And so Julia came to the rescue.

After a fair bit of bluster and a good deal of brinkmanship by the Senator Xenophon, Julia got into the room, did the deal and released the summary of the NBN Business Plan. It is being reported as a 50 page summary – but it’s only 36 pages. 

So what does the summary tell us? Well for a start it tells us that perhaps the ALP needs to work on its strategy.

The document is one the ALP should want out in the public domain.  They should have been handing it out last Monday morning. The only possible reason I can think for them to keep it in reserve and thus get to a point where releasing this innocuous document would be classed as a back down, is because they were worried that if they released it earlier, Xenophon would be demanding more – more perhaps than they really wanted to give out. 

As such I guess you can say it is good poker by the PM. She kept quiet, let Turnbull and Abbott make more and more out of the business case than it ever was going to be (seriously did anyone expect a business case from NBN Co to say that there was no business case for NBN Co?) and thus when Xenophon started saying he wouldn’t vote for the structural separation of Telstra unless the Government released the business plan, she was able to come in and save the day by getting him to agree to just having the summary released.

It is good politics, but I do worry a bit that politics over policy seems to be the order of the day.

What it also shows (again) is that Julia is a master negotiator. Doing what Rudd was pretty loathe to ever do she actually got involved with negotiations with Senators and got the job done.

Let me be bold and say this right now: we will have a price on carbon before the next election*. It will be a shitty, God awful, drag-down, knock them out negotiation, and then Julia will get involved and the deal will be done. This is a woman who knows how to work with people, and most of all she bloody well likes to win.

So what is in the NBN business plan? Well to be honest, not a hell of a lot more than we already knew. Some interesting bits are the Product Release Road Map: a series of five “Product Drops”. The second of these was “Emerging Entertainment Capability” – ie being able to deliver TV through the internet (called triple play because it will be delivering TV, internet and telephone services).

I won’t go too much into it, because it is not my field and I’d only make a fool of myself (yeah , I know, why stop now), but this document is not a real financial business plan. It is a political business plan. The entire point of this summary is not to get people to buy shares in NBN, but to get Xenophon and Fielding to buy into it politically. So for all those who bleat and blather about it not being enough, about there not being enough figures, about it not being what a private company would be required to provide, I say, sorry, you’ve missed the point. Gillard this week does not care what you or Turnbull are saying: she only cares what Xenophon is saying, because he had the vote. She did enough to have him coming out and praising her:

YNDAL CURTIS: Nick Xenophon, have you won a back down from the Government?

NICK XENOPHON: This is not about a back down. This is about a sensible compromise being reached and this is good for consumers, it is good for businesses and it is good for certainty for Telstra shareholders as well.

LYNDAL CURTIS: You met Julia Gillard twice on this, talked to her again today. Was her decision to get involved in negotiations over this the key factor in changing your mind?

NICK XENOPHON: I met with Julia Gillard twice last night and I think it is fair to say that the Prime Minister's intervention did make all the difference to bringing this to a conclusion, to a good conclusion.

At this point Julia was going to do just enough to get that result – why pay over the odds for a vote?

And just in case the policy gets forgotten, the result of all of this? Telstra will be separated – the wholesale and retail arms will be split.

This is no small thing.

This is the absolute holy grail of communication's policy. 

Many commentators (myself included) have been pretty hard on this Government's lack of reform. George Megalogenis on News Radio this morning made the point that Labor under Rudd and Gillard too often seems to think reform is doing things that are popular and easy.

Well this may be popular (though probably not greatly – who really sits around talking about the governance of Telstra) but it sure as hell was not easy. Any one who thinks Telstra was going to allows itself to be split without a big fight is kidding themselves. Yes they are getting a big payout here, but they are giving up the things they held most dear – its copper network and exchanges. Howard kept the two arms together so he could sell Telstra for the biggest price (its so easy to pay off debt when you just sell something – beats the hell out of imposing spending restrictions on your budget). After that the Libs tried to get them to separate “operationally” – ie put up Chinese walls etc etc. The industry knew it was bollocks – that is unless you think Optus was treated by the wholesale arm of Telstra the same as it treated the retail arm of Telstra?  If you think that you’re at odds with the ACCC.

Now it is split. Well done Conroy (by the way ignore pieces that says Conroy is in trouble, the guy has had a very, very good year), and well played Julia.

***

QT was dominated by the Liberal Party quoting The Australian. Nothing new there I know, but they were quoting some leaked minutes of the ALP Caucus meeting the day Rudd got knocked. The big thing was Rudd made a speech were he apologised for everything. Apparently this means that everything he says is true. I guess we should ignore the emotional roller coaster the guy had been on and that he had most likely not had any sleep and that he was feeling lower and more pissed off than he would ever have felt in his entire life. But let’s ignore that.

He said his Government had made mistakes. 

Take for example this bit of his speech:

The Oz and the opposition claimed this was Rudd admitting to everything they had been saying. Well no. Yeah mistakes were made in the implementation of the insulation scheme, and yes there was some waste and mismanagement of the BER. But the biggest mistake Rudd made was allowing The Australian and the opposition to report and talk about that waste and mismanagement out of context. Finding some poorly designed and constructed buildings is all well and good, but a proper media would acknowledge the 97 per cent of cases where good work is done. And a better advocate as PM would have made such a fact impossible for the media to ignore.

But still this is all old hat. Elections are amazing things. They do wipe the slate clean, and oppositions who continue to fight on issues that existed prior the last election are doomed to fail at the next election. Take Julie Bishop’s question to Gillard. She referenced Rudd’s speech where he said that Gillard and Swan had advised him to dump the CPRS, and she wanted to know why did she call for it to be dumped.

The problem of course is it was dumped only after the Libs dumped it – so they can’t very complain that Gillard dumped it when they themselves did it as well – or do they want Gillard to bring it back? The point is NOW Gillard is for a carbon price, so too is Rudd, so too is Swan. The Libs can talk all they want about events in early 2010, but they won’t win the CPRS fight twice. The caravan has moved on, Abbott and Co need to keep up.

And so we have one day to go. It looks like the Government will end on a high note – the passing of the Bill splitting up Telstra – and Abbott leads a party bereft of ideas. Sure the ALP is reform-light – reform in the 80s,90s style of let’s cause some pain. But in the next 12 months they’re going to attempt to  put the NBN into reality, bring in a mining rent tax, and put a price on carbon. If they achieve all three it will be had to say they are a do nothing Government, and it will be very hard for the Libs to win in 2013 with a policy program that consists basically of “Stop the …”.

This past fortnight in QT the opposition have pretty well targeted Gillard only. Usually in the early part of a Government the opposition likes to find a weak link Minister and go them . To do that however requires some sort of policy to challenge them on, and the opposition doesn't really have anything at the moment, and so Gillard fields the questions, and the rest put up their feet and wait for their turn at a Dorothy Dixer.

Next year the Opposition will need some policy so they can test out some of those Ministers, because Julia ain;t going to fall.

*yes I realise saying she’ll get a price on carbon is a massive jinx. Blame me if it doesn’t happen. 

I think it is fair to say The Australian has not coped well with Julia Gillard becoming leader, and less so with her winning the election. If you were to run a contest to decide the absolute dumbest, knuckle-dragging, spite-ridden, misogynistic, couldn’t find logic with a flashlight and a road map article written about Gillard in The Oz, you would struggle due to the plethora of choice.

My nominations for the award are the execrable front page treatment by Kate Legge writing about Julia’s earlobes:

The ears have it, in a deluge of distraction from campaign themes

• Kate Legge
• From: The Australian
• July 26, 2010 10:12PM

"HECK, there must be a surgeon who can help," worried one voter yesterday in a web debate over Julia Gillard's pendulous earlobes.

Yep, hold the front page.

Then there was The Australian's editorial:

Needed: A policy for Julia, direction for Labor

Seemingly sensible and and yet deciding within the piece to come up with this stunner:

We wear Senator Brown's criticism with pride. We believe he and his Green colleagues are hypocrites; that they are bad for the nation; and that they should be destroyed at the ballot box.

(And yes I realise that is not a criticism of Gillard, but geez, it is so brain dead level stupid it deserves entry within this list)

In September we had the genius of Glenda Korporaal:

Julia enjoys the high life free of old bags

• Glenda Korporaal
• From: The Australian
• September 09, 2010 12:00AM

JULIA Gillard may have chosen a dress for her first visit to the Governor-General as the newly elected Prime Minister of Australia, instead of her traditionally efficient power pants suit.

But she continues to show her superwoman characteristics by walking into events sans handbag.

Seriously, someone got paid to write that. And even more seriously someone decided it was good enough to publish (oh how full of chagrin am I that I will never be good enough to be a real journalist).

Early this month even the usually intelligent and sensible Peter Brent got involved:

Where’s the Gillard gravitas?

Are Gillard’s hand movements contributing? She insists on inserting the things into every head and shoulder shot and waving them around. It was learnt in politician school - something about trust and open palms, nothing up sleeves. But her words, however convincing, are negated by those flapping hands.

But no, none of these even comes close in the race for the prize of most arse-hat level stupidity as that achieved today by Niki Savva.

Savva is now generally described only as “the author of So Greek: Confessions of a Conservative Leftie” and left unsaid is the fact she worked for nine years as advisor to Costello and Howard (yeah, an irrelevant aspect really when you’re considering someone's views of an ALP Prime Minister). I can’t wait for Lindsay Tanner to write a book so that whenever he does an op-ed piece he can just be described as “the author of…”

Savva in her wisdom based on many years spent being a journalist and then working for Costello and Howard decided it was time to hand out some advice to Julia:

Smarten up, PM, and do not wear green

The headline of course is not hers, but sadly in this case it does not distort the ever so stupid analysis by Savva:

She devotes a whole 2 sentences to some policy ideas (well not really):

First, though, she needs an agenda: something politicians usually acquire in order to attain leadership. She had no time to do that and ever since she became Prime Minister, she's done little else but pick over Kevin Rudd's leftovers and whatever the Greens toss her way.

But this is just a sideshow for the main line of attack that Savva has planned for the day:

She has to sharpen up in every way, every day. Some people welcomed her recent performances in parliament as feisty. To others they were scratchy and screechy.

Her humour often lapses into bitchiness or condescension. As Prime Minister, she has to be measured and respectful. She needs to delegate the attack dog role.

“To others” eh Savva? C’mon show some guts and say whether you think that or not – don’t hide behind bullshit “others”. And of course Savva wouldn't know anything about bitchiness or condescension…

She continues:

She should sack her hairdresser (sorry, Tim) get a decent cut and colour, pack up all her clothes and send them to the Smith Family. There are plenty of stylists who can buy her smart clothes that fit her properly. She needs to hire a good one or get the name of the Governor-General's dressmaker.

Really?

Seriously?

Yes, my friends this is the type of hot-shot analysis for which The Australian pays. (Yeah I know, I’ll never attain that level of brilliance – I’ll never get to that level of “can I pull something out of my backside and see if anyone is dumb enough to print it” writing ).

Savva, full well knowing she is being a complete idiot, tries to justify herself:

If all this sounds gratuitous, it isn't. The photograph of Julia Gillard in Sydney's The Daily Telegraph yesterday, wearing a coat that looked as if it was made out of an army blanket by one of the infantry, said it all.

How you look is as important as what you say and how you say it. And the rules apply equally to male and female politicians.

What utter bullshit. It sounds gratuitous because it is. It’s not every day you see a brain-fart getting put on the pages of the national paper, but here we see it.

The rules apply equally to men and women do they? Has Savva been comatose for her entire life? Has she ever worked in the media? Has she ever even read a newspaper like… oh geez I don’t know The Australian which publishes shite about Gillard’s earlobes, lack of handbag, haircut, hand waving etc etc?

Tony Abbott has spent good portions of the past year running around in a pair of speedos, now ask yourself what sort of treatment Julia would get if she were seen regularly in a bikini, or even a one-piece swimsuit?

Think real hard (ie do something Niki Savva found herself incapable of doing when she wrote this piece). Actually don’t think hard, it’s not required, anyone who has seen any type of media coverage in the last say 1000 years knows women are judged much, much more harshly than men when it comes to their appearance – especially when it comes to women in positions of power. And Savva seems to think that should continue.

Just in case you didn’t think Savva could get any less intelligent, or you didn’t quite get the message she was selling, she gives us this:

A bit of exercise wouldn't go astray either, a healthy body and a healthy mind and all that.

She is in diabolical trouble, and she has to be in the best possible shape for the fight ahead.

I’ll give Savva credit for not writing, “And by the way Julia, your arse is fat”. Guess that was in the first draft.

The problem with news.ltd papers going behind a paywall is not that you’ll have to pay for things which you now get for free, it’s that you know they will bundle it all up so you’ll be able to get George Megalogenis and decent breaking news but only if you also pay for the bottom of the bird cage musings of Savva and her ilk. That deal might fly in print, but in the on-line world people only want to pay for what they want – it’s why people kick up a stink when artists say they only want iTunes to sell their albums entire and not their songs separately.

The type of rubbish Savva vomited onto the page was out of date twenty years ago, and considered a disgrace at least ten years ago. Now I guess it’s opinion worth paying for. 

But anyway, congratulations Savva, you win the award.

***

A Newspoll come out this morning that showed the ALP back in front 52-48. It is utterly meaningless as I’d wager a good third of the population seriously could not give a stuff about politics – and not in an “oh I don’t know, I guess Gillard is better” kind of way, I mean in an “I don’t give a stuff” and then hang up on the pollster kind of way. So sure they’re getting results, but seriously who cares?

Well of course the politicians care – they have to. After all caring about polls makes up for caring about policy. On that score the Libs care a very great deal about the polls. The Newspoll result pretty well knocked the stuffing out of their “The government has lost its way” schtick. And so taking a  cue for the Government in yesterday’s QT, the Libs decided today to link everything to the NBN. It was laughingly done. Try Scott Morrison:

"Given that since February 2008 there have been more than 9000 illegal arrivals on 190 boats, how can the prime minister now be trusted to get other policies right, such as the $43 billion national broadband network, when she couldn't protect our waters?"

I don’t think there has been a statement made more lacking in want of logic since Michael Kroger on Lateline said “If you can’t stop the leaks, you can’t stop the boats”.

Gillard dispatched it away with ease – calling Nauru “Camp Detour” because 96 per cent of the asylum seekers that went there ended up in Australia or New Zealand.

We also had Chris Pyne saying the BER was a stuff up and so “how can the prime minister now be trusted to get other policies right, such as the $43 billion national broadband network”

Gillard again was all over that one coming out with the response:

Just because you come into question time and make things up doesn’t make them true….

You wouldn’t want to risk your life and limb by getting in between and opposition member and a BER opening especially when there are scissors and red ribbon involved.

She ripped into Andrew Robb (who must have been foolish enough to interject too loudly) about his turning up to a local BER project in fluro vest and hard hat.

The one issue that should have had the Opposition’s full attention rather than the scattergun, easy to dismiss approach they took, was to ask Gillard, and Swan etc about the NBN Business Plan.

Turnbull (in an a question that very lamely tried to tie together all the disparate questions that had proceeded his) asked Gillard about the “secret plan” to pay some consultants to review the NBN Business Plan. Julia pretty well skipped down the pitch and put it over the fence:

He has been carrying on in this Parliament day after day suggesting that the Government was not doing enough due diligence on the NBN and now he is in here today criticising me for doing too much due diligence on the NBN.

Poor Malcolm did really bowl a long hop there – he should forget about the consultants and focus on the business plan itself. It’s one of those things that is more important than it really is. It sounds important – “business plan” ooh that must be important it’s about business, and it’s a plan. No one knows what is in it, so the opposition can make it out to be whatever they want it to be. And being able to make stuff up is Abbott’s forte, so really that is the only thing the Libs should be caring about.

What they shouldn't do however is look to the Newspoll on the NBN for any guidance. The Australian was running with the headline:

Call for broadband costs undermine support: Newspoll

Utter bull.

Here were the questions asked:

Look at that last one – imagine being asked on the phone if you agree with the statement, “Should the NBN not go ahead in its current form at all?” First off, asking someone to agree with a question? And secondly, if I answered yes to that I’m not 100 per cent sure if that means I am for the NBN or against it…  Dumb, leading statements which give no real insight into what people think. Everyone is best to ignore this poll, and The Oz is best to come up with some better material the next time it wants to slant the facts to suit its agenda.

One interesting answer given by Albanese in QT today referred to a report to a Parliamentary Committee in 2002 chaired by none other than Christopher Pyne. The report was titled:

CONNECTING AUSTRALIA!

WIRELESS BROADBAND

In the second paragraph, of the report’s Executive Summary it has this line:

No wireless broadband technology is able to handle the data rates of the best wire-line technologies…

As Albanese pointed out, that is pretty much game-set and match.

The ALP though needs to be a bit careful because both sides would be able to cite the report for its own purposes. The sentence that Albo read out in full is:

No wireless broadband technology is able to handle the data rates of the best wire-line technologies but there are many situations where the latter cannot yet be used or is simply unavailable (such as in remote and regional areas, and even in some suburban metropolitan areas).

The report also states:

Given the fundamental fact that different wireless technologies serve different purposes and that they are constantly evolving, the government should take a technology-neutral approach to both wireless and wire-line services.

The Committee concludes that the solution to the ‘last mile’ service involves a mixture of technologies, both wire-line and wireless.

It also had this conclusion:

Many submissions and other inputs to the inquiry emphasised the diversity of technologies and the pace of change. The future will see a mix of various technologies and the market should be permitted to determine which ones best suit particular applications. While it is entirely appropriate for governments to set standards and allocate spectrum for particular uses, governments should remain technologically neutral with respect to developments in telecommunications.

Now that would seem like game-set and match for Turnbull, but the problem for him is that the entire document is notable mostly for how archaic it all is. Take this sentence:

The definition of broadband is open to interpretation and therefore remains fluid. The minimum data speed that could be considered broadband is probably 64 kilobits per second (kbps) and the most common definition is 200 kbps.

Ooh 200kps, what a magical dream world that would be…

But do not worry – the future is near!

The Canadian document referred to above noted that, with new applications, the capacity of wireless broadband could increase to 4-6 Mbps

So were Turnbull to start launching into Conroy etc on the basis of this report he would be instantly (and rightly) ridiculed for using as his evidence a document that regarded a broadband speed of 64kbs as good enough.

Ah well, 64 kps would be more than fast enough to download a Niki Savva article… so perhaps the lesson of the 2002 report is that we need is less speed not more.

The best article of the day was that by Dennis Glover who wrote on the value of oratory and posited that had Kevin Rudd been able to make some decent speeches he would still be PM. Now yes you could argue that if he had been a bit better at listening to Cabinet Ministers he might have been ok as well, but Glover is right when he states: “good speech can both make careers and change the world, for good or ill”.

It is true – oratory will convert sceptics, convince doubters and strengthen supporters. But while this is nice, what truly matters to people is also what is said – oratory is only important if it delivers (or fails to deliver) good policy.

Rudd’s oratory was woeful (the only bit of rhetoric he mastered was rhetorical questions), but crucially what he was saying was just as bad. Oh it would be lovely if we were to have a Cicero walking the carpet of Parliament House in the guise of our Treasurer, but that is not the case, and no amount of my wailing that I wish Keating were still with us will make it happen, so let us focus on what is said, if we can’t always improve how it is said.

Oratory – and how an argument is put – is important because the Rudd Government failed miserably selling both the CPRS and the RSPT. The first failed because Rudd’s treatment of the issue in speeches was woeful – it was always about the end of the planet, the destruction of our way of life etc etc – and not only that Rudd also wanted us to believe it would be solved by something that wouldn't involve any increase in the cost of living. Now yes the CPRS might have been the personification of “flawed policy”, but at no stage did Rudd, or others in the Government charged with the responsibility – yes, Penny Wong, I’m looking at you –  explain just why and how the CPRS would affect the economy and thus help the environment.

When the RSPT came round, the job was done marginally better by Swan, but once again Rudd missed the point. He seemingly spent the entire time talking about increases in superannuation and infrastructure, which was all nice and good except it didn't help anyone understand why the RSPT was a good idea. A tax is either good or bad because it is either good or bad, not because of what expenditure may be spent with the revenue.

Since the election, Julie Gillard has pointedly changed tack on the merits of a price on carbon – it is all economic: the price of electricity will go up – that’s the point. It is much more effective, and while the Opposition will bleat about her having broken her promise, the point is that she is selling it well because she is speaking well about the issue – not falling into Ruddish speak about the ephemeral benefits.

Which brings us to the National Broadband Network.

The Government is in danger of stuffing this up – not because of whether or not it is a bad policy – but because of how they are selling it; how they are talking about it.

In Question Time today the wonders of the NBN were spruiked by every Minister who had been able to finagle a Dorothy Dixer – Garrett on education, Roxon on Health, Gray on openness of Government (yeah, you heard me!). We were back in Rudd world, where the NBN was good because of what it would bring.

If the Government keeps going down this line they will lose the debate.

People know the NBN will bring all manner of goodies. They know that there are things in the future that we have no idea about today which in ten years time we will look back and think, how the hell did we do without this. We live in 2010. Any adult can remember a time when email was not commonplace. And adult can remember when a site like YouTube would have been pointless because it took 3 hours to down load 3 minutes of video. Any adult can remember when you weren’t able to book a seat online, print out the boarding pass and show up at the airport 1 minute before boarding.

We know this – the Government does not need to sell us the wonders of the future.

It needs to sell us the wonders of the NBN. It needs to sell us that the NBN is the best way to do it.

Now everyone knows it is not the “cheapest” way to do it – because the cheapest way is to let Telstra do it, and we all know how good that has worked out so far – ie don’t live in a low density area more than a mile from an exchange. But then why is the Government doing it the way it is doing it? Why is the NBN in and of itself good? Why is the NBN in and of itself better than the way Malcolm Turnbull is suggesting?

You see talking about the benefits of e-health and e-education and e-open government is a waste of time and words.

A complete waste of time.

A complete waste of words.

Why? Because Malcolm Turnbull will say he can deliver exactly the same thing – only cheaper.

So there are two arguments here (and neither of them have anything to do with the glories of e-education): the technical and the economic.

Whenever any mention of benefits flowing from the NBN, it must be explained clearly in small, memorable, but non-focussed grouped-sounding words why the NBN will do it, and why Turnbull’s vision of a wireless glory land won’t.

Now that’s the easy part of the argument – the laws of physics are very helpful here.

But the economics? Ain’t got nowt to do with kids and their desks doing book learning over the internet.

It all might sound wonderful; it all might sound like a great idea for education – but what’s the cost? And why are we paying it? And why shouldn’t we pay a bit less and still get much the same?

The last question is really the only main bit of the economic argument tied up with the technical aspect – it needs to be hammered: will Turnbull be able to deliver essentially the same to everyone as would the NBN? If not, tell us clearly, brutally, and repeatedly why not. After this debate, if nothing else, every voter should have a much better understanding physics than they did before. The Government needs to package up a physics lessons on IT that voters can take with them down to the pub on a Friday night and use to refute anyone who says, “Yeah but Turnbull reckons he can give us the same for less cost”.

Asymmetric speeds? What the hell are they? In six months the drawback of asymmetrical speeds needs to be as clearly obvious to the non-tech voter as is the difference in the fuel economy of different cars.

Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan, Anthony Albanese, Stephen Conroy – you’ve got 3 minutes to tell me why the NBN is the most effective and efficient way to deliver high speed broadband to the nation and you’re not allowed to mention the benefits of fibre. Go.

It’s hard isn’t it? The Government is trapped into talking about the benefits, when the debate is shifting to the economics. Assume people know the benefits, assume people agree with the benefits, and go from that starting point. 

Rudd thought if he convinced people of the nice booty that would come from the RSPT they would not care about the RSPT. It was a futile way to go about it – people know infrastructure is all nice and lovely – but they'll wonder why can’t you just cut something else to provide for it. Bring in a new tax, and you better be damn sure you can explain why we need the tax –and your argument better be deeper than because we can then spend a lot more money.

Today in Question Time the Government tried to have some fun with the fact that Turnbull has invested around $10m in “Melbourne IT”, because it is a company that makes its money out of the internet and will obviously do well out of the NBN.  Gillard and Albanese got up and had some fun – coming up with the line “put your mouth where your money is”.

But seriously, who gives a shit? It is a minor, nothing of a sideshow. Turnbull hasn’t invested in NBN Co; he’s invested in an IT company (a company which as Malcolm Farnsworth pointed out o Twitter charges exorbitant prices – $75.70 for what GoDaddy will sell you for $12.15). The ALP’s argument is like saying if Turnbull invested in a trucking company that means he supports the way the Government is spending money on roads.

It was the type of oratory that Costello would indulge in, and which would have the press gallery in orgasmic raptures.

It reality (like much of Costello) it was petty, puerile and pointless.

The opposition was asking stupid questions all ending with “the Government has lost its way”, but that doesn't mean the ALP needs to respond by being equally as pathetic.

What the Government should be more concerned about is that people are wondering why the Government won’t release the business case on the NBN till after parliament has risen. Joe Hockey dopily asked Gillard if she had read the business case and if so why can’t everyone else. She was far too dismissive in her response – he had in fact given her a perfect opportunity to explain the reasons and essentially use Hockey as a punching bag. Instead she gave a one sentence response. (She was much better slapping Abbott away when he was asking her about the “deal” done with The Greens on the sale of the NBN – she pointed out it wasn’t any deal at all, in fact nothing had changed).

I have no idea, but I wouldn’t mind betting she hasn’t read the business case yet – after all it would have been presented to Conroy. He would be the one reading it, studying it and getting multiple briefings on it, and he’ll be the one who then takes it to Gillard.

Most likely it is being released in December because that’s how long it will take for the Government to work through it bureaucratically and politically (in Cabinet). They would be dopey to rush it through – Government is about incumbency, part of which making sure you only go public when you’ve got everything sorted. But the timing in this case is not fortuitous. The NBN business case should be something the Government is excited about – it should be as looked forward to as was the Orgill Report into the BER (a report, which anyone who was at all across the entire context of the BER, rather than merely focussing on the stuff ups, knew was not going to hurt the Government). 

The NBN like every damn thing in Government comes down to economics. The Government needs to win the economic debate and needs to get damn hot on the business case. Possum tweeted re the business plan “Grow balls & recall the Senate in December post-release”. This is unlikely to happen, but the Government does need to get its argument in order. Because of the timing it can’t afford to take a December holiday form politics – and unfortunately most of the public will have.

Boring speeches, boring oratory, and far too many sights of slogans – three words and others – have left the public completely disengaged. I haven’t given one damn about any poll put out since the election – the ALP is behind 49-51? Who cares. It means nothing at the moment.

I am a political junkie and I hardly even bother with the 7:30 Report or Lateline anymore, so why on earth would I expect those more saner people who don’t live and breathe politics to care in the slightest who or what the Government is doing. 

It has been this way since Oakeshott and Windsor made their call. No one – politicians, media or public wanted things to start up again. Everyone just wanted a break. Since September everyone has been looking to the Christmas break.  It is why I believe all future elections should be held in November. In 2007 Rudd won, then we went on a break and in 2008 everything started afresh. Nothing since the 2010 election has been “fresh”.

Unfortunately for Gillard and Co this makes it all the bit harder to make their case on the NBN: to convince people they first have to get them to listen.

And to do that they’ll need more than to be told Malcolm Turnbull has made some money investing in shares…

This week’s Flick of the Week takes us with Richard Attenborough and his role as advisor to Queen Elizabeth in Elizabeth to his role as Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett (Big X) in John Sturges’ World War II classic, The Great Escape. 

Last week when I bemoaned the lack of historical accuracy in Elizabeth I wrote that I was a bit of a film hypocrite on the issue. Sure enough here we have a film that strays a fair bit from the script. This film about the greatest ever attempted escape from a Nazi Prisoner of War Camp had a hell of a lot of exciting reality to deal with – but in true Hollywood style is gave it a little oomph.

Firstly the events are contracted, and secondly the Americans have a much bigger role than in reality. On both issues I have to say I don’t give a damn.

Yes we can read in Australian Paul Brickhill’s  excellent book (he also wrote The Dam Busters and Reach for the Sky) on the escape that the Yanks were involved but were certainly much more minor players, and no Americans escaped because they were transferred to a separate compound just before the escape. 

And of course no one tried to jump the Swiss border on a motorcycle.

But for some reason it just doesn’t matter to me.

I can understand people disliking the fact that the Yanks get a bigger role, but this film certainly doesn't put the Brits and other Commonwealth soldiers in the shade (like say a modern WWII POW film like Hart’s War). Perhaps because Englishman James Clavell co-wrote the screenplay, the Non-Americans get their due: Bartlett as Big X is definitely in charge of the show and Gordon Jackson as his MacDonald “Intelligence” is the Scot who keeps everyone in order. Plus for us Aussies, there’s the Sedgwick the Manufacturer (not totally convincingly played by James Coburn). There are only three yanks, and in reality only two get much screen time – James Garner as the Scrounger, Hendly, and Steve McQueen in the Steve McQueen role, Hilts, the Cooler King.

My history with this film goes back a long, long way. It is not the first “grown-up” film I ever saw – The Sound of Music gets that title. But my first viewing of this was a seminal moment in my life. On seeing not only was I enthralled with this film, but I am pretty sure from this moment on I was enthralled by movies. I just loved every single thing about it – from Elmer Berstein’s amazing score, to the planning of the escape, the tension involved, the horror at the murders, the exhilaration of Hilts trying to get into Switzerland. It is also most likely the film I have watched the most (not including all the many, many Pixar movies I have watched by virtue of being a parent!).

Everything (yes even Coburn’s accent) just fits perfectly. If you’re going to have a bird-watching forger who goes blind, why who else could play it but Donald Pleasance? You need a mono-sibylic Polish tunnel digger? Charles Bronson is your man.

The history of course is glamourized – POW life was not nearly so easy as the film depicts – Brickhill writes of the gnawing hunger which all felt most the time – and how this affected the escape as well – starving men don’t have a great deal of energy. But this is more a product of its time, where gritty realism wasn’t the done thing.

The film has a number of indelible moments – Hilts in the cooler with his baseball, the discovery of the tunnel “Tom”, the escape itself, the stuff up by MacDonald, the execution of the men, Hilts’s jump… Many have received the ultimate pop-culture compliment of being parodied in The Simpsons.

It is easy to dismiss the film as just an action film, but so much of it is done so well that it demands attention. Quentin Tarantino in the 2002 Sight and Sound poll of the 10 Greatest Movies of All-time, put it in his top 12 (also included in his list were The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Rio Bravo, Taxi Driver, His Girl Friday, Rolling Thunder, They all Laughed, Coffy, Carrie, Dazed and Confused, Five Fingers of Death, and Hi Diddle Diddle – an eclectic list to be sure – and no, I don’t know why he listed 12 and not 10). The way the film is edited and shot is so completely foreign to what an action movie looks like now that it seems a relic. Firstly the pace is much, much slower. Hand-held camera? What’s that? The music swells, but it is a score, not a soundtrack. And here’s the real kicker – the entire thing is a monumental stuff-up. Two Hundred and fifty POWs were meant to escape, in the end only 76 got out, and of them only 3 got back to England. Fifty were caught by the Gestapo and murdered (one of the crimes for which Hermann Goering was tried at Nuremburg).

That ain’t happening in any film made now. You think history was tinkered with back in 1963? Pah, made now, the entire escape plan would be the work of Hilts – he’d get it all organised – Bartlett would be his helper perhaps. The Forger, Manufacturer, the two Tunnel Kings, Intelligence? Gone. Played by nobodies in small parts. Hendly as smart guy who knows how to get things? Hilts can do that himself – after all the star must be the star – give him everything. If the screenwriter is particularly dopey, or is pushed around enough by the star we’ll have a flash back to the Hilts and his wife. Heck the whole bloody film will probably start from Hilts getting shot down, and him arriving at the camp a year later with the biggest reputation in the entire POW camp system for escaping.

Do they escape? Well maybe not – Hilts in a bit of pathos would most likely die helping Bartlett get across the border. The fifty? Not murdered, but perhaps killed in a shoot out with the Germans.

And 172 minutes? Well that might be the one thing that doesn’t change, but Michael Bay would make sure as hell a lot more of those minutes were used showing the motor bike chase.

Ah yes, I can see it now, fade to black, try not to throw up in to your popcorn bucket.

That is why this film succeeds. Yeah the final bit with Hilts on the bike is bullshit, but it’s not superhuman bullshit, and it fits with the character, it never goes too over the top, and most of all – he fails. The rest of the film though is played straight. It doesn’t turn into an Alistair Maclean film (as much as I love those) because it always has as that end result the fifty getting murdered.

It is perhaps the only action film based on a war crime. It succeeds because not only is the film done to entertain, it is also done to honour the dead. The film thus has a heart that is lacking in so many action films today – films where the main purpose seems to be to hopefully make enough money so the sequel will get green lit.

Were The Great Escape made today it’d be up for Best Picture – and treated as a drama. I have to say, looking at what won in 1963 – Tom Jones, and what else was nominated: America, America; Cleopatra; How the West was Won; and Lilies of the Field not only should it have been nominated for Best Picture that year (hell Elmer Bernstein didn’t even get nominated), it should have won. 

Here’s a few scenes of Bartlett and MacDonald (there’s not much of it on YouTube):

When I was younger – back in those dark, ignorant times before the internet – going to the movies meant making damn sure you got there early enough to see the previews. I still like to get to the cinema early enough (on those rare occasions that I actually go out to see a movie), but what is lacking is the sense of excitement that comes with the previews.

Back then you had next to no idea when a film was coming out, now you can find the release schedule for every film till 2012, and also the previews for every film. It’s still nice to see a good preview on the big screen – when I went to see The Social Network I was glad to see the preview for The Tourist – mostly because I had liked the preview on YouTube and wanted to see it on the big screen. But had it been fifteen or even ten years ago (when I had a dial up connection so slow it took about 3 hours to download one preview) I would have been excited to see something I hadn’t heard about. In fact I am still slightly disappointed when I see a preview in the cinema that I have seen on YouTube, even though I know I have seen EVERY preview on YouTube.

Previews have been around for years of course. But back in the day they lacked a fair bit of sophistication – sure they wanted to get you excited about seeing the film, but they hadn’t really got the selling down to an art form. Take the preview for Casablanca:

It’s nice, but the using words across the screen? That’ll never get the punters excited (also the Casablanca preview shows that giving away spoilers is not new.

My favourite previews (or trailers) are the teaser ones. These are the ones that come out well before the actual film is released.

They are a much more recent phenomena . Superman in the late 70s apparently had one, but I don’t recall it. They have really only came into their own in the last 15 or so years.  They are (as the name implies) there to tease the audience – and so generally they are shorter than a usual trailer which usually gives away a lot more about the film – and they often involve footage and music not seen in the movie.

Take for example the teaser trailer for Gladiator:


Hang on, what was that I said about using word on the screen? The teaser brilliantly and quickly gets across the narrative of the film – and quickly and brilliantly informs the audience that this gladiator movie is not going to be some camp affair. It’s easy to forget that before Gladiator, there hadn’t really been a big Ancient Roman blockbuster since the late 50s, early 60s, so the job of the teaser was to get the audience past that issue, and get them looking forward to hearing and seeing more about the film, and of course wanting to see the film itself. And the music used? Not from Hans Zimmer’s excellent score does the music come, no it’s from Conan the Barbarian!

Another teaser that used another film’s music was that for Australia:


The teaser, which almost achieves the impossible of making me feel like watching the movie again (no that ain’t going to happen), uses the stirring score from Kenneth Branaugh’s Henry V. So well done to Patrick Doyle for giving Baz Luhrmann’s teaser more passion than the film itself had. 

The first teaser trailer I really remember, mostly because I was at uni and going to see a few films and so I saw it quite often, was the teaser for Jurassic Park. Now again, at this point dinosaur films and the like were not exactly common. CGI was in its infancy and they didn’t want to give away the view of the dinosaurs until he actual film came out because that was what you wanted to pay to see. They also had the problem of trying to make it believable that dinosaurs could roam around in the 20th Century. If that idea was not believable, then the entire film would lose its vibrancy, and the producers would not have wanted to have the buzz around the film held back due to the science issue. And so the teaser effectively became a science lesson (movie science that is):


The voice, the dialogue, all brilliant. The concept is now believable – in fact had people wondering if it would truly be possible – and Spielberg could get on with wowing us with the T-Rex in the actual film, and not need to slow us down with masses of footage of the amber mine etc (even though there was a bit of a info-movie in the film of it).

The teaser trailer concept though really caught fire in 1996 when Independence Day had a teaser so brilliant that it pretty well guaranteed the film was going to be huge. This was before every single disaster movie would be released showing a famous landmark in New York or Washington being destroyed. It was really the first to use CGI to do such things, and in the pre-September 11 worlds, people absolutely loved the idea of being able to see the White House getting blown up.


Pixar do teasers as good as anyone. They too will use footage that is purely for the teaser and won;t show up in the film. My favourite teaser of theirs is for The Incredibles. It pretty much tells you all you need to know:


My favourite Australian teaser was the one for Animal Kingdom. Sure it might contain a spoiler, but teasers can get away with spoilers to an extent because they come out so many months before the film that you don’t really remember them (if they’re done well – which was the case here). The use of the Air Supply music, the lack of dialogue, of all it just lets you know this was going to be a film experience worth waiting for:


This week came out another teaser for a film that I hadn’t heard about – Battle: Los Angeles. It is another alien film, and so you would expect lots of explosions, lots of bombast. Instead what you get is one of the most arresting teasers I’ve ever seen – and has me absolutely desperate to see this film – and I don’t care if it is apparently somewhat similar to “Skyline” . That’s what a brilliant trailer does, in 2 minutes I went from not knowing about this film, to going on-line and searching to find out how soon it would be till I could see it (24 March).

The key is the song – the absolutely haunting “The Sun’s Gone Dim and the Sky’s Turned Black” by Johann Johannsson.


I’ll leave you with the teaser for Forrest Gump – due to the rather odd story of the film they couldn’t just give a quick tease. I mean think about it, a below average IQ guy goes through the baby boomer generation of experiences: how do you get that across in a trailer? And so the trailer pretty much told the whole story. It was a wonderful trailer, but I much prefer this version, done with the use of The Simpsons.
Have a great weekend:

On Tuesday night in Canberra I went along to the book signing of Paul Howes’s book “Confessions of a Faceless Man: Inside Campaign 2010”. At the launch he made some good points about the ALP – that they need to examine doing away with the binding caucus vote; that a price on carbon will raise the prices of electricity – that’s the bloody point; and that it’s time the ALP got with the 21st century on the issue of gay marriage. He also made some typical ALP-LNP-Media points about the Greens – namely in the next few years they’ll be a lot of fun to watch as they argue over whether or not they compromise on issues. I had a quick chat to him after he spoke and he came across as he generally does on TV – smart, personable and knowledgeable of the working of politics.

I look forward to Howes writing a book that reveals these qualities, because Confessions of a Faceless Man doesn’t do it.

On Wednesday I had to fly to Sydney for work and I was able to read the book in the two hours flying up and back. It is an easy read, but that is not only because he writes easy to read prose, but because he writes prose that doesn’t require too much thought. This is as much the format’s fault as it is Howes’s. It is written as a diary and too often such a format especially when written with the knowledge that it will be published (as is the case here) leads to entries that have little in common with a real diary – no introspection, no secrets, no (to quote the blurb on the back) “unvarnished” accounts.

Howes makes no secret of the fact he is not a writer – and certainly he was not employed with this task because of his writing ability but because of who he is – he was contacted by Melbourne University Press after his appearance on Lateline on the night of the spill that took down Rudd. Nothing wrong with that – which is why I can forgive him on Day 4 describing AWU media officer Andrew Casey as a “dishevelled genius”, and then on Day 10 write, “Bob Ellis, the dishevelled genius who…” Two dishevelled geniuses in the ALP? What are the odds?

But that is being churlish. It’s not why you read inside accounts. You read inside accounts to find out what happened inside. But on this score Howes’s book is a failure: instead it’s a political version of a cricketer’s diary of an Ashes tour, though neither as earnest as Steve Waugh, nor as funny as Warwick Todd.

It is instead pretty innocuous, and worst of all, lacking insight.  One journalist tweeted it was “compulsory reading for anyone interested in election 2010”, which leads me to wonder if he was paying attention during the campaign because I struggled to think of anything new that I discovered from Howes’s account. I certainly came out from reading it just as ignorant on a number of things as I was before hand.

For example, I still have no idea what was Howes’s role in the spill of Rudd or what was his role during the campaign. 

The book begins on the night of the spill. Howes writes that he received a phone call from a senior member of the federal ministry telling him the challenge was on and asking could “I please make my mind the fuck up about whether we’d support it and let him know in half an hour”.

Howes then spend a good portion of the rest of the opening chapter explaining how he had next to bugger all influence over the result. Why then was it so important he (and the AWU) decide who they were going to support? The closest we get is that the plotters wanted an “outside voice” a “leader of the labour movement” to back their decision.

Howes does not explain why on earth the opinion of a labour leader, but not a member of parliament could influence an MP – and equally how his opinion made the move legitimate. He says he went on Lateline purely because “Gillard’s key supporters thought that the AWU’s backing might be the key to convincing a number of backbenchers to make the switch”. Why he could persuade them to make the switch is left unanswered. Left unanswered as well is why his going on Lateline would do this most effectively – surely a few phone calls would do the trick?

The book is full of such unanswered points – Howes describes the ALP a “a large family made up of different wings” but he gives no insight into how they work. The core reason for Howes’ lack of insight is because he is a party man. The only ALP person to get a bullocking in this book is Kevin Rudd; everyone else gets off scott free. Howes of course knows that publishing an account so soon after an election which reveals his complete “unvarnished” thoughts would be manna for the Liberal Party and the media, and there is no way in hell he is stupid enough to do that. Now there’s no problem with that, but let’s not pretend then that we’re getting anything other than a filtered version of the truth.

Take Howes’s verdict of his mate Karl Bitar. Here’s what he writes early on:

“Plenty of people have laid the blame at the feet of the campaign director Karl Bitar… This is a pretty lazy and weak analysis . The actual campaign machinery that Bitar and party officials were responsible for ran like clockwork”.

That’s a nice account which makes Bitar sound like an executive assistant rather than a director. No one ever criticised the organisation of the campaign; it was the direction.

In his book Howes and his wife (as with everyone else) makes fun of the “Moving Forward” slogan. Is there a discussion with Bitar about this? Nope.

Howes thinks (again like everyone else) that the Citizen Assembly idea is dopey – did Bitar play a role in the decision to announce this? Guess not.

Howes disagrees with “many in the federal  campaign” who tell him the seat of Lindsay is in trouble. He writes “the race card plays well in Lindsay, so we’re told” Who is telling him this is it the media or the party executive? Is Bitar ever criticised for the obvious stance taken by the ALP in the campaign to appease the red neck vote in western Sydney? Nope – his role in it doesn’t even come up.

What about the “real Julia” strategy? This is laughingly put down by Howes to a “slip of the tongue” made by Gillard on Monday 2 August . It must have been a damn big slip of the tongue because it was on the front pages of the major newspapers on Monday before she even had an interview about it. What role did Bitar play in getting this story out? None? All? Part? 

Howes’s applauds Bitar for the adverts put out on Day 20 “the first outlines Labor’s genuinely good record of economic management”. They were good adverts but most Labor supporters had been wondering where the bloody hell they had been for 20 days. Why did it take the campaign so long to focus on the economy? Howes doesn’t ask or let us know.

You see Howes doesn’t actually tell us what his role in the campaign was. As far as I can gather his role was to go on the Today Show and debate Michael Kroger; go on MTR and debate Michael Kroger; quickly whiz over to Sky News and appear on Contrarians with Peter van Onselen (no Michael Kroger); then for something different go on Lateline and debate Michael Kroger. To finish off the night he’d ring Bitar, find out the polls then have a few beers and go to bed before getting up to debate Michael Kroger.

At no point do we actually get told his role, nor even that of the AWU, in the whole campaign. He writes near the end that “plenty of critics are mocking me about my ‘media slut’ status as well”. Gee I wonder why. Howes doesn’t tell us why he needs to go on TV. Why is it him and not someone else? Why him and not a Minister? What is he doing for the ALP? He worries at the start that he might be hurting the ALP by going on, but Bitar tells him to go for it. But how was he helping? Was he unable to say no to the Today Show, to MTR, to Contrarians, to Lateline, to Australian Story because to do so would have hurt the ALP’s chance of winning?

All we needed is a “Bitar wants me to be the media front man of the campaign – because we need someone not running for office to argue the Government's case against the likes of Kroger and Bolt”. But nope, none of that – he’s just out there going on TV, on radio, having to go on Sky on election night because… well we don’t know why.

So much of this book tells us nothing about what really went on in the campaign – the real inside story. Take Day 7, the day of Gillard’s climate change speech. After spending a good four and a half pages writing about Mark Latham, he ends with

“After indulging in my own version of 1984’s Two Minutes’ Hate against Latham, I settle into a busy day of work, more media appearances and a few meetings related to the campaign.”

Does he care to tell us who was in those “meetings related to the campaign”, what they discussed, what happened as a result? No of course not, you would only include such things if you were writing an insiders account of the campaign.

You see while it is nice to read Howes let rip at Latham, it’s nothing new. Anyone who follows politics knows Latham is a rat. But what did the campaign do about it? Did Bitar or anyone come up with a strategy once they knew Latham would be on 6o Minutes? No idea.

And so it goes on and on. Howes complains about aspects of the campaign, but blames no one. He sees the polls and blames the leaks and Rudd. Now I agree the leaks played a big part but they only served to give the campaign a hip and shoulder – that it was knocked over was because it didn’t have a firm footing to begin with.

Take Day 7 and the climate change speech. Howes writes of the citizens’ assembly “This seems a bit wacky (or Ruddish)”. He is spot on! The problem with the citizens’ assembly was not that it wouldn’t work, or wouldn’t help (which it would not have) but that it smacked 100 precent of a Rudd idea. Linking Rudd with any issue was bad, but with climate change? Death. And yet when the polls come out the following Monday with the ALP slumping from 55 to 52, he writes: “Maybe the Rudd factor is now starting to have an affect”. 

Please.

Surprisingly the person most missing from Howes’s tale is Julia Gillard. We really don’t see her other than as we all saw her – on TV. And when we see here in the flesh, we get little insight. Here’s Howes writing on Day 5:

“I see the Prime Minister in the evening. She says she feels that things are going well, but there is still along way to go”.

Geez I hope that isn’t all she said to him, otherwise she talks in person like she does when having a press conference. But we get no closer; no deeper.

Howes is at his best when he writes of Scott Morrison – the way he graduates Morrison’s title from Shadow Minister for Boat People, to Shadow Minister for Boat People and the Whipping Up of Racial Tension and on and on is wonderful. It provides the narrative with… well a narrative, rather than just another day, another interview, another debate with Kroger, another poll, another few beers with the boys. But even here we get no sense of what the ALP was trying to do to counter the asylum seeker issue.

Howes writes well about his wife and children – but again here the format does him no favours, for there is no time to build much of a sense of the loss he feels from being so often away from them (perhaps because we get no sense of why he must be away from them).

And so we are in end none the wiser, other than that Bob Ellis does think Julia Gillard is good (contrary to every bloody thing he wrote during the campaign about her on The Drum), and that Andrew Bolt and Janet Albrechtsen apparently write about policy.

Howes no doubt is not just some hanger-on in the ALP. He is an insider – deep inside. He also obviously has some strong views about the direction the party should head. When he came out back in 2009 against the Government's asylum seeker policy he deservedly got a lot of praise from many people who now criticise him. He has things to say and he often says them well. He also would have some views on what went wrong during the 2010 election.

One day, perhaps many years from now, when he doesn’t have to worry about ruining his own career, or being viewed as a rat, he’ll write about them. When he does, perhaps then we’ll get the true confessions. The complete unvarnished, brutally honest account.

So Parliament is back. Let’s get excited.

There are Private Members Bills on Wild Rivers, Going to War, $2 ATM fees and NBN Transparency. The times they are a changin’. But Question Time? Meet the new Question Time, same as the old Question Time.

Actually that is not quite true, it is worse. Julia started in brilliant form today, letting rip into Abbott when up piped Speaker Harry Jenkins calling her to order and to get back to the question. You get the feeling Harry goes to the cricket to watch Billy Bowden umpire. The rest of us want to see the game played. Let ‘em go Harry; the changes to Question Time were pretty well a joke once they made sure Dorothy Dixers remained, so stop pretending the world is new. There has been one rule change which does give Harry a new job, and he should keep strictly to it – that of  time keeper.

The opposition attack was opened by Tony Abbott. It was pretty obvious early on that the Liberal Party has been spending what little remains of its funds on focus group testing the phrase “lost its way”:

"I remind the Prime Minister of her statement in June that the Government had lost its way. When does she expect to find her way by setting out some clear, direct, specific and deliverable policies to stop the tax rises, to stop the cost-of-living rises and above all else, to stop the boats?"

That was it. That was the best he could come up with for the first delivery of the the day. It brought to mind Steve Harmison’s first delivery in the Brisbane Test of the 06/07 Ashes series.

The question was in effect a Dorothy Dixer that allowed Gillard to talk about anything she wanted to. She quickly got into stride:

“You’ve got to give the Leader of the Opposition this: once he’s told a slogan by a focus group he never deviates from it… driven by focus groups every day of the week…. He's showing all the political maturity of a two-year-old in a tantrum after the election. It's about time he got over it and actually started contributing to national debates”

The problem of course is that Abbott will never do any such thing. He got where he is in the polls (or at least where the Liberal Party is) through the three word slogan. He received lavish praise for his discipline during the campaign of sticking to his mantra (discipline is much more important than policies). Whenever he accidentally utters something of his own, it is almost guaranteed to be a thought bubble that has the rest of the Liberal Part front bench wondering why they hell they elected this goose. So there is no way he will deviate from it now.

Abbott as is his usual form – followed up with a supplementary (seriously, who came  up with this dumb rule about allowing only one supplementary per Question Time?). The supplementary was as dopey as it gets:

"Does she agree with former Labor minister Graham Richardson that the Government has no agenda and no plan?”

Yes, the Liberal Party are now holding up Richo as the bastion of judgement on the need for vision of political parties. The supplementary allowed Julia to absolutely rip into Abbott by listing off all the challenges facing the nation and comparing Abbott’s attitude:

I say in answer to the question from the Leader of the Opposition: would it not strike Australians as strange that, in a world where there are so many challenges—how do we keep our economy strong and how do we ready our economy for the future? How do we tackle climate change? How do we make sure that every child in this country gets a great quality education and how do we make sure we have the healthcare services that Australians deserve not only today but in 10, 20 and 30 years time as our society ages? How do we make sure that we have world-class infrastructure right around the country? How do we make sure that we have balanced growth in an economy where our resources sector is obviously going so strong but things like the high dollar are impacting on other industries and other parts of the country? How do we reconcile and improve the prospects and life expectancy of Indigenous Australians; how do we close the gap? How do we as a world deal with the challenges of food security, development and freer trade?

In the face of all these challenges, that the Leader of the Opposition would come into this place and use the precious minutes of question time to yet again play politics—we do not expect anything more from a man whose entire philosophy can be reduced to a few three-word slogans.

Now that is a long bloody list, and I am in now way saying the ALP is all over these issues, but Gillard listed them off without as need for prompting. It’s a good list  Perhaps one that we should keep in mind when we want to think about what the ALP stands for.

Chris Pyne at this point got up for a pointless point of order (except to try and stop Gillard’s attack) whereupon she responded that she didn’t agree with John Howard about much, but she agreed with him on Chris Pyne – alluding top Howard autobiography where he pretty much dismissed Pyne as just a Costello activist who mishandled the issue of Costello’s leadership.

At this Jenkins piped up for the PM to get back to the question (which earned him a bit of a sharp glance from Gillard). She then proceeded to tear into Abbott, at which point Jenkins seeing a chance to get involved again tried to stop Gillard from “debating the question” and then after a few more “orders” told her to conclude her answer.

Yeah thanks Harry. We’re so indebted to you to ensure keep things in check.

Julie Bishop was up next, and she didn’t need to wait for a supplementary: she named checked Richo straight up! She thought she had Julia a beauty when she asked when was she going to stop using the three word slogan on asylum seekers of “Regional Processing Centre”. It got an incredibly forced “ha ha ha” from Abbott and a wonderful “Puerile!” from Albanese. And I can’t really better that for commentary.

The interesting aspect of the opposition’s questions was the utter lack of acknowledgment of the OECD Economic Report on Australia released yesterday. The Report contained this about the NBN:

“Empirical studies have stressed that value of competition between technological platforms for the dissemination of broadband services”

Yes I know, you’re shocked. It certainly got Michael Stutchbury all frothy. Usually you would expect the opposition to use such a report to attack the Government – especially on a day they were debating the NBN. But Turnbull didn’t even get a question, instead Alan Tudge asked a question on the NBN. Tudge??! So much for Turnbull being charged with destroying the NBN. You’d think the tactics committee might actually give him a few questions with which to do it… (it suggests perhaps that Turnbull doesn;t hold a hell of a lot of sway in the tactics committee – or perhaps more that Abbott is worried about giving him too much oxygen)

The OECD report had some interesting things – Peter Martin has 4 good excerpts – but I do like this bit on the NBN:

“Such a monopolistic incumbent [theNBN Co] could forestall the development of as yet unknown technological advances”

Wow, the OECD must be watching a lot of Star Trek if they think something that is faster than the speed of light is going to be invented. I can’t wait for the hyper-drive broadband network.

This is an often refrain of those against the NBN – that it is picking winners and we don’t know what the future holds. The problem of course is that it cuts both ways. We don’t know what we will be using the NBN for in 20 years anymore than in 1990 we knew what would be using the internet for in 2010 – but we’re supposedly not allowed to consider that.

As for the rest of QT, well Joe got in a question on the banks. It was not exactly a yorker – mostly because it was all ties up in the laboured “lost its way” spiel.

My favourite question was Greg Hunt once again getting up and refuting his pervious views on a price on carbon:

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to President Obama’s abandonment of a cap-and-trade emissions trading scheme for the world’s largest economy. As the Prime Minister herself rejected an emissions trading scheme during the period of the Rudd government, which she said had lost its way, can she explain how increasing electricity prices for Australian consumers rather than cleaning up power stations is somehow the government finding its way?

Whew. Glad to know that all we need to do now is clean up those dirty power stations and all will be good! And does Hunt really suggest we should just follow America’s politics? That we should just do something because the Republican Party are against it? The Republicans voted against a pretty piss poor health care bill last year, does that mean the Libs think Australia should dump Medicare? What idiocy.

Gillard dispatched this weak delivery over the fence:

Australia is not an American state. We will make our own decisions in our national interest. The mid-term elections in America did not determine policy for us. We are Australians; we will make our own decisions. …. The most efficient way of reducing carbon pollution is to put a price on carbon pollution. I am of that view; economists are of that view; President Obama is of that view. Right around the world nations are working through how best to deal with carbon, including pricing carbon.

She then pointed out something that those who would have us believe we’re rushing to lead the world do not want us to know:

If the member does want to slavishly follow American examples—and I believe we are Australians and we will make our own decisions—then perhaps he would want to look to the example of California. As he would well know, if California were a nation it would be sitting at the table of the G20. It has moved to price carbon in its economy.

She ended:

Members opposite, including the Leader of the Opposition, have had every position possible on this, the Leader of the Opposition changing his mind every 24 hours—famously called a weather vane by the member for Wentworth. Now is the time to put those politics aside and to work with the government on something so clearly in our national interest. National interest before political interest: try it just once.

It was a good response, and Gillard certainly showed some good mojo – she seems to need parliament to get some. Lets hope after her Christmas break she finds it outside of the chamber as well.

The rest of QT? Have to say I couldn't be bothered – get a copy of one from earlier this year. You won’t notice much different.

***

There’s been a few interesting things written about Paul Howes’s comments on anonymous trolls on the internet. I was going to write a response, but Chas Licciardello pretty much said it all for me.

Will not be blogging till Friday – Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday see me having a life!