's budget ... to show internal critics that the leadership is listening? And on it goes.

A challenge might have changed all of this. Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister may well have been locked into a fresh round of Rudd/Gillard/Rudd revolving door conflict ... perhaps.

Or alternatively he may have seen the necessity to break from the mould and capture the waiting imagination and hope of the Australian people. He may have recast the sweep of Coalition policy, perhaps in a way that, given his apparent grip on the "sensible centre", brought an emphasis on outcomes rather than ritual observance; to do something about the structural budget, rather than mouth about the evil of debt while assiduously increasing it.

The effect on the ALP would presumably have been galvanising, perhaps even in a way that went beyond a refreshed platform to a true reform of party structure that brought Labor into a more intimate and meaningful contact with progressive Australia.

Why? Because in both these things there is true political opportunity, the opportunity that will only come now from breaking from the ghastly self-reflecting inversion of our recent politics.

Out here in the community there is a sense of the possibilities of that change, a sense of what a political culture that is as connected as we are might achieve. A culture that is nimble, that uses the modern tools of instant and universal proximity not as tools for law enforcement or control, but as a path to better reflecting true community interest and need.

A culture that might recognise that a toll of domestic murder that tips double figures by February requires a greater response than either talkfests or the reheating of existing COAG priorities. A culture that might look with true dismay and urgency at rates of indigenous incarceration, poverty, sickness and suicide. That might convince us with mature and inclusive conversation of the need to restructure budgetary priorities in line with evidence rather than quick-fix palatability. A culture that might think less of the telegenic qualities of flags and podiums and more deeply, and with our input, on the changing nature of nationality and country.

All of which might have been beyond Turnbull too, and perhaps beyond whoever Labor elevated to take him on ... but it seems we may never know.

The great opportunity of Australian politics is left hanging.

Jonathan Green hosts Sunday Extra on Radio National and is the former editor of The Drum.

A chance to refocus politics went begging - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)