Glenn Milne boned from News? The automated email response from News Limited gallery hack Glenn Milne delivered the news: “Please be advised that as of the 13/03/2010 I no longer work for News Limited Sunday Papers, I still work for The Australian.” Milne is directing correspondents to a Gmail account, presumably because his role at News is now as Australian column contributor only.

So what’s happened? The veteran Canberra reporter had been dishing the political dirt for the Sunday tabloids — including The Sunday Telegraph, The Sunday Herald Sun and The Sunday Mail (Brisbane and Adelaide) — catching Kevin Rudd at a New York strip club, and swearing at MPs, exposing Greg Combet’s love life, uncovering Jan McLucas’ travel rorts and other salacious scoops prowling the halls of parliament house on Saturdays. It seems all that digging got too tiresome for the man Paul Keating dubbed the ‘The Poison Dwarf’ (and that was before his celebrated run-in with Crikey founder Stephen Mayne at the 2006 Walkley Awards). Milne couldn’t be reached for comment.

Crikey understands his replacement has already started work. Shaun Carney has defected from Fairfax — after almost 25 years at The Age — and last week announced to a shocked News Limited press suite he would now be filing for the Sunday titles. Fairfax didn’t respond to questions before deadline.

Carney was an associate editor and senior columnist with the Melbourne newspaper. He’s written two books, including a biography on federal Treasurer Peter Costello — ironic given Milne was seen as Costello’s biggest supporter in the press gallery.

Update: Correction from Crikey – Simon Kearney not Shaun Carney.

While Bishop has been massively unconvincing in the Treasury portfolio, it’s not only the Deputy Leader who should be concerned over this latest outburst of leaks to The Australian. Malcolm Turnbull and the rest of the Libs should also recall that Brendan Nelson was brought down as much by the constant dripfeed of negative stories to their mates in the press gallery, as by his own hapless efforts as Leader. What is now being done to Bishop (and the articles have been cleverly framed to keep the “narrative” alive for quite a while – by forcing her putative replacements to deny an interest, and thus further fuel the story) could be done to Turnbull tomorrow. As if to lay down a few markers, Peter Van Onselen published an otherwise bizarre op/ed on Saturday praising Peter Costello as the best available leader.

I’ve observed before that the opposition’s coziness with the press gallery does them no favours. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find a way of resolving problems internally rather than in newspaper columns.

The questions facing mankind are, essentially, the same as they have always been: the age-old questions about what is good, true and beautiful. How do we identify those characteristics in our own and others’ behaviour? How do we achieve them in our lives?

Inevitably, we will never answer them validly if – confusing the medium with the message, to put it in Marshall McLuhan’s discredited formula – we confuse the garments for the person, the cover for the book.

Apparently, the ABC’s remit is to pose (or answer?) eternal questions, and any management decision about Radio National demonstrates “relativism” and that “they hate religion”.

I’m actually not a huge fan of Stephen Crittenden’s, but there can be no doubt that discussing programming decisions in this fashion is, well, just demented. The ABC’s decision making is driven by twin (and overlapping) logics – the decline in funding for content created inhouse by specialists, and an attempt to be a leader in interactive content. It has nothing much to do with “relativism” and “postmodernism” except in the fevered imaginings of crazed columnists. There are legitimate questions to ask about all this – but the culture wars frame makes it literally impossible to debate them sensibly. A lot is changing in public broadcasting in this country, and we really haven’t begun to discuss it because the overhang of the culture wars mindset seems to persist. Probably this sort of craziness is best ignored, and its hyperbolic nature itself a sign that its time is past, but it’s worth noting if only to call for a much better informed and contemporary discussion on public broadcasting.

There was another outbreak of this guff on Monday in The Australian, apropos of quarterly newspolls in New South Wales and Victoria. There was the usual news story and two op/ed pieces to ram home the point. It was intriguing to see the frame applied to the comments of ABC election analyst Antony Green:

Voters clearly see benefits in balancing a federal government with state and territory governments of the opposite political complexion.
ern
“All the state governments are suffering from the same thing,” ABC election analyst Antony Green said yesterday.

“They no longer have the federal Coalition to run against,” he said. “They have to stand on their own two feet and can’t blame John Howard any more.”

“The Victorian poll shows it’s competitive and Labor can come back. The NSW ratings are terminal, unless Rees can leverage his popularity into votes.”

Any moderately careful reading of this passage would disclose that Green is not making the point which has been seized on as the current all purpose iron law of politics. What he’s in fact referring to is the fact that Labor governments find it harder to make excuses for poor performance on infrastructure and service delivery. Peter Beattie made much of the fact that Howard hadn’t come to the party in 2006, and the focus groups Graham Young and I conducted showed this message resonated. In turn, Kevin Rudd very successfully argued in 2007 the same thing in Queensland – implying that governments working in co-operation could turn things around, but not immediately. That, in turn, suggests that there’s a chance that Howard’s ghost is still available for Anna Bligh to run against in 2009 – because voters know there are long lead times for infrastructure and improvements in services, and the economy may also provide some sort of alibi. Different dynamics, and versions of this one, will be operating in other states. As Green points out – in direct contradicting the spin that his quote is woven into – Victoria’s circumstances are different to those of the putrid NSW Labor regime. Fixed terms allow governments to frontload unpopular decisions, and that’s what Brumby has been up to.

By the way, these comments aren’t intended to suggest that the state governments are all bright and shiny and the fount of all things good. I think Peter Beattie deserved in many ways to lose in 2006 – precisely because of a lack of foresight until quite late in the piece in improving service delivery and attending to infrastructure. What I’m trying to do is suggest that the analysis we’re being told is “common knowledge” is in fact wrong, and reflects neither actual voter behaviour nor some logic of politics, but is itself derivative of a partisan political strategy.

Elsewhere: Possum points out another gaping hole in the commentary on these polls – the fact that almost 30% of respondents in NSW are choosing to indicate a preference for neither major party, and that the same effect is present in more muted form in Victoria. That’s what’s worthy of analysis!

Jacques Chester, I suspect, has pinged what’s going on with all this:

It’s a lawyerly way of arguing. Pick an argument, any argument, that might be plausible, and throw it at the judge. You never know, it might stick.

There are certainly some straws blowing in the wind over the past few days, which in the way of these things, either represent columnists in The Australian flying kites for the opposition to grasp, or reciting lines fed to them by the Coalition. The always all over the place Malcolm Colless, whose stream of consciousness writing is valuable precisely because the multiplicity of disconnected thought bubbles probably do act as a barometer of right wing thinking, opines:

With a solid financial background under his belt, Turnbull must not fall for the politically correct line that opposing government policy makes the Opposition guilty of economic vandalism. He needs to counter this with firm leadership and conviction.

There’s also a bit of blah in there about the fiscal stimulus package not representing “macro-economic reform”, whatever that might mean. However, the dots can be joined by reading Michael Sutchbury in the same paper:

KEVIN Rudd and Wayne Swan’s emergency fiscal stimulus is unlikely to end up being a good investment of $10.4 billion of taxpayers’ money.

The great bulk of the “economic security strategy” package won’t improve Australia’s economic security because that would require supply-side measures to improve productivity.

This, obviously, ignores the fact that infrastructure spends take a very long time to stimulate demand, and the package is all about short term stimulus in order to forfend a recession. Supply side interventions were, of course, very thin on the ground under Howard and Costello, and improving the skills base and economic infrastructure (both soft and hard) is a medium term rather than a short term project. But what’s important about all this is that it neatly articulates with the anti-deficit argument that the Liberals are starting to run.

Former treasurer Peter Costello also criticised Labor’s move to drive the budget surplus into a potential deficit, as financial analysts predicted tax revenue generation would slow as the economy grinds down.

Mr Costello, who engineered a strategy to allow the budget windfall from the revenue boom to build, said it was better economic policy to operate a surplus.

“When the economy is growing the budget should be in surplus,” Mr Costello told The Australian yesterday.

Costello has apparently forgotten that he once understood that counter-cyclical fiscal policy implied being comfortable with deficit budgeting during turbulent economic conditions, and that the whole point of a fiscal stimulus at this stage is to boost economic growth, which is in danger of slowing to a halt.

Mr Turnbull urged the Government not to squander the savings of “a decade of responsible financial management”.

There are more than a few echoes of the Keating legacy in all this.

First, the “defend the last government’s legacy” line – initiated by Keating himself – which was rapidly transformed through its appropriation by pundits such as Paul Kelly into some sort of conventional wisdom: that the Labor party cruelled its chances of escaping opposition early by allegedly trashing Keating’s legacy. The holes in that argument as a political story should be too gaping to need spelling out. But it’s been seized on – at the instigation of another former PM, John Howard – as an iron law for the Liberals in opposition. Never walk away from John Howard. So we get all sorts of bizarre positions all unified by a desire to preserve the “Howard legacy” – in this case a preciousness about the surplus that was in fact created as much by serendipitous movements in commodity prices and an addiction to bracket creep coupled with election winning handouts as by “responsible financial management”.

Secondly, we have some resonances of Keating’s “recession we had to have” position lurking around. It’s as though, at some level, Liberals and pundits expect Labor to bring on another recession to further the cause of reform. Bizarre. The praise for the Keating government’s One Nation stimulus package from the opposition benches seems to completely elide the fact that it was too late and too slow. And the argument about the Treasury numbers – which is as much about attempting to give the political line that “Rudd is wasting the surplus” legs as any real desire for accountability – ignores the fact that the formulation of growth projections is a time consuming and deeply bureaucratic exercise. Ken Henry’s much more likely to have relied on his best reading of the circumstances than set Treasury minions to work on a full scale forecasting exercise. If we waited for that, in the current climate, it would almost certainly not be worth the paper it was written on by the time it arrived.

Nicholas Gruen puts the politics of all this into perspective neatly:

But back in Australia wouldn’t the Opposition give the government hell if it took the Coalition’s string of surpluses and started running deficits? Too right it would, just as the ALP would with roles reversed. But, if another fiscal stimulus proves necessary the government will have to decide. Politically they’ll need to choose between a faltering economy, rising business failures and unemployment – or giving their opponents some ammunition that they’ll use. Economically, one way spells misery, the other hope and a better chance of success.

I’ll bet some of the Government’s political advisers counselled against the bold approach the Government took last week. “Couldn’t we keep more of the surplus?; Have two bob each way?” Now they’re eating their words. Using the economic textbook to manage the economy decisively is a political winner.

I’m only an economist. But if I were a Government politician I know which path I’d choose. If the economy falters I’d fight recession. I’d take some nasty hits from the Opposition rather than die the death of a thousand cuts while I waited for recovery to come in its own good time.

That takes me to my third instance of Keating’s least impressive legacies. The opposition appears to be banking on their “Labor = deficits” line being available for revival, under the illusion that it was some sort of killer blow to post-Keating Labor rather than shadow boxing. People were always (and rightly) much more concerned with crippling interest rates and job losses rather than some arcane argument about fiscal policy. In a way, it was also an artefact of Keating’s wonkery – mistaking political narratives for political and social facts. I’m 100% certain that Australian electors today would rather have a government staving off recession than being able to sit around patting Peter Costello on the back for his record of surpluses.

Ps: Incidentally I’m inclined to completely ignore the “what did Kevin Rudd say about what Ken Henry said about what Glenn Stevens said” furore – total beatup in my view. Although, I’m surprised that the omniscient Malcolm Turnbull didn’t use his own purported financial expertise to spot the problem which is the occasion for the said furore. But I suppose his credit claiming for the bank deposit guarentee is so last week’s media cycle.

Pyne, one of Turnbull’s key leadership backers, has now been promoted into the frontline education portfolio and it is Julia Gillard, his opposite, whom he now has in his sights. Pyne has finally assumed his rightful position at the epicentre of the Opposition, a role that was bloodymindedly denied him by Howard for two reasons: he was a Liberal progressive and he was a supporter of Peter Costello. It was enough to generate such negative personal energy from Howard that he continually blocked Pyne’s promotion in what turned out to be part of an act of self-destruction.

Pyne is now where he wants to be in the Liberal pantheon and, more critically, where Turnbull wants him to be.

In case you don’t feel like reading the rest of this guff, Christopher Pyne has “lighted onto” a “proposition” – that while Kevin Rudd and his ministers are portrayed as “Howard lite”, they’re actually hiding their socialist lights under a bushel! Exposes such as Christopher’s clever realisation that transparency in private school funding might lead to Class Warfare will be their secret weapon as they go on the front foot…

Memo to Kevin Rudd: these guys think they can win. And they will now do whatever it takes to do so.

Whatever…

LISTENING to Kevin Rudd at Council of Australian Governments meetings as he tried to connect the global economic situation to the more mundane items on the national reform agenda was often excruciating.

Anybody with a rudimentary understanding of economics would have quickly concluded, as I did, that the Prime Minister didn’t have a good understanding of these issues.

Can a tell all book be far behind? Would it need to be a three volume set to contain slurs on all the people Michael Costa doesn’t like?

Here’s a suggestion for the under-employed former pollie – why not join the Liberal Party? You’ve already got News Limited Columnists eating out of your hand (you actually are one too!)… And your right-wing views should see you fit in nicely. Perhaps with your added ruthlessness, you could spark endless speculation about Malcolm Turnbull’s polling and leadership and unlike the Great Pretender seize the top job by the power of the Word!

Pavlov’s Cat also has some interesting reflections on being a sociable blogger, and how addictive it can be. It’s well worth remembering that there is stuff to do other than correct people who are wrong on the internets. At a time when so many blogs are making the switch to the Crikey platform, and others are considering such a move (and that comments thread is worth a read), I think it’s important both to celebrate the independent blogosphere (not that I’m knocking the Crikey folks – quite the contrary) and blogging as an amateur practice in the best sense of the word – do it as long it’s fun and rewarding, and you’re writing about what you’re passionate about, not as a chore or because you think you’re on a mission to change the world. Remember that next time some concern troll or trollblogger denounces the whole show as falling short of the high standards the MSM sets for “balance and fact” or loudly condemns you for not blogging about this or that. The public sphere isn’t all uber serious rational deliberation (is it ever?) but a space for expression and enjoyment, or it should be.

Speaking of blogging, Rx advised in comments that Tim Dunlop’s commenting crew from the now sadly erstwhile Blogocracy have set themselves up in their own digs. That’s an interesting development, and it also goes to show one other important thing about the blogosphere – it’s the community that matters.

Elsewhere: Boynton.

Update: Lyn Calcutt at Public Opinion on the redistribution going on around the blogosphere.

This is not an attempt to portray the accomplished and charming Bryce as a Cromwellian dark star on the horizon.

Sometimes the kowtow can make a useful contribution to the common good, but to be characterised as a kind of household robot would have been hard to take for a girl from the bush who has raised five children and climbed to the top in the demanding profession of the law.

There was also a disconcerting ambiguity about Bryce’s announcement that her first travels would be to the Murray-Darling. Did she mean she would traverse these two immensely long rivers and make whistlestops at all the settlements within their vast embrace? Or was she intending to brief herself on the politics of climate change, conservation and state-commonwealth relations now implicit in the phrase Murray-Darling?

Entirely shamefully, as I contemplated the elegantly coiffured and accoutred new GG, admired her perfect profile and struggled to share her angst, it crossed my mind that if we had played our cards differently we might have recruited Boris Johnson.

Go figure.

Richard Farmer has pinged what the national News Limited polling pundits haven’t noticed – the movement in inconsistent directions (although the trend in both cases is weak) shows that their current narrative of “balancing” Labor’s federal dominance by turning on state Labor.

Incidentally, Lawrence Springborg shouldn’t get cocky (heh! bad pun!) about all the good news from the meejah. Since his dream baby, the LNP, came into the world, he doesn’t seem to have done anything much other than continue the purge of Liberals. Oh, and claim to stand for “renewal” while failing to stand up to should be superannuated former leader and Minister Mike Horan who wants to continue to occupy Toowoomba South at age 65, thus leading to Stuart Copeland – one of the few Nats shadows with brain power – being redistributed out of existence at age 40. But, never mind, The Borg has promoted a 27 year old no one has ever heard of to the front bench!

Lawrence had better either start spelling out how exactly he’s going to “fix” Queensland, or get that singlet and the running shoes out and prepare for some more stunts.