Peter Martin has all the wonky stuff worth reading on the Reserve Bank’s 1% rates cut, which a number of banks and lending institutions have indicated will lead to a .8% cut in their variable mortgage rates. Dennis Atkins, writing at Party Games, thinks that the Reserve has given the Rudd government political breathing space.

No doubt we’ll find out.

Malcolm Turnbull has been playing a dangerous game on interest rates. For a start, finding a single point of differentiation with Labor on the financial turbulence in calling for the banks to deliver the full .5% cut expected from the Reserve tomorrow trashes his “bipartisan” message articulated so recently. With banks falling over all round the world, the government’s argument that conditions have changed is going to find a fair bit of receptivity around the shop. Turnbull realised two weeks ago that bipartisanship was a good message in the midst of perceived chaos, at a time when people don’t really want to hear disagreement from political leaders. That’s gone now. Now, a lot of people might not remember his incoherent critique of the federal budget back in May when he was Shadow Treasurer (and the government’s budget strategy is looking a lot more clever five months down the track than reaction suggested at the time), but with both economic news in the foreground and his leadership itself big news, a lot more voters will be switched in to what he has to say than usual.

He may have figured that he had to go populist to avoid the “merchant banker” thing. That may be short-sighted.

If incidentally, there is no Turnbull bounce, it’ll be interesting to see if the usual suspects attribute that to voters flocking to the government at a time of economic uncertainty. There’d be truth in that, but if the assumption is that politics is not dynamic and there’s an underlying trend to the Liberals being masked by the crisis, that would be quite wrong.

Update: New post on recent developments.

I suspect this was some sort of pre-emptive strike to try to forestall any credit claiming by Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan if (as expected) the cash rate is cut by 25 points later today. The politics haven’t played out to script, with Nelson’s comments that he wouldn’t make such a call in government playing into Rudd’s hands.

But it was interesting to hear Nelson’s justification on Lateline last night. Nelson argued that he was reflecting what “many Australians” thought. For those who’ve been paying any attention to what he’s had to say since he became leader, that’s typical. He appears to regard himself as some sort of transmission belt. Hence all the emo-ting. It’s an intriguing view of political leadership because it completely eviscerates the notion of leadership itself. Perhaps it’s one reason why his own leadership is in so much trouble.

Speaking of which, Christian Kerr, who brings you “balance and fact”, occupies his column inches this morning deconstructing Peter Costello’s interjections in Question Time. Perhaps this is his own small contribution to balancing out the purported paucity of analysis on the part of bloggers. It’s really important for our nation’s destiny, after all, to parse Costello’s throw away lines every which way:

“Wow! What about the meaning of life?” Costello exclaimed.