It's easy to forget who you are. Life is a daily tsunami of things to do and worry about. Gotta go see the doctor Tuesday about those weird chest pains the other night. Need to make more money as Christmas approaches. Pick up the car from the panel beaters. Get the kids after school today...

Staring blankly into a bookshop window the titles remind me. 'Me and my Daddy', with and without an exclamation mark! 'Daddy and Me.' There seem to be lots of bears involved, and balloons, and pastel colours. Okay, Father's Day approaches. But what does that really mean?

Beyond the children's books there's a plethora of titles telling me how to be a better parent, and with luck a better man too - or, if not, then a better gardener and handyman, which feels more practical as well as more honest somehow. Like death and taxes, war and sport and spy thrillers never fade away either.

Then there are those books strung together around a worn-out routine from some columnist or other and transformed into a crappy 250-page memoir or novel. If they're not insincere they sure as hell read as pretty damned glib, knock-offs with lots of marketing gloss to cover up the shoddy work below. It's the male equivalent to Chick Lit, and I call it Bloke Pulp. Must the trees of the world be wasted on this?

The weekend supplements are likely to be filled with the same tripe. The phrase 'Men's Issue' is something I incinerate on sight. It's a guarantee I will not be interested. Ever.

Sometimes I get the impression the only images of masculinity, and more particularly fatherhood, being made available to me are these huggy, sensitive New Age guy instalments with a dollop of Masterchef panache, or a bunch of Homer Simpson, I-can't-change-nappies, I'm-just-a-loveable-dope reports from the frontline of lagers and love.

Do I feel left out of the picture? Damn right. After having this stuff shovelled at me every year since God-knows-when I have had my fill. I guess it works okay for flogging designer eggbeaters and male beauty products, but it doesn't speak to me and it never has. Most men I know feel the same way.

The suspicion is it was all a lot more truthful when you got a power drill and an appallingly jokey Hallmark card for your own dad rather than being forced to deal with this swamp of targeted marketing and media hype presented in the guise of annual understanding.
The worst was a few years back when I read a celebrity dad saying "every day is a rainbow", the biggest load of crap I have ever heard when it comes to fatherhood. My instant response was that he either had very little to do with his kid or hadn't been a father for very long, or more likely both.

The truth is that many days are difficult or at least testing when you're a father. And that it's not the days that matter so much as the moments when the kids open up to you - and you open up to them - when you're suddenly, really there with them as if it's some forgotten key that has turned in your being.

Time worries me, of course. Time just for myself, time to catch a breath so that I can then be there as that better person and father, and a better partner too. Most guys I know are stressed about money and keeping afloat, and they trouble over finding the extra time to be calmer and gentler, and yes, more communicative. There's a lot of beating up of one's self, a lot of stress every father's day.

Then there are the big worries for where the world is headed: environmentally, politically, economically. And the powerlessness that comes with it. It can feel as if you are trying to carry your whole family across thin ice. What to do? You can't solve it, or change it, although you might vote for people who actually care about it. But you can get in close to your children sometimes, and when you do it's like waking out of the stupor you know is merely surviving.

"IHopeDerYOUHabbmak". My five-year-old daughter passes me a note etched on the back of a crumpled white envelope she has fished out of the recycling bin. It's not so easy to read (her version was in pencil, with some letters toppling over the top of others, so you've got it easy). "It says, 'I hope you had a good time at the doctor's daddy. But I couldn't fit the word doctor on the paper so I left it out.'" I nod as if her explanation clarifies it all for me. I run my fingers into the snags of her tangled hair and she smiles up at me.

My attempts at interpreting her note have been complicated by my eight year-old son also showing me his Sydney FC Junior Blues Card. It finally came in the mail after a two-week wait. Now that the vigil is over he is keen to start booking dates for all the season's football matches - immediately. He has the pass! The Pass! It's a seasonal license alright - to hassle me!

My youngest boy, who has just turned three, is meanwhile standing on his chair being unruly with his meal. The older kids have taught him how to call everyone "a big fat monkey bum" and a few other things not usually allowed on TV till after 9pm. He wants to hear a Michael Jackson song on the stereo, he wants pasta, he wants The Wot Wots, he wants "strawbobbies" (strawberries)... he wants it all but really he's just tired and if we can only get him to have a bath and into bed he will be a lot happier in the morning.

It's all mundane and not a little frantic, and I'd love to turn the volume control down a few notches. (Is parenthood, by definition, the art of dealing with being yelled at no matter what the mood is?) But it's while all this is happening and my partner is cooking dinner and keeping them all happy that the family seems to coalesce into some atomically true feeling, a kind of oneness or rhythm as rightly lit in my eyes as any Vermeer painting.

Later on this same night when my oldest son has a nightmare he calls out and asks me to lay with him for a while. His body feels slight as a leaf and he clings to me before we both turn on our sides. I'm a little unlucky and drop off to sleep in his single bed, creaking my old bones back up and out and padding back to the bedroom where my partner sleeps and my youngest son has gazumped my place with his preference for sleeping sideways. Move over, kid.

In the moonlight shadows I lay there and worry for how fast time slips away. How old they will all be soon, too old for any of them to want me laying beside them at night, too old to hold hands with me as we walk down the street together. I feel the nervous, mortal motion of them slipping away from me and out into the world forever.

Yes, I fear for them - and for my own loneliness without them - and I hold them closer to me in that strange dreaming place between the mind and the heart. Is there anything like the smell of your own children's skin as you nuzzle into them? The way their voices can gather like a song (even if it is a rousing version of 'Highway to Hell' on the car stereo)? They're getting older now and I'm trying to learn how to talk with them more: whales, stars, football, fairies, songs, pizza, the agenda is varied.

I think about how the author Cormac McCarthy was right, that children are the last trace of God in all of us. I certainly haven't read a description of fatherhood's sacrificial faith as profound as what you find in McCarthy's novel The Road. There's a terrible end-of-the-world darkness to that book, of course, but a deep love as well. In a funny way it touches on the idea that being a father means next to nothing in the Existential sense, that indeed we are only here to lay down our lives for children. Loving them to death. And waking again in the morning to find we're still there and able to hold them and be held by them too.


Mark Mordue is the winner of the 2010 Pascall Prize for Critical Writing. He has just completed a novel for his MA in Writing (by Research) at UTS and is currently developing a biography of the singer Nick Cave.

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By signing on to support a minority Gillard Labor Government, Tasmanian Independent Andrew Wilkie may very well have also signed his own political death warrant at the next election.

The Federal Liberal Party is furious at Wilkie's decision with the fury that only a sense of betrayal can bring forth. The explanation for the backlash is simple; Wilkie was elected in Denison on August 21 on, wait for it, Liberal preferences.

The former Greens candidate and Liberal Party member polled a meager 21.3 per cent of the primary vote. Labor's Jonathan Jackson was on 35.8 per cent. Then came the Liberal's Cameron Simkins on 22.6 per cent and the Greens Geoffrey Couser on 18.9 per cent. As such Simkins how to vote card directed his votes to Wilkie.

Wilkie was a political fluke. If the Greens had managed just 3 per cent more of the primary vote they would have finished ahead of Wilkie and also been elected on Liberal preferences ahead of Labor.

Given the Greens' new formal alliance with Gillard Labor, that result would not have altered the outcome of the current minority government negotiations. The Greens Adam Bandt, who won the seat of Melbourne, also from Labor, is supporting Gillard. So too would have the Denison Green, Jonathan Jackson.

But for the Liberals none of this matters. All that counts for them is that Wilkie got over the line with their backing and has now rubbed their noses in it. The next election will bring revenge.

Senior Tasmanian Liberals who spoke with The Drum on condition of anonymity said that at the next election - which they're expecting within 18 months - The Liberal Party would take the remarkable step of preferencing Labor in Denison. Under those circumstances Wilkie would be wiped out, a one term wonder.

And if he thought he was going to get any favours out of Labor in return for backing Gillard he should think again as well. Denison is regarded as a "natural" Labor seat. They lost it on August 21 because they pre-selected what one senior Liberal described as an "appalling" candidate in Jackson.

"He was the son of a former Tasmanian Attorney-General," says another local Liberal. "They thought that would be enough. It wasn't. They took the seat for granted and ran a bad campaign to boot.

"That won't happen next time. They (Labor) will throw the kitchen sink at it."

There's nothing to suggest this analysis is other than prescient. Given the knife edge August 21 result the next election, which most inside observers think will be well inside the full term agreed to between the Greens and Gillard, is going to be one where both major parties will be going all out to win.

It will be dog eat dog and there'll be no favours for past service. Labor won't want Wilkie in the Parliament just as much as the Coalition won't. He will be hammered by both sides. Under these circumstances can he survive?

If the voters of Denison want an independent member with a strong belief system, Wilkie is not their man. He has been on both the Left and Right of Australian politics. Early in his life Wilkie graduated from the Duntroon military college rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

In a twist of fate, the Liberal candidate in Denison on August 21, Cameron Simkins was at Duntroon at the same time. He and Wilkie were friends and it was that friendship that at least, in part, helped build the Liberal preference deal that put him over the line.

Turning his back on Simkins in favour of Gillard has simply added more fuel to the Liberal fire when it comes to Wilkie.

After Duntroon, Wilkie, who has admitted belonging to the Liberal Party "many years ago" worked for US Defence giant Raytheon. Hardly a soft Left outfit. He continued his defence career as an intelligence analyst with the Office of National Assessment. Soft Lefties also need not apply.

In 2003 he broke onto the national stage when he resigned and spoke out against the Howard government on the Iraq war, saying there was no intelligence to indicate Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

This event seemed to mark Wilkie's conversion to the Left. At the 2004 election he ran against then incumbent prime minister, John Howard in his seat of Bennelong as a Greens candidate. He also ran for the Greens on their Tasmanian Senate ticket in 2007. After falling out with Brown he resigned from the party in 2008 citing a lack of "professionalism".

Some close to the Greens believe wasn't the Greens professionalism that was the issue, but more Wilkie's ego. At the 2004 election, fresh from his spectacular exit from the Office of National Assessment and following a high profile campaign against the Iraq War and then his personal "war" against Howard in Bennelong, Wilkie was extremely high profile.

By the time the 2007 election campaign came around he was just another losing Greens candidate. Some say it rankled.

Wilkie then opened a rug shop in Hobart and washed up in Denison. He is in effect a serial candidate. And his win on August 21 was narrowly founded. Senior Tasmanian Liberals say it was based in part on a positive and at times moving profile on "Australian Story". The Denison demographic is regarded as very ABC.

The second factor in play is a characteristic limited to Tasmania called the "sympathy" vote; a phenomenon whereby candidates in that state who fail at one election have a history of being regularly voted in at the next. Examples: Labor's Michelle O'Byrne who was dumped by voters as the Federal member for Bass in 2004. She then contested the next state election, won the seat of Braddon in a landslide and is now Health Minister in the Bartlett Government.

On the Liberal side, Michael Ferguson won the seat of Bass in 2004 - from O'Byrne - but lost it in 2007. He too is now in the state Parliament. Having lost as a Green's Senate candidate in 2007 Wilkie fits this model.

His politics have changed remarkably. From being a national interest whistleblower in 2003 he's now firmly rooted in parish pump politics, after that other famous pork bareller on behalf of Tasmania, former Independent Senator, Brian Harradine.

In welcoming his support for her minority government, Julia Gillard, congratulated Wilkie on putting the "national interest" first. What tosh. She gave him $340 million for a new Hobart hospital. That's a hefty price tag for one vote.

As a result, says one Tasmanian state Liberal, "He''ll be popular for a while. "But it's a long way from 20 per cent to 50 per cent."

That's a reference to the next election in Denison where Wilkie will have to get 50 plus one per cent of the vote not to have to rely on Liberal preferences. Otherwise he's gone. And in politics the numbers never lie.

Glenn Milne has been covering Canberra politics for more than two decades.

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There have been two weeks of debate about the seemingly unfamiliar prospect of minority government - despite all those minority governments at state and territory levels over the past 20 years. Meanwhile something else has completely slipped below the radar.

Neither the Coalition nor the ALP appeared to produce a women's policy for the federal election or any overall plan for achieving gender equality, despite Australia's international commitments. In one of the best-kept secrets of the election campaign the ALP did actually release a women's policy on the day before the election. They didn't tell anybody and it is not to be found under 'Policies' on the ALP website. Nonetheless, it can be tracked down and is called 'Equality for Women'. It even addresses in general terms one of the key issues not debated during the campaign.

The issue is the kind of budget increases needed if the current test case being run by the Australian Services Union is to result in equal pay for women. The community services industry, where the workers are over 80 per cent female, has suffered from feminised rates of pay. The current equal pay case, the first under the Fair Work regime, seeks to bring pay rates into line with those for work of comparable value in a male-dominated industry.

From the secretive Labor women's policy we learn that "The Gillard Labor Government has committed to work through the funding implications of any increase in wages awarded as a result of the Australian Services Union's national pay equity case..." This is somewhat short of a commitment to funding the increases - but would an Abbott government fund them?

In Norway one of the objectives of gender equality policy is to value care for people as highly as responsibility for technical and economic tasks. Is this the policy of our major parties? Why weren't we able to debate this during the campaign?

Low pay is just one of the factors contributing to gender inequality and poverty in old age. The skewed distribution of paid and unpaid work is another, with women still far more likely to have interrupted careers in the paid workforce. Men are in the paid workforce for an average of 39 years, women only for 20 years.

Countries like Norway and Sweden have well-defined goals for their gender equality policies, which include the same opportunities for financial independence for men and women and, the other side of the coin, shared responsibility for care of home and children. Is Australia ready for this? It takes more than paid parental leave; it requires a holistic approach to policymaking.

Complex issues arise from the intersection of paid and unpaid work in the community and its skewed gender distribution. Just for a start, there are potential conflicts between the encouragement of labour force participation (to reduce dependence on income support from government) and the availability of family members to provide care work.

Despite the failure to produce an overall policy on gender equality, rather than bits and pieces, both the ALP and the Coalition are normally quick to stress their commitment to the presence of women in public decision making. Indeed, the ALP not only had a woman Prime Minister at this election but also a policy to increase the proportion of women on public and private sector boards. But what will the actual outcome of this election be?

Already we know that the number of women in the House of Representatives has fallen from 41 to 37. This is largely due to the swing to the Coalition - women make up 32 per cent of Labor members of the House of Representatives but only 19 per cent of Coalition members. The overall percentage of women in the House of Representatives is now 24.7 per cent.

The Inter-Parliamentary Union maintains a very useful ranking of countries by the representation of women in the lower or single house of the national parliament. Even before the election Australia had slipped from 15th (in 1999) to 34th place on this ranking, sharing the 34th place with Afghanistan. It will now slip below Afghanistan and also below nine other countries including Kyrgyzstan. It will come in just above Lesotho.

One of the problems with allowing the number of women in parliament to slip is the reduction in the pool of women available for entry into ministerial positions. Australia already has a smaller proportion of women in its national Cabinet (21 per cent in the current Gillard Cabinet) than any comparable democracy apart from the new UK government (17 per cent). In some countries such as Finland and Spain women are a majority of Cabinet members, while they are about half in Norway and Sweden, 37 per cent in Germany and a third in France and New Zealand.

Fortunately this grim picture does not extend to the Senate, where from July next year women will make up 38 per cent of Senators (up from 35.5). The increase is due to the Green Senators (women will be six of the nine of them from July 1). It's reassuring to know that at least the 'house of review' will have a reasonable presence of women.

Hopefully what has just happened in the UK couldn't happen here. According to a gender audit conducted by the House of Commons Library, women will shoulder almost 75 per cent of the burden of the UK's emergency budget, even before the cuts to public sector employment are factored in.

It shouldn't be up to women in parliament to notice the disparate gender impact of public spending cuts. But somehow the presence of women, and the fact that women's advocacy groups make a beeline for them, does seem to make a difference. It helps legislators to remember that more than half of those affected by laws and policies are women, and that the effects on them are unlikely to be just the same as for men.

Marian Sawer AO is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations, Australian National University and a member of the Democratic Audit of Australia. Marian is co-author of Strengthening Democracy, in a recent publication, More Than Luck: Ideas Australia needs now, from the Centre for Policy Development.

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What a week this has been. A week in which the nation squatted cautiously inside its current electoral bubble, afraid to move lest it startle the body politic into doing something foolish.

Like allowing North Queensland to have its own air force in order to gain the support of Bob Katter, or even worse, making us all vote again. And yet, by the end of the week Australia's continuing state of political limbo had become almost soothing, thus proving that the yearning for oblivion we've been feeling for so long was well-founded.

It was of course another week in which Australian politics stood forever on the brink of a significant event, without ever quite going over the edge. We kept holding our breath, afraid to let it out without permission from an independent such as Andrew Wilkie, who this week announced he was just about ready to decide who he was going to support, shortly before announcing that actually he wasn't because deciding things turned out to be a lot harder than he had expected, shortly before announcing that in fact, he had decided, having flushed out his preferred government via a clever ruse akin to that used by King Solomon to determine a baby's true mother.

However, rather than threatening to cut Julie Bishop in half, Wilkie instead cried out for funding for a new hospital in Hobart. Immediately Abbott stepped forward with an offer of $1 billion to build the hospital, and sincere inquiries as to whether Mr Wilkie would be requiring anything else, like maybe a bridge to the mainland, or a Corvette. Upon receiving the offer, however, Wilkie shouted triumphantly, "Gotcha!" revealing that it was in fact a test, and Abbott had failed. "Only the true prime minister would value fiscal restraint over the favour of an independent," said Wilkie, bestowing his precious support upon Julia Gillard and teaching us all a valuable lesson about selfishness.

Of course, Bob Katter isn't about teaching lessons, he's about getting things done. He's about taking action, cutting the crap, and abruptly increasing the volume of his voice for no apparent reason. His big move this week was to release a list of 20 demands for a new government. The maverick ex-National, acting on orders from his Soviet masters, called, among other things, for: restrictions on food imports, particularly bananas, the food of the Gods; a requirement for all fuel to be 22 percent ethanol; a cap on the market share of Coles and Woolworths of 22.5 percent; and the "return of recreational freedoms", which probably involves either public nudity or legalised duelling. However, attached to Katter's demand-list was a statement that any leader who promised to fulfil them all would be "a liar", illustrating perfectly the Gordian Knot that confronts any party leader seeking to curry favour with Bob Katter: how to satisfy a man's desires without earning his contempt by satisfying his desires.

But while the Independents were playing their diabolical mind-games, the Greens were showing themselves to truly be the party of reasonable collaborative wussiness, signing an accord with the ALP promising that they would support a Labor government, in return for which Labor vowed to seriously discuss the possibility of considering initiating preliminary debates on the advisability of implementing certain elements of Greens' policies. This agreement will of course serve as a clever smokescreen, the better to blindside the public when the Greens force PM Gillard to demolish all power stations and redirect the Defence Budget to free dental care for gay refugees. For his part, Tony Abbott proclaimed himself incredibly disappointed by the agreement, the hurt feelings palpable as he expressed himself baffled by the Greens' shock decision to support the party they had previously promised to support. "Why, Bob, why?" Abbott was heard to sob, dissolving into tears and ending the press conference.

Mind you, the tears may also have been for the Coalition's budget costings, which were revealed by Treasury to contain a $7 billion "black hole", although this was shrugged off by the Coalition's economic team as merely a "difference of opinion" over the assumptions underpinning the costings - for example, Treasury's assumption that the Liberal Party gives a crap about what Treasury thinks is erroneous.

It also raised the question of why budget shortfalls are always described as "black holes". Can't we find a new metaphor? I nominate "Cash Chasm".

However, in the midst of all these parliamentary palavers, the Australian public was surprised to find out that things happened this week outside the realm of federal politics, proving once again that the country functions perfectly well without a government (see last week's wrap).

Firstly we turn to the NSW parliament, where state politicians, interrupting their usual routine of discovering the most efficient possible ways to crush their electorate's spirit, were rocked by revelations that MPs had been accessing pornographic and gambling sites on their parliamentary computers.

The scandal claimed minister Paul MacLeay, who resigned in disgrace, and did not claim Fred Nile, who, after the revelation his computer had been used to access adult sites 200,000 times, claimed that he hadn't looked at any porn, only his staffers had, and they were only doing it for research purposes, and anyway they only looked at it for a few seconds, besides which they couldn't help it because of all the pop-ups, and it was all the Sex Party's fault, as usual. In any case, we can be fairly sure it was at least Christian porn, like WhoWouldJesusBang.com and Barely Legal Martyrs.

In fact, it was a big week in NSW for moral decay, with the Lower House passing a bill legalising adoption by same-sex couples, all those warnings about righteous vengeance and Satan stalking the earth apparently not having hit home in Macquarie Street. The move was immediately welcomed by proponents of "human rights", but condemned by religious organisations such as Anglicare, which declared it could not provide gay adoption services because heterosexual parenting had been the norm throughout recorded history, and that gay parents would have to provide some hard evidence that they were capable of raising children before they could be allowed to raise children. Which seems only fair, given how committed to hard evidence Christians have always been.

Despite the federal government's furious horse trading and the NSW government's obsession with sex, however, this week's issues of import were not restricted entirely to the political world, with the appearance of Bert and Patti Newton on A Current Affair touching the hearts of the nation. Their heartfelt account of the difficulties of dealing with a son bent on self-destruction struck a chord with every parent who has ever seen their child in a similar situation and thought it'd make great TV. One couldn't help feeling for troubled star Matthew Newton as his parents publicly lamented the way girlfriend after girlfriend continually hindered his attempts at rehabilitation by wilfully standing within arm's-length of him. It really made one realise that domestic violence is a serious problem in our society that, if not addressed, will just lead to more and more ruined television careers. Although there was some relief at the news later in the week that Newton had only been punching women for research purposes.

And so that was the week that was. A week in which the media was alight with discussion and debate, and yet, in which everything stayed essentially the same - federal parliament still in stasis, NSW parliament still in disgrace, and celebrities still in a violent, drug-sodden haze.

It's comforting, in a way. I could get used to it. With any luck, nothing will change next week either.



Ben Pobjie is a writer, comedian and poet.

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Tony Abbott wisely got through the entire election campaign not only avoiding submitting his costings to Treasury - as a law his own government passed required - but refusing to debate the PM on the matter of the economy.

While he was not doing both these things, a key plank of his election pitch was that his side were better economic managers, a claim not at all undermined by his unwillingness to test it before Treasury or the Australian people.

I mean, why would he make something like that up?

Instead, he submitted his figures to an accountancy firm associated with the Liberal Party, declared them more qualified than Treasury, and then he and his key economic ministers went around claiming they had been audited, a claim, that Peter Martin points out , is not borne out by what the firm itself said.

Mr Abbott also declared two days out from the election that he would not sleep, saying that it was worth giving up sleep in order to meet constituents. It was the sort of macho and decisive action that set him apart from the political pack. The fact that he then slept was not a concern to the forward march of the basic narrative.

Clearly, as the media said, he won the campaign.

The key moment was seen to be when, at a public meeting, Mr Abbott decided to stand rather than sit. This stroke of well-scripted spontaneity was cited again and again as proof of Mr Abbott's political genius. And why not?

On election night, Mr Abbott gave a speech in which he declared that now was not a time for triumphalism, a good call given that he hadn't been triumphant, though it didn't stop him, in the next breath, becoming triumphant. Labor had lost its legitimacy, he said, cleverly not mentioning that neither had he won it.

The next day he gave a press conference, took three questions, and then wandered out in daze. One journalist was heard to cry "you have to be kidding" but she was never heard from again. The incident was quietly forgotten.

In the aftermath of the election result, with the balance of power in the hands on non-major party politicians, Mr Abbott again refused to submit his costings to Treasury, even though the independents wanted that as part of their negotiations. Mr Abbott took a very principled stand against complying, citing everything from leaks to the inability of Treasury to understand his policies as his reasons.

Then he changed his mind and submitted them.

This about-face might have tempted some journalists to stop taking the Leader of the Opposition seriously, though they have wisely kept their own counsel. After all, how are we going to get rid of the incompetent Labor Government that has delivered the strongest economy in the world through the global financial crisis if the media reveal that the alternative government is led by an actual buffoon?

Anyway, back to the narrative. Now that the costings are done, Treasury has revealed a $7-11 billion error in the Coalition's figures.

The department have said that he made four types of mistakes, "the inexcusable, the inexplicable, those resulting from a failure to comprehend the nature of the process, and some understandable errors."

Mr Abbott has explained how this doesn't matter and that he will deliver a better bottom line result than Labor. Which is great news.

In another act of fiscal rectitude he offered Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie, amongst other payments, $1 billion for a new hospital, which an ungrateful Mr Wilkie rejected merely on the grounds that Mr Abbott failed to account for where the money would come from.

No pleasing some people, I guess.

Oh, and somewhere in amongst all this, a senior Liberal Senator rang one of the independents and declared himself to be the devil when he thought it was the MP's young child who had answered the phone.

Insider journalists cooly revealed that the Senator does this a lot and that it is therefore nothing to worry about.

A relief all round.

In the meantime, the independents are consulting with mining magnate Andrew Forrest. Presumably they'll also have a chat to the head of the ACTU, though the linked article doesn't mention that.

The unaligned MPs are now, apparently, taking the weekend to decide whom to back.

Obviously it is a tough decision.

Tim Dunlop writes fortnightly for The Drum. You can follow him on Twitter.

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i) And so it was that the moon grew full in its season and the people brought their cattle in for shelter, and their sheep and their goats also. And at sunrise they went out once more, putting their animals to graze in the field. And they did this many times, for such was the diurnal round. And the moon waned in its turn, and still the counting went on.

ii) And in the tents of the leaders there were talks with those who were brought forth by the people but lacketh affiliation. And they were divers in their opinions and spake sometimes jointly and sometimes severally and in the case of colloquy with Barnaby, sometimes not at all.

iii) And there were some who looked upon the confusion and said 'From chaos comes order, and this is good.'

iv) And there were others who thought the people should be sent back to the booths. 'For the Julianites and the Anthonites haveth each many times the support of the unaffiliated, and it is not mete that the tail waggeth the dog'.

v) And Bob who was Brown and was also Green was not of this view. For he playeth a blinder in the previous round and he expresseth his view at the time. And it was 'Thank you linesmen; thank you ball boys.'

vi) And the scribes began to write the history of the time. And they were greatly troubled, and reported a plague of cynicism and shallowness, and of narrowness of issues, and of slogans and trivia. And they were sore distressed, for their intellectual rigour was offended by the shambles they saw before them.

vii) But what the people had done was simple, and they understood it, for it conformeth with the tenets and the teachings. And these underpinneth the laws and provideth the foundations of justice.

viii) Thou shalt not identify a great moral challenge and put off dealing with it.

ix) In a system where the people choose the leader, thou shalt not topple the leader without consulting them.

x) And generally speaking thou shalt not consort with faceless geezers hiding in the drapery with sharp objects.

xi) And most importantly thou shalt not toss the mortal remains of a former leader out in the street the next morning and invoice the people for the clean-up. For there will be retribution, and it shall be in spades.

xii) And ask not upon whom the retribution shall be visited. For it shall be visited upon thee.

xiii) And while I've got you all here, thou cans't not logically remove thy leader on the basis that he knoweth not what he is doing, if thou art helping him do it. For this will blow up in thy face.

xiv) And so it was that the Julianites lost those who were green and those who were blue. And were themselves lost.

xv) And thou shalt not look upon the dryness of the land and the rivers, and say to the people who live on that land and have not water 'This is not happening. Look over there. For we are being invaded by boats.'

xvi) Thou shalt make sense in thy utterances, for people like that sort of thing.

xvii) If thou damneth those who assassinate their leader, be not the beneficiary of assassinating thy leader. And if thou pointeth out that thine enemies are made up of factions, haveth not thine own divisions so deeply riven that they produce the independents, for they may control thy destiny.

xviii) And so it was that the Anthonites lost those who were green and those who had grown to adulthood. And were themselves lost.

xvix) And after many days the tent-flap opened and out stepped Julia and Bob, who was Green and whose dentist will be very pleased, and they waveth a piece of paper saying 'Peace in our time.'

xx) And on this same day, there also emergeth officials from Treasury, who were skilled at calculations, and were particularly adept in the area of addition. And they also carried a piece of paper. And they said 'Anthony. Joseph. Headmaster's office. Now.'

xxi) And the tent-flap rustled again a third time, and there came forth Andrew whose name was called Wilkie, and he singeth a song from the double white album. And it was 'Julia.'

xxii) And then there were three. And the moon rose again in its season. And the people looked at each other and said 'Can't be long now.'

Saint Paul's Letter to the Electorates: Chapter 1Saint Paul's Letter to the Electorates: Chapter 2Saint Paul's Letter to the Electorates: Chapter 3Saint Paul's Letter to the Electorates: Chapter 4Saint Paul's Letter to the Electorates: Chapter 5Saint Paul's Letter to the Electorates: Chapter 6Saint Paul's Letter to the Electorates: Chapter 7Saint Paul's Letter to the Electorates: Chapter 8
Saint Paul, known to his friends as the Apostle to the Gentiles, has written 27 books.

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In 2004 the journal Global Environmental Change published an article titled 'Balance as bias: Global warming and the US prestige press', by Maxwell and Jules Boykoff. A thorough content analysis of coverage of climate change by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal over the period 1988-2002 found a divergence between popular discourse and scientific discourse, arising from the exploitation by denialist groups of the journalistic norm of balance. They concluded that 'the prestige press's adherence to balance actually leads to biased coverage of both anthropogenic contributions to global warming and resultant action.'

The author Ross Gelbspan set out the problem simply. In general, unbiased reporting requires the presentation of alternative perspectives - but this principle fails when reporting on science. 'It seems to demand that journalists present competing points of views on a scientific question as though they had equal scientific weight, when actually they do not.'

Presenting both sides is biased when one 'side' is backed by a large body of peer-reviewed research and the other is not. The 'other side' would deserve some reporting if there were a significant minority view that had some legitimate science to sustain its claims, even if that science proves unsustainable. In the case of climate science, there isn't.

In March the presenter of Media Watch, Jonathan Holmes, weighed in to the debate over bias in the ABC's coverage of climate change.

"'Bias' is notoriously difficult to pin down," he began.

But is it? In political and social debates, where differences are founded on divergent values or political viewpoints, that might be true, but where there is a well-defined body of fact, bias is not difficult to pin down. There is an objective benchmark.

A number of studies have substantiated what is obvious to anyone with even a casual knowledge of the research on the science of global warming - that is, there is an overwhelming consensus on the main conclusions presented in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.

While uncertainties remain and the evidence will evolve, the level of consensus on the main tenets of climate science is unusually high.

A recent study identified the 1,372 scientists around the world with expertise in climate science, measured by their track records of publication in a relevant field. It concluded that there is 'striking agreement' among climate scientists, with 97-98 per cent of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field supporting the conclusions of the IPCC. This suggests that, if the ABC aims to present climate science in an unbiased way, for every qualified climate scientist with a dissenting view we should hear from 39 presenting the consensus view.

The vital distinction between issues in which credible views should be based on expertise and those where values and political orientation are perfectly valid escapes even Jonathan Holmes. Noting that 'the degree of scepticism in the community at large bears little relation to the degree of doubt that exists in the scientific community,' he nevertheless goes on to suggest this public ignorance vindicates the decision to give airtime to characters like Christopher Monckton.

In fact, the ABC's editorial policy mandates the opposite. It rightly declares that the organisation should not confuse its audiences by allowing opinion to be presented as fact. If claims about climate science have no empirical backing, cannot meet the criteria for publication set by professional journals and are repeatedly rejected by the world's scientific academies, then they must be regarded as opinions.

Curiously, nowhere in the ABC's 172-page editorial policy document is there any discussion of what fairness, balance and bias mean. Some further thought would surely disprove the simple-minded assumption that the way to avoid biased journalism is to present a balance of opinions.

The fact that climate denialists, invariably linked to right-wing think tanks with an axe to grind, have succeeded in their explicit and widely-known strategy of confusing the public by casting doubt on the science should not be a reason for providing greater coverage to anti-scientific opinions. Indeed, one would have thought it within the ABC's charter to correct public misunderstanding, notwithstanding that the corporation's chairman shares those misunderstandings.

After all, if half of the population were persuaded that the Apollo mission to the moon was an elaborate hoax, would the ABC feel compelled to give equal coverage to 'experts' who claimed to have evidence that proved the hoax each time the moon landing came up? In Holmes' view it should, for he goes on to argue that if half of Australians believed in creationism then each time a scientist was interviewed about evolution, it would be right to 'balance' this view with a creationist take on the science of evolution. The ABC would not - and should not - resist the demands of those who reject evolution.

"[F]or general programs, it's not what the boffins think, but what our listeners and viewers think, that guide our decisions about balance," he writes, although acknowledging that on specialist programs like the Science Show the obligation would be to present the theory of evolution supported by the overwhelming majority of biologists.

A moment's thought reveals what a bizarre conception this is. It implies that on any program for a general audience - including news, current affairs and chat shows - there is no reason to privilege science over popular prejudice, even when the popular prejudice is demonstrably wrong and its persistence represents a threat to the future.

Why not, then, present creationism to 'balance' evolution? In some respects, the case for giving creationism equal time is actually stronger than that for giving equal time to climate denial. Creationism's rejection of evolution science is, after all, based explicitly on another source of authority - the Bible - and is rooted in religious convictions. It is therefore possible for listeners or viewers to make a decision about which authority (science or the Bible) to accept before taking a view on the content of the claims. Climate deniers, by contrast, conceal their political purposes and pretend to base their arguments on the authority of science - which is the same authority that the accepted view of global warming relies upon. The deniers' lack of honesty makes it more difficult for the public to decide whether to accept this; the ABC's failure to inform the public of the deniers' deceptions lends credibility to discredited views.

The editorial policies of the ABC insist that a range of perspectives on each subject be presented - which in most cases is fair enough - but unless the ABC wishes to concede it has accepted a version of postmodernism in which scientific evidence becomes no more than a 'perspective' and any point of view is as valid as the next, surely it must differentiate between subjects where a body of objective facts determines the truth (or at least approximates it) and others where values and world views legitimately determine opinions.

Ironically, the Howard government's culture war that set out to expunge from the ABC all traces of political correctness seems to have ended up endorsing the postmodernist position of characterising science as a matter of opinion. Modernism's confidence in objective science developed through the process of formulating hypotheses, gathering evidence, testing conclusions, replicating results and subjecting everything to the fierce scepticism of well-informed peers has been under attack from conservatives determined to defeat environmentalism at the expense of public confidence in science.

While The Australian has been for years the principal agent in this country of the Republicans' war on climate science, the ABC has been engaged in a strategic retreat, leaving scientists isolated on the battle field. As a result, the scientific community - always slow to react, due to its natural inhibitions - is now expressing grave concern at the erosion of the 'intellectual and moral authority of Australian science'.

The war on climate science, conducted on talkback radio and in opinion columns and the news pages of The Australian, regularly characterises climate scientists as unreliable, manipulative and self-seeking. One does not expect Alan Jones to understand the scientific research process and the role of peer-review - but we do expect the ABC to be more sophisticated, notwithstanding its chairman's intellectual crudeness.

Rather than being rebuked by Maurice Newman for 'group-think', those in the organisation who understand how science works should be invited to explain to senior managers like Kim Dalton and Mark Scott that when the hard evidence is overwhelming, insisting on 'balance' can only contribute to public ignorance.

This is an extract from the author's article 'Appeasing climate denial at the ABC' published in the current issue of Overland.
Clive Hamilton is Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University, attached to the the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the ANU.

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A very senior doctor told me quite a few years back that he'd stopped going to drug company funded scientific conferences, because he couldn't stand the smell any longer.

The sensitive medico never specified the exact nature of the offending odour, but it may well have been the sour aroma of burning credibility.

Through its tangled web of financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies, the medical establishment has generated a crisis of public trust in doctors, still rightly revered as caring healers, but equally scorned for too often having their stethoscopes in the trough.

Yet as the revelations of the lavish wining and dining continue to flow, so too has the soul-searching, and there are now major moves worldwide to try and end the sleazy affair, get doctors out of bed with drug companies, and forge a new independence in the relationship. And that can only be good news for all of us, if the prescriptions of our health care professionals become less based on marketing and more on rigorous independent science.

In the world of sex research, the loose global network known as the New View has been exposing the way the influence of pharmaceutical marketing has reached into the very definition of medical conditions. The New View's co-founder Dr Leonore Tiefer is now regularly quoted in media, offering the public and the health professionals ready access to an alternative viewpoint - suggesting that the ordinary ups and downs of life are being portrayed as the symptoms of conditions like 'hypoactive sexual desire disorder', HSDD - a sub-disorder of FSD - in order to expand markets for pills.

While corporate marketing claims HSDD affects one-in-ten women, New York University's Tiefer has questioned whether HSDD is real. "Here is the perfect opportunity to create a disease condition where really nothing exists" Tiefer says in Sex, Lies and Pharmaceuticals, arguing drug companies are trying to create new norms of high and constant desire. "Its sinister and its insidious" she says.

The work of Tiefer and other critics over recent years has arguably been very influential, and there are proposals currently being debated to abandon the term 'HSDD', and subsume it into a new entity, combining desire and arousal problems, with more focus on relationships than individual sexual dysfunction, and a requirement that symptoms are more severe and long lasting before a woman qualifies for a diagnosis. The new approach will see future estimates of the numbers suffering FSD far lower than the absurd claims of 43 per cent of all women.

But not all areas of medicine, and not all contentious conditions, have benefitted from the scrutiny of a ginger group like the New View. If you start to look closely at the panels of experts who sit down and write the definitions of disease and guidelines for treatment - the people who actually define the boundaries of human illness - you will find an extraordinary degree of entanglement with the drug companies who stand to profit from expanding those boundaries. And expansion is the order of the day.

In recent years we've seen the rise of conditions like 'Adult ADD' giving fathers access to the same quality amphetamines their kids are taking; we've watched the creation of 'prehypertension' which labels tens of millions of people with perfectly normal levels of blood pressure; and we've witnessed the promotion of 'pre-osteoporosis' or osteopenia - a condition where an otherwise healthy woman is deemed to be sick because she is at risk of being at risk of a future fracture, and sometimes even targeted with potentially dangerous long-term medicines.

Infamously, among the panel which radically expanded the numbers of people classified as having 'high cholesterol' a few years ago, eight of nine experts had ties to drug companies.

Growing alarm about the closeness between doctors and drug companies has caused many organisations around the world to issue calls for something of a clean-up. The Josiah Macy Foundation released a report in 2008 arguing that pharmaceutical funding of medical education was causing a pro-drug bias in what doctors learned, and it called for a comprehensive ban.

In 2009, the prestigious Institute of Medicine in the United States argued that while collaboration with industry was important for discovery and development, the risk of 'undue influence' on doctors' judgements may well be jeopardising the integrity of scientific investigations, patient care, and public trust.

In 2010, as part of the wider healthcare reform in the United States, new national laws were passed mandating that drug companies disclose every payment to doctors over $10, on a publicly searchable website. It's only a matter of time before similar levels of transparency are legislated in Australia.

Individual hospitals and universities everywhere, including Harvard in recent months, are introducing new regulations, starting to slowly untangle the science from the marketing. But there's a lot to untangle. A new report out last month found two-thirds of health consumer organisations working with regulatory authorities in Europe were now taking industry money, while at the same time claiming to represent the patient's voice.

It's clear drug companies make many medicines that can save lives and ameliorate suffering, and that many of our doctors are compassionate, caring, hard-working professionals. But it's also obvious that the amorous relationship between these two sectors is having profoundly unhealthy effects on the way medicine is practised, and the way human experience is being redefined as treatable illness.

The bizarre corporate attempts to fit the square peg that is the complexity of our sexual difficulties into the round hole of a simple drug solution may well prove to be a turning point in medical science, helping to spark a fundamental reassessment of the often unhealthy business of healthcare.

This is the third article in a three-part series. Part 1 and Part 2 were published earlier in the week.
Ray Moynihan is an award-winning health journalist, author, documentary-maker and academic researcher. His new book is Sex, Lies & Pharmaceuticals.

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While the outcome of the August 21 federal election remains unclear, key questions also remain unanswered about the police 'terrorism' raids conducted just two days earlier.

Federal and state police conducted dawn raids in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth on 17 homes and offices of Kurdish Australians in what the Australian Federal Police (AFP) described as a 'joint counter terrorism investigation'.

In the Melbourne suburb of Pascoe Vale, AFP and Victoria Police officers arrived at the offices of the Kurdish Association of Victoria at 6 am and spent most of the day searching the premises. In Sydney, the Australian Kurdish Association offices in Bankstown were raided, as were five premises in Perth, including the headquarters of the Kurdish Association of Western Australia.

Significantly, no arrests were made. However, files, computers, mobile phones, financial documents, books and other reading material, cash, notes, DVDs, news articles, flags and business cards were seized—amid considerable media publicity.

The AFP offered no explanation for the timing of the raids, but conceded there was no immediate threat. In a brief statement, the AFP said it wanted to assure the public that the operation did not relate to 'any terrorist related threat or incident'. Instead, the investigation concerned 'allegations of financing of a terrorist organisation'.

The AFP did not specify the organisation, but police leaks to the media indicated that it is the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Kurdish separatist group based in Turkey that the Howard government controversially listed as a terrorist organisation under the counter-terrorism laws in 2005. The Labor government has maintained the ban.

The Kurdish Association has actively campaigned for the lifting of the ban, which was imposed by executive order after the Turkish prime minister visited Canberra. In response to the police raids, the group issued a statement saying it supported the PKK's cause but did not provide it with funds.

The Pascoe Vale offices provide a range of services to Kurdish migrants, including settlement, advocacy, referral, education and health advice. The association also offers cultural and recreational programs, such as folk dancing, traditional music and Kurdish language lessons.

There is evidence that the politically sensitive raids proceeded with the federal government's approval. A solicitor representing the association, Chris Ryan, told journalists he had seen the search warrant and it was dated several days earlier. He pointed out that the raids could have been conducted after the election.

Ryan revealed that at a meeting several weeks earlier he had raised with federal Attorney-General Rob McClelland concerns expressed by members of the Kurdish community that the government's continued listing of the PKK as a terrorist organisation could see Kurds unfairly targeted by police. McClelland rejected his request to reverse the ban.

In effect, it appears that the police operation constituted a pre-election demonstration that the Labor government remained fully committed to the so-called 'war on terror'.

The raids certainly demonstrate how the post-2001 'anti-terrorism' legislation — introduced by the Howard government with Labor's backing, and maintained by Labor since 2007 — can be used not only against Muslims but anyone seen by the government as politically undesirable.

The legislation features sweeping definitions of 'terrorist act' and 'terrorist organisation'. Someone can be jailed for up to 25 years for donating to, or supporting, an overseas political group alleged to be attempting to 'intimidate' or 'coerce' any government, including by threatening to disrupt infrastructure. These provisions apply even if the group is also involved in humanitarian projects.

Under these vague definitions, people could have been jailed as 'terrorists' for giving money to the anti-apartheid movement, Irish republican causes, or East Timorese independence groups. Whether an organisation is officially designated 'terrorist' or a 'liberation movement' depends entirely on the political needs and calculations of the government of the day.

In 2007, three prominent Tamil Australians were arrested on charges of being members of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and providing funds to the LTTE, knowing it to be 'a terrorist organisation'. Two years later, those charges were dropped, partly because the LTTE had not been banned in Australia. However, the men were convicted on five remaining charges under the little-known Charter of the United Nations Act 1945 of providing money to a 'proscribed organisation'.

Like the LTTE, the PKK has a perspective of seeking to establish a separate state. In my view, it offers no progressive solution to the protracted oppression of the Kurdish minorities in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Armenia. Nevertheless, the PKK is not a terrorist group, but a political organisation. While the PKK has been involved in actions targeting civilians in Turkey, successive Turkish governments are responsible for the armed conflict. The Turkish military and allied fascist gangs have a long history of terrorism against the Kurdish minority and other political opponents.

By the time of the 2007 election, the anti-terrorism laws became discredited by the exposure of a series of frame-ups involving alleged Muslim terrorist suspects, including Mohamed Haneef, Itzar ul-Haque, David Hicks and Jack Thomas. The incoming Labor government pledged to 're-establish public confidence' in the laws by conducting a judicial inquiry into Haneef's case. The ultimate result has been moves to bolster the laws, including making it more difficult for alleged terrorist defendants to obtain bail, and expanding the definition of terrorism to include psychological harm, terrorist hoaxes, threats and 'inciting violence'.

For six years after 2001, the Howard government stoked fears of terrorism to provide a pretext for anti-democratic 'terrorism' laws and to justify its participation in the US-led military occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. The Labor government has maintained a similar course, with far-reaching implications for basic legal, political and civil rights.

Dr Michael Head is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Western Sydney. He has published books in the areas of administrative law and legal theory.

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No issue in my lifetime has done more to undermine trust in government and the media than the "selling" of the Iraq war. I would go so far as to argue that the hyperpartisan, hectoring tone that dominates the way we do politics today was normalised during the national debate over Iraq.

George W. Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard not only retailed as fact information that was at best debatable, they also smeared citizens who dared question them. If truth was the first casualty of war, the second was decency. And by and large the media went along for the ride.

Remember, the Iraq war coincided with the popularisation of weblogs. Blogging had gained some traction in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, but it was the prospect of an invasion of Iraq that saw the medium boom.

This was a good thing. Blogs provided a space for any number of people, from genuine experts in the area to interested lay citizens, to question what they were being told.

The moment also coincided with an increase in the use of the web in general, a sudden freeing up of information that would've previously been locked away in archives and libraries or in specialist magazines and academic papers that few people would see.

The ability to access such research, to openly fact-check what we were being told, to juxtapose what had been said on one day with what was being said on another, and then blog that material, was a vital breakthrough.

The term citizen journalism was coined for this activity, but some bloggers rejected the term as a form co-option by the very institution they were seeking to challenge. For many, it wasn't citizen journalism, it was simply citizenship.

And it has to be said, neither the government nor the media liked it much.

Both institutions suddenly realised that their authority was being undermined.

Inevitably, the empire(s) fought back. A million articles appeared that sought to brand "bloggers" as know-nothing kids in pyjamas living in their parents' basements. They were ridiculed and lampooned, even as their complaints about false information on WMDs, the role of al Qaida in Iraq, the death toll, were vindicated.

Politicians attacked too. Dissenters were labelled as unpatriotic or useful idiots or whatever other insults could be found to cover their own culpability.

Who could forget John Howard piously declaring, "If there's a demonstration, it does give some encouragement to the leadership in Iraq," and that "People who demonstrate and who give comfort to Saddam Hussein must understand that and must realise that..."

Governments even attacked public servants they deemed enemies. In the US, CIA undercover agent Valerie Plame was outed after her husband criticised the Bush administration, while here, the Howard Government dishonestly smeared former intelligence analyst, Andrew Wilkie.

The blogosphere - spontaneous, unwieldy thing that it is - certainly wasn't perfect. Far from it! There were those willing to use the medium to toe the government line, and it is worth remembering how many such apologists for official propaganda emerged. (I trust, for their sake, that that servility was its own reward.)

So a deal of partisanship arose, and it got ugly. But no uglier than it did amongst politicians and the media. Governments became more concerned with "messaging" than ever before, while an aggressive, campaigning style of "journalism" became the house style of certain sections of the media.

In short, the Iraq war was a period when two powerful institutions in our democracy failed in their most basic obligations.

Now, as US combat troops finally come home, it is clear that the people who mostly got it right were the bloggers and others who questioned the government line. The so-called kids in pyjamas in their parents' basements ended up being better able to see through the misinformation than their professional counterparts in the mainstream media.

Comments from Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5 in Britain, tell the story. She recently confirmed most everything that anti-war types had argued was the case, including that the invasion increased the threat of terrorism, that there was no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaida, that the invasion itself led to al Qaida's presence in Iraq, that there were no WMD, and, most tellingly of all, she said that "Very few would argue that the intelligence was substantial enough to make that decision [the decision to go to war]."

Unfortunately, though, the legacy of the period is not a rebirth of democracy but a media and a political class more hellbent than ever on controlling the agenda. It is a polity disillusioned with its leadership.

In 2003, we were misled into the Iraq war. The media aided and abetted the deception rather than act as a bulwark against it. We are living with the consequences of both failures.

Lest we forget.


Tim Dunlop writes fortnightly for The Drum. You can follow him on Twitter.

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The centrepiece of the historic Green-Labor Alliance announced by Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Green's Leader Bob Brown Wednesday may be illegal, and therefore inoperable.

At a joint press conference with Brown, Gillard announced she had agreed to create a multi-party parliamentary committee to put a price on carbon, in the process junking her embarrassing election promise to convene a citizens assembly to reach consensus on the contentious issue.

Here's how Bob Brown described the proposed parliamentary committee: "There'll be a climate change committee with the status and wherewithal of a Cabinet committee, but it will be inclusive as it moves towards looking at the best way for this nation to tackle climate change, including a carbon price as a means of reducing the ever growing menace of climate change to our economy, our lifestyle and our environment".

Brown then invited his Senate colleague, Christine Milne to elaborate on what turns out was her idea: "In Europe where multi-party government, multi-party politics is the order of the day, in Scandinavia in particular, Norway and Sweden, they have this process that we are adopting here. And that is to set up a parliamentary committee representing all the interests in the parliament committed to a certain idea and then enabling the appointment of experts to that committee. So the experts are not just to give evidence to the committee."

"The experts are part of the deliberations of that committee and that way you create the space in a parliament for people to talk through their own perspectives, nuance those perspectives and try to come up with a parliamentary consensus which has the support of everyone around the idea. You will note in the agreement the proviso for membership of the committee is that the people going onto it are committed to a carbon price."

There, right there, is the ticking bomb that may blow this committee out of the water before it even considers rising sea levels - the diktat that every person on the committee must be committed to a carbon price agrees as a threshold requirement for joining the committee.

Politics is often Orwellian; Brown, Gillard and Milne (no relation) all described the committee as "inclusive". In fact it's precisely the opposite, it is exclusive. Unless you are a member of Parliament who believes in climate change and a carbon price as the answer to that challenge you are not welcome to sit on this group.

Opposition environment spokesman, Greg Hunt, has been trawling through the Parliamentary record. He can see no precedent for such a constrictive arrangement in the 110 years since Federation - a Parliamentary committee of inquiry that is constituted of members of Parliament who have already made up their collective minds before the inquiry has even got underway.

But it is Shadow Attorney-General, George Brandis, who has belled the cat. He tells the Drum that because of this requirement that members hold a certain belief in order to sit on the committee it may be in breach of Parliamentary privilege.

"This seems to be clearly a breach of parliamentary privilege because it dictates an outcome to a committee before it is even convened," says Brandis.

"It imposes a limitation on the deliberations of a parliamentary committee that limits its discretion."

On the basis of Brandis' legal doubts - he is a Senior Counsel in his own right - the Opposition (if it remains in Opposition pending the outcome of negotiations to determine a minority government) will likely test the committee's powers to bar Opposition MPs who are not committed to a carbon price.

Once barred, and Brown, Milne and Gillard are all adamant on that point, the issue will be taken to the powerful Privileges Committee of the Parliament. If the Privileges Committee finds in favour of disbarred Opposition MPs the entire deliberations of the climate change committee would be in contempt of the Parliament. The Committee would be null and void.

It would be unable to operate. In theory its membership could face harsh penalty from the House of Representatives sitting as a court. The proceedings would be similar if an MP was found guilty of a breach of privilege, for example, by leaking the contents of a committee report prior to it being tabled in the Parliament.

The former Clerk of the Senate detailed the nature of Parliamentary privilege in Senate Brief Number 11, 2010. Essentially privilege protects the rights of MPs to go about their business without fear of interference. There is little doubt that a bar on an MP sitting on a committee because of his or her beliefs would be a breach of that privilege.

Evans writes: "The term 'parliamentary privilege' refers to two significant aspects of the law relating to Parliament: the privileges or immunities of the houses of the Parliament, and the powers of the houses to protect the integrity of their processes, particularly the power to punish contempts."

"These immunities and powers are very extensive, but they carry with them great responsibilities. They are deeply ingrained in the history of free institutions, which could not have survived without them."

What the Greens and their fellow traveller, Gillard, have done here is attack those "free institutions" in the form of Parliamentary Committees. Gillard and Brown waxed lyrical about their Alliance yesterday as they dramatically signed and swapped Memorandums of Understanding as if they had brought peace to the Middle East.

But the fact is the beating heart of this deal, Gillard's acquiescence to Brown's push for a carbon price in the form of a Climate Change Committee is an assault on the very "free institutions" nominated by Evans. It is a fundamentally anti-democratic development to which Gillard has conceded in a base attempt to create enough momentum with the independents to form a minority government.

Evans conclusion is unequivocal in his description of privilege: "The principal immunity is the freedom of parliamentary debates and proceedings... This immunity is known as the right of freedom of speech in Parliament."

Clearly if you are banned from a committee because of what you have said in the past on climate change, your freedom of speech as an MP is being impugned.

These are the kinds of problems that arise when a desperate Prime Minister accedes to the demands of a party that will hold only nine Senate seats and one Lower House and then tries to pass it off as a democratic outcome.

In truth this measure of Gillard's weakness formalises the historic truth of the numbers on election night; the Left vote in Australia is now split between the Greens and the ALP to the point where Labor can no longer govern without Green support.

Politically legitimised by Labor, Brown is the winner out of this deal and a supine Gillard is the loser. She is driven to this by the need to set dress the pact as evidence of her capacity to deal constructively with minor parties. Her target audience is not the Australian public but the three Lower House independents whose support she needs to form government.

It is hard to see, though, how it will impress the three former National Party MPs representing as it does a lurch to the Left. Bob Katter would be Exhibit A of MPs prohibited from sitting on the Climate Change Committee. Only this week he described climate change scientists as "stupid".

It's also hard to see how Katter's and the other two independents overwhelmingly conservative electorates will be anything but aghast as once again Gillard tries to airbrush out recent history in a transparent bid to hang onto power.

Only six months ago, during the Tasmanian election, Labor distributed 40,000 leaflets warning of an alleged secret plan by the Greens to legalise heroin. It then followed the assault up with 20,000 automated phone calls.

The recorded "robocalls" featured the voice of Montrose (a Hobart suburb) "mum and mother-of-two" Glenys Lindner saying she is ringing about the Greens' "dangerous" ideas. Ms Lindner repeated the strongly denied claims that the Greens want to give criminals the vote and make heroin legal.

This is the same party Gillard is now formally in bed with. What's changed then? Nothing but the straitened circumstance of a once great Labor Party.

Glenn Milne has been covering Canberra politics for more than two decades.

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Reading a recent lengthy and detailed Sydney Morning Herald article detailing the latest charges against Wikileaks frontman Julian Assange, I can only nod my head knowingly.

This was always going to be the way things worked out. From the time last year when we all became aware of Assange, I felt a twinge of fear, an inner voice saying Something isn't right here. It took me a few weeks to articulate that feeling into a real, grounded rationale for my dread.

Long ago, before I moved to Australia, before I'd done any of the work that I'm known for within the technology community, I had some peripheral contact with the 'hacker' world (In this usage, 'hacker' means folks who break into computers, not the folks who stay up all night programming them in weird and wonderful ways).

One of the things I learned very early on was a simple rule of thumb to separate the accomplished from the n00bs and fools: only a n00b would brag about their exploits. Only a n00b would tell others that he'd broken the law. Those who do crimes keep silent about their darker doings. Those who wannabe, they're loud about it.

When Assange suddenly became the public face for the increasingly fascinating Wikileaks, it confused me on several levels.

First, why does Wikileaks need a public face? It's a dropbox service that promises anonymity to whistleblowers across the world. That kind of service is best kept low-profile, very nearly invisible except to those who might want to avail themselves of the service. If you need it, you'll know where to find it.

Second, why would Assange - or anyone, for that matter - consent to being the public face of Wikileaks? Wikileaks has worked hard to anger some of the most powerful institutions on the planet. In no particular order: the US Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, the US Department of State, MI5 and ASIO. These are organisations with institutional memory and global reach. If you vex them, they have it within their capacity to make things very difficult for you. Possibly terminally so.

If this all sounds very much like a John LaCarre novel, that's because we're dealing with the stuff of Cold War thrillers: spies, secrets, dropboxes, whistleblowers and the great mass of ignorance which is the body politic. Information is power, and Wikileaks pricks a big hole in the plans of the powerful. So again, why would anyone willingly associate themselves with Wikileaks? Isn't that the equivalent of painting a great big target yourself?

Finally, what does this public exposure say about the long-term security and stability of Wikileaks?

An invisible organisation presents no surface that can be attacked, or compromised, or tortured into submission. An organisation that has resolved itself into the body of a single individual has placed an enormous burden on that individual - and placed them into substantial danger. Assange knows this, and all of his recent troubles in Sweden are, to his account, disinformation campaigns conducted by organisations seeking to thwart him and Wikileaks. This should have been expected. This is how that particular game is played. Everyone knows the rules. You can't scream and shout when your opponent makes a counter-move on the game board. You wouldn't need to scream and shout if your opponent has no idea who you are.

I don't mean to sound naive; these organisations are well-resourced and probably would have gotten to Assange eventually (Then again, given how long it's taken to find Osama Bin Laden, maybe not). Being visible gives Assange the protection of visibility. If he's taken down publicly, it could look bad. But whether or not Assange remains a free man, Wikileaks has been substantially weakened by his representation.

Faceless, pervasive and powerful, Wikileaks might have grown into the mirror image of al-Qaeda, a force which could terrify the rulers while simultaneously becoming folk heroes for the ruled. Instead, all the power of the State is landing on Wikileaks and Assange. Whatever remains of Wikileaks in a year's time will only be those components deemed to be unthreatening. Wikileaks will be compromised; that became inevitable as soon as we all got a look at Assange. Hence my dread.

As much as we might regret this, it will not bring an end to this new era of whistleblowing, any more than the court-mandated dismantling of Napster was the end of peer-to-peer file sharing. Indeed, just a few days after Napster disappeared, a new network, Gnutella, opened for business, and having learned from Napster's mistakes. Where Napster was centralised, Gnutella was distributed. Where Napster was noisy, Gnutella was quiet. Where Napster had a surface that could be sued into oblivion, Gnutella was slippery, and very hard to grasp. Gnutella is still around. Napster has been gone for a decade.

Any organisation that follows Wikileaks will learn from the mistakes made by Assange & Co. It will be invisible unless sought for, as pervasive as necessity requires, and much more impervious to attacks that attempt to corrupt its essential functions and integrity. Will it be perfect? No. This is a cat-and-mouse game, a process where both the forces of State control and the forces which seek to thwart the control of the State are both evolving, both learning from one another.

Within a few years, we'll be drowning in information from 'whistleblowers'. The State will try to swamp these new channels with meaningless or useless information in order to render them unusable. With so much, how can any of us know the truth, or know what truths are significant?

This presents the most interesting opening for 21st century journalism: investigative reporters will be those who have dedicated themselves to winnowing the wheat of truth from the chaff of noise, in order to share it with the rest of us. At the end, we're precisely where we started; the State tries to keep things hidden, while a few brave souls work hard to shine a little light into the dark places. The means will have changed, but the aims remain the same.

Mark Pesce is one of the pioneers in Virtual Reality and works as a writer, researcher and teacher.

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The Governor General sought legal advice last week in respect of her connection with Labor Minister Bill Shorten. Paul Kelly in The Australian yesterday weighed in by advising the Governor General to avoid any activism in her role. Kelly suggested that the Governor General's job is to ensure that anyone claiming to be able to form a Government will be able to survive a no confidence motion in the lower house (not just afternoon tea at Yarralumla).

My advice to the Governor General is much simpler: do whatever you like. It may come as some surprise to those who have not read our Constitution, but Quentin Bryce has a prerogative power which can be exercised at her whim.

Conflicts of interest and pre-existing political sympathies have been features of many previous appointments to the role of Governor General. Indeed, by comparison, Bryce's issue looks very minor indeed. Consider, for example, when our Governor General was Sir Paul Hasluck (after which the ultra-marginal seat of Hasluck is named). Hasluck was elected as a Liberal MP but resigned from the Menzies Government in 1969 to take up the role of Governor General. He held the spot until he resigned in 1974. Obviously, the Governor General had a political history and ideological sympathies, but this raised no concerns in his appointment.

This was a series of events which was set to be repeated, but on the other side of politics. Bill Hayden was elected as a Labour MP in 1961 and served as a Minister in the Whitlam Government. After the dismissal, Hayden became leader of the opposition before Hawke pipped him for that job in 1983. He went on to serve as Governor General between 1989 and 1996.

So the role of Governor General has often been closely affiliated with politics and political parties. In this context, it seems vaguely ridiculous that Bryce felt the need to obtain legal advice.

One of the issues is, of course, that the role of Governor General has the potential to be politically controversial. The sacking of Gough Whitlam is the obvious example. The prerogative powers permit a Governor General to sack a Prime Minister where they do not have the confidence of the lower house of parliament (ironically, Whitlam did have the confidence of the House of Representatives). The option is then available to either go to a poll (which is the conventional approach) or to invite the opposition leader to form a government.

Sound unlikely? Well it happened, though in a state setting, in New South Wales in 1931. Jack Lang was sacked by the Governor of NSW for failing to collect Commonwealth tax. The Governor believed this was in breach of the law and dismissed Lang and this was despite Lang having the numbers in the lower house.

Technically, this was not the job of the Governor. As mentioned, the Governor's role, by convention, is to appoint a government if the relevant leader (in this case a Premier) has the confidence of the lower house. To dismiss Lang for what was essentially an irrelevant consideration would seem to be a breach of Convention albeit not subject to judicial review.

But it was not unlawful - precisely because prerogative powers are exactly that - the prerogative of the Queen and her Vice-regal representatives. So even if the Governor General takes irrelevant factors into account, there is absolutely nothing an elected leader can do about it. The only option is for the leader to take the initiative and sack the Governor General before they do the sacking themselves.

Given the complex political situation currently unfolding in Australia, Bryce is hardly in an envious position. But her prerogative powers remain hers to exercise as she sees fit.

So what do we take from all this? Our democracy is fragile and relies heavily on conventions rather than strict enforceable rules. But equally such conventions make the system responsive to the political trends of the day. For Quentin Bryce, the conclusion is that any personal conflicts of interest are completely irrelevant and whilst she may be wise to accept Paul Kelly's advice, ultimately, she can do whatever she likes.


Elizabeth O'Shea is responsible for Maurice Blackburn's Social Justice practice working on cases which address issues of community concern and further the public good.

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Much has been made of the potential clash of rural and regional independents and the Greens in Australia's emerging political order.

But the urban-centered Green vote and the renewed voices of country Australia may in fact be the new 'odd couple' of Australian politics.

They represent two parts of Australia that want the same thing but couldn't find it from the traditional big parties - a safe and sustainable country.

We face a future in which Australia must help clothe and feed a planet of 9 billion people, with double the consumption levels they have now.

This means we will need to boost the amount of food and fibre we produce, while also reducing the impact we have on our environment.

Just to meet current levels of consumption we are already stretching our soils, our water supply and our atmosphere's ability to absorb pollution.

Sadly, Australia has some of the highest rates of extinction on the planet and landclearing - for agriculture and urban development - has been a major contributor to that, as increasingly is climate change.

Meanwhile, our cities continue to grow, demanding more energy and materials to fulfil our lifestyles.

We are the highest producers of carbon pollution per person in the developed world. This pollution is helping drive the changes to our climate which exaggerating the often harsh conditions of rural Australia. No-one in Australia wants to live through more frequent, harsher and longer drought.

The solution must be to do more with less. This is the essence of sustainability, whether you live in Melbourne, Perth, Townsville or Taree.

It is possible, but we must be smarter about the way we do things. The next Australian government must invest substantially more money and expertise in rural and regional Australia.

We must harness both the power of markets and the power of good policy to improve our environment.

We must significantly cut our carbon pollution and give people living on the land a way to make a positive contribution to the climate.

We need to help farmers find better ways to use water; to reduce the amount of chemical fertilisers and pesticides used; and to save our fragile native species from extinction by protecting important areas.

Australia needs more national parks that protect critical habitats such as breeding grounds, migratory routes and nesting sites, and reserves that connect these parks and create wildlife corridors.

Our rural landscapes need to be a balance between nature and sustainable agriculture. The same principle same applies to our oceans.

Consumers, as well as large food companies, must also pay a fair and true price for food - a price that delivers a reasonable share to farmers, as well as paying for the environmental management of our resources.

Many of our leading farmers and fishermen are already demonstrating a willingness to adopt inspirational and innovative practices.

There are farmers in the Mackay-Whitsunday catchment area investing in technology to reduce pollution on the Great Barrier Reef, which at the same time is boosting their productivity.

These farmers are growing more food at a greater profit with a lower footprint. This is the future - but only if we can expand from 19 farmers in North Queensland, to 19,000 farmers Australia wide.

Millions of consumers in our major cities are demanding more sustainable food options, including nearly 20 per cent of Australians who voted Green at this election. They are showing a willingness to support a better way of doing things.

Up until now, rural independents and urban Greens may have seen each other as adversaries, rather than allies. But the hopes of either group cannot be achieved without the support of the other.

The big question is: can the next government of Australia nurture this common ground to achieve our shared objective - a healthy, prosperous and sustainable Australia?

I, and millions of other Australians, certainly hope so.

Dermot O'Gorman is WWF-Australia's Chief Executive.

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Tony Abbott's recent announcement that he would crack down on gang warfare and knife crime if the Coalition wins the election reinforces the common perception that the worst danger of physical violence lurks down dark streets or in parks.

But the fact is, for most of us the horror exists within our homes, or with the people already in our lives. Of the women killed each year, 60 per cent are at the hands of partners or ex-partners, and 12 per cent by family members.

The common wisdom is that if a woman is in an abusive relationship, the best protective action she can take is to leave. But it is a hidden fact that a woman's risk to violence increases when she attempts to leave her partner, or if she is pregnant. This is the point at which domestic violence often begins, or otherwise existing violence and abuse intensifies.

The period post-separation is actually a particularly dangerous time for women, with research indicating that there is a significant increase of lethal and non-lethal violence during separation and after divorce. A 2008 study of 400 pregnant women in Queensland found that being separated from her partner did not mean a woman would avoid future abuse. In fact, for a large proportion of these women the violence increased.

There is also an identified association between pregnancy and increased risk violence by an intimate partner or ex-partner. Figures from the ABS Personal Safety Survey (2005) reveal almost 15 per cent of pregnant women experience violence from a current partner or ex-partner, and for half of these women it will be the first time they have experienced physical violence from this person. The violence these women could be subjected to during pregnancy includes being pushed, grabbed, shoved, slapped, hit, kicked or punched. An abusive partner might attack these women's abdomens or breasts, sexually assault them, threaten them with a knife or gun, use a weapon against them or choke and strangle them.

ABS studies have established that a woman's experience of Intimate Partner Violence [IPV] - including physical, emotional, sexual and psychological harm - poses a serious threat to her own health as well as that of her unborn baby or newborn. A baby's repeated perinatal exposure to the stress hormone cortisol impacts negatively on its development in utero.

Furthermore, violence against a pregnant woman has been found, in various studies, to trigger low birth rates, premature births, mental health concerns including anxiety and depression, suicide, miscarriage and perinatal morbidity. The British Medical Association found that up to 20 per cent of women suffered domestic violence during pregnancy, and the injuries they sustained included 'placental separation, foetal fractures, rupture of the uterus, liver or spleen and pre-term labour'. These are horrifying facts.

In addition, domestic violence against pregnant women has been found to trigger alcohol and other drug use by those women while carrying an unborn child. A 1996 study of US hospital records found that women who had experienced domestic violence were 15 times more likely to abuse alcohol and nine times more likely to abuse drugs. Drug and alcohol usage was also linked with the incidence of violence, possibly as a way for women to cope with the abuse.

Although Abbott's anti-crime policy, which proposes to crack down on violence in the public sphere (including gang violence), is important, there are two major reasons why government policy should also be addressing, and controlling, domestic violence. The first is the protection of public health and the second is managing the financial cost of this problem.

First, from a public health perspective, the ABS established in a recent study that domestic violence has been attributed to more health problems than other 'known risks to health such as cholesterol or illicit drugs'. These statistics alone should attract the attention of politicians if they are genuinely interested in attending to the health and social needs of their constituents.

Second, in terms of financial cost, the Australian Government's 2004 report The Cost of Domestic Violence to the Australian Economy concluded that "domestic violence poses the greatest risk for disease and premature death for women 15 - 44-years-old and costs the country $8 billion each year". Approximately half of this cost is borne by the victims of intimate partner violence, with the balance being covered by government at all levels, employers and the perpetrators themselves.

These two sets of statistics, which demonstrate the negative impact domestic violence has on both the public health and economy of our country, makes domestic violence - whether it be against pregnant or non-pregnant women - an issue deserving of political attention, whether it be by the Coalition or Labor party.

In 2003-2004, there were almost 35,000 children whose mothers' were seeking sheltered accommodation to escape domestic violence, and research has found that there are many women and children who survive, escape and recover from domestic violence situations with very little support from formal services. More formal services provided by the government to assist these women and children would be welcomed.

A more concentrated policy effort to provide help, protection and rehabilitation to the victims of this hidden form of crime would also make it more likely for those who continue to suffer in silence to speak out and seek help.

If the government does not seek to take some additional measures to address this major public health issue, domestic abuse will continue to put pregnant mothers and their babies at risk of health problems - some of them fatal - both in the short and long term.

Catherine Robinson has been a social worker for seven years and has specialised in the field of domestic violence for the last six. She is currently completing her Masters of Social Work at the University of Sydney.

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There's a cardinal rule in politics; never make a speech unless you have something to say.

Julia Gillard broke it Tuesday at the National Press Club. As a result she was left looking like a party leader who had run out of options and ideas, rather than a Prime Minister in waiting.

Worse still was the rank hypocrisy on display as she angled to pick up the support of the three crossbench independents, Bob Katter, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor. But not even they were listening. The trio were behind locked doors receiving private briefings from departmental heads.

They were briefings granted by the government so presumably Gillard knew they weren't around to hear what she said. So what exactly was she doing on her feet at the NPC exactly?
We'll come to that. For the moment let's stay with the charge of hypocrisy.

The central message of her address - if it can be called that - was Labor's embrace of parliamentary reform. It was blindingly obvious why, of course. It's the agenda being pushed by the independents whose votes she desperately needs to avoid being a footnote in history.

Gillard was fulsome: "We have a larger challenge, which is also an historic opportunity," she said. "An opportunity to pause, to stand back from the entire political process and truly take stock of how the system is working. To address those things that undermine public confidence in our democratic system."

"To make our system more open and more transparent. And especially, to strengthen the role of the national parliament in the decisions that affect the everyday lives of Australians."

Gillard was speaking of the reforms being demanded by Messr Windsor, Katter and Oakeshott, namely; an independent Speaker, relevant and time limited answers to questions in Question Time, an Estimates Committee system for the Lower House, legitimising Private Members Bills and possibly fixed term Parliaments.

It's a sweeping agenda. So sweeping Gillard titled her speech: "Australia's New Political Landscape".

All of which meant Gillard didn't need to talk about the uncomfortable "old" political landscape. That's the one in which she dismissed parliamentary reform out of hand as Deputy Prime Minister to Kevin Rudd. And as Prime Minister too. Specifically on the first day of the election campaign when she was asked about a position paper she wrote on Parliamentary Reform in Opposition and which she subsequently ignored when she came into government.

Gillard was asked:"If you are re-elected will you look at doing that - reforming Question Time and reforming how the House works?"

Prime Minister: "With the greatest respect to the question, I believe hard working Australians, thinking about what an election means for their nation, with the election being called today, may have their minds on other matters than Question Time. They may have their minds on matters like jobs and hospitals, GP super clinics. Whether or not their son or daughter is going to get an opportunity of a trades education in a trades training centre. For Question Time, for those matters, I'll defer that to Anthony Albanese in his job as Leader of Government Business."

I've seen a few flick passes in my time covering federal politics and that one was up there. Clearly not only did Gillard not want to know about Parliamentary reform, she didn't even want to talk about it. The brutal truth is at the outset of the campaign when she thought she was a shoo-in, she couldn't care less about Parliamentary process.

And I'll tell you why. Parliamentary reform only favors the Opposition and the independents. By its very nature it takes power away from the government of the day because it establishes a more level playing field in the House of Representatives. No incumbent government wants to talk about real change - as distinct from tinkering at the edges - because genuine reform threatens its authority and therefore it supremacy.

Not until now, that is. Now, we're in a situation where both sides of politics are desperately dedicating themselves to the issue because they desperately need the votes of the independents. But here's the thing; it was Gillard who for some benighted reason decided to go to the National Press Club Tuesday. Abbott stayed low. Consequently it was Gillard's desperation that was on clear display.

The fact is she had many chances to embark on the big structural reforms she's now contemplating when she was Deputy Prime Minister. Instead she and Rudd embarked on a calculated campaign to run down the institution.

An example. Rudd and his fellow traveller Gillard, the two most senior members of the Government's Question Time tactics committee, used to repeatedly, when Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull were Opposition Leaders, delay and frustrate Question Time with long Parliamentary statements.

The strategy was clear. Delay Question Time, the only opportunity for the Opposition to be anywhere near on equal terms to the government, make it harder for the TV news to package up against late afternoon deadlines, and then when Question Time did arrive, smother it with Rudd-speak.

They tried it again against Tony Abbott in his first week in the Liberal leadership, giving notice there'd be a Prime Ministerial statement on, wait for it, the first anniversary of the second fiscal stimulus package. Pugnacious as ever Abbott called a doorstop 40 minutes before Question Time where he called the strategy for what it was.

Ten minutes before Question Time the government pulled the statement. It was an admission of guilt.

Did Gillard ever question these tactics? Never. And she had her chances. Twelve months ago the Manager of Coalition Business in the House, Christopher Pyne wrote to his opposite number, Anthony Albanese proposing widespread procedural reform including limits on answers in Question Time and the creation of a backbench Question Time.

The Government did nothing. So Prime Minister, spare us the soaring rhetoric now about how important such reforms are. You have all the authenticity of a late convert.

And like all late converts Gillard on Tuesday protested too much about how she was really a believer all along. It's just she didn't get around to doing anything about it, the perennial excuse of the late convert. "For Labor a commitment to parliamentary and democratic reform is not one of opportunism," she said. "It actually allows us to go further down a road of reform to which we have already committed and where we have demonstrated real progress."

Really? She got it right the first time. This is all about rank opportunism and the elusive sniff of power.

Hypocrisy also got another run around the track when Gillard was asked at the Press Club whether she would abandon the use of focus groups. No, she said, she wouldn't. But she wouldn't let herself be governed by them. And she hadn't during the election campaign either.

Does she take us for mugs? If she wasn't being dictated to by focus groups what was all that about in the second week of the campaign when, realising she was in trouble, she said she was breaking loose from all those constraints to reveal, superwoman like, "The Real Julia"!

Here's a reminder of what she said at the time: "Look, mainly when you look at election campaigning in the modern age it gets to be a bit of a formula. There a kind of a rule book about how these things are done, very risk averse, very stage managed, you know, you're trying...to avoid gaffes and problems."

"And I thought for me that I did want to play my own game more, which is more out there with people, saying what I think, you know, truthfully and as bluntly as I can, and so I've been doing that."

Truthfulness and bluntness were in short supply at the National Press Club, based on Gillard's own past statements and actions. Not only that but she apparently has completely abandoned her undertaking, given the day after the election, not to conduct minority government negotiation via a media megaphone. You don't get a much bigger media megaphone than the National Press Club.

So what made her do it? A Prime Ministerial staffer explained on the day to a disinterested bystander who asked precisely that question; "We were sitting around waiting for the independents," the staffer said. "So Julia said; "Let's do something to look Prime Ministerial."

It was a phoney event from the start. And she looked phoney too.

Glenn Milne has been covering Canberra politics for more than two decades.

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Despite both major parties claiming they'll fight to stop increases in the cost of living, neither are likely to deliver with the parliament they've been handed.

Current jockeying by Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard for independent and Greens Party votes necessitates some accommodation of their policy priorities.

But almost all will result in increases in retail prices or taxes.

The most vocal independent seeking appeasement for his support, Bob Katter, has a bug bear with the Coles and Woolworths "duopoly".

Many Australians may superficially support Katter because of concerns that the "duopoly" has on prices, but the evidence doesn't support these concerns.

Following the Rudd government's election it directed the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to complete an inquiry into grocery prices.

The Commission concluded there was nothing wrong with retail price competition resulting from the dominance of the two major chains.

Instead the real problem was at the wholesale end of the industry.

Katter's beef with the major supermarkets is that their market size ensures they can negotiate hard and buy agriculture produce at lower prices from his producer constituents.

But the flipside is that grocery prices are lower for consumers.

And strangling the two majors will increase prices.

The ACT government implemented a policy that Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope, claimed would "lower prices" by limiting Coles' and Woolworths' capacity to develop new stores in Canberra.

But an analysis of the ACT Treasury's own data on supermarket prices showed that promoting other retailers would have the reverse affect and increase the price of an average basket of groceries by up to $13.45.

The reason is simple - the two majors are the most competitive players in the market on price.

By limiting their growth in favour of higher cost competitors on puts upward pressure on prices.

And the cost of Katter's call for tariffs and trade bans on certain agriculture imports like bananas will result in less competition allowing producers to squeeze more profits from consumers.

Fewer imports will also make Australian processed food manufacturing less competitive in Australia and our export markets.

Thankfully Gillard has ruled out increasing tariffs, and Abbott would face an open revolt inside the Liberal Party if he did. However Labor's record since 2007 has been to compensate tariff cuts with increased subsidies to industry which ultimately gets paid out of taxpayer's pockets".

Member for Lyne, Rob Oakeshott, has previously expressed strong support for an emissions trading scheme that would introduce a new tax on a vital input into the production of everything - electricity.

And with Member for New England, Tony Windsor, Oakeshott also supports Labor's $43 billion National Broadband Network which will have to be repaid by tax dollars.

And these cost of living pressures don't take account of the costs of policies proposed by the Labor, Liberal or Greens parties.

During the campaign the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry announced Labor's action on illegal timber imports policy, including making it an offence to import illegally harvested wood.

The commitment mirrors Labor's 2007 unimplemented policy to deliver "greater policing and enforcement of an effective national ban on the sale of illegally logged timber imports".

Yet earlier this year a government commissioned report by the Centre for International Economics concluded "Australia's imports account for about 0.034 per cent of global timber production, and 0.34 per cent of products incorporating illegally logged timber".

The same report concluded that trade restrictions would be ineffective and cost more than they are worth.

According to Labor's news release announcing its policy they didn't need to include costings because "there will be no impact on the budget from this important initiative".

They're right.

The costs of compliance for a non-problem would simply flow through to consumers and the Australian domestic industry which will become less competitive in export markets.

And despite the stated goal of the Greens Party that it wants the "elimination of housing-related poverty", their opposition to land release and burdensome building regulations will stop an increase in affordable housing supply.

For the high number of young people voting for the Greens Party, the cost of their policies will be felt when they enter the housing market and demand for affordable housing continues to outstrip supply.

The only policies that would actually contribute to cutting the cost of living were the Liberal and Labor small business tax cuts of 1.5 per cent.

But Labor conditioned their cuts on the passage of their now dead mining.

If the Coalition achieve government Abbott has aspired to further tax cuts once the budget is returned to surplus.

But Abbott's tax cuts will only slow the upward increase on the cost-of-living that come at the price of securing government.

Tim Wilson is Director of the IP and Free Trade Unit at the Institute of Public Affairs and author of Forcing Prices Up and Green Excuses: Collusion to promote protectionism?

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If policy is the deciding factor, the independent parliamentarians support Labor, argues Ben Eltham

So, now we know who The Greens are supporting.

I don't think too many of us were surprised by Adam Bandt and Bob Brown's decision to support Julia Gillard and Labor, although there will certainly be some Labor hardliners who must shudder at the very thought of negotiating with the party.

The Labor-Greens deal formalises what many had expected. In return for lending Julia Gillard a crucial lower house vote, The Greens gain a seat at the table, considerable extra resources to formulate and cost their policies, some concessions on things like high-speed rail and a debate on Afghanistan, and real leverage on the eventual shape of any Labor climate change legislation.

But then again, the Senate numbers dictated they would get most of this anyway, so the real importance of the deal is that it clears the way for Labor to continue negotiations with the independents in earnest.

Which way will the independents jump?

Numerous attempts to try to guess the answer to this question have dominated media coverage post-election, along with some fascinating but irrelevant details like who won the two-party preferred national vote.

We've seen a lot of media coverage of the independents, of course. Lateline viewers got a taste of Rob Oakeshott's political philosophies last week. It was a rare media appearance by an Australian politician in which questions were answered fairly and genuinely, and policy issues were discussed knowledgeably. Oakeshott appears to have actually read the Garnaut Review, for instance, and knows the difference between a node and a home in broadband policy.

The wizened visage of Tony Windsor has also been popping up all over the place. Windsor has played his cards carefully in the interregnum that has ensued since the inconclusive results of August 21, saying that the key factor in his decision will be "stability". But what does "stability" really mean, and who could provide it? Could it be the Liberal-National Coalition, which has had four leaders in three years and contains a National Party that can barely hide its contempt for Windsor? Or would it be a Labor Party which deposed its own sitting prime minister only seven weeks before going to the election?

Australians are likewise getting to know Andrew Wilkie better. The former Office of National Assessments analyst who will become the independent member for Denison has issued a list of "priorities" that he wishes to see addressed by whoever forms government. Some of the priorities are classic local member issues: a huge redevelopment for Royal Hobart Hospital, light rail for Hobart's northern suburbs, and an advanced broadband rollout in his home seat. Others are more typically the stuff of national policy debates: he wants to limit ruinous gambling on poker machines, include dental care in Medicare, set a price on carbon, enact federal whistleblower legislation, give more money to universities and reinstate a 2012 review of the Federal Government's schools funding system. On Wednesday morning, Wilkie announced that his discussions with Julia Gillard had been unsatisfactry and that he was now waiting to hear from Tony Abbott. "I've now received a formal proposal from the ALP for my support," he told Fairfax. "It's confidential - and unacceptable to me. I'm now waiting for one from the Coalition."

And then of course there is Bob Katter, who is continuing to provide the sort of material for satire that political humorists dream about. Over the weekend he was boasting about his fist-fighting prowess while this week he was holding forth on the "lightweight" climate change credentials of Ross Garnaut and Nicholas Stern. Katter's big hat and equally outsized personal style make it hard for many to take him seriously - which is something of a shame, because if you do take his various policy positions seriously, they turn out to be surprisingly consistent and electorally appealing. For instance, Katter wants to raise agricultural tariff barriers, a position Julia Gillard has ruled out, but one which many rural voters might agree with. We'd expect his rural north Queensland electorate would also support his demand for a $1 billion fund from mining royalties to be directed to north Queensland infrastructure, although it seems ironic that a strident critic of the Resource Super Profits Tax should now be an advocate for extra public spending from the proceeds of mining royalties.

The continuing back-and-forth between a string of independent members and minor parties clearly has many in the media uncomfortable. Laurie Oakes, who has had a vintage election so far, held fire for a week before launching a stinging attack on the independents, who he claims "have looked about as serious as kids in a toy shop" and have turned "the whole hung Parliament thing" into a "circus". Dennis Shanahan has lost patience too, declaring that "the nation would actually be better off if we just went back to the polls."
So perhaps it's time to ask the all-important question: just who should the independents support?

I think the independents should support Labor - because the policy issues they themselves have advanced align better with Julia Gillard's incumbent government than with Tony Abbott's alternative.

I'm not arguing here that Labor will make a better government, or Julia Gillard a better prime minister. I'm simply pointing out that, if you look at the policy issues advanced by the independents, they line up better with Labor's stated positions than they do with the Coalition's.

Four salient issues stand out: the economy, regional investment, health and broadband. I've chosen these issues because they are the ones that all four of the independents have mentioned in their various list of demands.

The economic data and the proper costing of the major party's policies comes top of the list. As I've argued previously, the Coalition has been all over the shop on economic management this election. The centre-piece of the Coalition's economic policy platform is a non-issue: government debt. There's no doubt that too much government debt is a big problem. It's just that Australia has very little of it. Nor have the Coalition's attacks on Labor's wasteful spending convinced. We can all agree that some of Labor's spending programs have been poorly managed. But that's a sideline compared to the success of the current government's stimulus package, which avoided a devastating recession and now sees the Australian economy powering ahead. In contrast, Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey have looked decidedly ill at ease when forced to discuss economic matters in any depth, repeatedly deferring to Andrew Robb's policy expertise. The low farce that ensued after Tony Abbott refused to release his own independent costings - only to cave in under pressure days later - underlined the Coalition's discomfort when it comes to budgets and the economy.

Quite apart from the rubbery figures the Coalition has put forward in the election campaign, there is a further economic issue for the independents to consider: public investment in the regions. All the independents, including Andrew Wilkie, are calling for substantial new federal investment in infrastructure and public services in their electorates. This is to be expected. But it flies in the face of what appears to be a dominant economic ideology in the Liberal Party, which broadly opposes public investment and government spending. You can see this attitude reflected in Liberal opposition to a swathe of this Labor Government's policies: the NBN, the schools stimulus, spending on e-health, even public investment in business coaching and advice for small businesses. The independents would be well advised to weigh this up when they consider which alternative government would actually deliver the spending they seek in their home seats.

On health, I think the independents will conclude that the incumbent Labor government offers a more comprehensive and better-funded suite of policies. Labor's health and hospitals reform package has a number of flaws, particularly in mental health, but it delivers key reforms in areas such as electronic health records, public finance reform for hospitals funding, more hospital beds in public hospitals, more training places for GPs, specialists and nurses - not to mention an agreement with every state and territory except Western Australia. The Coalition's health policies are more modest, except for their better-funded mental health policy, and they require savings to be found by axing important measures like the e-health reforms. Weighing up the competing health policies of the major parties, I would expect the independents to favour Labor's.

Broadband is another issue that has been nominated as critical by all four of Oakeshott, Katter, Windsor and Wilkie. There is a clear difference between the two policy platforms on broadband. Labor will build a high-tech, costly, future-proofed National Broadband Network, laying fibre into the homes of nine-tenths of Australian households. In contrast, the Coalition is offering a far more constrained, cost-effective and slower plan for building broadband infrastructure. It will be much more affordable, but far less effective. You'd think that for Rob Oakeshott, Bob Katter and Andrew Wilkie, who have nominated broadband as a key issue, Labor's NBN is the better policy.

On the economy and campaign costings, on regional investment, on health and on broadband: Labor wins on all four.

Of course, this only matters if you think the independents really will weigh up the issues on the merits of competing policies. They might decide their own electorates favour a conservative government, or that they simply don't like one or other of the two leaders. Constitutionally, they don't have to give a reason at all.

But if policy is the deciding factor, we should expect the independents to side with the government.

Ben Eltham is a writer, journalist, researcher and creative producer.

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If you're getting a little tired of stories about the hunt for the pink Viagra, you're not alone. A succession of drug companies and their paid consultants continue to tout the wonders of the latest experimental pill or patch, and some in the media continue to dutifully report there's a sexual panacea for women just around the corner. But as usual, the gap between the inebriated marketing hype and the sober reality is a vast chasm.

First up was Viagra, with early positive findings generating enormous excitement. One small study found the pill appeared to help women's lubrication and blood flow, and improve problems of desire, arousal, pain and orgasm. On the basis of this and similar findings, some of Pfizer's more enthusiastic sales representatives began spruiking the benefits of Viagra for women, long before it had even been assessed for approval for such a use. Some of the promotional techniques proved rather unorthodox, with a whistleblower later alleging that one top-selling sales representative in the United States used to take his doctors to strip clubs. Those specific claims formed part of an historic legal case against Pfizer, which saw the company maintain near blanket denials of all allegations against it, but at the same time agree to settle with US health authorities last year to the tune of $US2.3 billion.

Sadly though, once bigger clinical trials were conducted, the evidence didn't look quite so promising, and a key study in 2002 found Viagra was unable to significantly beat the placebo, or dummy pill. It apparently helped genital blood flow, as it did with men, but it was not improving the way women perceived their sex lives, any more than a placebo could. Importantly, on a particular dose, around a third of women got flushing and headaches, and one in five experienced "abnormal vision". By early 2004, Pfizer announced it was pulling Viagra out of the race to be the first female sex drug.

By that time, another unproven aphrodisiac was being mercilessly hyped up, including by esteemed media outlets such as BBC and New Scientist. Reports suggested an experimental testosterone patch could deliver a "74 per cent increase" in satisfying sex for the one in 10 women claimed to have low libido, or hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD). But the truth about the potential risks and benefits of that drug would emerge at a dramatic public hearing of the powerful United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in late 2004, an extraordinary day in the recent history of sexual medicine, covered in meticulous detail in Sex, Lies and Pharmaceuticals.

One side effect of all the hype about female sex drugs has been the increasing media attention given to a group called the New View, a loose global network of feminist academics and clinicians, who are offering a very different conception of women's sexual problems. Rather than an "insufficiency" of blood flow, or a "deficiency" of testosterone to be fixed with pills and patches, the New View, and its co-founder Dr Leonore Tiefer, see sexual difficulties as due to a complex web of personal, social, cultural and sometimes medical reasons, often derived from relationship issues rather than individual dysfunctions. With characteristic humour Tiefer had given a speech not long before the 2004 FDA meeting, entitled 'Not tonight, dear, the dog ate my testosterone patch.'

'Not tonight, dear, the dog ate my testosterone patch.'
Click forward to 2010, and this time round it was a drug affecting brain chemicals which was coming to the rescue of tens of millions of women suffering in silence with an apparent disorder of low desire. The German pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim - a private firm with 40,000 employees across the globe - was developing a medicine called flibanserin. A chemical that affects the neurotransmitters in the brain, including serotonin, flibanserin originally failed as an anti-depressant, before being resuscitated as a possible remedy for reduced libido, or HSDD.

In the lead up to the all important assessment by advisers to the FDA in June this year, the drug company unleashed a major multimedia campaign to raise awareness about HSDD, with company-linked researchers claiming women's sexuality was now understood to be "more about the brain" than anything else. The company enlisted public relations firms, co-funded a major film documentary on desire, and hired a former Playboy model turned television celebrity to promote the idea of enormous "unmet need" for the treatment of HSDD. In Australia, it kindly funded a love-in for sexperts in Sydney, offering them up to $1,000 each to attend. As part of the television blitz in the US, one high-profile researcher revealed breathlessly that HSDD affected "about 30 per cent" of women.

But as with testosterone and Viagra, this failed anti-depressant didn't seem to have the right stuff. Staff inside the FDA released a withering assessment of the company's scientific data, finding the drug had simply failed to beat placebo on the pre-agreed measures of success. At best, compared with the dummy pill, the medicine might offer women an extra 0.7 "satisfying sexual events" per month. And weighed against that purported benefit, were worrying side effects including nausea, dizziness, fainting, and accidental injury. Advisers to the FDA rejected the drug.

The problem for the pharmaceutical industry is that their products simply haven't so far been able to beat the pesky placebo in any meaningful way - raising serious questions about whether the women enrolled in these company-funded trials really have a medical disorder at all. But rather than work with the placebo, as is revealed in Sex, Lies and Pharmaceuticals, one of the current campaigns by some high profile sex researchers is to try and change the rules for the way drugs are tested, to make it easier for them to beat the dummy pills, and get new drugs on the market. And once a sex drug for women is approved in the United States, no matter how modest its benefits, or serious its risks, the tsunami of advertising behind both the drug and the "disease" will wash over the shores of nations everywhere.

With more pills in the pipeline, the hype about widespread sexual disorders is far from over, though with every successive promotional wave, the industry's marketing techniques become a little clearer. And as we'll discover, there is a growing impatience about the unhealthy impacts of pharmaceutical industry influence in medicine, and a growing mood for a major clean up.

The first article in this three-part series, The merging of marketing and medical science, was published on Monday. Part three will be published on Friday.
Ray Moynihan is an award-winning health journalist, author, documentary-maker and academic researcher. His new book is Sex, Lies & Pharmaceuticals.

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Oh, aren't they charming, these "Independents"? Aren't they just your local, neighbourhood, friendly chaps? With their homespun wisdom and folksy ways, their big hats and suntans and malapropisms. The hicks from central casting. Mr Smith goes to Canberra, indeed, and all them big-city folk are shown up for the treacherous, lecherous, greedy sods they are. Politics is changing, the paradigm is shifting. Demands, demands, demands.

Charming? Friendly? Refreshing? Tell 'em to get stuffed.

It might all be wonderful fodder for the media, who swarm around the independents like flies around, well, what flies swarm around. But the spectacle of this nation's prospective prime ministers fawning over people like Bob Katter and Andrew Wilkie takes the term unedifying to new lows. It now appears that the fate of Australia will rest on murky tete-a-tetes in Canberra backrooms; an interesting situation for Tony Abbott, to be sure, after his cries of injustice over the backroom deals that sunk Kevin Rudd. It seems the only acceptable backroom deals are the ones that make him prime minister.

This is politics though, after all, and a little bit of intellectual and moral flexibility should surprise none of us. But the flexibility that allows our major parties to bend over backwards to accommodate the views of bigots and lunatics and the politically fraudulent goes far too far.

Abbott and Gillard - and their cheersquads - should remember that Bob Katter once claimed there were no homosexuals in North Queensland, and that he'd "walk backwards from Bourke" if there were any. (Presumably he didn't think there'd be any homosexuals walking forwards to Bourke at the same time). It's unsurprising, then, that he thinks homosexuals should not simply be actively discriminated against but for good measure declared to be illegal. He thinks divorce is the woman's fault "90 per cent of the time". He signs petitions put about by the Citizens Electoral Council, a charming little anti-Semitic, anti-gay, anti-Aboriginal and racist group who think the Port Arthur massacre was a conspiracy to help the government take people's guns away. He think global warming is all rubbish, like having a crocodile on your roof.

He accuses the National Party of causing dairy farmers to commit suicide. If he really cared about farmers he'd tell them to get a real job - but he doesn't want to fix the problem, merely profit from it politically. He was a member of and minister in Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen's government; you know, that mob of anti-gay, anti-Aboriginal, anti-democratic corrupt gangsters that ran Queensland like a cartel of power addicts. He was the minister for ethnic affairs and for Aboriginal affairs under Bjelke-Petersen, a fact to give you pause if ever there was one.

Charming? Friendly? Refreshing? Tell him to get stuffed.

This is the man our leaders are now dealing with. What price the re-introduction of tariffs and subsidies aimed solely at propping up unsustainable industries? Katter wants to force you and I to pay higher taxes for the luxury of paying higher prices, just so a few primary producers can be spared the inconvenience of dealing with economic reality. And the Labor and Liberal parties are going to "consider" a list of demands from this poltroon? Spare us.

Any government who'll make concessions to the likes of Bob Katter shouldn't be in the business of governing at all. Any government willing to buy the vote of Andrew Wilkie - a serial candidate who polled a fifth of the vote and ran on a grab-bag of state government issues and personal hobby-horses - by acquiescing to demands for extra staff and resources and parochial pork-barrelling doesn't have much self-respect. Any government who listens to Rob Oakeshott's naive nonsense about unity cabinets might be able to complete a Year 10 social studies project, but not much more.

It's too much to hope for that our political leaders will have the dignity and the integrity to to do what ought to be done with these independents. It's too much to hope for that at least one party might say, "We have run on a platform designed to benefit all Australians. We believe in it. You are more than welcome to join us and implement our program, but we will not be held hostage to your narrow, sectional agenda and your crackpot ideas". It's is too much to hope for at all, but it should be done.

There isn't anything charming about trying to govern with a porkbarrel under your arm and a gun at your head. There isn't anything refreshing about having political reform in this country dictated by a small band of short-term constitutional marauders. This isn't a paradigm shift; it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the most blatant of opportunists, for political con-men and hucksters and small-town mayors.

We should tell 'em to get stuffed.

Luke Walladge is a writer, commentator and PR professional currently based in Melbourne.

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A coroner has begun his inquiry into the death of the "little Gungaleeda girl", who died after being turned away from the Doomadgee Hospital three times.

Domadgee is a township of around 1,200 people in the remote gulf area of northwest Queensland, 1,800km from Brisbane.

Whether her death was due to the hospital staff being overwhelmed with cases of the swine flu virus is yet to be determined. But whatever the findings, this case should throw a much-needed spotlight on the inadequate health care provisions for Indigenous Australians in remote communities.

It is a wonder given the appalling standard of health care in many remote parts of Australia, there are not more of these tragic cases. But maybe there are and we just never hear about them.

Certainly, nurses, doctors and other health professionals working in remote communities have been saying for years (decades even) that there are disturbing deficiencies in the delivery of health care to remote Aboriginal communities.

Nearly 20 years ago, remote area nurses and Aboriginal health workers from the Northern Territory withdrew their services, claiming that they were unable to provide a safe standard of care and that the "inadequate and inhuman health services being provided was a violation of the human rights of Aboriginal people in remote areas."

After their protests fell on deaf ears, the Council of Remote Area Nurses of Australia wrote a submission to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission detailing numerous cases where inadequate staffing and medical supplies had endangered the safety and even the lives of patients.

Sadly, despite increases in Australian government Indigenous health expenditure from around $400 million in 2004-05 to nearly $1.2 billion in 2010-11, the problems on the ground remain.

In an inquest into the deaths of 22 Aboriginal people in the Kimberley in 2008, one of the doctors said the biggest problem they faced was maintaining a stable workforce. In some areas the nursing turnover was as high as 350 per cent - this means that a hospital with 15 nursing positions would have to employ around 50 nurses a year.

In her excellent book Sounding the Alarm: Remote Area Nurses and Aboriginals at Risk, Jennifer Cramer blames the high turnover on nurses' lack of relevant preparation and training for working with the often complex health problems that exist among Aboriginal people in remote areas.

The book was written five years ago, but most nurses are still going into remote communities totally unprepared. While they may be distinguished by the title "Remote Area Health Nurse" - the position does not involve any specialist training that other nurses in dedicated positions such as paediatrics or cardiology receive.

Despite the huge volume of literature on Aboriginal health problems, issues regarding the quality of health care are usually left untouched.

No one wants to ask questions or scrutinise practices because then they would have to think of alternatives.

Inevitably, due to the shortage of doctors in remote areas, the day-to-day responsibility for health care will always fall on nurses and Aboriginal health workers.

Yet, rather than trying to sweep the problem under the carpet and ignore the huge turnover in staff, government should be making sure that nurses and other health professionals are provided with training that will equip them for working in remote areas.

At the time of her death, the "little Gungaleeda girl" was found to be suffering from pneumonia and rheumatic fever.

Rheumatic fever used to be a relatively common childhood illness in the early 20th century, but now is so rare in most parts of Australia that many medical practitioners will never see a case. The decline in cases of rheumatic fever occurred largely as a result of improvements in living conditions and the use of antibiotics.

But socially and economically disadvantaged populations worldwide continue to have high rates of rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease. The highest published incidence of acute rheumatic fever in the world is in Aboriginal people living in the 'Top End' of the Northern Territory.

Given that rheumatic fever is so prevalent in Aboriginal communities it should be policy that health professionals working in these communities are trained to recognise its symptoms.

According to the little girl's mother, the nurses took her daughter's temperature, tested her for swine flu and then sent them home with nothing more than liquid Panadol and a syringe. The nurses told the mother there was nothing wrong with her daughter.

It wasn't until a doctor saw the girl three days later that she was diagnosed with a respiratory tract infection and was prescribed antibiotics. Unfortunately by then, it was too late and she died the next day.

It shouldn't have taken the death of a little girl to raise questions about the quality and delivery of health care to people in remote areas. But hopefully something good will come out of the inquest and governments will start realising that if they are going to continue to rely on nurses to deliver the lion's share of health care in remote communities that they are provided with the training and the support needed for the task.

Sara Hudson is a policy analyst at The Centre for Independent Studies.

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In fulfilling his 2008 election promise, president Barack Obama has declared the end of the US combat role in Iraq as a prelude to a total US military withdrawal from the country by the end of 2011. From now on the US forces are expected to focus primarily on assisting and training the Iraqi army and security forces in order to enable them to ensure the integrity of Iraq as a sovereign independent state in the wake of the American withdrawal. However, the reality is that the US is leaving Iraq in such a poor state that it would be incapable of standing on its own feet for the foreseeable future.

Leaving Washington rhetoric aside, Iraq still remains in the grip of long-term structural disorder. After nearly seven years of occupation, Iraq is not stable or democratic. Nor is it free of the fundamental factors that could possibly cause its disintegration and transformation into a wider theatre of conflict in the region.

The Iraqi political institutions have not developed beyond infancy, and the main political blocs that contested the general elections of March this year have not been able to form a government to date. Similarly, the Iraqi army is not ready to take over from the Americans for another decade - something which the Iraqi army chief, Lieutenant General Babakir Zebari, confirmed as late as 12 August 2010.

This, together with the expected American military withdrawal, has generated a massive political-strategic vacuum, contributing to the level of violence to pick up dramatically since early this year. Whereas the number of civilian casualties had dropped by 50 per cent to 4,500 in 2009, it is now expected to go well above that figure this year. The Iraqi situation is so fragile that it could easily return the country to its dark days of 2005-2007, when hundreds of Iraqis were killed, injured and kidnapped every week as a result of operations by US forces and the Iraqi insurgents as well as by criminal gangs, with all sides committing heinous acts of human cruelty and destruction.

The roots of all this go back to the flawed US strategy under president George W Bush to transform Iraq from a dictatorship under Saddam Hussein to a democratic beacon for the whole of the Middle East. As part of this strategy, the US not only uprooted Saddam Hussein's rule, but also in the process destroyed the Iraqi state, unleashing a widespread insurgency in, and regional rivalry over, Iraq.

The insurgency was made up of disgruntled supporters of Saddam Hussein, Sunni and Shiite militants, and Al Qaeda. They battled not only the US forces and those of their allies in order to prevent them from consolidating their hold on Iraq, but also one another for political supremacy. The Sunni militants, representing 20 per cent of Iraq's population, wanted to restore their historical rule of Iraq and preserve the country's identity as an Arab state. In this, they were backed by many neighbouring Sunni-dominated Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia. The Shiite insurgents, whose sectarian adherents form some 60 per cent of the Iraqi population, desired earnestly to reassert their majority weight to lead Iraq. Some of their powerful elements were backed by the predominantly Shiite Islamic Republic of Iran, which found a unique opportunity to checkmate its arch enemy, the US, as well as some of its regional allies, most importantly Israel, and to expand its influence from central Afghanistan, where many of the 20 per cent Afghan Shiite population is concentrated, to Lebanon, where the Shiite Hezbollah force has been operating in concert with Iran against the US and Israel. In this development, the Iranian-Syrian strategic partnership also proved to be critical. In between the Sunni and Shiite sectarian struggle was the independence-seeking Kurds, who constitute 20 per cent of the Iraqi population. Allying themselves with the US from the early 1990s against Saddam Hussein' s regime, the Kurds went all out to build virtually an independent enclave of their own, and developed close ties with Israel, whose intelligence has become very active amongst them in order to keep an eye on Iran and to ensure that no united Arab or Islamic front is emerging against Israel.

When president Obama made his election promise to end America's military involvement in the Iraq war, which he considered to be the wrong war compared to the one waged in Afghanistan, he may have not anticipated that the problems that dogged Iraq then would persist today. The point is that they do, and are likely to get worse. One could expect Iraqi political paralysis, military unpreparedness, sectarian and ethnic power struggle and regional rivalry to exacerbate rather than diminish with a US withdrawal. This could only mean more violence, bloodshed and instability.

Washington has begun its withdrawal without achieving either a national consensus and enduring unity among the Iraqis or a regional understanding among Iraq's neighbours to prevent them from tearing further the fabrics of the country. The very survival of Iraq as a united and functioning state may now well turn out to be at stake. The only variable that can confound this development is for Iraq's neighbours to use the US withdrawal as a welcome step and act in ways that could help the Iraqis to build a viable state. Is this too much to ask in the Middle East?

Amin Saikal is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (the Middle East and Central Asia) at the Australian National University.

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Measuring media bias is notoriously tricky. As a mode of inquiry, it's more typical of a strand of US communications research than the mainstream of British and Australian work, partly because some researchers in the field consider that talking about the "bias" of one or another outlet in the absence of a broader discussion is likely to be a dead end. It's worth discussing methods of determining bias though, because accusations that particular outlets are biased will regularly crop up, especially from those living in the cartoon world of the left-right culture wars.

It's notable that some respectable voices don't think measuring media bias is possible, or worthwhile. Some have argued, from evidence of experiments on human subjects, that assessments of media bias are bound to fail because they reflect a subjective call, rather than a description of something with an objective character. There's an argument that states that assessments of the slant of particular articles will reflect our own views - hence some economists' attempts to get around this with somewhat cumbersome methodologies using particular talking heads and think tanks as proxies for the slant of stories or outlets.

One large scale meta-analysis of studies of bias in the US Media has suggested that as of 2000 there was no significant bias in US media, and that:

"the major source of bias charges is the individual perceptions of media consumers, and, in particular, media consumers of a particular ideological bent... It is all too easy to see the failure of others, including the media, to agree with one's message as being wilful, deliberate and possibly malicious".
For what it's worth, I think it is possible with modern techniques to determine whether or not certain outlets have particular issue focuses, and how they treat them, and that this can be worthwhile. But more old fashioned methods, looking for a simple binary partisan slant, can be deeply problematic, especially in the hands of those with an axe to grind.

If care isn't taken, would-be analysts tend to fall into one or more of a range of familiar traps. Gavin Atkins' attempt to prove bias at The Drum is instructive as an example of what can go wrong.

The kind of bias Atkins is chasing on The Drum has been referred to as "statement bias". (There are other kinds including "gatekeeping bias" and "coverage bias" that need not detain us here.) The method for finding statement bias involves fishing declarative statements out of "media events" like news stories. Note that this methodology is usually applied to news, not op-ed content. That's because news is the place it's usually considered appropriate to go hunting for bias. Opinion content will generally be expected to contain opinion; analysis will generally be expected to contain judgements, and readers will generally be expected to be able to take account of all of this as they're reading. Opinionated statements in clearly badged opinion and analysis shouldn't come as a surprise, whereas in content badged as news might. Negative and positive judgements or opinions about a particular leaders performance might be entirely appropriate, fair, and come from anywhere on the political spectrum.

Leaving this glaring problem aside, there's another methodological issue: ripping a statement out of context might easily give the impression that a writer, an article and the coverage overall has a meaning or thrust other than the one it does. With good will, careful peer review, and with a clear commitment to try to be objective themselves, a researcher may be able to correct for this. Atkins doesn't offer us a lot of hope that he's trying very hard with his question-begging introduction in his first post:

"[Drum Editor Jonathan] Green has invested our money into publishing the left-leaning, News Limited-fixated, Howard/Abbott-bashing views from his Crikey friends. He apparently considers this to be balanced out by occasional columns by token conservatives."
The call he makes before any of his empirical work is done conveniently matches his conclusion a few posts later: Atkins argues that The Drum has a structural bias which is visible on the basis of counting up negative and positive mentions of the leaders during the campaign. He wants us to accept that the aggregate of these is a good proxy for partisan bias, and that a partisan bias to Labor thus demonstrated is evidence of a "structural, systemic" left-wing bias. (The grumpy neocon corollary to this is that "our taxes" are illegitimately funding a nest of left-wing opinion). Even if we accept this dubious logical chain (does praise or criticism of a political leader really equate to partisan bias, and does this really match up with what we know of the ideological spectrum?), there's a clear problem - which this election should have demonstrated - with thinking about politics on a simple left-right continuum. Beyond all this, though, there are good reasons not to accept that Mr Atkins has been counting particularly carefully.

The characteristic problems Atkins strikes are selective perception - claiming as "biased" statements or pieces that are open to different interpretations - and instance confirmation - where people with different perspectives can easily find things that offend them in a diverse overall coverage and claim that these are representative of the whole. You don't have to go too far into Atkins's analysis to see them in action.

In his first post on The Drum's bias, Atkins finds in a piece by Annabel Crabb (whose work he goes on to demonstrate a specific loathing for) two positive mentions of Gillard in a piece on the first week. Here his hunt for only negative comments about leaders means he discounts a range of statements suggesting the entire campaign is shaping up as meaningless and inadequate:

"in this campaign, both candidates are rushing to dump everything that might otherwise constitute a reason for voting one way or another."
"These two helplessly conflicted opponents are homing in on each other, policy-wise, with all the clumsy inevitability of toey teenagers at a town hall dance."
Now, think about the selective perception in his omission of the following statement about Gillard:

"Julia Gillard has abandoned Labor's 2007 policies on climate, and is working towards an adoption of the Coalition's approach on asylum seekers."
I'd read this as a strong suggestion of an expedient abandonment of principle; presumably Mr Atkins would read it as a wrap, or as a neutral comment. Who's right? How would we settle it? He also misses the following comments, and I can't be alone in reading them as specific, barbed criticisms of Gillard:

"During her opening campaign statement, the Prime Minister smoothly congratulated Tony Abbott for agreeing with her on offshore processing - a remark the outrageous cheek of which alone elicits a whistle of amazement and a grudging golf clap."
"Mr Abbott says Julia Gillard doesn't believe in anything, and on the evidence currently to hand, you'd have to say he's got a point."
And what to make of this claim about Tony Abbott?

"Against Kevin Rudd, the Abbott characteristics that keep his advisers perpetually nervous - his tendency to answer questions frankly, sometimes to a needlessly self-harming degree, for example - suddenly became a weird sort of campaign asset."
I'd read it as not-very-qualified praise - Abbott's laudable candour is what often gets him into trouble. But Atkins only has room for binary positive/negative statements in his methodology.

Now let's see selective perception and instance confirmation at work, and treat ourselves to a lesson about the importance of context. Analysing another Crabb piece, Atkins risibly nominates the claim that "Julia Gillard, for her part, is doing an excellent job of cauterising the botched bits she inherited." as a positive mention, and ignores the lines immediately following, which can only be interpreted as attacking the Gillard campaign's lack of principle and coherence:

"But in their place, she is installing - what?
Something chimeric; the impression that asylum seekers might be processed in East Timor. Or elsewhere. Or not.
The impression that a Gillard government would ease the crowdedness of western Sydney and similar groaning suburban areas.
The impression of continuing devotion to 2007's zeal for carbon abatement, without any of the guts."
Taken as a whole - that is, read in the way that people normally read it - this is clearly an article damning both sides of the campaign, and reserving particular scorn for Gillard's expediency and lack of principle. Atkins has missed the criticism, and taken a piece of apparent praise out of context as representative.

Atkins is also given to qualifying certain criticisms of Gillard as being "from the left", as if this further confirms the overall bias of The Drum. This is, of course, in keeping with the implicit proposal that more ultraconservative voices attacking Labor leaders and praising Liberal ones would address The Drum's "bias". But this is where his limited vision of what left and right might mean, and his impoverished caricature of the range of political opinion, leads him into strife. He assesses this call - by former Costello staffer Nikki Savva - as an attack "from the left".

"When Gillard says she is opposed to a big Australia, she might be speaking truthfully, but I remain to be convinced that she is pushing anything other than a slogan with a dog whistle dangling from it urged on by the pollsters and the pygmies of the right who have done such a brilliant job getting New South Wales to where it is today."
Is it an attack from the left because she attacks the NSW right of the Labor Party? Because if it is, Abbott has been attacking Gillard "from the left" since before the campaign began. Is it an attack from the left because it implicitly supports a "big Australia"? That wouldn't make much sense - both major parties and the Greens called for slower population growth, a position that some centre-right think tanks, among others, are opposed to. Is it because she mentioned the "dog whistle" technique? If so, is Atkins suggesting by implication that only the right are capable of this? On the face of it, this is a full blooded, unqualified attack by a former Liberal staffer on what the author sees as Gillard's gutlessness. Again, though, Atkins's own position on the neocon right leads him to interpret and qualify a criticism of Gillard in a deeply idiosyncratic way.

We could go on with other articles by Crabb, Savva, Malcolm Farnsworth and others which taken in their entirety clearly damn both sides of the campaign, but where Atkins misses negative comments about Gillard, or damns them as soft "attacks from the left". He's also prepared to write off the likes of John Hewson and Chris Berg as "token" or "pet" conservatives - presumably his own version is the only authentic variety. He doesn't mention that Jonathan Green's been roundly attacked from the left for running the views of climate change sceptics, and for giving space to Glenn Milne. Nor has he considered that editors can only choose from what's submitted to them - perhaps Atkins should focus his energies on making some more material of his own available for Green to run.

As for the part where he lapses into actual trolling in order to prove some point (what it is isn't entirely clear) - that sort of methodology is sadly unavailable to university researchers, who labour under the dead hand of ethics. All in all I'd suggest that his lunge at a "scientific" cover for the favoured neocon pastime of attacking national broadcasters can be safely ignored.

All of this isn't just arguing around the edges of his count. I'm suggesting that Atkins is demonstrably incapable of applying his chosen method to The Drum, mostly because it's an outlet he clearly harbours his own biases against, and his own ideology badly distorts his assessments. Given all of these problems, Atkins's "findings" don't actually add up to much.

Atkins's analysis only makes sense if you accept a clear, binary partisan political spectrum, that political leaders nicely line up with, and where declarative statements by particular opinion writers can be aggregated to determine the bias of outlets in a binary way. If you live outside the culture wars cartoon, you're likely to see things as slightly more complicated. More sophisticated modern research in this area uses automated content analysis tools to tease out which issues are emphasised by particular outlets, and how they're treated - rather than totting up mentions of leaders, using these methods we can see how particular outlets tend to talk about key issues. But Mr Atkins is less interested in adding to the sum of human knowledge than he is in firing a salvo at the ABC. And that's all getting a bit old now, isn't it?


Jason Wilson is a Lecturer in Journalism and Communication at the University of Canberra.

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In recent days, several high-profile neo-conservatives and backers of the Iraq war have indulged in some triumphalism.

David Brooks, writing in the New York Times, points to several key statistics - economic growth, basic security, and political and legal institutions - to show that "nation building works".

Paul Wolfowitz, a key architect of the 2003 invasion, says that Iraq could become the South Korea of the Middle East so long as the United States maintains a long-term commitment. Numerous US Republican activists, meanwhile, call on anti-war critics to "Apologise to Bush".

I beg to differ. Certainly, Iraq is in a much better position today than anyone had the right to expect several years ago. Since President George W Bush's decision to increase US combat troops in early 2007, the level of violence and deaths has dramatically declined and local politics has embraced the exhilarating, albeit complicated, quality of a functioning democracy. All true.

But none of this means that Iraq will necessarily become a viable democratic state once Uncle Sam's boot leaves the ground later next year. Will, for instance, those age-old ethnic and tribal tensions resurface?

Nor does the recent progress on the ground justify the original decision to invade Iraq seven and a half years ago. It certainly does not justify all the costs in terms of blood (more than 4,500 coalition deaths and scores of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths) and treasure (trillion US dollars and counting).

But the Iraq experience has produced one good thing, something that many Australians will appreciate: it has shattered three dangerous neo-conservative illusions that have warped US policy in the post-9/11 era. In international relations, the destruction of illusion is almost always healthy and although it has taken a huge cost in American blood, treasure and prestige, it is to be hoped that Washington will learn from recent experience, correct its course and adopt a world view more in accordance with a realist world view.

Now I've given up on the many times I myself have been derided as a "neo-con", especially on this site. It is a crude slur to apply on anyone who happens to be on the right of the political and ideological spectrum. But neo-conservativism has a peculiar intellectual linkage to hawkish liberal Democrats who fell out with George McGovern's isolationism as well as Kissingerian realpolitik in the 1970s; and I am not one of them.

Instead, I would describe myself as a conservative realist in the tradition of Hans Morgenthau, Brent Scowcroft and former ABC Boyer lecturer Owen Harries. I certainly have no problem with America throwing its weight around the world in the service of promoting its national interests and preserving the balance of power. But I decry the tendency of US policy to be idealistic. And the problem with US policy during the Bush years was precisely that: by seeking unlimited moralistic goals in place of specific limited national interests, Washington inflamed domestic opinion with appeals to utopian goals and had ignored the coasts of achieving them. All too often, Bush foreign policy was formed by several neo-conservative illusions, which thankfully have been shattered thanks to the Iraq experience.

The first of these illusions is the belief that preventive war was justified to combat rogue states. After the 9/11 attacks, it was confidently predicted that the twin pillars of national security policy during the Cold War - containment and deterrence - no longer worked against the Saddam Husseins of the world. As Bush said in 2002 (replayed with devastating effect in Oliver Stone's movie W): "After September 11, the doctrine of containment just doesn't hold any water as far as I'm concerned."

Today, it is clear that containment still has relevance. There is every reason to believe that any threat posed by Saddam, a cynical calculator whose overriding concern was consolidating power, not exporting martyrdom, could have been contained as it had been since the 1991 Gulf War. True, containment does not work against terrorists, who can run and hide, but rogue states do have a return address. Saddam knew if he smuggled weapons of mass destruction to Al-Qaeda or used banned weapons against US interests, his regime would have met, as Rice put it in another realist) life in 2000, "national obliteration" from the US nuclear arsenal.

Yet for preventive war advocates, containment meant, as The Weekly Standard's neo-conservative editors warned, coddling a "suicidal tyrant". Never mind that containment (sanctions, naval blockade, no-fly zone) kept that suicidal tyrant in his box for more than a decade. And never mind that although a strategy of containment lacked the ideological red meat the American people crave, it recognised the dangers of the unintended consequences a "liberated" Iraq delivered, especially in the immediate aftermath of Saddam's downfall: a power vacuum which culminated in widespread chaos, a vicious insurgency, and a strengthened shia Iran.

As Obama faces the challenge of dealing with a nuclear-bound Tehran or Pyongyang, he should recall the lesson that Bush and the neo-cons forgot: that if Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China could be contained, so can Iran's mullahs and North Korea's communists.

The second neo-con illusion is the belief that democracy is an export commodity. This noble but misguided idea was an article of faith not only among the neo-conservatives in and out of the Bush administration but also among the anti-McGovern liberal wing of the Democratic Party. None of this was surprising - such idealistic instincts are as old as the republic itself. In the post-9/11 context, neo-cons and liberal hawks were adamant that problems abroad stemmed from the authoritarian nature of foreign governments, that the new era heralded an Arab spring, that the time was ripe for the political transformation of the whole region and that history was on the side of good over evil. The examples of post-fascist Japan and West Germany, the argument went, could be replicated in the Middle East.

But the conditions and circumstances in post-war Iraq have been hardly conducive to the kind of dramatic social and political change that worked so well in US client states after World War II. For one thing, Japan and West Germany were genuine, coherent nation states with homogeneous cultures, whereas Iraq is an arbitrarily-created state with deep ethnic and tribal divisions. For another thing, Japan and West Germany had already modernised and had a history, albeit a blighted one, of parliamentary government on which the US-led occupation forces could build. Iraq is still in the process of modernising and, notwithstanding some of the progress that David Brooks identifies here, is open to all the disturbing ideological and sectarian forces that this process unleashes.

Although the US had long championed the idea of promoting democracy across the world, the Bush policy of regime change nonetheless marked a radical departure from established norms. In the immediate aftermath of Saddam's downfall in April 2003, Bush and the neo-cons threatened that they could use military power to topple authoritarian regimes in Syria and Iran and eventually reshape the Middle East along democratic lines. This was to be social engineering on a massive scale. To call this position conservative was a misnomer; it was a radical, grandiose agenda, and true conservatives as George Bush and John Howard should have known should always be conscious that radical change can lead to loss as well as gain and is fraught with the danger of unintended consequences.

The third illusion that guided neo-con policy was the Pax Americana or, as leading neo-conservative figures Bob Kagan and Bill Kristol once coined, "benign hegemony". This belief was engaged by neo-cons as well as liberal hawks following the collapse of the Soviet Empire and it gained more acclaim in the aftermath of 9/11. Even the words imperialism and empire, usually terms of abuse in American public discourse, were wholeheartedly embraced by many influential thinkers on the Washington think-tank circuit.

But the idea of a heavy-handed policy to remake the world in America's image was bound to generate widespread resentment, hostility and concerted political opposition. Such a scenario was evident in early 2003 when the French-led UN Security Council ganged up to thwart the US-led resolution to invade Iraq. And it has been evident in the way anti-Americanism rose dramatically during the rest of the Bush years. It remains to be seen whether Obama's worldwide popularity translates into more favourable global attitudes towards the American "hyper-power", as a French foreign minister called the US several years before Bush and the neo-conservatives arrived in the White House.

But if the US indiscriminately throws its weight around and treats potential partners with contempt and neglect, such posturing will inevitably galvanise a backlash. This is not a criticism so much of the US; it's more a reflection of the tendencies of power politics. Hegemony always seems like the ideal system to the nation practising it; the very effort to impose it will inspire coalitions to resist it.

None of this means that the collapse of the neo-con illusions presages the collapse of American. The US has consistently demonstrated remarkable ability to bounce back from adversity: think of 1812, the civil war, the Depression, Pearl Harbor, Vietnam and Watergate. It is just that the neo-con illusions that clouded American judgment during the Bush years have been shattered. And this is a good thing for America and the world.

Tom Switzer is research associate at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and a former senior Liberal adviser.

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The arm of the independents when it comes to key reforms to the Parliament has been immeasurably strengthened by the powerful Clerk of the Senate who has produced a paper pushing for radical and much needed changes.

As the independents begin their negotiations in earnest with the Government over such reforms the question that hovers is this; how to make sure such changes are entrenched and not subject to the whims of future Parliaments, which are likely to revert once again to the procedurally corrupt two party system of governance.

Independent Senator Nick Xenophon is the first to take practical steps to ensure that any gains which make the Parliament more powerful and the executive more accountable are permanent. It was Xenophon who sought and has now received the advice of the Senate Clerk, Rosemary Laing. A copy of the advice has been obtained by The Drum.

Normally officers of the Parliament are cautious in offering their own opinions on such vital issues. What's notable about the Laing advice is that she has seized the opportunity of these abnormal circumstances to provide Xenophon backing for a series of major reforms to the operation of the Parliament. These reforms will be part of the Lower House independents wish list from each major party as they negotiate this week over the conditions of their support for a minority Labor or Coalition Government.

Laing has now provided them with considerable ammunition.

It's important to note that under the conventions of the Parliament Laing's opinion holds quasi-legal status. Her declaration of support for some of the most ambitious reforms will hold weight in its own right and influence the nature and content of the current negotiations.

Laing's advice to Xenophon throws up a comprehensive list of options that would strengthen the Parliament and allow it to act as an effective check on the Executive comprised of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. If Tony Abbott or Julia Gillard agree to any of the options considered and advocated by Laing they will be agreeing to a significant dimunition of their own power.

So what reforms does Laing cover? It's a comprehensive list starting with the strengthening of the Parliamentary Committee system, including the chairing of such committees by non-Government members.

She lays out a blueprint for making Private Members Bills viable, rather than having them consigned to the Parliamentary dust bin by the major parties as they now are. Laing sets up a framework for making Question Time more effective; to whit - getting Ministers to actually answer questions. What a revolutionary idea.

She also canvasses proposals for a truly independent Speaker, a fixed term Parliament and a Parliamentary Budget Office. On all counts Laing has seized the opportunity offered by Xenophon's request to think big. At a juncture in our history when her opinion could actually count, the Laing document breathes the need for root and branch Parliamentary Reform.

Let's take each of those reforms in turn. On a more effective committee system Laing notes the history. The Senate is widely regarded as having the most powerful oversight committees, such as Estimates, in the Westminster system. But Laing notes it was only pushed through 40 years ago, in 1970, by the then Labor Opposition Senate Leader, Lionel Murphy relying on tight numbers in the Senate, and "tactical voting by an independent and a Liberal Senator."

The import of Laing's remarks are clear; it's only when voters rob the government of the day an absolute majority that real Parliamentary reform can be pushed through. She does not need to say that this is the point we are now at as a result of the August 21 election. Laing points to the key features of the Senate committee system as an obvious model for the House of Representatives, the most important of which is that the references to the committees are decided by the Parliament - not by the Executive.

Laing notes: "Another important feature is the availability of Senate powers to back up committees which encounter any resistance to the provision of information or the appearance of witnesses. This is possible only when a government does not have a majority in the chamber."

In other words: "Memo Bob Katter, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott; if you want real Parliamentary reform strike now while the iron's hot."

The model Laing prefers leaps out from between the lines of her advice: "It is very common in other jurisdictions for public accounts committees to be chaired by non-government committees as a demonstration of the independence of such committees from the government of the day and a reinforcement of their ability to scrutiny[s]e the affairs of the government."

"Such a move may be seen as a step towards greater independence from the executive government and enhance parliamentary status as a result."

On improved provision for the consideration of Private Members Bills, Laing produces damning statistics. Since Federation in Australia, Laing says, more than 11,000 government Bills have been passed into law. Only 19 Private Members Bills have been passed in the same period. Here Private Members Bills account for only 0.17 per cent of Bills passed. In the UK, since 1983 the comparable figure is 11.5 per cent.

Describing this as "an enormous structural bias" Laing points again to the UK system which sets Fridays of sitting periods aside exclusively for consideration of Private Members Bills.

On the corruption of Question Time Laing says: "It has long ceased to be a vehicle for the provision of information by ministers and has been described as an opportunity for ministers to make statements in response to friendly questions from members on their own side. (Dorothy Dixcers)."

Laing points to the Senate system of time limited questions and supplementary questions as a model. The same model ensures independent Senators get at least one question a week.

On the related issue of a truly Independent Speaker Laing outlines the British system where the Speaker no longer attends government party room meetings and who goes unchallenged by either major party at elections. "Whatever the solution to this problem, it would appear to be matter to be resolved by the establishment of conventions rather than enforcement by statute or parliamentary rule."

Laing is unabashed in her advocacy of the need for a Parliamentary Budget Office, a Coalition election promise explicitly rejected by Julia Gillard. Laing is unequivocal: "The current debate (and in some quarters disquiet) over the role of Treasury in costing the election promises and policies of both government and opposition highlights the need for a truly independent source of this kind of analysis."

Laing then lists 14 other reform ideas, which she says "are worthy of consideration", including a government undertaking that information ordered by the House will be provided, a general instruction to departments and agencies to co-operate fully with parliamentary inquiries, and a guaranteed number of sitting days and a code of conduct for ministers.

Laing is direct: "None of these," she says "require any more than co-operation by the executive and acknowledgment of the proper role of the Parliament."

Then Laing proposes an idea of her own, what she calls an "accountability scorecard". She writes: "The aim of such a mechanism would be to advise the Prime Minister and the Parliament on progress in implementing significant accountability reforms (including freedom of information, electoral matters, oversight of bodies exercising considerable power) and to advise on further developments)."

Laing concludes on this radical idea while noting the limits to enshrining such reforms. "Significant parliamentary reforms can be achieved," Laing says, "but only constitutional reform can be entrenched". By that she means by way of referendum.

She continues: "The main barriers to reform will always be a lack of will or a lack of consensus on the direction of reform. The desire to entrench certain reforms may also be somewhat displaced...Each parliament must have the freedom to determine for itself the procedures that best suit its circumstances."

But then Laing gets to the nub: "The chances of continuing respect for fundamental parliamentary principles are greater where parliamentary discipline is loose and applies only to core functions of government, not to every single vote."

This amounts to a virtual endorsement of the efforts of the independents to break the monopoly of the major parties when it comes to Parliamentary reform. It also amounts to a declaration that only by continuing to vote in independents who hold the balance of power in the House of Representatives can voters ensure that parliamentary reforms won in this week's negotiations will remain in place.

The mere commissioning of the Laing paper by Nick Xenophon is evidence of the power of the independents. Can you imagine any Labor or Liberal MP asking for such advice? The Augean Stables of Parliament need cleaning out. Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard should get out of the way. Xenophon, Windsor, Katter and Oakeshott are all shovel ready.

Glenn Milne has been covering Canberra politics for more than two decades.

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Andrew Bolt laughed as he talked about independent Bob Katter on Insiders, "I think it will come down to opening the purse strings and show us what you've got. But it's so hard to read someone like Bob Katter. He's got a ragbag of things like stopping Filipino bananas and stuff like that! It's anti-free market! How do you deal with that?"

It didn't take long for the sneering to begin. Bob Katter is a hick, a figure of fun in a big hat, obviously he would be in it for all he can get. It just shows how ill informed and unsophisticated city neo-liberal ideologues like Andrew Bolt really are. It's unwise to denigrate Bob Katter, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott because they just might save Australia from itself. Australia's national interest no longer relies on globalisation and fake free trade but judicious protection of Australia's clean and green environment, the independents and the Greens know it but the two major parties would rather see the continued import of cheap, subsidised food from China, Europe and the US and the consequent death of Australian agriculture.

In the last 15 years both Labor and Liberal governments have gone out of their way to make Australian agriculture uncompetitive. When the Howard government signed the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA) it effectively sacrificed several industries. Our trade negotiators said, at the time, that if tariff-free sugar exports to the US weren't included in the deal then Australia should walk away. It wasn't and yet prime minister Howard signed it anyway, I presume to ingratiate himself with George W Bush.

The FTA facilitated the import of beef and pig meat from the USA, Canada and Europe which all subsidise their farmers to produce or, indeed, to leave farm fields fallow and not grow anything at all. The last time I checked the US farm bill provided about $US370 billion in subsidy to American farmers. No wonder they can land their bacon and ham at Woolworths and Coles cheaply. The importation of pig meat will eventually see the collateral arrival of a pig wasting disease that will destroy our industry. On the grounds of that biosecurity risk, pig farmers took the government to court, first won and then, after the Howard government appealed, lost and the doors were thrown open. Australia's unsubsidised farmers have been forced out of the industry in droves, 70 per cent have gone since the middle of the decade. Now the US, Canada and Denmark have taken 70 per cent of the local market. The largest proportion comes from the USA where hog farmers can legally use an antibiotic growth prominent called Carbadox which is banned in Australia. Australian health authorities don't test imported ham or bacon for Carbadox residue.

In 2004, Australia allowed the importation of Brazilian beef from an area of the country supposedly free of foot and mouth disease through vaccination. Australia's front-line defence, the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) didn't visit Brazil to check the veracity of Brazilian disease free claims. They couldn't even get off their shiny bureaucratic bottoms to ensure that vaccination certificates weren't forged, or that cattle weren't smuggled in from foot and mouth endemic Paraguay or that Brazilian government animal health regulations were being met. Some front-line defence!

When foot and mouth broke out in Brazil again, the Wagga based US multinational company which had imported a shipment dumped the beef at the local council tip without alerting authorities. New South Wales Liberal Senator, Bill Heffernan, got a tip off and made the scandal public! Can you imagine how betrayed cattle and sheep producers felt when they heard how close Australia came to agricultural Armageddon? We might have had Britain's smouldering carcass mountains as the country tried to contain foot and mouth, luckily, we only had to deal with horse flu.

A decade ago, the mantra was of free trade, privatisation and self regulation. These ideas collided disastrously, first in 2001, when the Eastern Creek quarantine centre was privatised. Ironically, right at the Light Horse Interchange, just where the M4 and M7 meet in western Sydney, 22.1 hectares were sold for a lousy $6 million. AQIS has an option to rent for another five years, when it will probably have to find a new home, even further away from the airport, adding to the risk that infected animals could spread disease before they even make quarantine. (The land is now valued at well over $50 million). Given the culture of self regulation and under pressure from wealthy thoroughbred interests, AQIS had allowed standards to slip so that valuable overseas shuttle stallions could be quickly got to promising mares and millions in service fees made and foals bred. Did the veterinarians, grooms and farriers really need to shower "in" and "out" and prevent any disease from spreading? Was it wise to give a key to certain people so they could come and go on weekends as they wished? Obviously not because in 2007 equine influenza bolted and the horse industry was almost brought to its knees. After the outbreak was eventually contained and he retired as minister for agriculture, Peter McGauran became CEO of Thoroughbred Breeders Australia. Is it any wonder Australian farmers feel disenfranchised, ignored and taken for granted by the major political parties? Both the Liberal National Coalition and Labor accept the fake free trade consensus while Australian agriculture is going, going, gone!

Currently Australia is appealing a World Trade Organisation (WTO) decision to mandate the import of apples from New Zealand. So what? NZ has a disease, 'fire blight' which will decimate our apple industry when it inevitably arrives on fruit from across the ditch. Maybe you couldn't care less about Australian growers going broke, if you can get cheaper apples at the supermarket. But you should worry about which antibiotics New Zealand farmers use to control the disease at home: A generous spraying of oxytetracycline, or if the 'fire blight' is resistant, streptomycin. New South Wales Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan has been told they even spray gentamycin, a last resort drug in the battle against multi-resistant superbugs in hospitals around the country. Can't we just eat our own apples without antibiotic residue? Why do we want to add to the dangerous background load of antibiotics already in the food chain? Why should we harm our natural and national advantage by allowing in exotic diseases? What's the long-term gain for Australia?

Even though America is bullying Australia to accept its beef, which given lax US health provisions could well contain the prion which causes BSE or mad cow in humans, can't we just be allowed to eat our grass-fed steaks? Why must we be forced to chow down on beef that is produced in industrial feedlots, on expensive grain and chemical growth stimulants with a protein ration made from reconstituted chicken-sh*t? That's what they often use; I promise I'm not making this up. It's no surprise that hundreds of Americans die each year because of super resistant E. coli contamination of beef alone.

Katter, Windsor and Oakeshott know from their constituents that 'free trade' is a great idea in theory but deadly in practice. Now they have put it on the agenda and they might be able to rescue Australian agriculture before it's too late. Otherwise in a couple of decades Australians will be asking how could authorities have let in those lethal superbugs? What were they thinking when they opened the door to those microscopic cane toads?

Assistant Treasurer Chris Bowen suggests that maintenance of the "single desk" for marketing wheat internationally means farmers have no choice of wheat buyer. Sorry Minister, you are about 20 years out of date. The domestic wheat market was deregulated in 1989 and wheat growers can sell their crop to whoever offers the best price.

It's only on the international market where growers cooperated to provide one seller, a "single desk" into the corrupt and subsidised international wheat trade. As the Member for Kennedy, Bob Katter has said, it's simple economics. When you have one seller and a multiplicity of buyers you will get a better price than thousands of wheat growers competing to sell their crop to a few international grain traders. Collusion between those traders, in the 1930s, drove wheat prices down to unsustainable levels causing the then Labor government to back the establishment of the Australian Wheat Board in the first place.

Michael Carey owns a farm and works as series producer of the Indigenous program Message Stick.

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The Force from the North, Bob Katter, doesn't do anything by halves.

His independent compatriot Rob Oakeshott has spent the last week pushing out ideas about parliamentary reform, a new politics of consensus, and Team of Rivals-style cabinet government.

Katter's contribution has been a little more out of the box. On Thursday he proposed a wholesale redrawing of Australia's state boundaries.

The plan is as follows:

Queensland gets neatly split in two, from about Rockhampton. South Queensland gets everything from Byron Bay to Bundaberg. North Queensland gets the rest, including, of course, Katter's own electorate of Kennedy.

The Northern Territory loses a fair chunk of its south to an engorged South Australia, but its western border gets pushed out all the way to the ocean, taking the Kimberley and Broome from Western Australia. The new state - it'd be a state - would be renamed North-Western Australia, leaving Australia with an embarrassingly unimaginative bunch of state names.

Katter reckons new states would allow the country to better exploit the resources of the north, to become a food bowl, and accommodate 100,000 extra people.

Perhaps I'm taking Katter's plan more seriously than anybody should. But you know what? It's not a bad idea.

In 2010, it's extremely refreshing to see a politician stand up for the very existence of states. From all sides of politics we're far more likely to hear states are anachronistic relics of the 19th century - frustrating barriers to good policy. Not everybody goes so as far as arguing states should be eliminated entirely, but most are eager for the federal government to intrude further and further into state areas of responsibility.

One of Katter's arguments for his plan is more important than it first seems. "I don't know of anywhere else in the world where people are governed by a government thousands of kilometres away," he told the Northern Territory News.

Indeed, one of the key ideas behind a federal system is that the nearer a government is to the people it governs, the more likely it will govern in their interests. The needs and desires of citizens in Victoria and the Northern Territory sharply diverge. Katter is arguing the needs of those in Coolangatta and those in Mount Isa, nearly 2,000 kilometres away, can be just as different. There is little reason to doubt it.

So when Katter talks about living in a "North Queensland paradigm" instead of an "Australia paradigm", it actually makes a bit of sense. Many in his electorate no doubt agree; Katter's two candidate preferred result was a massive 69 per cent.

Katter's antipathy towards free trade and the economic reform of the last few decades has become very well-known over the last week.

Not only can states tailor their policies to the needs of their electorate, they act as policy incubators. Policies can be tested in an individual state before being adopted elsewhere. If policies don't work, well, at least the damage is limited.

So more states, more experimentation.

If Katter wants North Queensland to get back into the state intervention game, then that's North Queensland's prerogative.

Across the border, the expanded and empowered Northern Territory could be a low tax, low regulation zone. We'll see which state does best.

Reconfiguring the federation would be complicated, sure.

But we have a habit of believing our existing political arrangements are fixed and therefore eternal. The Australian federation is only just over a century old. And while our constitution has barely changed, the Commonwealth is doing things that would have astonished its authors.

Western Australian secessionism keeps raising its head, and will likely get louder as the rest of the country tries to expropriate the gains from mining in that state.

The boundaries of Australia are not written in stone. Nor should they be. Giving Bob Katter a pen to redraw the borders is radical, but not revolutionary.

Rob Oakeshott's proposal for "consensus" government has been given serious attention, even though the corollary to his idea - having no opposition - is patently absurd. Well, maybe it's not a bad idea if you're engaged in total war against the Hun and the Empire of Japan, but it hardly seems appropriate in 2010.

At the same time Oakeshott is calling for consensus, he's calling for the adoption of ideas from the Henry Tax Review and the Garnaut Climate Change Review. In other words, the most divisive reform proposals in the last few years.

Bob Katter's plan for new states has the opposite problem. His plan seems absurd upon first glance - the NT News titled their article about his plan as "'Cut snake' Katter eyes Top End slice".

But it makes a lot more sense than some of the other proposals being canvassed as we wait for a government to form.


Chris Berg is a research fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs and editor of the IPA Review. Follow him at twitter.com/chrisberg.

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The real story that emerges from Crime Incorporated, last night's joint Four Corners/Fairfax expose of organised crime and the drug trade in Australia is that this country should end its 'War on Drugs'.

If we wanted to reduce the scope for internationally linked organised crime activity, corruption on the waterfront and in the community generally then remove the reason it happens - prohibition. If you ban substances like cocaine, ice and party drugs you create a very lucrative black market. And that is why there is plenty of material for journalists to work with in creating stories like the one on Four Corners and in the Fairfax newspapers this week.

If you want evidence that the policy of treating drug users and even low-level traffickers as criminals is farcical then take heed of the words of a former senior Victorian police officer Jim O'Brien, who told Four Corners; "You'd have to be kidding yourself if you thought you were getting any more than probably 10 or 15 per cent off the street." He is right.

Australia needs to examine what is happening around the world, particularly in regions like Latin America where the War on Drugs has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and impoverished millions for generations. No less than five ex and current leaders from that region are now calling for a rethink of drugs policy.

Even Felipe Calderon, the current president of Mexico and the architect of the most bloody attack on drug lords in that country's history - a battle that has so far cost 28,000 lives since December 2006 - has this month begun to recognise that his policy will never work. Taking his cue from his predecessor Vincente Fox, Mexico's president from 2000-2006 who has recently called for an end to the failed prohibition policies, Calderon has tentatively suggested that legislation and regulation of the drug trade could be an option to ending the bloodshed in his country.

Fox is in good company in his call for a new approach to the issue of drugs. In July this year former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Columbia's Cesar Gaviria reiterated a previous call they had made for governments to tackle drug demand on the basis of empirically based and public health-oriented policies.

And does such an approach work? Yes it does. Just ask the Portuguese who took the step of decriminalising possession and use of drugs a decade ago. The result - according to an independent study undertaken by Glenn Greenwald of the Cato Institute in Washington - drug usage has declined in every age group and most importantly among 15 to 19-year-olds, where the usage rate has dropped from 12 per cent to 9 per cent. Portugal's health-based approach has not turned it into Europe's drug mecca with most of the trafficking prosecutions involving locals, not international syndicates. The Czech Republic has now followed Portugal's lead and other European countries are looking carefully at the Portuguese way.

In Australia we spend around $5 billion a year in trying to stamp out the sort of activity that Four Corners revealed last night. Yet it is battle we will always lose because the policy is based on fear and prejudice and not on evidence. Everyday in court rooms around Australia we see the evidence of this scandalous waste of taxpayers' money. It is fair to say that well over 70 per cent of criminal prosecutions have drugs in the mix. Whether it be directly such as in the case of the prosecution of small time dealers or users who are feeding a habit, or indirectly via cases where individuals have committed burglaries, thefts and robberies to obtain badly needed funds so they can be consumers of an illegal substance, drugs are involved. And it is not getting any better.

The drug trade in Australia from the perspective of law enforcement is like a plastic bag filled with air. You squeeze one end and the other pops up and on it goes ad infinitum. That's the lesson from this Four Corners and Fairfax investigation. But will our politicians take heed? That would require common sense and courage, both of which are in short supply in this country.

Greg Barns is a barrister and former political adviser.

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I play football professionally for the Collingwood Football Club. But football does not define me. Once you label something you limit it.

I prefer to define myself not by occupation, ethnic background or age, but by the fact that I am simply a member of humanity.

And that's why I'm interested in global health and the UN-sponsored conference of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre

I have had various experiences which have profoundly shaped my world view and taught me the relevance of three things—suffering, empowerment, and unity.

The suffering we see in developing nations—through poverty, disease, and famine—can be overcome. Understanding such suffering, we should be empowered with the knowledge that we are connected with those who suffer. We are two sides of the same coin. The key to effectively changing things is in acting together, in unity.

I don't know what is more dysfunctional, the fact that such suffering exists or that, here in Australia and the rest of the developed world, we are not doing enough about it.

I recently endured and overcame an experience which caused me and my family great suffering. In March last year I received an unforgettable phone call from my mother. I could sense her devastation on the other end of the line as she managed to murmur the words that would turn my world upside down, "The police have found Dad's body."

My father had been missing for six days. He had chosen to end his life. I had to make a four-hour flight back to Perth immediately, and can confidently say that this was the longest flight I have ever taken. My emotions took over my body and, as I sat trembling in my seat, I became a shadow of myself.

But at some point during that flight I came to the realisation that everyone faces tragedy at some stage in their lives and will suffer as a result. Such suffering is natural.

But there is another kind of suffering which is not natural, but which we have collectively accepted. While visiting local NGOs in Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo six months prior to my father's death, I experienced that suffering, suffering as a state of life.

Australia is a country founded on opportunity, democracy and equality. But in my travels I saw places where the foundations lie on disease, dysfunction and destruction.

If we are ever going to move closer to the Millennium Development Goals to end poverty and disease, we must be empowered by the awareness that despite our differences we are all the same and interconnected.

Humanity's heroes have all possessed this awareness, and it empowered them to inspire others in a positive and effective manner. Heroes like Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama have shown us that 'real' change starts with the person in the mirror.

As surprising as it may sound to some I felt more pain in Africa than the pain I experienced from the death of my own father. For in Africa I was thrown into an environment where I experienced suffering that was inescapable in daily life.

My visit to the town of Chimoio located in Manica Province in Mozambique showed me the significance of a united front. At a centre for orphans we were greeted by 20 or so children who were malnourished, dirtied by mud and in desperate need of the love and affection all children should be entitled to as a birthright. After playing and interacting with them, it was time to leave. As we hopped back into the car, the children began to wave.

I immediately felt helpless. One person alone does not have the ability to alleviate their suffering. We must stand united. The same principle applies to the many NGO's working around the world.

This large number of NGOs with differing intentions and agendas spreads the available energy and does not lead to maximising the potential for the most effective and efficient change. A focused intention must be established.

Then each separate entity can play out its function, and they can act together like the organs of a body. Each organ fulfils its role in its own unique way, but operates to serve the one common intention— to keep the body alive and healthy.

Unity is the only way forward.

Live for hope.

Heritier "Harry" O'Brien plays Australian Rules Football professionally as a defender for the Collingwood Football Club.

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Pre-summer debt concerns of Greece, Spain and Portugal have receded. Market volatility and angst have eased. As northern hemisphere markets return after the summer break and normal activity resumes, caution is the watchword.

Greece passed its initial inspections from the supervising "Troika" (made up of the European Central Bank (ECB), European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund (IMF)). In truth, there was no choice but to pass the student as money must be made available to enable Greece to continue to function. Despite progress, the economy is slipping into a deep recession, impeding the recovery plan. Similar scenarios, albeit less urgent, are playing out in Spain, Portugal and Ireland. Slowing growth in North America and China also complicate the problems.

Negative or low growth, savage budget cuts and economic restructuring will need to continue for years. The plan requires these countries to run a four-minute mile over and over again for years on a lower than subsistence calorie intake. It remains to be seen whether this is feasible. The willingness of government to impose and citizens to bear the decline in living standards necessary to avoid a debt restructuring remains uncertain.

The bank stress tests proved that the EU and ECB believe in Father Christmas, the Easter Bunny and other munificent deities. The process did not seriously test likely losses in case of sovereign debt restructuring and realistic falls in commercial real estate prices. As they were confined to trading books, the tests did not apply to the bank's banking books where an estimated 90 per cent of the sovereign bonds are held, making the test of limited value. The definition of capital was generous. It was effectively a car "crash test" where the testing authority deems the car cannot crash.

The exposure of Germany and France to troubled European countries remains around $1 trillion. According to the Bank for International Settlements, as at the end of 2009, French banks and German banks had lent $493 billion and $465 billion respectively to Spain, Greece, Portugal and Ireland. The ECB remains a key source of funding for vulnerable European banks, particularly in peripheral countries.

In short, the problems remain.

It is probable that in the coming months pre-summer concerns will resurface. Economic data, like growth, unemployment, budget position, and debt issuance will be key indicators on progress. Risk margins on Greek debt (relative to German government bonds) is almost back at the record levels prior to the announcement of the rescue plan. Markets continue to believe that Greece's debt will need to be restructured with significant losses to investors.

Increasingly attention may focus on the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), which is a key component of Europe's financial contingency plan. Details of the structure reveal doubts about its efficacy.

The structure echoes the ill-fated Collateralised Debt Obligations (CDOs) and Structured Investment Vehicles (SIV) (as pointed out by Gillian Tett in the Financial Times). The recently appointed head of the EFSF also had a brief stint at Moore Capital, a macro-hedge fund, entirely consistent with the fact that the EFSF is placing a historical macro-economic bet.

In order to raise money to lend to finance member countries as needed, the EFSF is seeking the highest possible credit rating - AAA. The EFSF's structure raises significant doubts about its credit worthiness and funding arrangements. In turn, this creates uncertainty about its support for financially challenged Euro-zone members with significant implications for markets.

The €440 billion ($520 billion) rescue package establishes a special purpose vehicle (SPV), backed by individual guarantees provided by all 19-member countries. Significantly, the guarantees are not joint and several, reflecting the political necessity, especially for Germany, of avoiding joint liability. The risk that an individual guarantor fails to supply its share of funds is covered by a surplus "cushion", requiring countries to guarantee an extra 20 per cent beyond their ECB shares. An unspecified cash reserve will provide additional support.

Given the well-publicised financial problems of some Euro-zone members, the effectiveness of the 20 per cent cushion is crucial. The arrangement is similar to the over-collateralisation used in CDO's to protect investors in higher quality AAA rated senior securities. Investors in subordinated securities, ranking below the senior investors, absorb the first losses up to a specified point (the attachment point). Losses are considered statistically unlikely to reach this attachment point, allowing the senior securities to be rated AAA. The same logic is to be utilised in rating EFSF bonds.

If 16.7 per cent of guarantors (20 per cent divided by 120 per cent) are unable to fund the EFSF, lenders to the structure will be exposed to losses. Coincidentally, Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland happen to represent around this proportion of the guaranteed amount. If a larger Euro-zone member also encountered financial problems, then the viability of the EFSF would be in serious jeopardy. There are significant difficulties in determining the adequacy of the 20 per cent cushion.

Investors will assume - "wrong way correlation risk". This is the potential risk that if one peripheral Euro-zone members has a problem then others will have similar problems. This means if one country required financing, guarantors of the EFSF will faces demands at the exact time that they themselves will be financially vulnerable.

The structure also faces a high risk of rating migration (a fall in security ratings). If the cushion is reduced by problems of an Euro-zone member, then the EFSF securities may be downgraded. Any such ratings downgrade would result in mark-to-market losses to investors. Recent downgrades to the credit rating of Portugal and Ireland highlight this risk.

Unfortunately, the Global Financial Crisis illustrated that modelling techniques for rating such structures are imperfect. Rapid changes in market condition, increases in default risks or changes in default correlation can result in losses to investor in AAA rated structured securities, ostensibly protected from this eventuality. Given the precarious position of some guarantors and their negative rating outlook, at a minimum, the risk of ratings volatility is significant.

This means that investors may be cautious about investing in EFSF bonds and, at a minimum, may seek a significant yield premium. The ability of the EFSF to raise funds at the assumed low cost is not assured. The acronym - EFSF - could stand for "Extremely Fanciful Silly Fantasies".

Major economies have over the last decades transferred debt from companies to consumers and finally onto public balance sheets. The reality is that a problem of too much debt is being solved with even more debt. Deeply troubled members of the Euro-zone cannot bail out each other as the significant levels of existing debt limit the ability to borrow additional amounts and finance any bailout. As Albert Einstein noted: "You cannot fix a problem with the kind of thinking that created it."

A huge amount of securities and risk now is held by central banks and governments, which are not designed for such long-term ownership of these assets. There are now no more balance sheets that can be leveraged to support the current levels of debt. The effect of the EFSF is that stronger countries' balance sheets are being contaminated by the bailout. Like sharing dirty needles, the risk of infection for all has drastically increased.

The EFSF is primarily a debt shuffling exercise which may be self defeating and unworkable. George Bernard Shaw observed that "Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history". The resort to discredited financial engineering highlights the inability to learn from history and the paucity of ideas and willingness to deal with the real issues.

Satyajit Das is the author of the just released Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives - Revised Edition.

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Let's get this election over with. It's already gone on for about a week too long, and instead of being obliged to exhaustively rebut the myth that Labor's losing the two-party preferred vote, Antony Green needs a holiday. The only counting the ABC's election analyst should be doing is of the olives in his poolside martini.

I find it hard to believe the independents haven't made their minds up already. Bob Katter, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott know Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott intimately from Parliament. And unless they slept through the Rudd years - for which they could, admittedly, be forgiven - they must have a firm view about whether they'd rather see Gillard or Abbott as PM.

What we have instead of a decision is a protracted charade of seeming undecided. No doubt they're enjoying their moment in the national spotlight - and that's fine. I won't pretend I haven't been enjoying Bob Katter's antics, and will attend his gigs once he makes his inevitable transition to the RSL comedy circuit. But now it's time for them to make a call. If Matt Preston and his uncravatted colleagues can make far more important decisions in an hour on MasterChef, then surely the three rural indies didn't need more than a week.

Andrew Wilkie's conduct, by contrast, has been exemplary. Once he looked like winning, he organised a quick meeting with each leader, released an absurd list of demands, quickly acknowledged they were only really a "wish list", and promised to announce his decision tomorrow. Which will highly likely be Gillard. As you'd expect of a former Green who narrowly snatched a win from the ALP.

Adam Bandt didn't even need to take that long. Of course he's supporting Labor, who will inevitably fall slightly less short of the Greens' lofty, leftie, uncosted ideals than the Coalition.

Tony Crook, the WA National, was also fairly circumspect. He'd consider supporting Labor if they dumped the mining tax, he announced, surprising those of us who hadn't realised the WA Nationals were mavericks who don't play nice with the Liberals or even their federal equivalents. Julia Gillard refused, and so he acknowledged there was a snowball's chance in Heffernan's house of him supporting Labor. Easy.

But the good men of Kennedy, Lyne and New England weren't going to make things so easy. Oh, no. They insisted on meeting the heads of departments, perusing the budget estimates, and otherwise behaving like ATO auditors on Ritalin.

Rob Oakeshott even suggested everyone get together and sing Advance Australia Kumbaya, which was all very lovely, but showed great ignorance of the value of having an Opposition to scrutinise a Government. It's left me wondering about his credibility as a political leader - although I'd definitely back him to head up a scout troop. Best Bob-A-Job day ever, I'd wager.

The indies should get on with it so we can quickly conclude whether this situation can work at all. I suspect it won't, because to get anything done, both parties would have to craft bills which appeal to both the Greens and several of the independents. And other than some sort of massive subsidy for organic farming in north Queensland. I'm not sure the bill exists that would please both Bob Katter and Bob Brown.

Let's look at this in more detail. The Coalition's on 72 seats not including Crook, so Tony Abbott would need him and three of the four indies to pass any legislation. But three of them, Oakeshott, Windsor and Wilkie think there should be a price on carbon, for example, and might well back the mining tax. It would be a struggle for Abbott to negotiate any bill even before facing the Senate.

And then, what will happen after July? The Greens saw what happened to the Democrats when they passed the GST, and surely they won't destroy their brand by compromising their principles. They refused to pass the ETS last time, let's not forget, because it didn't go far enough. So besides paid parental leave, which of Abbott's policies are they likely to approve, exactly?

Labor's chances of being an effective government have to be rated slightly higher because they're more natural allies with the Greens in the Senate. In the Lower House they'd have 74 with Bandt and Wilkie - but then they'd still need at least Oakeshott and Windsor to pass any bill. Again, this will make negotiating almost any legislation tortuous.

Whoever is the next prime minister is likely to be almost completely ineffective, and as a result will probably lose the next election in a landslide. After three years of chaos - which both parties will be obliged to guarantee if they win, since the independents are demanding a full-term commitment - the electorate will be fed up with everyone associated with the Government.

At the National Press Club, the Prime Minister has just said that Australians voted for this result, so it was the politicians' job to make it work. She's wrong. No-one in Australia endorsed this outcome. Rather, an almost equal number of us wanted diametrically opposite outcomes, and so what we have is a bad compromise, that will please nobody who isn't lucky enough to be represented by an independent. Another election seems like the best chance of a functional government, but the price of becoming prime minister is promising not to call one.

So, get used to Bob Katter and his enormous hat on the nightly news, Australia. Right now, the independents have been given far more say than any one parliamentarian representing a mere 1/150th of Australia's voters deserves, and the entire nation is waiting on tenterhooks for them to announce their whims. And they intend to keep it that way.

Dominic Knight was one of the original founders and original destroyers of The Chaser newspaper, and has contributed extensively to all the team's projects except the unfunny ones. His new novel, Comrades, is out now.

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As this week's hung parliament negotiations move into a crucial phase a central paradox has emerged which must drive the three key independents in the direction of a minority government agreement with the Coalition.

To date the ongoing friction between the National Party members of the Coalition and the independents - all former Nationals - has emerged as a net negative to Tony Abbott's chances of becoming Prime Minister.

Rob Oakeshott in particular has taken his claims of bullying by un-named National MPs to the airwaves, demanding Abbott call off the dogs or be seen as wanting to destabilise the negotiations to the point where voters are forced back to a new poll.

Never mind that there's one glaring hole in Oakeshott's argument; if the independents are truly that aggrieved they can always abandon the talks with the Coalition and walk straight into the arms of Julia Gillard.

Seen that way Oakeshott's appeals to Abbott to rein in the rogues may just be a sign of what he, Bob Katter and Tony Windsor really want; a deal with the Coalition.

Which brings us to the paradox.

Given what motivated each of the independents to become just that was disillusionment with the Nationals, what would give Oakeshott, Windsor and Katter most power and influence over their former party?

The answer is not immediately obvious. But it's this; join the Nationals in supporting the Coalition as a minority Government.

If the three amigos backed Abbott, the Nationals would spend the next three years muzzled within the Coalition. Despite their almost visceral need to attack the independents for their betrayal of the Nationals' cause, the likes of Barnaby Joyce and Ron Boswell would be silenced by the knowledge that any criticism could force the independents back to the cross benches, forcing the defeat of the Abbott Government on the floor of the Parliament.

Joyce may hate Oakeshott, Katter, and particularly Windsor. But no hatred could justify the loss of government.

From the three independents point of view they could spend the first term of the Abbott Government lauding it over the Nats. Their electorates would receive favoured treatment. Their policy priorities would be fast tracked and their access to the Prime Minister would be unmatched.

On the wrong end of a political dose of Schadenfreude, all the Nationals could do would be to grind their collective teeth.

Consider the alternative - the independents choose to support Julia Gillard over Tony Abbott. If that were to happen the Nationals would be unleashed; let loose to campaign ferociously against the independents in their own seats.

The Nats would depict them as Labor fellow travellers, or as one suggested to The Drum, "Labor-Green" fellow travellers given the new Green MP, Adam Bandt, has formally announced he'll be backing Gillard.

You can imagine how that epithet would go down in Oakeshott, Windsor and Katter's rural back paddocks given all recent polls have shown their electorates are overwhelmingly in favour of a Coalition minority government.

Every unpopular Labor decision - and for that read every decision designed to keep Bandt inside the Labor tent - would be sheeted home by the Nationals to each of the independents in their own backyard. In the face of such a campaign it would be unlikely that any of the three would survive a challenge from the Nationals at the next election.

As one Labor Minister told The Drum: "I'm expecting them (Windsor, Katter and Oakeshott) to go with the Coalition for one very simple reason. How could they go back to their electorates every weekend and be confronted with constituents calling them "pinko bastards"?"

"It wouldn't be much of a life."

Absolutely right. And the minister concerned is not alone.

There's a growing sense in the government that after a week where the independents appeared wary of Abbott and the Coalition, the week coming will be the one where they return to their real political "home". And this is the week that counts.

In that context let's address Oakeshott's complaints that he's been the subject of "Rambo style" phone calls from Coalition MPs who've been freelancing in the cause of getting the independents to shore up Abbott's claims to the Prime Ministership.

Oakeshott nominated a call from an un-named MP - who by implication everybody thought was a National - who left a message with his wife that "the Devil" had called. All very menacing. Or not if you know the circumstances.

The MP involved was not a Nat, for a start. He was Liberal, Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan to be precise about it.

For starters everyone knows Heffernan has a quirky sense of humour. He's notorious for sticking his foot in it when people like Oakeshott don't appreciate the joke. There was no malice in Heffernan's call. The Drum spoke to him early this morning while the Senator was in a sheep paddock on his property outside Junee in NSW's Central West.

Heffernan said he'd rung Oakeshott to discuss broadband. When he got "the missus" (Oakeshott's wife) and she asked who was calling Heffernan said to tell him it was "the devil". As in the "devil you know versus the one you don't", according to Heffernan.

"Everyone in Australia's been calling me," Heffernan tells The Drum, "As soon as they heard everyone knew it was me." Apart, apparently from Oakeshott.

It's a storm in a teacup and Oakeshott would do himself a favour by forgetting about it. The risk here is that Oakeshott and his confreres will end up looking too precious in the eyes of the Australian public - and in the end public confidence in whatever the independents decide to do will be crucial. If voters end up thinking the independents are bunch of jumped jerks, whatever minority government is formed will sink under the weight of bad opinion polls.

That's why Tony Windsor was wise on Sunday's Meet the Press program to laugh off the near hysterical headlines in The Sunday Telegraph about supposed threats from his Liberal next door seat holder Alby Schultz.

As Windsor explained he's good "mates" with Schultz. Here's what Windsor said: "I haven't named Alby but obviously somebody else has. Alby, as we all know - and he is a mate of mine and his wife Gloria is a good friend of ours too, he gets a bit excited about life. I think we all recognise that."

Hardly the stuff that's going to de-rail negotiations about the future of governance of the country.

Windsor went on: "A lot of people might not like the situation we are in. I didn't put myself in this position [but] seeing the Australian people have, I think we've got to try and make reasonable decisions based on information before us and hopefully come to some conclusion."

And as for the suggestion, also floated in the Sunday papers that the Nationals Leader Warren Truss was responsible for "backgrounding" against Oakeshott as part of some sort of smear campaign, listen to one of Truss's colleagues: "That's impossible", they say. And the reason? "Warren wouldn't know how to background."

While that might be a case of damning Truss with faint praise, it's also true.

Let's leave Windsor with the last word: "I think both leaders, in our discussions with them, and I know that the papers and different people in the press are creating their own diversions, but both leaders have been very good so far and I think they recognise that this is a situation that we need to stay calm about and try and reconcile."

Good advice to the media and the participants; we should, all of us, get back to the fundamentals.

Glenn Milne has been covering Canberra politics for more than two decades.

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For weeks, pundits have argued that the federal election campaign offered an uninspiring choice to an electorate crying out for "leadership". Whatever one thinks of this view, there is at least one issue where both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott have lacked leadership: Afghanistan.

The Prime Minister insists that Australia's role in the war is "vital work" and estimates that our mission should be completed within two to four years. The Opposition Leader maintains it is a "very important struggle that can't be abandoned".

Yet neither leader has explained satisfactorily the rationale behind Australia's 1,500-strong troop and personnel presence in Afghanistan. What's the compelling reason for the war? Who are the obvious bad guys to defeat, and good guys to support? Why have western casualties dramatically risen in recent months?

The British statesman Lord Salisbury once warned: "The commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcass of dead policies." Today, after nearly nine years of fighting and no end in sight, we are witnessing a striking and dangerous example of this error in Afghanistan. Indeed, the war to destroy the Taliban is "unwinnable", as US Republican chairman Michael Steele recognises, and Australia should set a firm timetable for an early withdrawal from this world-class fiasco. Here's why:

First, the goal of eliminating the Al Qaeda base in Afghanistan from which the 9/11 terrorist attacks were launched was achieved years ago. There is no substantial Al Qaeda presence in the country anymore; according to the CIA, only 50 to 100 Al Qaeda fighters are left there. To the extent Osama bin Laden's network remains operational, it is more likely to be based in Somalia and Yemen than Afghanistan. "We're not there because of terrorists," Andrew Wilkie rightly argues. "The terrorists morphed years ago into a global network, making Afghanistan irrelevant."

The Taliban, to be sure, retains a strong presence throughout the country, especially the Pashtun-dominated south. But there is little evidence to suggest that the Taliban, a loose confederation of local tribal, factional and personal relationships, is directly linked to a global terrorist network. According to US intelligence, only 5 per cent of the Taliban are "hard core".

Second, democracy is not an export commodity, especially to an artificially constructed state and ethnically and tribally divided society such as Afghanistan. It is a primitive society, more difficult in its terrain than even Iraq. Poppy fields are in bloom. Elections have been deeply flawed. And the Karzai government is hopelessly corrupt. None of this augurs well for a democracy project.

Third, no recent invader has ever prevailed in what is known as the "graveyard of empires." Think of the Greeks, Mughals, British. Even the former Soviet Union, which had deployed around 150,000 troops in brutal counter-insurgency in the 1980s without restrictions on rules of engagement, went home with its tail between its legs.

Fourth, other Western nations are heading for the door. US leaders keep insisting on the possibility of victory, which they struggle to define. But given an economy that is on the verge of a double-dip recession, the parlous state of US finances (more than $US13 trillion in outstanding public debt, and counting) and an electorate clamouring for massive reductions in the size and cost of government, it is hard to imagine that Afghanistan will remain a high priority in Washington.

Indeed, Defence Secretary Robert Gates recently insisted that "there is no question in anyone's mind that we are going to begin drawing down troops in July 2011". Nor is the US alone. The Dutch quit the country for good last month. The Canadians are withdrawing next year. And David Cameron's rhetoric has already shifted Britain's priorities in the theatre.

Fifth, while polls should not define the national interest, popular opinion cannot be ignored: Newspoll in June saw 63 per cent of Labor voters supporting withdrawal from Afghanistan, with Coalition voters not far behind on 55 per cent. Given that nearly half of all the 21 Australian deaths in Afghanistan have taken place since June, it is a fair bet the public's opposition to the war has intensified.

As the deteriorating position of the coalition in Afghanistan becomes increasingly evident, Gillard and Abbott are falling back on the intellectually bankrupt argument of last resort: that we must finish the job.

But the logic that suggests that because we've stayed so long, we may as well finish the job, is based on a false premise that assumes a defined endgame exists and is achievable. For Gillard and Abbott, momentum has become a substitute for logic: Australia is not fighting in Afghanistan because we have clearly defined goals. We're fighting, apparently, because, well, we're fighting.

This is absurd. Whoever occupies the Lodge after the fate of the hung parliament is determined should seriously reconsider the continued investment of precious blood and treasure in what even leading neo-conservative scholar Fouad Ajami says is a "hopeless undertaking in an impossible land." Gillard or Abbott should remember the adage: when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

Tom Switzer is research associate at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and a former senior Liberal adviser.

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Hello. I'm an online post moderator for the ABC Drum Unleashed website.

The last 8 weeks have been a struggle as I've tried to figure out how to be fair and balanced, maintain ABC editorial policy and give a voice to the countless Australian men and women who want to have their say on our various political candidates' sexuality, Marxist-Leninist past (Manchurian Candidate conspiracy theory anyone?), Fascist Nazi (sorry, please don't invoke Godwin's Law yet!) dictator tendencies, and the way they've treated past lovers, past leaders, past policy, their ability to tell the truth, ability to lie, ability to lead, lack of ability to follow, their fertility, lack of it, belief or otherwise in Climate Change, understanding of technology, as well as Mark Latham, the Afghan War (both 19th Century version and current), gender, God, Godlessness, education, healthcare, aged care, and who cares, loyalty, disloyalty, Greenies, Queensland, Bob Ellis, John Hewson, Ben Pobjie, debt, the GFC, the BER, economic stimulus, and the ubiquitous obsession with a pair of red Speedos...

Did I get it right? Or too left? Did I have an agenda or did the ABC? Was I under strict instructions to push a particular barrow or not?

As always my instructions from The Drum Unleashed HQ were to maintain the ABC editorial policy and the website's own House Rules, which include:

- Comments which the ABC considers to be abusive, defamatory, discriminatory or off-topic, or otherwise unlawful, will not be published. - Messages should not be longer than 500 words. (NB The message board software will automatically crop posts that exceed 3000 characters.) - While the ABC aims to provide balanced coverage of issues, this is a public discussion space reflecting the views of its participants. From time to time one particular side of the debate may dominate views expressed here. This simply reflects the natural flow of comments we receive. - The ABC reserves the right to reject contributions that have been widely canvassed in the discussions. It also reserves the right to reject contributions from participants who seek to dominate the discussion. - Contributions that seek to endorse commercial products or activities or solicit business will not be accepted. - The ABC reserves the right to archive and re-publish contributions sent to this discussion space. - Contributions made to this discussion space will not be treated as program complaints. The ABC has a variety of complaint handling mechanisms available to members of the audience who wish to complain about ABC programming material. - If you wish you can click the Alert moderator link directly beneath a post. This produces a form where you can communicate any concerns to the moderator.
Perhaps the last House Rule should be: Read these House Rules again. Slowly.

In the past couple of days I've read a lot of commentary on the subject of the ABC's bias and I truly wonder how it is the public - particularly those of you who like to remind us of your personal 8 cents a day investment - imagine a moderator arrives at the decision to publish or not? And I also wonder how it is, and why it is, that many of the website's post commentators think that abusing and denigrating each other, the website, the individuals who bother to write a wide variety of contributing articles, and the people who are trying to manage a barrage (and when the election was called, a veritable tsunami), of heartfelt and passionate opinion, helps support the valuable and independent media source the ABC is?

Because I can tell you truthfully, I've tried to be open and non-judgmental in my evaluation of the post comment contributions made to Unleashed. I've read the articles by Gavin Atkins and Margaret Freeman, and the comments about them and I feel a little hurt, professionally maligned even. Man! If Gavin and Margaret or anyone who thinks Unleashed and the ABC is biased could have seen the posts by both the so-called Left and the so-called Right that are not approved for publication, they would realise just how 'ROFLMAO' funny it is to imagine we're busily designing subtle ways to reinforce one agenda or another. And Gavin might get a new hobby. Honestly, us moderators are just trying to give as many of you as possible who bother to post the opportunity to have your say. That's the agenda. And I reckon we do a pretty reasonable job given the budget constraints (there is not a lot of money going round in the online moderating game - see '8 cents a day'). And believe me, contrary to what seems to be a commonly held belief, under the time constraints (6 hours out of 24 in which to get it done), even if we had the inclination, we certainly have no time to count how many times someone, or some topic has been mentioned.

And, in the continuing spirit of honesty, I'd like to give you contributors a little feedback if I may:

1. Mind your manners

Call me old-fashioned, but it's not OK to call each other, or the contributors, names, even in jest. The terms "idiot", "fool" "stupid", "bigot" and "dickhead" are some that come to mind and that I can publish here. There are often (much) worse. Apologies that some of them got through because occasionally, I know I missed some. (See above re: time and motion.)

It's also not OK to contravene the State and Federal laws regarding racial or religious vilification, or the laws of plain human decency. By that, I mean it's not OK to make rude, crude and offensive statements about Australia's indigenous or non-indigenous populations, about non-Anglo ethnicities, about those who believe in Judaism, or live in Israel, Palestine or Woollahra, or who believe in Islam, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, simply because that's what they believe or because that's who they are.

At the same time, it is OK, although sometimes unpleasant, to criticise policy and behaviour of nations, religions, and those behaviours which manifest when those policies or dogmas are enforced. Even if that offends others.

Again, apologies for the sometimes offensive commentary that did make it to publication. Often, the arguments and opinions are extreme and varied. What I have always tried to do, is to give as many people as possible the opportunity to express their opinion, and to give the readers of Unleashed the benefit of knowing just how wide and varied, and sometimes extreme, those public opinions are.
Perhaps, before you submit, you might ask yourself: "Would my Mum/Dad/favourite teacher/partner/boss be pleased/proud to read this in print?"

2. Don't be selfish (with the site itself).

Many contributors do want to dominate the discussion. And I imagine that it often looks that way to others. What you might not realise is that back here at moderator central, we're busy deleting as many contributions by those posters as we approve. Those posters who like to say it again, and again, and again, are like those guests as at dinner party who just won't shut up or let the polite, shy and often more interesting people speak. Particularly after a couple of bottles of red. They're not prepared to listen to anyone else or consider other opinions. It's never pleasant at a dinner party, even with strangers, so why would you do it in an online conversation?

3. Remember that you are trying to communicate in writing.

I understand that spelling and grammatical rules are truly difficult for some people and I believe that all of the moderators make plenty of allowances for a more creative approach to writing, but often it's impossible to make sense of a stream-of-consciousness-500-word-rant combining bad spelling and not a single full stop. If I don't understand it, I'm not going to approve it. Read some of the well written, concise posts and model yours on those.

4. Less is more.

If it has been said once, and someone else has had a turn saying it again, and then another poster says the same thing in their own particular way, then perhaps you might consider that as it has already been said and despite the fact that you want to say it your way, that might not be a good enough reason to expect to be published. And if you're not published, sending the moderators rude messages to that effect doesn't change our minds. Just saying.

5. Identity theft is actually bad (and rude, see point 1 above.)

Sometimes, some of you - and you know who you are - think it will be funny or clever to post using another poster's name. Sometimes, us moderators pick it up but to do so means connecting the right screen name to the right email address or ISP number. I'm sure you'll agree that it is pretty impressive when we do connect those particular dots as what we are really trying to do is read the post, check that it is connected to the right topic, and that it fits the House Rules and ABC editorial policy. All within a very small timeframe with often hundreds of posts queued and waiting for approval or otherwise. A suggestion as to how this one can be resolved: Don't do it. It is your ABC, don't deliberately try to stuff it up.

6. Community feeling

You may be like Groucho Marx and prefer not to belong to any club that will have you as a member, however, once you start posting on Unleashed, like it or not, you've joined a community. Personally, I think you might all consider taking some pride in the fact that whatever your political persuasion, creed or race, showing up at Unleashed and being prepared to comment, being passionate about your own beliefs and interested enough to take part in the online debate means that you are choosing to join in. To care about the world you are part of. Pat yourselves and each other on the back and (I refer back to point 1 again), keep your community nice, tidy up after yourselves, and be polite to your neighbours even if they love Bob Ellis while you want to have Chris Berg's love child.

7. Do you remember anyone ever telling you not to discuss sex, politics or religion?

Except on the ABC of course. Let's face it folks, this is the website where you all get to talk to each other about the things you are often discouraged from talking about in polite society. While that is a healthy thing, it's going to get rough, it's going to get heated, and passionate and impolite and confronting. If you are going to put your opinion out there, you are going to be challenged. People will disagree with you and because they are interested in the same stuff, they're going to want to give you their own take on the subject in no uncertain terms. You might be right. They might be wrong. Or you could both be complete t*ssers. But THIS website allows you to air your opinions in a robust arena. If you can't stand the heat, if you can't bear people disagreeing with you, if you don't like reading about politics, the arguments for and against gay marriage, sex and religion, then get out of the proverbial kitchen.

8. Humour is personal

Some things that I find laugh-out-loud funny, my best friend considers offensive. And vice versa. You know how it is. The French think Jerry Lewis is hilarious while the English love Benny Hill. Some of you LOL at Ben Pobjie while others seem to froth at the mouth with anger on reading his first sentences. Relax. Not everything in this world or on this website is going to be for you and your 8 cents a day does not give you the right to dictate what it should publish. It might be better to just be grateful that the world accommodates a lot of difference and that you can always watch Sailor Beware (or The Nutty Professor if you prefer your Lewis without Martin) instead of reading Ellis or Pobjie. Stop banging on about what you hate and start appreciating what you actually like.

9. Left vs Right

OK. This is the big one. Are the moderators part of a Leftist eco war against the the IPA and capitalism itself or have the climate change "deniers" taken over the ABC in a cunning plan to turn the public broadcaster over to Rupert Murdoch in exchange for a blanket and some coloured beads? Are WE the Manchurian Candidates?

I could tell you the truth about that. But then I'd have to kill you.



Unleashed moderators have editorial backgrounds and are well versed in ABC editorial policy.

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It's not often you get to watch a new disease being manufactured before your very eyes. But that's exactly what's been happening with a little known condition called 'female sexual dysfunction' or FSD.

And as the evidence uncovered in Sex, Lies and Pharmaceuticals clearly demonstrates, the global drug giants have played a key role in helping to construct the basic scientific building blocks of this new disease, in the hope of creating new billion-dollar markets for their products.

It's a fascinating and frightening case study in the increasingly familiar merging of marketing and medical science.

No one disputes that sexual problems are real, and that for some women and men they can be debilitating. Yet while the notion of a widespread medical condition called FSD is highly questionable, a coming tsunami of marketing is set to convince millions of otherwise healthy women that they are suffering with a treatable sexual dysfunction.

Virtually unheard of not so long back, FSD burst onto the global stage in 1999, with bizarre but widely trumpeted claims it affected 43 percent of women. Viagra had just been approved for men, and as sales soared, the fantasies of pharmaceutical executives soon turned to a similar mass market among women.

Sex researchers, for a long time locked outside the hallowed halls of the health establishment, were suddenly inundated with offers of fine food, flattery and funding, from the friendly folks in pharma, and a new science of sexual medicine was born. Over the next 10 years companies with obligations to shareholders to widen the numbers of people defined as sick, and narrow the solutions offered to them, would not just sponsor the science of FSD, on occasions they would actually help to create it.

Corporate staff would participate in scientific conferences where the uncertain nature of FSD was hotly debated; companies would orchestrate surveys to prove how widespread sexual problems were; and perhaps most chillingly, company employees would help design the diagnostic tools used to label otherwise healthy women as disordered, opening the pathway to long-term treatment with costly and potentially harmful medicines.

And at the centre of all this sponsored science was the special long-term relationship between a small circle of senior researchers and a powerful industry whose sales are approaching a trillion dollars a year. In 2000, when a key definition of FSD was published - with claims it affected up to one in every two women - 18 of the 19 'thought leaders' who wrote it had financial ties to a total of more than 20 companies.

'During the process of defining the disease' said Darby Stephens, then a drug company research manager, 'we've been able to get thought leaders involved in female sexual dysfunction, and really work closely with them to develop this disease entity, so that it makes sense.' The Californian based Vivus was trying to test a genital cream for women said to have 'arousal disorder'.

As Viagra sales were booming, there was no time to waste. 'We're hoping to be able to expedite the process of drug development and disease development' said Stephens, during a candid interview for a film called Orgasm Inc, which colourfully documents this extraordinary process of 'disease development.'

'We're hoping to ... expedite the process of ... disease development'.
At a time when Pfizer still hoped Viagra might work for women, it funded a global survey of almost 30,000 people, finding frighteningly high rates of sexual problems across almost 30 countries. Yet Pfizer not only funded the survey and participated in running it, the whole thing was a 'marketing effort' orchestrated by the company to gauge interest among different nations, according to a key study investigator. Similarly Pfizer sponsored and helped create a scientific questionnaire to measure FSD, and then funded an educational package for doctors featuring claims that up to 63 per cent of women were affected by it.

Declining a request to be interviewed for the book, Pfizer said via a statement it had 'conducted a number of studies over the past 15 years designed to understand the causes and nature of FSD and its impact on women.' In relation to its financial ties with professional and patient organisations, the company said it likes to help efforts that 'strengthen communities and work towards a healthier world.'

While Pfizer was busy testing Viagra for women, the American household products giant Procter & Gamble, or P&G - which boasts annual sales of almost $80 billion and is famous for selling soap- had high hopes its new testosterone patch would lift the low libido of post-menopausal women. P&G funded and helped run a scientific survey which found one-in-ten post-menopausal women suffer with the condition called 'hypoactive sexual desire disorder' or HSDD, another of the controversial sub-disorders of FSD.

Similarly, company staff designed a questionnaire to assess how well their testosterone patch worked, and then funded educational seminars to teach doctors the 'rationale for testosterone use' in women with HSDD. Sponsored 'educational' seminars for doctors are not rare events. In Australia drugs companies fund more than 30,000 every year, with a third taking place in restaurants, hotels and resorts.

More recently it's been the turn of the German drug company Boehringer Ingelheim to construct this science, its paid consultants 'educating' doctors, its staff helping produce yet another survey finding widespread suffering, and employees helping design the tools to diagnose the condition. The Decreased Sexual Desire Screener is a simple five-item questionnaire, launched last year by the company as a 'new, easy to use' diagnostic tool to assess women with HSDD - the target condition for the company's experimental sex drug, a failed anti-depressant which affects the brain's chemistry. That's right … a drug company is helping to design a diagnostic instrument to label women with a disorder, so they can qualify for that same company's drug.

According to a Boehringer press release the tool 'enables clinicians who are not necessarily experts in female sexual dysfunction to diagnose the condition with high accuracy in a few minutes.' Certainly this is nothing if not efficient. Like P&G, which sold its pharmaceutical business last year, Boehringer declined to be interviewed during research for Sex, Lies and Pharmaceuticals.

While all this might seem stranger than fiction, it's worth remembering 'female sexual dysfunction' is just one example of a much bigger problem: an unhealthy medical system so entangled with industry that even the conditions themselves are influenced by marketing.

So next time your doctor offers you a disorder, a disease, or a dysfunction to describe the ordinary ups and downs of life, it might be worth trying to find out who constructed the science, and at the very least inquire as to who paid for the wining and dining at their most recent 'educational' event.

Ray Moynihan is an award-winning health journalist, author, documentary-maker and academic researcher. His new book is Sex, Lies & Pharmaceuticals.

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Tight elections all over the world almost inevitably end up in the courts. And it's looking increasingly likely that the recent federal election will be no different.

With the election result precariously poised and able to fall into the hands of one party or another with even the gentlest push, the protagonists are pursuing every possible avenue to securing government.

One avenue has been to re-read the Constitution to try and find any previously forgotten or overlooked provision that may tip the balance one way or the other. So far this has involved a few faux constitutional issues being thrown into the mix.

The most notable constitutional rumour that had swirled around political and public circles over the past few days had been that Wyatt Roy was not qualified to be a member of the House of Representatives.

On the face of it, it is easy to see how so many people made this mistake. Section 34 of the Constitution does indeed say a member of the House of Representatives "must be the full age of twenty-one years".

However, section 34 also begins with these words, "Until the Parliament otherwise provides", which gives the Commonwealth the power to legislate whatever qualifications they like. And indeed, the Commonwealth has done just that. Section 163 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 provides that a person who "has reached the age of 18 years" is qualified to be elected as a member of the House of Representatives.

More recently, it has been suggested that several successful candidates could face a constitutional challenge because they were local councillors when nominated. While this challenge will most likely be dismissed, it does raise some interesting issues.

Section 44(iv) of the Constitution provides that any person who "holds any office of profit under the Crown" shall be incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a senator or a member of the House of Representatives.

The contention has been put forward that local government councillors hold an "office of profit under the Crown" and are therefore disqualified from being members of Parliament. If this is right, Russell Matheson (Liberal), who has won the seat of Macarthur, Jane Prentice (LNP), who has won the seat of Ryan, Natasha Griggs (Country Liberals) who has won the seat of Solomon, and George Christensen (LNP), who has won the seat of Dawson, could all be disqualified for being sitting councillors when they nominated for parliament.

Unfortunately, the expression "office of profit under the Crown" is obscure. It has its origins in early 18th century English law and there has only been one High Court case on the issue; namely, Sykes v Cleary.

In that case, the Court held that Phil Cleary was not qualified to be a member of parliament because, as a Victorian school teacher he held a permanent public service position, which constituted an "office of profit under the Crown".

As to whether a local councillor occupies an "office of profit under the Crown", it is not entirely clear. The initial reaction of most constitutional lawyers to this question would be that local government council members would generally not occupy an "office of profit under the Crown" because local councillors are generally not appointed by the executive but as a result of elections held under state legislation. This would mean they are unlikely to be "under the Crown".

Where it becomes murky, however, is that in some states the legislation pertaining to local government vests some power in the executive; for example, in New South Wales, section 255 of the Local Government Act 1993 grants the Governor the power to declare, in certain circumstances, all offices in relation to a council be vacant.

Therefore it may be that before we can be certain that local councillors are able to stand for federal parliament, the High Court will need to examine the different local government legislation in each state before being able to decide whether a local councillor is an "office of profit under the Crown".

Although it would in many respects be unfortunate if the four councillors who have been elected this time were challenged, it would be desirable for the law to be clarified for future elections. Short of a constitutional amendment, the only way for this to occur is for the High Court to decide this matter.

So while, if a challenge is brought it will be part of a deeply cynical game of political brinksmanship to try and shift the balance of the election, it would actually result in a positive outcome and ruling for future elections. The uncertainty surrounding the status and eligibility of local councillors standing for federal parliament is in no-one's interest.

And indeed, there are worse ways for elections to be decided than in the hands of the courts. Backroom deals and promises of money for particular electorates or regions is decidedly unsavoury and undemocratic compared to the transparency and majesty of bringing a matter to the High Court.

At least we can be confident that here in Australia, this - and possibly other constitutional issues - will be worked out in an orderly and timely manner, free from the hysterical political posturing and absurdity of the hanging chad in Florida in 2000.

Peter Black is senior lecturer in law at the Queensland University of Technology, teaching and researching constitutional law and internet law.

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It is difficult to fully understand the extent of the floods that have hit Pakistan since the beginning of August. Estimates put the current death toll at around 1,500 with nearly 20 million people directly affected.

The sheer scale of the disaster has ramifications not only in humanitarian and economic terms for Pakistan, but also has potential political and security implications for South Asia. Here, the floods have severed roads and communications lines for the NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The interconnectedness of what President Obama now labels the 'AfPak' conflict is well documented. However, what is less understood is how this disaster will potentially feed into the ability of Pakistan's Taliban wing, the Tehreek-e-Taliban, to spread its influence.

The tenuous nature of the Pakistani government has come under increasing strain since the onset of the crisis not only from what Pakistani President Zardari has labelled as "Taliban extremists and rightist forces" but also from elements within the political and military elite who are seeking to use this to destabilise his administration.

Tehreek-e-Taliban have reportedly taken advantage of the chaotic situation in the north to conduct attacks on government forces as well as implement recruitment drives in the vulnerable North-West Frontier Province and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas. In response, the Pakistani government, in conjunction with the US, is actively trying to prevent organisations deemed hostile to the government, such as Tehreek-e-Taliban and the charity wing of Lashkar-e-Toiba, from delivering humanitarian aid in the flood-affected areas.

Any attempt to assist the tens of millions requiring urgent humanitarian assistance is a logistic exercise almost without peer. That this effort is taking place in the midst of a major global conflict to the north in Afghanistan as well as the on-going instability in Pakistan not only complicates this, but also highlights the political implications of aid and humanitarian relief in politically unstable environments.

Aid and humanitarian relief, despite their logic as addressing objective basic human needs, are intensely political enterprises.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah has been active since the 1980s in not just armed activities but also establishing hospitals, sanitation services and even ad hoc judiciaries in the absence of state institutions. The movement now sits in the Lebanese parliament with an effective veto over all vital legislation, a position of political strength built not only on their military capacity but also genuine popularity for their social presence.

In Algeria in the early 1990s, the Islamic Salvation Front ensured massive electoral popularity through the provision of basic services prior to the 1992 military coup that overturned national electoral results that would have seen them form an absolute Parliamentary majority.

Similarly, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) in Somalia, prior to the Ethiopian invasion of 2006, was able to establish a de facto interim government in the southern part of the country because they bought with them a semblance of order in this war-torn environment. Indeed, sympathy for the Taliban in Afghanistan echoes that of the ICU in Somalia, a blend of oppression and basic service provision that presents viable alternatives to anarchy or government corruption and authoritarianism.

Awareness of this amongst governments and international organisations has not necessarily translated into coherent policies that can mitigate this trend. The US has been the largest single donor in Pakistan in a desperate bid to raise its profile in what has become the most vulnerable front for US global security concerns. Alongside this aid, the US has also sought to maintain pressure on the Pakistani government to not only maintain its security efforts in the north, but to extend the fight against Tehreek-e-Taliban into North Waziristan.

This has been a difficult position for the United States, one that may be seen as self-inflicted as efforts at ramping up security efforts in Pakistan in the face of the inevitable political vacuum that ensues with natural disasters have come at the same time as the US has announced its plans to draw down its own security forces in Afghanistan in July 2011.

What the floods have presented is an acceleration of the security dynamic that has been prevalent in the 'AfPak' region since 2006, where Taliban setbacks in Afghanistan have been off-set by gains through Pakistan. Where Tehreek-e-Taliban have continued their military campaign with the killing of up to 50 people in attacks since the floods struck the region, they have also threatened to target government and foreign aid sources should they stray into areas under nominal Taliban control.

Vital to any insurgency or terrorist organisation is the presence of a community of support, a significant portion of a local population that gives tacit assistance or direct logistic support to the organisation. Here, the ability of Tehreek-e-Taliban to supply aid in areas where the government is simply not able to allows them to further entrench their presence in the region, acting as the de facto state and highlighting the government's inability to provide basic levels of security and other needs in a desperate time of need.

The Pakistani government and the international community has not assisted this dynamic. The UN, for instance, has allowed special provision for the Pakistani government to sidestep the usual monitoring procedures for the allocation of aid funding.

Since the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal of the 1990s, the UN has had strict regulations on transparency for aid, rarely allowing it to go directly to federal governments to spend at their discretion. The scale of this disaster, alongside the deteriorating security situation has seen the UN loosen these conditions despite charges of rampant corruption within the Pakistani political system.

The disaster in Pakistan is the perfect storm of what is increasingly seen as the new interconnectedness of security, political, environmental, economic and humanitarian concerns under the rubric of human security. An environmental catastrophe such as this gives insurgent movements an opportunity to expand their operations, increase support and target vulnerable governments.

In the face of this, the international community remains without comprehensive tools to deal with such events. The already vulnerable Pakistani government faces an increasingly uncertain future, a fate that will directly impact on the continuing operations in Afghanistan and potentially re-set the entire operational logic for our military engagement in this devastated part of the world.

Dr Benjamin MacQueen is a Lecturer in the Department of Politics at Monash University.
You can donate to the UNICEF Pakistan Flood Children's Appeal online or by phoning 1300 884 233 or 1300 134 071.

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Rob Oakeshott, Tony Windsor and Bob Katter, calling themselves the 'three non-aligned independents" have asked Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott for "a briefing from the Secretary of Treasury Ken Henry and the Secretary of Finance David Tune about the current economic cycle, the outlook for the Australian economy over the coming years and the likely impact of both Government and Opposition election policies on the budget."

It is difficult to see what economic update the two departments might provide that is not already in the public domain. The Pre-Election Fiscal and Economic Outlook (PEFO) was released a month ago, on 26 July, by the Secretaries of Treasury and of Finance and Deregulation.

PEFO contained the latest economic forecasts, forward estimates of revenue and expenses, a listing of all policy decisions up to the time the election was called and a statement of risks. There won't have been an estimates update since then. There has been no spectacular turnaround in economic data over August that might suggest PEFO is suddenly out of date.

A briefing on the outlook for the Australian economy would therefore likely consist of two secretaries patiently taking the independents through the PEFO document.

The trickier bit is the last twelve words, "likely impact of both Government and Opposition election policies on the budget". That goes to the row over costing of Opposition policies.

It took a while to work out what should happen because there are no rules. The policy costings provisions in the Charter of Budget Honesty Act 1998 apply before the election, not after. Section 31(1) says "As soon as practicable after a policy costing request has been made and before polling day for the election, either or both of the responsible Secretaries are to publicly release a costing of the policy" (my underline). When the Act was drafted, nobody contemplated that anyone would want a costing after the election date.

In theory (because there are only conventions rather than laws around these issues) Julia Gillard as caretaker Prime Minister could unilaterally have instructed the departments to cost the Opposition policies.

That would have been outside the spirit of the costings provisions.

They are and always have been voluntary - there is no requirement under the Charter of Budget Honesty that either government or opposition submit their policies for costing, it is an option available on request.

By analogy it was obvious that the opposition would have to agree before its policies could be submitted for costing. They have now done so. There will inevitably be differences between the official and the Opposition's cost estimates, due to different underlying assumptions. Treasury and Finance do not comment on any such differences in the costings they produce in the election period, and there is no reason to suppose they will do any different in the post-election period. It is likely to be less of an issue in retrospect than many are currently predicting.

There has also been speculation about giving the independents the incoming government briefings - what some in the media are calling the red book and blue book.

Commentators can't seem to agree on which book is for which party, The Australian suggesting red is for a returned government and blue for opposition, the Courier Mail the reverse, and both seem to think it is just Treasury that prepares such a document.

In fact all departments prepare an incoming government briefing folder. They are different versions for government and opposition and they are updated for respective election promises.

There would be no harm in the independents seeing most of the material, basic facts on what is going in the relevant departments. This is in any case accessible under a Freedom of Information request. In a government committed to transparency, these components of the briefings would be published online as a matter of course.

There are however other parts of the briefings that are written only for a department's new Minister, for example warning of traps lying in wait among lobby groups or sensitive staffing matters about forthcoming appointments. At times departments might even include advice that a particular promise is not practical or capable of implementation in its present form, and suggest alternatives.

If the public service thought this sort of material would be made public, it would never write it. The incoming Minister's brief would be simply facts and figures - and much less useful.

The independents have also asked to be briefed by the Secretaries of the departments of: Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy; Health and Ageing; Education, Employment and Workplace Relations; Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government; Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry; Climate Change, Energy Efficiency and Water; Defence; and Resources, Energy and Tourism.

There is nothing out of the ordinary in an MP asking for briefings. There is a formal protocol for briefings to be provided to the Opposition in the lead up to an election, but outside this period sometimes briefings are provided to individual MPs and Senators. Any parliamentarian can ask; they are not always answered. It is up to the government whether or not to agree.

At other times, a request by a few independent MPs for briefings from eight departmental heads (10 if you include Treasury and Finance) might provoke a government to provide unkind anatomical advice on a suitable location where the MPs might put the request. It would be seen as pushy.

This though is not an ordinary time. The independents have not had this much attention in their political life ever before. It is hard to fault them for taking advantage of the opportunity while it lasts.

They may not get as much out of these briefings as they might expect. There is no way public servants will be able to comment on the merits of policies put forward by either government or opposition. They cannot possibly compare one side with another - it would destroy their potential working relationships. It is not the role of the public service to pick sides.

So to the extent the independents are hoping that these briefings will help them choose, they are barking up the wrong tree.

Stephen Bartos is a director with global consulting firm LECG. He is an expert in public sector governance and risk.

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It's extraordinary the tribute human suffering pays to celebrity. Millions of people around the country sat glued to their televisions these last two nights in order to witness some representation of the inside story on Ben Cousins, footballer and drug addict.

What did they see? Well, the title recalled to participants the final words of that first of all Australian rock stars, Ned Kelly, though not the title of Joseph Furphy's great Australian shaggy dog story. This history of the troubles of the boy from the West who fell in love with coke and hit the ice was at one level the story of one of nature's bushrangers, armoured against the world and striding to meet his doom in some latter day Glenrowan, but it had it's own element of smoke and mirrors and self-concocted legend.

We saw a lot of Ben Cousins staring blue-eyed and untrustworthy straight into the camera, looking like an ocker god and one of nature's born liars. Every so often (though not too often) we saw the footage of another Ben, strung-out and stroppy, hair cropped and face strained, the reverse baseball cap like an insignia of yobbishness on the skids - ranting, berserk, a step away from the bereftness that might have been implicit in this sad and starry story but was never, not for a second, shown.

Mike Sheahan, the football commentator, wanted to see a tear, if only, as he said, symbolically. We saw plenty of tears, fought back manfully, from Ben's father, the impressive and decent Bryan Cousins.

He was the devoted dad who, when young legend was staying at home and terrorising the house with the spectre of his habit, almost came to blows with him one night when he said he had to go out and score; and then, in a reverse tactic of terrible poignancy the father said that all right he would come with him. And when his son wouldn't let him into the dealer's place lay in a crumpled heap, shoeless, in his pyjamas, in a bus shelter.

Cousins senior had the unshakable dignity of a man who had ceased to care about what anyone thought: if his son was going down he would run the risk of sinking on the same ship by offering him the spectacle of his own potential breakdown, physical or mental. He was for Ben, contra mundum.

Cousin's sister said she feared for her father and she also talks about the awful moment when she stole the sometime West Coast Eagle champion's pipe and locked herself in the bathroom only to end up tracing a circle of futility by returning it. Only Mrs Cousins, of the immediate family, speaks to camera calmly, the vestiges of her beauty intact in middle age, her self-possession flawless and good-humoured.

Well, only her and Ben. The weird, ambivalent, quasi-hagiographical thing about the Ben Cousins doco was that it presented him, perky to the point of cockiness, narrating the stardom and shipwreck of his life, with the breeziness of a summer's dream.

Yes, it was a sobering, potentially tragic story. In the discussion afterwards Bryan Cousins said that if Richmond had not taken Ben as the final pick of the draft it might have been the end. He says that his son had told him over the years about his thoughts of suicide, how as a father he had shied away and the family doctor had told him that, no, he had to listen.

But the bewilderment and despair are scarcely the emphasis in this weirdly extroverted homage to the damaged glamour of an all but great footballer.

We hear the tough worldly drug counsellor, an impressive woman, who knows everything about the lower depths and talks about them shrewdly and without sentimentality. We hear that wily man of footy business, Ricky Nixon talk ruefully of the responsibility he and others bear for not stopping Ben Cousins in order to save him.

But Ben himself just stares into the lens like the brazen embodiment of devil-may-care celebrity.

Okay, he probably was set up when the Western Australian police pulled him over and found nothing but a banknote with cocaine traces and prescription drugs in the car - though there was a TV crew tipped off to show the footy star in all his barechested trimness and glory.

And the story of how Collingwood hired private investigators and consulted Victorian police commissioner Christine Nixon before turning Cousins down when he wanted to come to Melbourne is grim and sobering.

But at one level the legend just shrieks a bit loutishly in this account, compounded as it is of human pain and the defiance of the outlaw who knows his stardom will outstare the damage he does to everyone and everything including himself.

We hear Andrew Fraser, sometime lawyer and sometime cokehead himself, talk about Ben Cousins criminal associates and we hear Patrick Smith, the football writer of The Australian say that, at the end of the day, the AFL will always act with ruthlessness when the game itself has its reputation threatened. But Ben Cousins, the anti-hero, keeps on smiling through this tale of glory and woe as if he can't really be arsed with anything but his own legend.

There are some fine moments: Mick Malthouse talking about the balance of top footballers, Glen Jakovic saying that he saw Cousins throw up but keep on running for goal, so that he thought he would die.

But we don't hear too much about the waste of the great sportsman. Nor, more particularly, in what is an overtly cautionary tale, do we hear, for instance, about how ice rots the brain and induces states of delusional, not to say psychotic, paranoia. We don't get any analysis of the effect that cocaine (the high flyer's drug of choice throughout the business and entertainment worlds) can have - in massive quantities - on a young footballer.

It's a truism, of course, that as Hollywood and rock stars get younger and younger the risk of train wreckage is higher because the Britneys and Lindsay Lohans get fame long before they grow up so that an essentially adolescent groping and grovelling for self-definition gets mixed up with the sense of entitlement of someone who is encouraged to believe in their own divinity.

Is that what happened to Ben Cousins? Of course it can seem like too heartless a way to put it but the trouble with the Ben Cousins doco is that to have a heart worthy of its subject matter, it needs to lie stretched out in the dirt and cry tears down.

It's a fact about the history of Australian Rules that some of the very greatest of all footballers - think of Gary Ablett Senior and the heroin and a young girl dead in a hotel room, Wayne Carey with his coke and his grog, all his craziness and assault charges - have been implicated in the horror of addiction which is the defining shadow of our society.

They were greater footballers than the remarkable Ben Cousins and they put him in context.

The Ben Cousins documentary refers to the tragic aspect of its own story but the producers are afraid to represent it fully. Instead we get the human and stricken face of the feckless drug-addled footballer's long-suffering dad. It's superb that he can say, of the AFL, that they made a moral judgement on what was essentially a medical condition but he's the person for whom we feel.

The face of Ben Cousins cracking hearty and heartless just goes smiling on. We see him frolicking in underpants but no girlfriend speaks. We see him concentrated on that glass pipe but not the pain it did him.

You can only hope against hope that the kids hear the anthem and the homage implicit in his father's testament. What's the line in the old Neil Young song 'Every junkie's like a setting sun.'

Perhaps some people will think of it when he runs out, like a lion of lost hopes, to play his last game on Sunday.

The Ben Cousins doco wants a bit of the borrowed romance of that elegy but not the pain.

Even on TV, close up and personal, we print the legend.

Peter Craven is one of Australia's best known critics and cultural commentators.

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What a week this has been. A week in which a hung-over nation sat on the edge of its seat as, hour by hour, things threatened to happen with unprecedented rapidity, and Australians everywhere tried to adjust to the wild rollercoaster of federal inertia. Who knew last Friday, when I wrote, "It could be that Bob Katter will hold the balance of power in the House of Representatives, causing the national capital to be moved to Mount Isa and Question Time to be replaced by a daily rodeo", that just a week later the press gallery would be hopping aboard the Inlander and Harry Jenkins would be learning how to fasten a flank strap?

It was, of course, a momentous election, and not only because of the stark and dramatic choice we were faced with, between a woman who believed in the value of work, and a man who wanted to stop boats - there were plenty of other notable aspects quite apart from this violent clash of ideologies. Historical moments abounded - in Hasluck, we seem certain to gain our very first indigenous federal MP in Ken Wyatt. In Longman, Wyatt Roy claimed victory to become the first federal MP to be elected while still teething. And of course in Bennelong Maxine McKew became the first federal MP to suffer a nervous breakdown on live television. Unless you count Tony Abbott's last five appearances on the 7.30 Report.

And yet, despite the historic and inspiring nature of the election, on Sunday we awoke to an uncertain and slightly irritating future. Who would the government be? Who was our next prime minister? Was our democracy broken, or was it in fact stronger than ever? Were we entering a better, kinder world of co-operation and mutual respect, or a harsher, angrier world of division and administrative paralysis?

And at the end of the week, I think we can safely say that the answer to all of the above questions is "Huh?"

Abbott himself perhaps did not foresee this tangled web when he stood before his cheering supporters at Liberal headquarters beneath Mount Doom, and declared that the people had spoken, before laughing maniacally for a full fifteen minutes. Clearly, he did not foresee, when he stood on that stage triumphantly, basking in the glow of Labor discomfort, that by the end of the week he would be holding three-minute press conferences that ended with a cry of "Look over there!" and a bolt to the door; or responding to demands he submit his policies to Treasury with screams of "NO! MINE!"

But on one point, Abbott was right: the people HAVE spoken. As so many in our clever, insightful, on-the-ball, clear-minded, thoughtful, logical, sensible, up-to-speed, right-on, articulate, nail-head-hitting mainstream media have pointed out, the people quite deliberately caused this hung parliament, as an expression of their desire that neither major party rule them. They did this by means of a vast underground voters' network, whereby everyone on the electoral roll was sent instructions, inside innocent-looking Big W catalogues, on which way to vote, so as to engineer precisely this result. Oh, clever voters! The politicians thought you were marking on your ballots who you wanted to be elected, when actually you were participating in a sophisticated political "sting" orchestrated by the Secret Voters' Council, to ensure that NOBODY got elected. The genius of the average Australian citizen strikes again! Who knew they were so organised?

And so we see that the voters got exactly what they wanted: the question of government lying in the hands of Independents Bob Katter, Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and maybe Andrew Wilkie; and Green Adam Bandt. From here it's all up to them as to which party they plump for, and both Labor and Liberal have been making their pitch strongly.

For Labor's part, it has been arguing that it will be best able to provide governmental stability due to its greater ability to work with the Greens-controlled Senate, and that it will also be able to provide vital services to the Independents' rural electorates, such as the national broadband scheme and the newly-announced $50 billion "Rural and Regional Fund for Whatever You Want, Guys", which will be spent on regional infrastructure like roads, railways, and, I don't know, hay or something, whatever people in the country like.

On the Liberal side, it has made a strong pitch to the Independents, by refusing to do what they ask and calling them names, apparently on the basis that what Independents really respect is strength of character and general rudeness.

And yet, both parties may be missing the mark on what the Independents and Green really want. For a start, they are by no means unified. Bandt, for example, wants action on climate change, recognition of same-sex marriage, more humane treatment of refugees, and a hardline Marxist global government powered entirely by candles, as specified in publicly available Greens policy statements. On the other hand, Windsor and Oakeshott are mainly concerned with process, calling for a more inclusive, consensus-based approach to politics. Indeed, Oakeshott has proposed that the government be made up of Liberal AND Labor, a new kind of government where the left shall lay down with the right, where Turnbull shall be brother to Wong, and where Abbott and Gillard finally give in to their rather obvious urges. It is a wonderful vision Oakeshott has for our country, and should not be rejected out of hand without some serious thought and a decent stretch of ironic chuckling.

And then there is Katter, who has promised he will support whatever government will ensure the survival of rural communities. This survival is to be ensured via the banning of foreign bananas and the removal of crocodiles from Katter's roof. Simple demands on the surface, yet they could conflict with the Greens' policies, which are strongly in favour of both crocodiles and selling out our own country.

So it's complicated. How can the Labor or Liberal party please this entire motley band of parliamentary pirates? How can we find a solution that truly reflects the will of all those voters who went to the polling booth and expressed their desire for exactly this outcome? How can we reconcile the concept of parliamentary democracy with the idea that a country's fate lies in the hands of a handful of men elected by a tiny minority of voters, most of whom probably only vote on the basis of which candidate grows the biggest pumpkins?

How? There is a very simple and relaxing answer, and it comes in the events of the past week. Look around you. Have you noticed something? Something ... unusual?

That's right: everything is still the same.

In the midst of this electoral gridlock, this terrifying uncertainty, this political purgatory ... nothing has changed much. We're still going to work, our cars still start, our light switches still operate, the laws of physics remain very much in evidence.

So what does this teach us? It teaches us that the government does not actually matter. For almost a week, we've not known the result of the election, and it has not made the slightest bit of difference. So why are we worrying? It doesn't matter who the government is. It doesn't matter whether we even have a government! We should probably try NOT having one for a bit longer, see how we like it. I predict we'll LOVE it.

Everyone can relax. Things are going to be just fine.


Ben Pobjie is a writer, comedian and poet.

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Amidst all the huff over the appalling state of politics in this country of late, and blame-slinging over the thoroughly uninspiring campaigns mounted by the Liberal and Labor parties, there's a particularly salient point that risks being missed.

This was a 20th century election campaign that happened to be held in the 21st century.

I'd suggest that one key reason why neither major party was able to resonate with a significant proportion of voters is because they're both resoundingly 20th century political parties. Political anachronisms, both.

One is a reformed socialist party that is still dominated by unions that no longer play a significant role in most workers' lives (even the term "worker" seems ill suited to describe many of today's highly-skilled professionals).

The other is a socially conservative party that embraces the free market but (particularly under the current leadership) is overtly guided by a religious values.

They're both relics of a bygone age. And a growing number of Australians, particularly those under 40, simply don't identify with the core values of either party. That leaves these voters torn between choosing one obsolete political ideology or another, and leaves the parties looking disingenuous when they try to appeal to them.

That's why what this country needs is a new political party. A 21st century political party. One that is in step with post-baby boomer values. One that can better represent the outlook of the growing number of people who have grown up in a world without unions and without religion.

But what might such a party look like? Well, we've already seen two tantalising hints: Kevin Rudd's Labor; and Malcolm Turnbull's Liberals. Yet, it was the very redefinition of values that these two leaders represented to their parties that so antagonised the lumbering dogmatists who operate the party machinery, and ultimately caused them to be turfed.

Rudd was never a staunch unionist or a factional player. His faction, so they said, was Newspoll. His very presence at the top weakened the creaky union-infected Labor machinery - a phenomenon only exacerbated by his unfortunate penchant for centralising power around his office.

Yet the party needed Rudd, at least to oust Howard. And Rudd did capture the affection of the nation, not because he embodied old-school Labor values, but because he represented a modern and sensible fusion of free market economics with the safety net of social democracy.

Turnbull was also a victim of his own progressiveness, although ironically it was his turning back the clock to the original small "l" liberal roots of his party that put the social and religious conservatives offside.

In fact, the Liberal party has always been something of an oddity on the political landscape. It was founded as a centre-right party, opposing the socialism of the left, but was not intended explicitly as a "conservative" party. But when you're in a two-party world, and the God-hating communists are in one party, the social and religious conservatives had only one place to go: Liberal. As such, the party - particularly under Howard - became a more old-school conservative party.

And it was into this environ that Turnbull brought his economically liberal, socially progressive politics. (Ask a few progressive Labor voters what they thought of Turnbull, and you're likely to hear a few coy admissions that he was actually quite admired.) But, again, the Liberal party machinery was too entrenched in its conservative funk.

Clearly, the Labor and Liberal parties are not equipped to transition into the new ideological landscape of the 21st century. Their machinery is too entrenched, too rusted in place. They have little hope of redefining their values to fit with the growing number of voters who are both in favour of economic liberalism as well as being socially progressive. Instead, they defy their core values by playing to the middle, but do so in a dissonant and disingenuous way.

My vote - and I suspect the votes of many others - would lie with a new party, headed by the likes of Turnbull or Rudd (although not necessarily them), that is truly of the 21st century. This would be a party that embraces the market, although believes in regulation to prevent exploitation by employers and big business. It would believe in sustainability and climate change, yet would encourage innovation and enterprise to solve these problems. It would be tolerant of cultural diversity, comfortable with same-sex marriage and strongly secular. It would believe that the government plays a crucial role in society, and that we need to pay sufficient tax for it to execute that role effectively, but government should be only as big as necessary and as small as possible. Moreover, the party wouldn't be tied to unions or the church.

Yet we live in a two-party system, not a three-party one. So I'd suspect that such a party would draw adherents from both Labor and Liberal, and we would settle in a new equilibrium with a truly socially conservative (and still inaptly named) Liberal party, with the Greens to capture the far-left vote.

Really, who's to say exactly what our political landscape would look like after such a shift. But all I know is that if there's been any time in the last 30 years that would be conducive to a new force in Australian politics - a force that might reinvigorate voters, that could present a vision of the future that actually accords with many Australians' values - now is that time. I just wonder if anyone will step up?

Tim Dean is a science journalist and philosophy PhD student.

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Four Corners' website proudly proclaims that it presents 'investigative journalism at its very best.'

It's a big claim, and one that is probably impossible to pull off week to week in the pressure-cooker atmosphere of current affair television. And to be fair, it's remarkable that so often Four Corners does such a good job.

Every now and then however, they fail to live up to their own standards, and this week's edition blew it big time.

The program was called 'Overdose', an apocalyptic warning that stimulus measures taken by governments around the world are leading us toward an inevitable global financial collapse. Now there may well be some merit in this argument, but if your aim is to present the 'very best' in journalism, then very careful attention needs to be paid to who is making such big and scary claims. And in this, Four Corners was sorely lacking.

Unusually, the program was not produced by the ABC, but was purchased via a UK distributor from a Swedish production company. It is narrated and written by Johan Norberg and based on his book, Financial Fiasco. In short, he argues that it was not the bankers who caused the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), it was the panicked response of governments interfering in the free market process.

According to Norberg and his ideologically like-minded interviewees, Government action in the face of crisis is always pernicious and never helps. Now that's a debate worth having, but let's make it a real discussion. As the Financial Times commented in reviewing Norberg's book, "it would have benefited from less idea-fetishism, and more workaday macroeconomics." As a polemic masquerading as journalism, 'Overdose' suffers from a similar lack of objectivity. Which is hardly surprising given Norberg's background - not that the Four Corners audience would know.

Nowhere in the film do we learn that Norberg is a senior fellow at the right-wing think-tank, the Cato Institute. Founded by the owners of America's biggest private company, Koch Industries, Inc, the Cato Institute takes some fairly radical positions, including calling for the abolition of the welfare system, repealing laws that restrict the tobacco industry while taking a highly sceptical line on the science of global warming.

Corporate funding for Cato reads like a Who's Who of the fossil fuel industry, Wall Street and big tobacco. Rupert Murdoch once served on its board of directors. The Institute also seeds like-minded organisations around the world, among them the notorious American Enterprise Institute. Norberg proudly declares that he is the first non-American resident to be given a Cato Senior Fellowship. Cato obviously like him and published the English language edition of his book, In Defence of Global Capitalism.

Neo-liberal groups have warmed to the Swede's good looks and polished delivery and he is a regular on the global think-tank circuit. The German Hayek Foundation gave him its gold medal in 2003 (shared that year with Margaret Thatcher).

Norberg has been a strong supporter of uber-neoliberal Milton Friedman and remains a supporter of the now discredited Chicago School of Economics whose fundamentalist teachings brought us the worst excesses of the GFC.

Norberg is also a member of the Mont Pelerin Society whose members are dedicated to restricting government involvement in the economy and, as its founder, F.A. Hayek put it," to combating the state ascendancy and Marxist or Keynesian planning sweeping the globe". Current president is Australian Greg Lindsay, executive director of the Centre for Independent Studies.

Getting 'Overdose' onto the ABC via Four Corners will doubtlessly be considered something of a coup by such organisations. The film's director Martin Borgs says that while he considered including voices that might hold a counter view to the free-marketeers, "mostly we wanted to give the view of voices who haven't been heard before." And who were those voices? Well, they are hardly shrinking violets.

Among them are economist Vernon Smith, an adjunct scholar of, you guessed it, the Cato Institute; trend forecaster Gerald Celente who is a Fox News regular and has appeared everywhere else from Oprah to Good Morning America. He recently told Fox that America will soon descend into collapse and anarchy brought on by criminal gangs and civil violence. Then there was the always quotable Peter Schiff, who when not speculating on gold is another TV regular, including in my own series for the ABC, Addicted to Money.

'Overdose' premiered in the US at a Cato Institute function. I have written to Borgs asking how the film was funded and if the Cato Institute or any of the other think-tanks Norberg is associated with contributed. No reply yet. You might hope that ABC News and Current Affairs might have made similar enquiries.

Now I must declare that as a filmmaker I have no ideological aversion to seeking finance beyond the public purse. It's hard enough to finance any documentary these days, let alone one that is controversial. Indeed I have just recently completed a film, Dick Smith's Population Puzzle, which as well as public funding was in part supported by Dick himself via a grant to the Documentary Australia Foundation. That support was declared in the credits, openly discussed in the publicity and I believe no one would have been in any doubt that this was very much a polemical film that aired Dick Smith's opinions. Polemics have their place in the firmament of ideas, but it's essential that they are sign-posted as opinion and their funding is made clear.

There is no mention of the Cato connection in the program the ABC put to air, and not a word about it on the Four Corners website. In fact the site misleadingly claims the film was 'reported' by Journeyman Pictures - the UK based middleman that sells the film on to broadcasters and which had absolutely nothing to do with the editorial content, let alone its 'reporting'.

It's essential that Four Corners does not become the mouthpiece for ideology, and can be seen to clearly be exercising editorial control over what it puts to air. In this case it has lazily picked a piece off the global TV shelf and put it on screen without any semblance of editorial judgement.

It has misled its viewers and it has failed to meet its own standards of excellence. And in doing so, it has made it more difficult for those of us who argue that from time to time, the ABC needs to be the public's voice in the centre of political ideas, not a mere spectator. Polemic has it's place, but not if it is hidden behind pseudo-objectivity and the Four Corners brand.

Simon Nasht was co-writer and director of the three part ABC series on the GFC Addicted to Money and writer, director and co-producer of Dick Smith's Population Puzzle.

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According to prosecutors in Sweden, authorities in Stockholm will pursue a vague "molestation" charge against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

There is precious little evidence available in the public domain, though the few details circulating make me extremely sceptical of both the rape (which seems 100 per cent false) and molestation charges against Assange. More on that in a minute. But for the wild-eyed, spittle-flecked conspiracists bloggers - and Assange himself - the charges reeked of a U.S. government plot. And sure, one only need to read the Church Commission report to realize that such dirty tricks have a long pedigree in American intelligence circles. But even a cursory look at the case would suggest that while it appears that Assange's name is being dragged through the mud, it isn't by the CIA.

But the speed with which the conspiracy theories spread throughout the moronosphere was enough for The New York Times London correspondent, the terrific John Burns, to produce an article headlined, "Plotting doubted in Wikileaks case". That would be the Pentagon/CIA plotting to destroy Assange, obviously. Assuming that Assange knew the identity of his accusers when contacted by prosecutors, he nevertheless told any reporter within earshot that "we have been warned that the Pentagon, for example, is thinking of deploying dirty tricks to ruin us. And I have also been warned about sex traps." After expressing scepticism that it was an American intelligence job, Harpers magazine nevertheless warned that "as this incident makes clear, the war on WikiLeaks will be fought with unconventional tools and those following the story are advised to accept nothing at face value."

Amazingly, the bumbling fools in American intelligence managed to flip Anna Ardin, the left-wing feminist (often described in the Swedish blogosphere as a "radical feminist") spokeswoman for Broderskapsrörelsen, the liberation theology-like Christian organization affiliated with Sweden's Social Democratic Party (she is not, as I have seen written, a "Christian Democrat"). If any of these sub literate bloggers knew anything about the kristen vänster (but why should you know anything at all, when a simple, ideology-validating conspiracy is so much more satisfying?), they would probably have guessed that Assange's accuser was, as is common in Sweden, operating off of a very broad definition of rape and "sexual molestation."

If any of these bozos did twenty minutes of research, they might have found Ardin's blog - "my feminist reflections and comments on animal rights, Swedish politics and Cuba from a political scientist, Christian left and long distance runner" - and read her post, with the help of a Scandinavian comrade or Google Translate, "Våldtäkt en del av mäns makt" - rape [is] a part of men's power. Or they would have seen this article from Ardin's days at Uppsala University, where she, in her role as some sort of equality watchdog, denounced the tradition of singing ribald student songs, which included "references to genitalia and serious sexual content," as "offensive and stereotypical." She is, in other words, rather sensitive on gender issues. Or this blog post on how one can exact "legal revenge" on men who have been "unfaithful." According to The Guardian, sources close to the investigation claim that she filed a complaint because Assange didn't wear a condom during sex. So the boring truth is that Assange didn't come up against a CIA conspiracy, but the rather broad Swedish conception of what constitutes a sexual crime.

Harpers hints darkly that "the information was fanned in a tabloid-style paper within minutes (sic) of its being opened." First, Expressen is not a tabloid-style newspaper, but an actual tabloid. Nor is it, as Assange claimed, "right wing." So who would have leaked this information to Expressen? A bit of legwork here too would have revealed that Ardin interned for the editorial page of GT, the Gothenburg edition of Expressen. While there is no evidence to suggest that Ardin herself leaked the material to her former employer, it is certainly more plausible than fingering the Pentagon. But again, why bother doing any research when the sinister conspiracy is more ideologically satisfying?

If you, like many of the conspiracists, are confused as to how the Swedish authorities could issue and then, in less than 24 hours, withdraw a warrant for Assange's arrest, then you don't know the Swedish authorities. Just ask the families of Anna Lindh and Olaf Palme for details. Indeed, when one prosecutor overruled the conclusions of another, more junior, prosecutor, she explained to Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter that "My decision doesn't mean that her decision was wrong." And to Aftonbladet, she dug in her heels: "That I changed the decision doesn't mean that her decision was wrong." Translation? Amateur hour at the prosecutor's office.

One final note on using Google Translate in blog posts, as is becoming increasingly common. Google Translate is a helpful tool, though in the race to be first with the latest news of Assange, many bloggers have been far too trusting of its often really terrible results. For instance, this story in Expressen, which was posted on many American blogs, contains the very simple phrase, referring to the allegations: "Allt är inte glasklart" - all isn't crystal clear. Google renders this without the negation, as "all is crystal clear." Also, Gawker, relying on Google Translate, links to a Swedish blog calling Anna Ardin possibly the "world's most hated woman right now." A few clicks deeper into the site - this weathervane of Swedish opinion about Ardin - and one gets to read charming, rambling stories of Jewish influence in Sweden and the creeping "Islamization" of Scandinavia.


Michael C. Moynihan is senior editor at Reason magazine and Reason.com, where this first appeared.

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It was bound to happen. One side of politics or the other was always going to stumble as both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott struggled to come to grips with the new political paradigm.

The first to trip up has been Abbott.

The Opposition Leader's strident demands that the independents be barred from having access to the Treasury "Red Book" and his refusal to allow the Treasury to cost the Opposition's election promises is wrong on so many counts it's hard to know where to begin.

Let's start with political optics. The people have spoken and we have a hung Parliament. This wasn't a mistake. It's democracy. Ipso facto the voters can never be wrong. What's happened here is that the electorate has sent a deliberate message; they wanted neither Gillard nor Abbott. Therefore what they did want was some form of government that gave vent to these doubts.

Enter the idea of a minority government reliant on a motley collection of independent, Green and renegade Liberal-National MPs. What this radical shift means is that whether Labor or the Coalition eventually form government they will both have to countenance thoughts, reforms and policies way outside the comfort zone of a two party system.

Which is just what the voters intended.

What this also means is a period of negotiated consensus as the independents submit their list of demands. This process should put to rest any loopy demands from either the lunar Left (the Greens' Adam Bandt) or the lunar Right (Bob Katter). On the current numbers in the House of Representatives extremist positions will deal whoever is making them out of a share of the balance of power in any case.

What needs to happen here is lots of serious talk from all concerned. Everybody has to recognise that the old adversarial ground rules dictated by the two party system of government no longer apply. Gillard has moved in this direction both rhetorically and in her actions. Indeed the fact that Abbott's view matters here at all is because Gillard has granted him a veto under the caretaker government conventions which require agreement on questions of process.

So, Gillard appears to know that all the ground rules have changed, that we went to bed on August 21 playing Aussie Rules and woke up on August 22 playing Rugby League. The independents know it too. The only one who hasn't made the cognitive leap into the political future is Abbott.

In resisting the requests of the independents for access to the Treasury economic brief prepared for the incoming government and for Treasury to validate the Opposition's election promises, Abbott demonstrates he's still stuck in campaign mode. That is; adversarial and aggressive. Right when the national mood requires constructive and non-partisan engagement.

By his behavior Abbott gives every sign of missing the moment when the caravan of democracy moved on. The Coalition's normally reasonable Finance Spokesman, Andrew Robb is similarly trapped. His argument that the Coalition won't present their policies to the Treasury because of a campaign leak damaging to the Coalition and sourced to the same department is adversarial politics on steroids.

The leak, which became a handy campaign excuse for the Opposition not to submit all of their costings to Treasury, is now irrelevant. In the changed political climate the country now faces, the rolling out of the same excuse, the same grievance, simply sounds negative and carping. Small minded even. Robb and Abbott are behaving as if nothing happened on August 21.

There's something else they seem to have missed; this time it's not the Labor Party demanding the Coalition submit itself to Treasury scrutiny. It's the independents who now hold the nation's future in their collective hands. The voters have given them the right to ask for these things.

Katter got it about right in his reaction to Abbott's arch refusal to accommodate the Independents when he said: "Obviously every person in Australia at the present moment believes that he's got something to hide," he said.

One other problem; Robb argues that the Treasury Red Book, as the incoming government brief is known, should be kept confidential as per precedent and not revealed to the independents. Well why not?

As observed above, the independents will be playing an absolutely pivotal role here. Hasn't it yet dawned on either Abbott or Robb that whichever way the power coin flips these guys are part of any incoming government. They should be shown the Red Book as of right.

While we're on that point, why can't the Australian people also be privy to the contents of a brief that could fundamentally change their lives? The idea of Robb - a member of the Opposition - suddenly arguing against full government disclosure is somewhat quaint in itself. Certainly it's one I've never heard before.

Surely Robb's debating point that the "Red Book" should be kept under wraps because, to quote him "it contains frank and fearless advice on the economic outlook" closes the deal on making it as widely available as possible.

So, let's take stock on where all this belligerence leaves Abbott: Firstly he's seen as still being fuelled by campaign aggression when the political paradigm dealt by the election outcome requires calm. Second he's seen as shifty on the issue Coalition costings. And thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, he's fouled, in one fell swoop, his relationship with the independents.

The latter is not a good look for someone potentially relying on those same independents to support the Coalition's claim to government.

Last, but not least of all, the above has left Abbott looking like he's still an Opposition Leader, rather than a Prime Minister in waiting. All you need to know is that Abbott's behavior has left Labor "flabbergasted", the description of one ministerial adviser.

If Abbott has given Julia Gillard hope then he's clearly got it all wrong. From here on Tony, just say "yes".

Glenn Milne has been covering Canberra politics for more than two decades.

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Hung parliaments, the misleading term used when, after a general election, neither side of politics manages to win a majority in the lower house of a parliament, where governments are routinely formed, have mixed reputations, like multi-party governments.

Especially when rare, as is the case with Australia's Federal Parliament, they nevertheless provide a golden opportunity to address matters which normally have no place on anybody's reform agenda.

In the case of the uncertain result of Australia's 2010 elections, the body which should benefit most ought to be the House of Representatives itself.

It is, without question, the most neglected, the most diminished public institution in Australia. Its Question Time is a shouting competition; except for set piece clashes, there are virtually no debates; ministers prefer to make announcements to the media than to the House; committees are subdued; it has virtually no role in scrutiny of finances and administration. It is a venue for politics rather than a forum for national discussion and contest of ideas.

If neither side of politics manages to win a majority, those to whom it falls to decide who for a time has possession of the Treasury benches should have, as a major, essential and conspicuous part of their terms of settlement, a suite of measures to restore, even if only for a time, a measure of standing and effectiveness to this beleaguered institution.

At least, for a while, the nation will have some relief from the pervasive majoritarian executive domination which normally afflicts this significant but weakened body.

There will be, perhaps only briefly, a period of negotiated executive domination; the chance should not be lost - delays have dangerous ends.

It would be folly to expect a reformation. The crossbench - this assortment of aggrieved former Nationals and fortunate Greens, even greenish independents, now the choice and master spirits of our age - would be unwise to aspire to such.

They should aim at well-directed, practical improvements, improvements likely to have a measure of effectiveness and, equally, a measure of durability. Such an agenda would include Question Time; prompt responses to reports of parliamentary committees; continued restoration of ministerial statements (with follow up questions); parliamentary time for legislation proposed by private members, including bills from the Senate proposed by private senators; and establishment of a parliamentary budget office.

Question Time is an obvious starting point, not least for the bearing it has on the public reputation of the House. In an ideal parliament, the key qualities of a question time are relevance and brevity. House of Representatives Question Time is marked by waffle and longevity.

The Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, has already proposed that the House, following the Senate, should introduce time limits on both questions and answers. His proposals should be adopted. Whoever is prime minister would be well-advised to encourage the new speaker, publicly, in the House, to rule flagrantly irrelevant answers out of order and, in short order, questions which stray too far from the objective of 'seeking information'.

The prime minister should also give an undertaking that questions on notice will be answered within three months, a not ungenerous period when compared to practice in a number of other parliaments whose proceedings might be regarded as 'good practice'.

Another sign of executive government dominance of the Parliament is the gross tardiness in responding to reports of parliamentary committees. There is no need to have any illusions about the quality of these documents - they rarely claim a place among the great state papers of our time. But taking a year or more to respond, when the stated rule is three months, can hardly be justified either by a competent public service or a ministry with a true sense of responsibility to Parliament.

The committees of the House are largely though not completely ham strung by practices which leave initiation of inquiries to ministers. An immediate reform should be to allow committees a real capacity to set their own agenda.

Committee chairmanships have been mainly part of the spoils going to the victor. The relevant standing order states that "a committee shall elect a government member as its chair".

Chairmanships should, instead, be distributed pro rata among all sides of politics in the House so an immediate amendment of the governing standing order will be a powerful test of faith for the prime minister.

Establishment of a Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) on a basis akin to that of the highly respected Congressional Budget Office in Washington should be the most conspicuous innovation in this reform initiative. No doubt the usual voices will be heard that Australia has a Westminster parliament and that such Washingtonian features would be out of place. These voices need not be listened to - such counsel is erroneous, seriously erroneous.

There is nothing about a PBO at odds with a Westminster-style parliament. It would sit comfortably with, and complement, the Parliamentary Research Service (PRS). It will need to be well funded and well resourced - the sort of funding which the Commonwealth has lately (and generously) directed to various universities, not least the Australian National University and the Grattan Institute (Melbourne), would serve as an important guide.

Negotiators might be well advised to insist that the PBO be established and funded on a statutory basis; it is equally important that it be located in Parliament House, not housed down the hill, for example, in West Block.

There will be strong resistance to these proposals. There will be argument that a PBO-like body should be simply part of the PRS with suitably modest funding. These views, especially inasmuch as they emanate from the Department of Finance, should be ignored.

A major advantage of establishing a PBO will be, at long last, proper, professional servicing of estimates hearings in the Senate. Though 40 years old, these hearings have deteriorated steadily; Senate estimates hearings are too much a form of trivial pursuits. This derives from the absence of regular, routine, systematic analysis of Commonwealth public expenditure and public finance on a continuing basis, not least in its federal aspects.

Some of the improvements now achievable need to flow to the Senate.

If some of these proposals, and kindred ideas from other sources, can be realised, the 2010 election result will not be without benefit. It could bring a long-overdue regeneration of a vital national institution.

JR Nethercote is an Adjunct Professor of the Public Policy Institute at the Australian Catholic University.

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It is probably reasonably safe to say that one of the last things on the mind of the various potential governments at the moment is the future of the ABC.

In any case, the virulent campaign against the ABC, and in particular allegations of bias from politicians, is mostly over. Gillard and Abbott, various media editors tell me, approached the last campaign like pros.

There were no shouting matches over the telephone about unfair coverage. Gillard and Abbott rolled with the punches. Which may, of course, say more about the meekness of the hits than about those in the boxing ring.

And yet while the political heat has departed, the constant rumbling of bias allegations against the ABC continues, ready to rear up wherever it gets a favourable hearing. The ABC is the only news organisation in the country that is forced to respond, rigorously and in triplicate (well, OK, I am making that bit up) to complaints of bias. Perhaps that is one reason why it gets so many.

You can get some sense of the travails this involves from this recent Independent Complaints Review Panel report on a complaint from climate-change sceptic Marc Hendrickx about content on the ABC Environment web portal. Remember as you read that this complaint had already been dealt with, by Auntie's internal Audience and Consumer Affairs division. Seven corrections were made to content, but Hendrickx was not satisfied. Thus, in what would be rich fodder for a Monty Pythonesque treatment, the ICRP and the ABC comes out with statements such as:

"The ABC does not believe that the omission of the Ordovician ice age, the Roman Warm Period, and the release of 'Climate Change Reconsidered' from the timeline constitutes a failure to demonstrate a diversity of principal relevant perspectives on a matter of contention or public debate across ABC Online in an appropriate time frame."
What can one say?

More seriously, the ABC has put in considerable work to working out how to measure impartiality, accuracy and bias in recent years, as can be seen from the reports listed under Quality Assurance here. And yet the allegations go on.

Apropos of all this, earlier this week the ABC Drum site ran this piece by conservative blogger Gavin Atkins about a monitor he has run on the ABC websites Unleashed and The Drum, on the basis of which he asserts that there was consistent left-wing bias during the election on these sites.

Atkins admits that his method is not infallible, but nevertheless asserts, most stridently on his own blog that many online stories by ABC staff demonstrate consistent bias. The ABC's chief online reporter, Annabel Crabb, comes in for a particular caning.

The editor of The Drum (and former editor of Crikey) Jonathan Green responded in feisty fashion this morning to the Atkins allegations. "I suppose I should be flattered that Gavin Atkins reads every word we run. I thought only my mum did that," he said.

Green regards Atkins' methodology as close to worthless. He asserts that every mention of, for example, Julia Gillard is counted, so that even a statement that she was leading in the polls would be regarded as a positive mention, and counted in the Atkins bias-o-meter.

Nevertheless Green thought it important that The Drum ran the Atkins piece. "I would like to be one of the few media outlets in Australia that is open to discussion of its performance," he said. And he is confident that, over the election campaign, The Drum and Unleashed did their job of representing a range of views fairly.

Atkins' work, of course, is picked up with delight by other conservative commentators, such as Andrew Bolt, and married with mentions of ABC chairman Maurice Newman's notorious speech about the importance of not developing a particular culture or mindset that might lead to bias. Thus we can be reasonably sure that it makes its way and is noticed by the highest levels of the ABC.

Despite this, one of the near certainties about the rural independents holding the balance of power is that the Auntie will be safe from threats of funding cuts. Ask Tony Windsor or Bob Katter about how important the national broadcaster is in the bush.

What I find sad is that all this energy is spent on what are largely wild goose chases. The larger and more important question of what journalists, including those at the ABC, can do to lift the game of the profession when it comes to reporting politics is left largely unexamined.

That is where the energy of the critics should be focused.

And that will have to be one of the preoccupations of all of those prating about a new kind of politics. We know the independents regarded the media's performance as abysmal. What might they want the ABC to do about it?

This article was originally published on Crikey.
Margaret Simons is an award-winning freelance journalist and the author of seven books and numerous essays and articles. She is also a part-time lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology. She blogs on journalism and the media at The Content Makers.

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Have we been transported back to the 1940s? The sad answer is that we seem to be reliving the past and witnessing the large-scale deportation of ethnic minorities throughout parts of Europe.

The recent experience of 'Travellers', Gypsies and the Roma in Western Europe, suggests a return to those dark times of ethnic minority targeting and mass deportations, all carried out in the name of public security and border protection.

Migration has always been linked to issues of local and national security. The movement of migrants has, for example, transformed the social, economic and political structure of regions and states, transported diseases across space threatening health security, and on occasions undermined the stability of local communities and even states.

Without any doubt, migration is one of the major global issues of the 21st century - not just a handful of boat people on Australia's horizon, but also the millions who cross international borders, legally and illegally, in search of jobs, education, freedom and/or in search of a better life.

Such movements have become a potent force in shaping life as we know it, with substantial impacts on population size, age structure, fertility, and general social and economic conditions.

The arrival of migrants can quickly impact on the social and economic balance of small local communities as well as states, and sometimes, when migrants are visibly different and distinctive in terms of language, culture, and religion, may engender community concerns about possible threats to housing, living standards, jobs and the local environment. In some instances this may result in prejudice, marginalisation, exclusion and disadvantage, further highlighting physical and cultural 'difference'. In certain circumstances, this may also lead to perceived threats to public security and draconian responses from governments. The fate of the Roma in France is a good example.

Here the Government has instituted a policy to raze their encampments throughout the country and forcibly deport many of the 15,000 or so back to Romania and Bulgaria, despite the fact that these people are EU citizens with the right to move to and live in France. The French Government insists on such groups obtaining a work permit and if after three months such citizens are found not to have sufficient resources with which to support themselves, they may be legally deported.

Much is made of the fact that such groups display poor health and a certain lawlessness that constitutes a threat to French life and French citizens. Never mind the fact that most of these people have found it impossible to formally register and enjoy the civil, political, economic and social rights enjoyed by most other citizens, or the fact that they have been largely kept in a form of social limbo by local municipalities who have often failed to provide space for the Roma to park and hook up to facilities as they are required to do under French law.

Ironically, under EU regulations, once deported, the Roma can return to France at any point. But such an irony is lost on the hundreds forcibly uprooted from where they have lived for years (in some instances, decades), and sent 'home' with a compensatory 300 Euro from the French Government stuffed into their pockets. France is not alone in this policy of scapegoating and enforced deportations.

In 2008 Italy declared a state of emergency and evicted thousands of Roma as 'security threats', and more recently, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Belgium have also instituted programs to expel the Roma.

To fully understand the plight of the Roma one has to ask why they left Eastern Europe in the first place. The answer is that they had no future, no jobs, their children were confined to 'special' schools for the backward or mentally retarded, they experienced extreme local hostility, and, like the rest of us, they simply wanted a better life for themselves and their children. The EU's failure to intervene in this gross denial of basic human rights is in many ways indefensible.

Are there any messages for Australia and New Zealand in all of this?

Both countries pride themselves on their multi-cultural and melting-pot philosophy, whereby migrants and some refugees are readily accepted and easily absorbed into local society. At least that's how it was and how it should be.

In Australia the boat people, the perceived flood of Asian migrants, many on temporary visas, illegal migrants and over- stayers, potential terrorists, and the odd occasion of ethnic street violence (remember the Cronulla 'riots'?) have produced a slight hardening of attitudes in some political quarters. But are the boat people, for example, a threat to public security, and would 3,000 or so such arrivals tip the immigration scales and be a threat to our population stability?

Perhaps it is more a case of politicians pandering to the populist vote. No one would dispute the Australian Government's right to protect our borders and determine who comes here, and who stays, but by turning back the boats and/or sending new refugee arrivals back, are we not replicating in microcosm what the French and other European governments are currently doing to their Roma populations?

Peter Curson is Professor of Population and Security in the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney.

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Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Bob Katter have a huge task ahead of them over the next few days - a burden made heavier by the poor level of secretarial support successive governments have provided. So I thought I could lighten their load by drafting a template letter to send to the two contenders:

Dear Julia/Tony

Thank you for your interest. I'm sorry it's taken you three years to find my e-mail and phone number, but I'm always happy to talk to you.

We have some specific interests including broadband, water policy, the distribution of health resources and policies to deal with climate change - an issue which we are sorry to see has been pushed aside by both parties. While a warmer climate might extend the outdoor dining season for café-latte socialists and may be dismissed by those who think it is "crap", it is already of vital concern to everyone in rural Australia, and will become of concern to all when they find storms dumping dust in their suburban back yards and when they find their food prices rise to the point of causing hardship. But these negotiations we can defer for a few days. Seeing you made so few [letter to Julia] any [letter to Tony] meaningful policy proposals during the campaign, we are confident that you have plenty of policy flexibility.

Right now, our interests are in governance. We demand some basic reforms to ensure that future elections present clear policy options. Something less patronizing than "stop the boats/debt/waste/big new taxes" and with a little more content than meaningless talk about "moving forward" and "working families". Even though successive governments, state and federal, have misdirected education funding to the detriment of our regions, our voters retain the native intelligence to detect bullshit.

The principles behind these demands are to distribute power back to Parliament, which represents all Australians, and away from Executive Government, which the election results show represents only 39 to 44 per cent of Australians. We are fed up with the instability of "winner take all" politics.

First, we want campaign financing reform, to prohibit all corporate donations to political parties - including union donations. That's not going to go down well in Sussex Street or in the Collins Street boardrooms, but we cling to the old fashioned belief that politics is about people, not corporations.

Second, we want a dramatic cut in ministerial staff levels. Ministers, helpless and unworldly creatures that they are, need secretarial and administrative support, but they should rely on the public service for policy advice. Bob Katter can easily find jobs for former staffers on banana plantations, and is happy to offer some training so they can tell the difference between a banana, a lemon and a cane toad.

Third, we insist on parliamentary reform, including an independent speaker (if you offer that to us as a sinecure it proves you have learned nothing in the last six weeks), respect for private members' bills, and a reform of Question Time.

Fourth, we want all contact between ministers and lobbyists to be recorded on a public website, with an outline of the proceedings of those contacts. Those outlines should be prepared by a public servant present at the meetings. (Please keep the website in plain text until we get something better than dialup.) Again, we acknowledge that this may result in unemployment, but we have a labour shortage up here, and could offer former lobbyists the novelty of productive work.

Fifth, we want all policy research and advice, with minimal restrictions for national security purposes, to be made public. Policy advice should be the work of agencies working at arms' length from government; the Productivity Commission and the Reserve Bank provide sound models.

Sixth, an essential agency in this regard is Treasury. We want to see all serious policy proposals, emanating from government, opposition or other members, made subject to publicly available benefit-cost analysis in good time before any election. We accept that in many cases it will be difficult for researchers to identify all costs and benefits, but that is no excuse for failing to present whatever analysis is available. This would replace the much abused "Costing of election commitments", which, with its narrow reliance on fiscal costs, has distorted the public's understanding of economic management, and is hindering our capacity to make nation-building public investments.

We look forward to meeting with you. Bob Katter has offered his office as a venue, but we realize that since airlines have been deregulated it's prohibitively expensive to get to Innisfail or Mount Isa at short notice. But we can meet in Tony Windsor's office in Armidale or in Rob Oakeshott's office in Port Macquarie. We urge you to drive up along the New England or Pacific "Highways" so you can experience the costs of years of diversion to middle class welfare the public revenues that should have gone to infrastructure. We pray [Tony] wish [Julia] for your safety. We won't have room in the conference room for any ministerial staffers, but we can provide them with a bed at the local YMCA, a KFC voucher, and some coins to operate the public telephone outside the pub that Jack McEwen got for us in the 1969 election. A secretary can show them how to operate a rotary dial phone.




Ian McAuley lectures in Public Sector Finance at the University of Canberra.

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What is incumbency and a personal following worth? If you are Malcolm Turnbull it is a whopping 13 per cent. That was the difference between his primary vote in Wentworth of 60 per cent and the Senate vote for the Liberal Party in the same seat of a more modest 47 per cent.

Comparing Senate voting and House of Representatives voting patterns throws up some interesting results that point to the importance of incumbency in firewalling the established parties against newcomers. This is especially the case for the Labor Party and the challenge from the Greens - as incoming Victorian senator called his party, 'the new light on the hill'.

Adam Bandt won a famous victory in Melbourne on election night, as the once safe Labor stronghold fell to the Greens with a swing in excess of 10 per cent. It was the first time since the 1920s that a new party has broken into the House of Representatives in a general election.

For Labor however, the march of the Greens into its inner city heartlands could have been yet more dramatic. ABC elections analyst Antony Green argued before the election that the departure of popular Melbourne MP Lindsay Tanner would likely see Melbourne voting patterns revert to the party lines evident in the electorate's Senate voting.

In the Senate in 2007, the Greens polled 6 per cent higher in the Senate than in the House of Representatives in Melbourne. In 2010 The Greens ultimately more than translated their 2007 Senate vote into the House of Representatives vote on the back of an exceptionally well fought local campaign. A comparison of Senate and House of Representatives voting patterns in a number of other inner city seats shows how reliant Labor is on incumbency to defend itself against the Greens.

In Melbourne Ports, where Labor's Michael Danby is the sitting member, the House of Representatives vote for the main parties in 2010 stands at Greens 21 per cent, Labor 36 per cent and Liberal 38 per cent. Compare this to the Senate vote in Melbourne Ports of Greens 26 per cent, Labor 31 per cent and Liberal 34 per cent. With far more candidates, the vote for both major parties declines, but the Greens increase - however once we go through some other similar seats the trend becomes clearer.

In Batman, the Labor high profile MP Martin Ferguson enjoys a 53 per cent primary vote, the Greens 23.5 per cent and the Liberals 19 per cent. In the Senate vote in Batman however the Labor vote falls to 46 per cent, the Liberals to 17 per cent and the Greens rise to 25 per cent.

In the New South Wales seat of Grayndler Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese has struggled to fight off the Greens Sam Byrne in this election, forced to preferences on 46.7 per cent, to the Greens 25.5 per cent and the Liberals 24 per cent. Incumbency has certainly saved this seat for Labor.

When we look at the Senate vote in Grayndler, the figures are 41 per cent for Labor, 22 per cent for Liberals and 26.5 per cent for the Greens. The partisan vote for the Labor 'brand' in Grayndler is not much more than the primary vote achieved by Labor's unsuccessful candidate Cath Bowtel in Melbourne.

In Sydney the Labor's Tanya Plibersek has been saved by a stronger showing for the Liberals, but the difference between Labor's vote in the House of Representatives and the Senate is the same. Plibersek won 44.5 per cent to the Greens' 23.7 per cent and Liberals' 27 per cent. The Senate vote in Sydney however was a mere 36 per cent for Labor, 24 per cent for Liberals and 28 per cent for the Greens. This suggests, using the Melbourne example, that the only thing keeping Sydney from falling to the Greens at this election was Plibersek's incumbency.

These results suggest that the Greens are indeed making significant inroads into Labor's once immovable support base in the inner cities. But the Liberals cannot celebrate either. Besides the continuing collapse of the Liberals to third place in the inner cities, the Greens vote continues to rise in their blue ribbon urban seats and, should the Greens outpoll Labor and force the Liberals to preferences, similar transfers could occur in surprising places.

Returning to the seat of Wentworth, the difference between House of Representative votes for the local member is in stark contrast with the more partisan Senate vote. Turnbull won the Liberals an incredible 60 per cent primary vote. In the Senate however, the results in Wentworth stand at a far more modest 47 per cent for the Liberals, 22 per cent for the Greens and 24 per cent for Labor. It is likely that a personal following like that enjoyed by Turnbull also inflates to some degree his party's Senate vote in the area, particularly from green voters. On these figures it is not unreasonable to suggest that incumbency also firewalled Wentworth against the march of the Greens.

For the Greens, the next challenge is convincing those who support the party in the Senate in a raft of inner city seats to also vote for it in the lower house. In Melbourne in 2010, the retirement of the sitting Labor member hit the partisan 'reset' button and made that task easier. The Senate and House of Representatives vote for the Greens in Melbourne in 2010 was virtually identical, and the result was victory.

The Greens are rightfully celebrating a tremendous breakthrough, with their first House of Representatives seat and a senator in every state. Their strong adherence to progressive and green values nationally and effective local campaigning have carried them this far, but the march could only just be beginning.

Dr Aron Paul is a Melbourne-based writer and historian, and a postgraduate student in Environment and Planning at RMIT.

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With a little luck the two major parties may finally have lost the stranglehold by which they have throttled open and honest debate on issues where they don't want to, or can't, publicly justify their positions or their actions. Australian Greens leader Bob Brown wants the new parliament to debate Australia's role in Afghanistan. Hopefully both he and we - the Australian people - will finally hear that debate.

There's a lot of ground that might be covered in the debate, such as what the government knew, the legality of what it did and what it is doing, where the money's gone and is still going, and whether the war is "just", if indeed any war can be.

The intelligence
Some of us remember the British Government's 2001 dossier "Responsibility for the Terrorist attacks in the United States" and the doubts expressed about it by Senior British lawyers Anthony Scrivener QC , Richard Gordon QC and Nick Blake QC.

The 9/11 Commission Report (released in 2004) says:

Although Bin Laden's top priority apparently was to attack the United States, others had a different view. The Taliban leaders put their main emphasis on the year's military offensive against the Northern Alliance ... From the Taliban's perspective, an attack against the United States might be counterproductive. It might draw the Americans into the war against them, just when final victory seemed within their grasp. There is evidence that Mullah Omar initially opposed a major al Qaeda operation directly against the United States in 2001 ... According to KSM, in late August, when the operation was fully planned, Bin Ladin formally notified the al Qaeda Shura Council that a major attack against the United States would take place in the coming weeks. When some council members objected, Bin Ladin countered that Mullah Omar lacked authority to prevent al Qaeda from conducting jihad outside Afghanistan. Though most of the Shura Council reportedly disagreed, Bin Ladin persisted. The attacks went forward...
This seems to support reports earlier this year that:

Evidence now available from various sources, including recently declassified US State Department documents, shows that the Taliban regime led by Mullah Mohammad Omar imposed strict isolation on Osama bin Laden after 1998 to prevent him from carrying out any plots against the United States ...
Was this information made available to Lord Robertson (then NATO Secretary General, now an employee of The Cohen Group) during the October 2, 2001 briefing by US Ambassador Frank Taylor just days before the bombing of Afghanistan?

Three days after the September 11 attacks our then Prime Minister John Howard announced:

"The federal cabinet had a special meeting today primarily to consider the consequences of the awful events that have occurred in the United States in recent days. We came very quickly to the view that the provisions of the ANZUS Treaty should be invoked in relation to the attack upon the United States...."
On September 17, 2001 Howard moved a motion that the House, amongst other things, "believes that the terrorist actions in New York City and Washington DC constitute an attack upon the United States of America within the meaning of Articles IV and V of the ANZUS Treaty". The motion failed to make mention of the references in the ANZUS Treaty (Articles I, IV and VI) to the UN Security Council.

On October 17, 2001 Howard announced the deployment of Australian troops to the ground war in Afghanistan. On October 22, 2001 - during an election campaign - Howard and Opposition leader Kim Beazley farewelled the troops from Perth.

In an address to the Australian Defence Association late in October 2001 Howard said "No-one now doubts that the al Qaeda network, led by Osama bin Laden, was responsible for the attacks and that the Taliban has allowed Afghanistan to become a safe haven for international terrorism..."

Exactly what evidence did the government have before it climbed aboard the US war machine? Did the Australian government prepare a "dossier" before committing our troops to Afghanistan? Exactly what were our intelligence analysts saying as our government was acting?

The legality of the invasion of Afghanistan
Did the United Nations Security Council pass a final judgment on the lawfulness of the measures against Afghanistan?

Before taking countermeasures against a sovereign nation for "harboring terrorists" what evidence was available to confirm that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were acting on the instructions or under the direction or control of the Taliban? Did the Taliban have a substantial involvement with bin Laden and al Qaeda in terms of the September 11 attacks ? Did the Taliban offer to extradite Osama bin Laden upon the production of evidence (and later without evidence) linking him to the September 11 attacks to an independent tribunal instead of the United States?

Having regard to humanitarian law, is it true that the use of force in self-defence must consider the issue of proportionality? If so, is proportionality judged in terms of the need to repel those attacks against which an act of self-defence is aimed and might it be considered not proportionate to retaliate in the same way as the initial attacks, or to produce the same amount of damage?

Was our government acting lawfully and morally in its deployment of our troops?

The role of the United Nations
Was the UN sidelined by our allies - and by our government - at the time of the invasion of Afghanistan? In his address to the United Nations General Assembly on September 24, 2001 Secretary-General Kofi Annan said:

"The attack of 11 September was an attack on the rule of law - that is, on the very principle that enables nations and individuals to live together in peace, by following agreed rules and settling their disputes through agreed procedures. So let us respond by reaffirming the rule of law, on international as well as the national levels. No effort should be spared in bringing the perpetrators to justice, in a clear and transparent process that all can understand and accept. Let us uphold our own principles and standards, so that we can make the difference unmistakable, for all the world to see, between those who resort to terrorism and those who fight against it ... Let us reject the path of violence, which is the product of nihilism and despair. Let us prove by our actions that there is no need to despair; that the political and economic problems of our time can be solved peacefully; and that no human life should be sacrificed, because every human being has cause to hope ..."
Australian Aid
With Australia's total aid commitment to Afghanistan being $650 million so far, why is no information available about any audit activities for aid expenditure in Afghanistan? And why hasn't there been a Senate inquiry to ensure that since the 2001 invasion the aid is being spent efficiently, effectively and with full accounting?

And surely it raises questions when the October 2009 Supplementary Estimates (2009-10) reveal that from 2001 to 2005 AusAid's online databases can't ascribe Official Development Assistance (ODA) and ODA-eligible funding flows to any particular receiving agency/organisation. Then, for the period from 2005 to 2009, the external agencies/organisations to which AusAid ODA funding has flowed can be identified, but information on individual recipients hasn't been collected for ODA eligible funding provided by other Australian government departments and agencies.

Shouldn't Australian taxpayers know where this money's going?

Permanent war, private profits
The Australian government has funded the ADF deployment to Afghanistan until June 2011 at a cost of $1.6 billion for 2010-11, including $487 million for enhanced force protection measures. The total cost of our operations in Afghanistan now stands at $6.1 billion since 2001.

Recent reports show that the British ministry of defence are facing a 36 billion pound budget blackhole over the next decade, and savage cuts are likely under the defence review with politicians warning that the war has become financially untenable. Similar rumblings are being heard in Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain and so on, even though NATO leaders were warning against deep defence cuts.

Professor Niall Ferguson spoke recently about the potentially dire consequences of huge defence spending in America.

How confident is the Australian Government that our allies can afford to commit the long term financial resources necessary to "win" in Afghanistan? Can we really afford to make a substantial ongoing commitment in the face of another global financial crisis?

Conclusion
Australia's involvement in the war in Afghanistan has never been justified on moral grounds, by logical argument, or on substantial evidence available to public scrutiny. Parliamentary debate has been blanketed by a strangely unified but never properly explained "bipartisan support" from the major parties; public debate has been minimal because of the parliamentary gag and because press coverage has been relatively superficial and skewed by political "spin" and "embedded" journalism, so issues like these have never seen the light of day. If Bob Brown can finally force our politicians to show their hands and justify what they have done - and what they are doing - he will have taken the first significant step in restoring political accountability to the Australian people.

Kellie Tranter is a lawyer and writer.

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i) And it was written that on the day before the Sabbath the people would gather together in a public place and accept burnt offerings, tip tomato sauce down their fronts, cast their votes and return to their homes. And when the darkness had fallen, and after they had uncorked their evening meal and begun to engage in wassail, there came the sound of a great counting.

ii) And as the counting advanced there emerged a pattern, and it was like unto that established by Noah. For the votes came in two by two, one of each kind with one each of the other kind, until the Ark was full.

iii) For the people had chosen equally, and by close of play either Julia nor Anthony could rule in the land. And so it was that the result hung in the scales of balance for many days and many nights, and was undecided.

iv) And calls were made to the uttermost parts of the land, including to Solomon, who was wise, for this would make a nice change.

v) And there were those who lacked dependence, but gaineth much, and were not part of the tribes of either Julia nor Anthony. And they carryeth all before them in the counting and were victorious, each in his area and after his kind. And they were agreed on one issue. And it was Barnaby. For they haveth no time for same.

vi) And they were courted by the Julianites and the Anthonites, yea, even as the counting was done.

vii) And the scribes looked at the figures and they all agreed that they had seen it coming, and were not surprised, and had predicted exactly this result, for it was always on the cards and was inevitable for the following reasons, which they listed. For the scribes see all things, and hear all things, and know all things.

viii) But one factor sneaketh up even upon the scribes. For Bob, who was Brown and who was also Green, turneth out not only to control the senate but to have a big romp downstairs as well. For those who were Green had gone forth and multiplied. And this was a feature of proceedings.

ix) And after a time, late in the evening of the counting, Julia came forth and spoke to the multitude, and they called her name. And although she had suffered losses in all parts of the country, she calmeth the people, and pointeth out that according to law she was still the caretaker leader, or janitor.

x) And Anthony came forth also and the multitude called also his name, and his wife's name, for the wassail was well in hand by this stage and the people were up for anything they could dance to.

xi) And Anthony acknowledged his triumph, and explained how he had done this remarkable thing.

xii) And this was unusual. For he had not won.

xiii) And Kevin spoke also, and as is indicated in the form guide, he spoke for some time and was fulsome in his praise for his own efforts and for his many qualities. And the people were pleased to see him up and about again, although this was a good time to put the kettle on.

xiv) And Bob, who was Brown, calleth it a victory for those who were Green. And it was so. And Bob was most excited, and fighteth the urge to pull his top up over his head and run around the field with outstretched arms.

xv) For there was a large swing to Bob.

xvi) And there was another swing which was even bigger than Bob's swing, and it was swing to informality. And those with long white beards stroked them at this point, saying 'Yikes. A great many of the people have lost interest in these matters'.

xvii) And messengers were sent out by the Julianites and the Anthonites to their imaginary friends at the Oakshottery, and in the House of Windsor and among the Kattermites. And they were experienced, and they understood, and were responsible, and they all spoke of the need for stable government. And the leaders agreed, saying 'Absolutely. Now, how about some steak knives?'

xviii) And the people waited, for there was nothing else to do, and they were getting quite good at it.

Saint Paul's Letter to the Electorates: Chapter 1Saint Paul's Letter to the Electorates: Chapter 2Saint Paul's Letter to the Electorates: Chapter 3Saint Paul's Letter to the Electorates: Chapter 4Saint Paul's Letter to the Electorates: Chapter 5Saint Paul's Letter to the Electorates: Chapter 6Saint Paul's Letter to the Electorates: Chapter 7Saint Paul's Letter to the Electorates: Chapter 9
Saint Paul, known to his friends as the Apostle to the Gentiles, has written 27 books.

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The last week and a half of the election campaign was characterised by something amazing for us geeks: Access to the internet was lodged front and centre as an election issue.

How times change. Communications Minister Richard Alston used to deride broadband internet access by labelling it as nothing more than a high-speed pornography delivery vector, and here we are, less than eight years later, and ubiquitous access to broadband is actually swinging an election.

As desperation mounted during the election campaign, Prime Minister Julia Gillard and current Communications Minister Stephen Conroy spent a Thursday morning in mid-August pushing a big blue button to officially open the Opticomm-built NBN trial network in Midway Point, Tasmania. NBNCo CEO Mike Quigley enthusiastically added to the political booster-shot by claiming that speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second will be possible.

But somehow it wasn't enough. The sales job behind the NBN was so bad that the editorial pages of some of the country's newspapers were using it as part of the reasoning behind throwing their support behind Tony Abbott.

Online, the Australian Network Operators Group (AusNOG) has hosted weeks of energised debate about whether the NBN is actually needed. You read that correctly: The Government has done such a catastrophically bad job of communicating their broadband vision that they can't even convincingly sell it to broadband ISPs.

Why is that? Ubiquitous high-speed broadband ought to be a no-brainer, especially in regional areas which have been very poorly served by virtually every type of infrastructure.

So what might a hypothetical independent MP say to the Government if he was so bold as to sit down to tell the Communications Minister how to do his job?

Firstly: cut out the hyperbole. We're all told that South Korea is "leaving us behind" in the broadband stakes, having had 100 megabit per second fibre to the home for years. But that means we know that most of the pie-in-the-sky innovative new services that NBN boosters wax lyrical about are probably hyperventilative garbage. Having had near-ubiquitous high-speed broadband for so long, the South Koreans use it in more or less the same way that we use our own internet access, only faster. It stands to reason that we'll probably use it in the same way too.

That's not to say that innovation won't happen, but let's get a grip: It's hard to believe that the NBN will transform schoolrooms given that most schools already have broadband internet access; and I'll believe that we'll all make widespread use of telemedicine as soon as malpractice laws are amended enough to make my GP feel comfortable about prescribing a glass of milk and a good lie-down without an in-person consultation.

The benefits arising from the NBN will be far more mundane. They'll be more concerned with ubiquity, not speed. They'll remove the tyranny of distance that causes people and businesses in Forbes or Hamilton to be disadvantaged against people and businesses in Melbourne and Sydney. And they'll be incremental, quietly displacing offline parts of our lives in the same way that Google has quietly displaced the White Pages.

Secondly: cut the guts out of the financial arguments. $43 billion sounds like a lot of money, but as one of my colleagues points out, it's only about twice as much as Australia is intending to spend on replacing the Collins Class submarines it bought less than 15 years ago. If the Government can run an economic stimulus programme that sees $44 billion spent in a year and project a surplus less than four years later, we should be able to spread the same amount of expenditure out over a ten year NBN build cycle without going broke. We survived the GFC, so we actually do have the money.

Thirdly: The price for access. Neither the Government nor NBNCo have yet made any statements about how much NBN broadband services are likely to cost. Indeed, Quigley's admissions in the May Senate Estimates round could be indicative of an attempt to cloud the issue. Mr. Quigley confirmed that services on the NBN trial in Tasmania are being offered to ISPs for $0 setup fee and $0 per month ongoings - meaning that retail prices offered by trial-participant ISPs will likely be something of a bait-and-switch: There will be a future day when NBNCo will increase their wholesale price. What will Tasmanian broadband prices look like then?

It's not difficult to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations to work out what the access price can be. The Government has said that the entire $43 billion enterprise will be sold to private investors five years after the network is built, and those private investors will want a commercial return on their money. Picking a number out of the air, 8% of $43 billion is about $3.44 billion per annum. Divide that over the 8 million premises expected to receive an NBN service to get $430 per household per annum, or about $36 per month. That's assuming that the network costs nothing per annum to operate, never needs to be maintained, and carries no additional debt which needs to be serviced from operating income, so perhaps bump it up to $50 per month per service to be conservative (and bump it up again if take-up isn't 100%: What if commercial returns must be yielded from 4 million premises instead of 8 million?)

That doesn't sound like much, until you consider that you'll have to plug that NBN port into an ISP, and ISPs aren't free. If the port price is circa $50 per month, what's the retail cost to the consumer? $80? $100? And what about when NBNCo is privatised, and prices are dictated by a monopoly provider interested in maximising returns to its shareholders?

So this brings us to what a savvy, engaged rural independent MP is likely to care about the most: The public interest. Or, more specifically, the interest of the part of the public that votes for him.

Rural Australians have not generally been well-served by telecommunications. Broadband connectivity is usually poor, if it exists at all, and living in areas where calling the next door neighbor could very well be a timed long-distance call provides perspective that city telephone users have probably never considered.

Bob Katter has shown awareness of this, commenting that, "Telstra's privatisation was diabolical for Australia ... Clearly you can sustain those services in the cities and you can't in the country."

Katter has correctly identified the fact that privatising Telstra created a fiduciary duty for the company to act in the best interests of its shareholders, and not in the best interests of Katter's rural electorate.

Yet the Labor NBN plan proposes to repeat exactly what Katter has already suffered.

So, what to do?

I think a perspective change is necessary. The NBN isn't a bright, shiny, geeky technology project. It's an infrastructure project, like a road (or, if ex-Senator Alston prefers, a sewer).

We're used to roads being built for political purposes: Most of Highway 1 was financed out of 50 years worth of pork-barrelling, but we don't now dispute the economic benefits it delivers.

Roads are boring, mundane, ubiquitous. But they're used for all kinds of purposes their designers never intended. They enable commerce. They enable communities to stay in touch with each other. It's unthinkable for a town in even the remotest corner of the nation to go without a Government-funded road linking it to the outside world.

No matter how few vehicles traverse a road used by some outlying satellite town in the middle of nowhere, both sides of politics know that it's political suicide to question the existence of the road on financial grounds. Nobody ever demands a cost-benefit analysis for a new road, they're simply installed where they're needed as an exercise in nation building. We know that road building projects cost billions, but we as an electorate accept their necessity without any controversy.

Roads aren't expected to operate at a profit. And toll-roads aside, nobody is proposing privatising the nation's highway network.

So it must be with the NBN.

I believe the NBN should proceed as a nation-building project. Its construction costs should be accepted as the 21st century public works programme that they are, and once it's built it should be heavily subsidised to ensure that access prices for end users remain affordable.

All thought of NBNCo ever making a profit for private investors should be vanquished. Indeed, the whole enterprise should be structured so that it cannot survive without continual injection of Government equity, just like the road network.

That'll make it stable and enduring, even if a new Government comes along later with different ideological objectives. An enterprise which loses money is impossible to privatise - who'd buy it? Once 8 million voting households are connected to a subsidised NBN, no Government will ever suggest hiking literally everyone's access fees by fiddling with the subsidies, it'd be like building tollgates at the end of every voter's street. Instead of hiking prices, politicians in bush electorates will fall over themselves to pork-barrel by turning regions serviced by wireless or satellite into new city-equivalent fibre optic developments, enabling the network to get incrementally better with age.

It also has the advantage that it'll get through the Senate. The ALP clearly wants the NBN to pass, but the Greens policy is to support it as public infrastructure, and oppose its privatisation. The new independent kingmakers created by Saturday's election have all expressed a desire for governmental stability, and that means they need to be able to get legislation through. An NBN which remains permanently in public ownership ticks that box rather well.

The Government's NBN privatisation plans propose creating a Government-funded cash-cow for telco executives which will inspire us to spend the rest of our days grizzling about how expensive the internet has become.

Treating the NBN like a road will give the nation a public infrastructure asset which we can be proud of, and incorporate into the fabric of our lives.


Mark Newton has spent almost 10 years serving as a boots-on-the-ground network engineer for one of Australia's largest ISPs.

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Don't blame Mark Latham's 60 Minutes spot for the increase in informal ballots last Saturday.

Blame compulsory voting.

The 2010 election saw the highest number of informal votes cast in more than 25 years. In seven separate seats the informal votes were higher than 10 per cent of the total - all in New South Wales.

Latham's muckraking reflected the general sense of disillusionment with the political choice in 2010. He was not the cause of it. If his spot was broadcast during, say, the 2007 election, Latham would have simply been dismissed as a posturing clown.

Well, more of a posturing clown.

Those who deliberately spoil their ballot are indicating they are not simply frustrated with the choices, but are frustrated they are compelled to choose. The informal vote is as much an indictment of the system as a protest against this campaign.

Sure, many informal votes are only accidentally informal. Most people want to place a valid vote, even if they don't have enough interest to figure out how to do so.

Yet that should be damning enough.

In 1924, a Labor Senator said that the "the opinions of the negligent and apathetic section of the electors are not worth obtaining". A bit harsh. But certainly it seems counterproductive to force the negligent and apathetic to give an opinion on something they are not interested in.

Many voters themselves feel they are not well-informed enough to make a choice. The extremely high number of undecided voters up to polling day is a clear sign the parties completely failed to engage many voters.

Indeed, much dissatisfaction with Election 2010 can be traced back to our compulsory voting system.

In 2005, RMIT Professor Sinclair Davidson and two other RMIT academics, Derek Chong and Tim Fry, examined the political consequences of voluntary voting. (They may have telegraphed their punch in the title: "It's an evil thing to oblige people to vote". And Davidson is an Institute of Public Affairs colleague of mine. Take that as you will.)

Davidson and Co. found the biggest losers from compulsory voting are the minor parties.

In the four federal elections the authors looked at (2004, 2001, 1998 and 1996), the Democrats and the Greens could have had a substantially higher vote share, if voting wasn't compulsory. Certainly in the Senate, but often in the House of Representatives as well.

In 1998 the Democrats could have received more than 15 per cent of the Senate vote share, compared to the 8 per cent they actually did get. In the 2004 election, the House Greens vote could have jumped from 6.8 per cent to 9 per cent, and in the Senate from 7.4 per cent to 10 or even 14 per cent.

The academics also argued a voluntary voting system might slightly favour the Coalition.

Nevertheless, we should take their conclusions with a grain of salt. The parties prepare their election strategies with the quirks and consequences of compulsory voting firmly in mind. You go to election with the system you have.

The obsessive focus on marginal electorates is arguably a consequence of our ballot system.

The major parties by and large favour compulsory voting because it is more efficient for them. Marginal electorate campaigns are the electoral equivalent of Roman divide-and-rule.

In a voluntary voting system, they'd have to work to energise not just marginal voters, but their base as well. You cannot expect unthinking loyalty from your supporters to get you into government. Your supporters might stay at home.

At the very least, all parties would be forced to rethink their strategies - and policies - to suit.

There's another important argument against compulsory voting - we ought to have the freedom not to vote. In one of this country's few libertarian classics, Rip van Australia, John Singleton claimed it is the "ultimate contradiction for a supposedly free and democratic society to be founding on a system of compulsory voting." But Australia is a very utilitarian country. Arguments about rights and liberties don't get very far here.

Many people claim that compulsory voting gives elected governments legitimacy.

Put aside for a moment the implicit belief that the majority of democratic governments overseas are therefore somewhat illegitimate. If legitimacy is what we're seeking, then why not compel citizens to take turns running for parliament (like jury duty for Canberra) or insist they join a political party?

Absurd, of course, but the legitimacy argument is too vague to be useful.

The independents say the result of this election reflects a desire in the community for parliamentary reform. And the Greens claim the preferential system conceals their party's electoral support.

They might all want to rethink compulsory voting.

Chris Berg is a research fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs and editor of the IPA Review. Follow him at twitter.com/chrisberg.

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Assuming - and it still remains a big assumption - that Julia Gillard manages to cobble together a deal with the independents to support a minority Labor Government her next challenge will be to tell Australian voters what she intends to do with Kevin.

Rudd that is. It's an answer she must get right. Especially in a hung Parliament. As Independent Rob Oakeshott has reminded anyone who cares to listen, in a Parliament as finely balanced as this one, any MP, Labor or Liberal, who chooses to defect from their party and sit on the cross benches will have a share of the balance of power.

That includes Rudd. If you doubt that's possible think back to Billy Hughes. Labor Prime Minister for one year, from 1915 to 1916 he subsequently "ratted" to form the National Labor Party serving out the balance of his Prime Ministership till 1923.

After that he spent the rest of his political life - 51 years of it - serially defecting from parties and re-joining others, looking for a leadership opening.

But Rudd wouldn't do that, would he? Two observations.

One; Rudd campaigned for his re-election in the seat of Griffith as a virtual independent. There was no Labor signage. On election eve he was framed by yellow balloons with his name in red and black. His victory speech focused on Labor values rather than the Labor "party". Even then he still suffered a 9 per cent primary swing away from him which translated into a 4 per cent two party preferred swing to the Liberal National Party.

So much for Rudd's restorative powers in Queensland.

Second; Rudd is extremely dangerous to Gillard because he has nothing to lose. By contrast she has everything at stake. With a hung Parliament and a minority Labor Government at best, Gillard confronts Rudd in a weakened state.

Had she won with a substantial majority, Rudd would've been about as relevant as last year's model mobile phone. Gillard could've made a choice as to whether she honored her commitments to her former leader or not. Now, with power draining away from her, she has little option but to bring Rudd back into the Cabinet. But if Labor does form Government in what portfolio is the big question.

Often in these situations the best source of information is the senior ranks of the Canberra bureaucracy. On the public service bush telegraph in the capital the serious word is that Rudd may be slotted into health.

The vacancy arises because, say senior bureaucrats, the current Health Minister, Nicola Roxon has been quietly lobbying behind the scenes to become Attorney-General if Labor wins government. Roxon's office describes the claims as "absolute rubbish".

Whatever Roxon's intentions, giving Rudd Health makes sense on most counts for Gillard. The health and hospital changes on which Labor campaigned during the election were largely Rudd's baby. Those reforms are currently trapped inside the policy boa constrictor that is the Council of Australian Governments (COAG). Who best to push them through but Australia's Chief Bureaucrat? Rudd is possibly the only person in the country that really understands (and enjoys) the COAG process.

There is however another potential bonus for Gillard if she puts Rudd into Health and it's this; if Rudd fails the whole flawed health agenda - particularly the hospital networks scheme - goes out the door with him.

Gillard will be able to jettison both Rudd and his reforms, while at the same time saying she kept her promises to the former Prime Minister.

The difficulty Gillard faces in making all this happen is that her supporters, the faction leaders, who put her into the Prime Ministership, are adamant that Rudd not be rewarded for what they see as the damaging leaks in the first two weeks of the Labor campaign.

When it comes to Rudd they are in the mood for punishment. The latest word of mouth campaign was that Rudd would have to choose between remaining an MP and his new Climate Change Ambassador's job with the UN. This was based on a caucus rule which says that no Labor MP can receive any income or allowance derived from outside the Parliament.

Except The Drum spoke to Caucus chair, Daryl Melham early today. No such rule exists.
Strike one for the anti-Rudd forces. But don't be discouraged, because they won't be. They argue Rudd is treacherous and disloyal to Gillard and that he would be a huge risk inside the Cabinet.

"Treacherous", "disloyal"? These descriptions of course could equally apply to Gillard and the manner in which she cold bloodedly dispatched Rudd in the first place. To that extent Rudd's naysayers in the ministry and caucus are on shaky ground. They certainly do not occupy the high moral ground.

Rudd's supporters inside the caucus - yes he does have some - argue that the former leader must be accommodated. This group is not a rump of Rudd lovers. Rather it is comprised of Labor MPs appalled at the way Rudd was treated as a leader. Expect this group to expand when Gillard - as she must - alienates those she rejects as part of her (Shadow) Cabinet.

Those MPs horrified by the callous disregard displayed towards Rudd by the leadership plotters argue pragmatically on Rudd's behalf. Simply, that any continuing split between Gillard and Rudd would do incalculable damage to the Party and any minority Gillard Government.

Indeed if you follow Rob Oakeshott's logic it could bring down such a minority Government. They point to the Labor campaign which was horribly stalled until the pair had a public rapprochement. As awkward as that was - and the Labor campaign genius' didn't make it any better by holding it in a secret location - the grip and grin largely put paid to the public bitterness for the rest of the campaign.

But not the private bitterness. As one Rudd loyalist put it to The Drum: "We don't reward loyalty in the Labor Party. We reward treachery."

In her weakened state Gillard will also have to watch her back. In an environment of constant doubt and fear, Kevin Rudd on the outer has shown himself capable of playing devastating mind games. If he chooses to be a disgruntled and unrewarded, Rudd could make himself the catalyst for a challenge to Gillard. The idea of Rudd himself running again is impossible.

So, as a haunted Gillard faces her limited choices and politics enters a very serious stage with negotiations over the fate of the country underway with the three independents, Oakeshott, Tony Windsor and Bob Katter, I thought I'd leave you with a laugh.

The following joke was circulating within the political class during the election. It goes like this:

While suturing up a cut on the hand of a 75 year old farmer, who'd been caught in the gate while working his cattle, the country doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Julia Gillard, and her being Prime Minister.
The old farmer said, "Well, ya know, Julia is just a Post Tortoise."
Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked: "What's a "Post Tortoise?"
The old farmer said, "Well, when you're driving down a country lane and you come across a fence post with a tortoise balanced on top, that's a post tortoise. Just like Julia Gillard."
The old farmer saw the puzzled look on the doctor's face so he explained: "You know she didn't get up there by herself. She doesn't belong up there. She doesn't know what to do while she's up there. She sure isn't goin' anywhere. And you just wonder what bunch of dumb idiots put her up there in the first place."
Hope that made you laugh. What might make you cry though is that the punch line is more than half right.

Glenn Milne has been covering Canberra politics for more than two decades.

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As we wait for somebody, anybody, to form a government, Australia is riven by uncertainty. Canberra is on tenterhooks, stock markets are jittery, and I'm not sure who I'm supposed to be making fun of anymore.

Well, that's not entirely true - there's Bob Katter, the scourge of Filipino banana producers, and Wyatt Roy, who has just been elected the Member for Milky Bars. But otherwise, I feel stuck in limbo, like in that bizarre bottom dream-level of Inception, except without the French babe who wants me to stay there with her forevermore.

But while we wait for the ever-reliable AEC and the ever-kooky independents to work out which of the two leaders is the least undeserving of high office, there are a few lessons to be learned from Election 2010. Maxine McKew has learned that a late-night ABC current affairs show doesn't hold a candle to Seven's Summer of Tennis, and I've learned from Julia Gillard's constant repetition of the phrase in her press conference yesterday that she had a "positive plan".

This came as news to me, because when I heard Julia Gillard's last-ditch pitch to the electorate on Friday, I don't remember being inspired by the lofty future she just couldn't wait to guide me towards. I remember her issuing the absurd threat that if Tony Abbott was PM on Sunday, WorkChoices would be back by Monday - despite him having promised endlessly to abandon it, and Labor (with the Greens and Nick Xenophon) having the ability to block legislation in the Senate for the next year.

Then, when I went to my polling booth on Saturday, what I saw were large sheets of plastic with scary black-and-white photos of Tony Abbott looking like Frankenstein with bigger ears, and the message "Don't Risk Him". I haven't been so terrified since someone talked me though the premise of Human Centipede.

Then, when the Labor volunteer handed me a how-to-vote card, she didn't urge me to vote for Julia Gillard's exciting vision for the future, she warned me about the riskiness of Abbott, as though he were hell-bent on destroying our very way of life instead of the over-50s triathlon record.

It's no surprise that the scare campaign didn't work, because we all know exactly what Tony Abbott thinks. After being a senior figure in Australian politics for a decade and a half, he's about as unknown as the details of Bob Hawke's sex life.

Sure, voters may not love every aspect of the guy, and he's gone out of his way to tone down his more hardline views in areas like industrial relations and abortion - but he's arguably the best-known player ideologically in either major parties. That's exactly why he was so successful against Kevin Rudd, because he seemed solid and consistent where Rudd seemed insipid and mutable. To paint him as risky was a misjudgement - especially after the rock-solid, disciplined campaign he's run. He's like that old school chum whose company you enjoy, so long as nobody brings up feminism or religion.

Labor should have aimed higher. As incumbents, they had the best opportunity to offer some inspiring ideas for our future - and a few tidbits were even launched during the campaign, like the broadband-driven remote GP plan, or the extension of paid parental leave to fathers. But these rare notes of positivity were lost in the bid to demonise Tony Abbott.

And what's more, demonising was Abbott's schtick, and Labor didn't do it half as well. For months, his strategy has been to harp on about pink batts, school halls and boats. When pressed for details about his own plans, Abbott has offered very little besides promises not to repeat the sins of Labor. Still, that's what Oppositions do. Governments have track records to criticise, while Oppositions have only nebulous plans that are harder to attack. But if a Government has performed well and offers a genuine plan for moving forward instead of just the endless repetition of the phrase, the mud simply doesn't stick.

Admittedly, there are times when negativity can work. It worked for Howard in 1996 after 13 years of Labor - and I'd imagine that Barry O'Farrell could win a landslide in NSW next year merely using the slogan "Not Labor". But where a result's not a foregone conclusion, you need more than just carping to impress the electorate. Kevin Rudd's campaign had clear, positive themes, and even though the detail was sketchy in areas like the "Education Revolution", it made him look like the leader with the plan.

This time, both parties' primary offer was to save the nation from the threat of the other's appallingness, without specifying much about what they'd do with three years on the Treasury benches. So, we voters shrugged our shoulders, and scored it a nil-all draw. Now it goes to penalties, and there can be few greater penalties than having to negotiate with Bob Katter.

If there's anything positive to come out of this frustratingly critical election besides a high-speed rail link to the electorates of Kennedy, New England and Lyne, let's hope that our political leaders now understand that when they offer us precious little in the way of positive ideas, they risk receiving precious few seats in return.


Dominic Knight is currently writing for Yes We Canberra!. His new novel, Comrades, is out now.

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On Sunday, Julia Gillard in response to the election result said that Australian people were saying "they want to see a change in the business of politics, the way politics is conducted". What may also be worth pondering is if the result should also mean a change in the way politics is reported.

The 2010 election was easily the most widely covered election in Australian political history. There were two 24-hour news stations, web pages devoted to the campaign, newspapers, radio, blogs, Twitter, polls every other day. It should have been a 35-day non-stop cavalcade of delight for politics nerds and a bombardment of valuable information for voters.

Yet I'd have to say it was not. While the coverage was widely spread, it was in many ways thinly done - a lack of deep policy focus and a great deal of the same thing being reported in different formats.

Interestingly, while the media coverage was the widest it has ever been, commentary of the media's role and performance during the campaign was also the greatest ever.

This is because of Twitter.

A vast majority of journalists following the leaders during the campaign have Twitter accounts. It gave media consumers a great insight into life on the campaign and also gave journalists instant feedback from their readers.

On the day Mark Latham entered the fray, Julia Gillard held a press conference involving 26 questions and only one - the last - was on the aged care policy she had just announced. Those watching Sky News and ABC 24 at home went wild on Twitter in condemnation of the journalists.

Gone are the days where all readers could do was write a letter to the editor. Now if you don't like a story, you can tweet your feelings to the journalists as soon as you have read it.

I have no doubt journalists on Twitter get a plethora of ignorant and vile abuse, but I also have no doubt they get a mass of informed reaction, criticism and commentary which has completely unnerved many of them.

This is no surprise - imagine doing your job and the second after you write something, everyone in the world can send you a message saying how badly you did it. Bet that's fun. Even more so when you consider people see signs of bias in journalists' tweets made while watching programs like the 7:30 Report or Q and A. The twitteratti are ever on the watch, waiting to pounce.

It is the "new media", and it is obviously a shock to the system.

Some journalists on Twitter take the feedback well. The best ones engage with their readers. A common response however is that if you don't like it, don't read it, or, if you think it's so easy why don't you come on the campaign bus and do it.

Life on the campaign trail is without a doubt a bloody hard grind. Up at dawn (or earlier), little time to eat (or do other essential functions), rushed from place to place, given no notice of what they'll be doing in two hours let alone the next day, given barely enough time to file a story let alone contemplate deeper issues.

No argument the journalists on the trail all work incredibly hard.

But did all that effort result in a more knowledgeable electorate? I'd say no.

For this the political parties must take a lot of blame. Both the ALP and Coalition, for example would give journalists the policy "document" (little more than a media release) either just prior to the press conference, or even as it was just starting. Trying to come up with intelligent policy questions under such circumstances is nigh on impossible.

It is even worse when you realise that Tony Abbott thought a press conference meant 10 minutes during which he would studiously avoid answering anything remotely close to the question and should the topic turn to policy, very quickly a voice from the back would call out "last question!" On Sunday he gave a press conference to discuss the hung parliament and why he should be prime minister that lasted for only three minutes, with only three questions!

The one time the Coalition did hand out the policy documents well before the press conference was when it launched its broadband policy. Anyone who saw Andrew Robb and Tony Smith being absolutely bombarded with sharp policy questions for over an hour would have seen why political parties do what they do.

Tony Abbott has short press conferences because he knows the nightly news will only show one grab, and so long as there is a shot of him pushing a billycart or kicking a footy, that is what will get shown. And so Abbott does short press conferences because the media highlights the trivial, and the media highlights the trivial because Abbot only gives short press conferences and then pushes a billycart and kicks a footy.

Perhaps the hung parliament should be used to break this cycle.

No time to analyse policy? Sorry but unless you want us to report that you are scared to answer questions on your own policy you better give us the documents earlier, and you better stand there and answer some questions. The Robb/Smith press conference should be the norm.

Sure the campaign trail is hectic, but that's no excuse for not giving journalists all documents to be referred to that day first thing in the morning - embargoed of course.

I am not so naive as to think we will go back to the stage where backbench second reading speeches would be covered, but policy is what really matters to people - because it will affect their lives. Not one person was affected by Latham turning up at a Tony Abbott press conference, and yet Sky News crossed live to show him drinking a cup of coffee. Is this what a 24-hour news channel is for?

Was anyone's life affected by the size of Julia Gillard's earlobes? No, and yet that got more coverage than any policy by the Greens - and they now hold the balance of power in the Senate.

No wonder Twitter and the blogs were full of criticism - constructive and otherwise - especially when journalists following Julia Gillard began asking if she was bothered by them asking her questions about distractions like her earlobes.

Policy is only dull when it is dully reported. For mine, there is nothing better than having the ins and outs of a policy explained - not just repeated, and not just given a "he said, she said" argument.

It requires the media to actively take on the role of information providers, not just entertainers. Spin is only successful when it's reported as argument. If you need to stand up and defend your policy to a group of journalists for an hour, you'll need a hell of a lot more than glib one-liners. It also means journalists as well need to have better questions than ones of Latham and earlobes.

Poor policy coverage leads to poor policy because the politicians know they'll get away with it. Ask yourself - did you really have any idea after reading the newspapers or watching the nightly news whose water policy was best? Did you have any idea whether either Abbott or Gillard understood their own water policies?

Can the "new media" help? I think, yes. Twitter and the mass of amateur blogs contain many very smart people who for some bizarre reason enjoy writing about policy: people who in their spare time will actually read an Auditor-General report and then write about it in depth. The media should not scorn these people; they should feed off them for ideas and for research (properly acknowledged of course).

It is also incredible how quickly people can tweet incisive responses to statements made by politicians during a press conference. Journalists should suck them all in and search for the best ones.

In the end, however any hope for change in reportage will need to come from those in charge. If editors are content with and demand stories about Latham and earlobes then that's what their journalists will give them. The big question though for media organisations is who pays - will consumers pay for better analysis when everything goes behind the paywall, or are political stories about trivia what readers really want?

Personally, I think we need and would buy deeper analysis of policy, and what's more, it will lead to better government - surely a sign it should be tried.

Grog's Gamut is an amateur blogger who spends too much time every night writing about politics and not enough time watching all the DVDs he buys each weekend. For some reason he thinks he looks like Ralph Fiennes. He doesn't. His blog can be found here.

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Independent candidate Andrew Wilkie's win in the Hobart based seat of Denison is as much about his not inconsiderable attractions as a politician who can attract a broad array of voters, as it is about the arrogance of the ALP machine in using a seat to dole out patronage.

Andrew Wilkie took votes from Labor, the Liberals and the Greens. Why? Because Wilkie is not a 'mouth from the south' type maverick but instead a carefully considered liberal who thinks about policy from the perspective of more than the next election. His views on asylum seekers are a perfect example of this outlook.

I write a weekly column in the Hobart Mercury and a few weeks ago spoke with Wilkie about his views on Prime Minister Gillard's bungled plan for an offshore asylum seeker processing centre in East Timor. Wilkie's position was that if Australians want to reduce the number of asylum seekers then its government has to be prepared to tackle the root causes of dispossession such as poverty and tyranny.

Wilkie ran in this year's Tasmanian election held in March and he very nearly got elected. Again his policy positions were considered. He campaigned hard against poker machines and drove around Hobart in a van that had, perched on its roof, a digital counter that told you how much money was being spent on pokies in Tasmania.

By disposition Andrew Wilkie is uncomfortable with the hard core conservatism of the Liberal Party and it is worth remembering that its leader Tony Abbott was part of a government, some members of which ran a nasty campaign against Wilkie in 2003 after he blew the whistle on the lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Wilkie has also copped it from the other side of politics. He ran second on the Senate ticket to Greens leader Bob Brown in 2007 and it was an unhappy experience. More than one Green took the view that because Wilkie had no experience as a campaigner in the Tasmanian forests he was not a real Green! In both this year's state and federal election the Greens 'ran Wilkie down' as one journalist told me yesterday.

But while Andrew Wilkie is an independent candidate of some depth, his election also owes something to the ALP's serious structural problems. Its candidate in Denison was Jonathan Jackson. Jackson was anointed by the party's factions to succeed long serving MP Duncan Kerr. What made Jackson so outstanding? Nothing, other than that he was, as one senior ALP member told me, 'Labor royalty.' Jackson's mother had been a long serving State MP and minister.

And the ALP took the seat for granted. Denison, which the party had held for 23 years, was their fiefdom and as such it was available to anyone who emerged victorious from its system of patronage that rewards the long serving and the mediocre as much as it does the talented.

Many voters I have spoken with since Saturday have indicated that they voted for Wilkie because the ALP had simply taken the electors of Denison for granted. There is some truth in that but it is not all the fault of the ALP. Both the Liberal and Labor parties federally have, in every election since 1993, focused on pork barrelling in the northern Tasmanian marginal seats of Bass and Braddon. So while Launceston is awash with new roads and sporting stadiums, Hobart and surrounds feels comparatively down at heel because the Liberals were never going to win it, and Labor always was.

But now that Mr. Wilkie looks likely to go to Canberra to take his seat in a knife edge parliament he might be able to steer some Canberra largesse Hobart's way, and ensure his re-election!

Greg Barns is a former Liberal Party staffer and was a member of the Australian Democrats.

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There is an old Seinfeld bit where he notes, on a late flight, that the pilot announced that they will "make up time in the air."

Seinfeld wonders, "well, isn't that interesting? Why don't they just go as fast as possible all of the time?"

I thought of that on Saturday morning (my time here in Boston) when a tweet from Mark Scott informed us that ABC News 24 online would be lifting all international copyright restrictions for their election coverage. I thought, "well, isn't that interesting?"

The image accompanying this article is usually what I see from this distance. Now I had figured that the reason for the block was that sometimes the ABC broadcast news from other parts of the world that was copy protected and so could not just choose to block whenever it wanted. But the Election Night action demonstrates that is not the case.

So my question is: why not just go? Why doesn't the ABC turn on and off blocking when it needs to rather than all of the time?

Some three quarters of a million Australians live outside of the country. There are surely others who might take an interest in Australia. But for some reason, our public broadcaster -- for which my tax dollars still fund (by the way) -- chooses to shirk that constituency. This is a constituency that does not have great alternative options precisely because the ABC is responsible for much of the self-produced news and talk shows. I am forced to sit reading 140 character tweets from Jonathan Green (The Drum's editor) in order to find out what is going on on Q&A. Suffice it to say, he tries but it isn't really a satisfying or informative experience.

Public providers should occupy space that private markets do not cover. For international expats, surely there is a case to be made for under provision. After all, Aussie ads aren't that relevant to me right now. And let me not get started on the content on iView. The same issue applies.

Surely it cannot be hard to work this out. For one, if I provide some proof of residency (perhaps a tax file number), maybe I could register to receive all content unblocked. Otherwise, can't the ABC at least turn off the block for its own local programming? It is an issue of access.

The ABC needs to take a long hard look at itself and its mission. The technology exists for greater access and it should be falling over itself to utilise it. I vote and am even asked to comment on Australian economics for outlets such as The Drum. Can its readers really rely on someone who is blocked from consuming ABC journalism? Either that reporting is valuable or it isn't. The ABC needs to make the call.

Joshua Gans is an economics professor at Melbourne Business School and a visiting scholar at Harvard University. This may be his last contribution to The Drum.

Response from Gaven Morris, Head of Continuous News:The ABC has content distribution rights to use video from an array of international news agencies and broadcasters. This video is used throughout each news bulletin we produce. We are entitled to use this content within the Australian market only as each of these providers distributes their content to other broadcasters in other markets. The cost of the ABC obtaining full international distribution rights for any non-ABC content would be prohibitive and not a good investment in the funds we're granted to provide a news service to Australia. In some cases, international rights are not available at any cost.

I understand expatriates and some non-Australians might be interested in viewing the ABC News live coverage of Australian events and so we are exploring options to make these available - as we did on Saturday night for the election coverage. It's a difficult technical scenario to manage as, at present, it requires the manual re-setting of the geo-block each time and we would need a regime that would guarantee we wouldn't be streaming any third-party content - but we are exploring ways to manage this and offer more live events.

ABC News does make most individual news videos that it has produced available internationally through the abc.net.au/news website so between access to these stories, the full text service on ABC News Online, and streams of the ABC's radio coverage Australians overseas can access a comprehensive news service from the ABC. In addition, ABC News also provides television news bulletins to an international audience through the Australia Network television channel and Radio Australia broadcasts - both often provide live coverage of big Australian events.

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From around 10pm on Saturday night, political wonks and tragics, as well campaign staffers and journalists alike, dusted off their copy of the Constitution (or simply downloaded the iPhone app - yes there really is an app for that) to see what, if any guidance, it gave about would happen in the event of a hung Parliament.

All of a sudden Twitter became rife with self-taught constitutional law experts, proclaiming that the Queen will decide who forms Australia's next Government (she won't) and that Wyatt Roy isn't qualified to be a Member of Parliament (he is).

What did become apparent to everyone who desperately started flicking through the Constitution is that it doesn't explicitly set out what happens in the event of a hung Parliament. Indeed, some observed that the Constitution doesn't even mention the existence of the Prime Minister.

While both of these facts may seem confusing or even troubling to many, those more familiar with the peculiarities of our constitutional system know that there are unwritten conventions that underpin the day-to-day operation of the Constitution.

It is those constitutional conventions that will govern what happens next, as both Labor and the Coalition begin the process of trying to form the next Government of Australia.

An important player in the process will be the Governor-General Quentin Bryce, who must summon the Parliament to meet not later than 30 days after the day appointed for the return of the writs, which will be on October 27.

In theory, the Governor-General is entrusted with the responsibility of deciding which party is most likely to be able to form a stable Government. However, arguably the most important constitutional convention is that the Governor-General acts on the advice of the Prime Minister.

The Governor-General will only intervene independently if one of the parties breaches the constitutional conventions (by, for example, trying to call a new election before exhausting the possibilities of a new government being formed with the existing members).

The conventions provide that Julia Gillard, as the incumbent and caretaker Prime Minister, will be afforded the first opportunity to form a new Government.

If Ms Gillard is able to get the support of the independents, she will advise the Governor-General that she is able to form a Government, and the Parliament will be recalled.

The first order of business in that new Parliament would be to test Ms Gillard's support. The Opposition would move a motion of no confidence in the Government. However, assuming the independents support Ms Gillard, she would survive that motion of no confidence and would be able to govern.

Of course, a motion of no confidence can be moved at any time in the life of the Parliament, and so Ms Gillard would need to be able to rely on the continued support of the independents to stay in Government.

If Ms Gillard is unable to get the support of the independents and it becomes apparent that Tony Abbot and the Coalition is able to get the 76 seats needed to form Government, the convention dictates she resign as Prime Minister and advise the Governor-General to call for Mr Abbott, who will then be afforded the opportunity to form Government.

If that occurs, Mr Abbott's Government would then also be tested on the floor of the Parliament with a motion of no confidence. Assuming Mr Abbott survives that motion, he would then be able to govern.

Throughout this process the Governor-General is able to take advice from constitutional lawyers, including the Solicitor-General. In 1975, the Governor-General also took advice from the Chief Justice of the High Court, but it has been suggested that that was improper because a protracted constitutional dispute, while unlikely, could ultimately end up before the High Court.

Although this process is unwritten, the conventions that govern it are nonetheless clear to all sides of politics, as well as to the Governor-General.

Furthermore, there have been several occasions in recent years where a state election resulted in a hung parliament producing a minority government in accordance with these conventions.

Based on some of the misleading comments I have seen flying around Twitter over the weekend, there remain a few additional points that are worth noting.

First, the popular vote is irrelevant to exercise these constitutional conventions. The only number that matters is 76; that being the number of seats needed to form Government. While both Ms Gillard and Mr Abbott may try and use various permutations of the popular vote to claim a mandate or to persuade the independents of their legitimacy as a potential Government, those numbers are of no constitutional significance.

Second, it has been suggested that the Governor-General is unable to exercise her constitutional responsibilities in this instance because she is the mother-in-law of Bill Shorten, a Labor Member of Parliament. While the political optics of having one of the so-called "faceless men of the ALP" so closely connected to the Governor-General is arguably unfortunate, it is of no constitutional significance and the Governor-General will independently and freely exercise her responsibilities.

Third, while it is possible that this situation ultimately will end up back before the Australian people in the form of another federal election, the convention is that the Parliament be given a reasonable time to run and to try and sort out a Government. Furthermore, in the absence of a constitutional convention being breached, the Governor-General would only call another election on the advice of the Prime Minister.

While these constitutional machinations may seem alien to some, all Australians should take comfort in the fact that centuries of custom and tradition have set out very clear procedures, even if they are unwritten, that govern exactly this situation.

All we need to do now is wait for all the votes to be counted, and for Ms Gillard, Mr Abbott and the Governor-General to exercise their constitutional rights and responsibilities accordingly.


Peter Black is senior lecturer in law at the Queensland University of Technology, teaching and researching constitutional law and internet law.

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With the post-mortems well and truly underway, many are still scratching their heads to work out what happened in this election.

As usual, the Australian electorate has proved itself far smarter than it is often given credit for. Voters managed to engineer a result exactly in keeping with the widespread apathy and disengagement that has been rampant in this campaign.

It's pretty simple really. Australian voters decided they didn't much like either major party, so they voted for neither. Record numbers of Australians voted for minor parties, independents, or informally. The result is a hung Parliament.

This is not a failure of our democratic system. This is a vindication.

There have already been many detailed accounts of Labor's disastrous campaign, and I don't intend to add particularly to them; Mark Bahnisch has written an excellent short summary of the longer-term implications.

As even a casual observer must realise, Labor ran a disorganised and strangely unfocused campaign. Obviously, the mid-campaign leaks were crippling. But Labor's campaign was in trouble long before this. And it is only by pulling back to examine the tumultuous events of 2010 as a whole that we can grasp why.

Let us recount briefly the extraordinary journey for this Labor government. It makes an unparalleled study in modern folly.

In brief, it is this: after eleven years in opposition, the forces of progressive politics unite around a talented and media-savvy candidate to deliver government from the dominant conservative figure in recent Australian political history. The new Prime Minister goes on to enjoy a long honeymoon as one of the most popular Australian leaders in history. His government seizes the mood of the nation by apologising to Australia's Indigenous peoples and embarking on an ambitious round of policy reforms, including an emissions trading scheme. Confronted by the most serious economic crisis in sixty years, he has the courage to listen to the best advice of his Treasury officials and implements one of the best-designed stimulus packages in the western world, which goes a long way towards heading off a crippling recession.

And then, in the space of little more than six months, it all falls apart - so spectacularly that the sitting Prime Minister is deposed by his own party. Worse, his replacement, also talented and media-savvy, goes on to stumble badly in the election campaign and lose her Parliamentary majority. It's a collapse to rival the fall of France in 1940 or the last days of Gordon Brown's government.

As we can now see very clearly, Kevin Rudd was struggling as Prime Minster from mid-February. I think he needed a holiday. His over-centralised management style meant he was incapable of delegating. The result was angry colleagues, policy stumbles, poor government processes and a series of listless public appearances. It all culminated in the breath-taking back-down on emissions trading: a decision which must go down as one of the gravest unforced errors in Australian political history.

Few now remember the background to the decision to delay the ETS, but one of the most salient points to recall is that Labor didn't need to make it. Having been defeated twice in the Senate, emissions trading was obviously doomed for the life of the last Parliament. The only issue in play was whether Labor would seek a double-dissolution election or not. There was simply no need to make any announcement on the ETS at all - let alone one which instantly convinced a large part of the electorate that the Prime Minister had back-flipped on the greatest moral issue of our time.

Once the die was cast on the ETS, events rapidly spiralled out of a fumbling government's control. A significant achievement in health and hospitals reform was not even bedded down before Labor picked a fight with the mining industry with a new resources tax.

Again, it was the wrong issue and the wrong message. The sensible place to take on a well-funded mining industry scare campaign was on carbon and climate change, where ten years of debate and considerable public anxiety about climate change had prepared the way for a sustained argument on the merits of raising resource taxation. But when it comes to framing a public message and keeping to it, as Lindy Edwards points out the Rudd-Gillard government has consistently proved itself incapable of sustaining anything. Rudd's terrible performance in the Resource Super Profits Tax debate proved the last straw for his factional supporters and caucus. Exit Kevin.

I still find the events of June 23 and the whirlwind eight weeks that followed mystifying. Most likely, many voters do too.

Despite the audaciousness of Labor's ruthless removal of a sitting Prime Minister, many in the party still seem unable to understand the level of mistrust this action created in the electorate. Nor did any of the plotters apparently stop to consider the effect it would inevitably have on Labor's election campaign, and the government's ability to defend its own record.

Labor's confused advertising strategy, its strange vacillation between various push-button policies like asylum seekers and a "sustainable Australia", the "real Julia" farrago, the strangely negative campaign tactics - none of it hung together as a sensible campaign strategy to retain government. Confused, unfocused, disorganised and error-prone, Labor's campaign was a mess.

For mine, the real revelation of the campaign is Karl Bitar's admission on Channel 9 on Sunday that he stopped polling midway through the campaign, so damaging were the leaks. "There was one point in the campaign where I suspended all research because it was pretty much a waste of money," Bitar told Laurie Oakes. "We were facing swings of anywhere between 10 and 12 per cent across the county."

Nothing encapsulates the bankruptcy of modern Labor's campaign style than this admission. Like a First World War general, isolated in his headquarters with a map and a telephone, Bitar has revealed himself to be so completely reliant on the modern tools of market research and focus groups that he was unable to grasp the larger problems with Labor's campaign. Guy Rundle, at his inimitable best in Crikey last week, observed that these techniques are proving ever less reliable as voters have begun to better understand the tools of their manipulation:

'As Labor forms ever more mechanistic models of electioneering, the very process by which they work starts to become visible to the people they attempt to stimulate in political-Pavlovian fashion. Disaster! The dogs can see the bells!'

The result is apparent to all today: a sitting government hanging on by the skin of its teeth. Labor may retain office, but it probably doesn't deserve to. But then again, neither does the Coalition. Whatever Tony Abbott may claim, this election result was also a failure for his party. Despite a perfect storm of Labor incompetence, he was still unable to deliver government. After all, Abbott was unable to recapture the Conservative vote of 2004, 2001 or even 1998; most of the anti-Labor swing went in fact to the Greens.

Indeed, Saturday's vote may prove the high-water mark of Abbott's leadership. Should Gillard win the support of the country independents, voters may just come to like the new arrangements, putting Labor in a strong position to campaign for a third term in a year or two. On Saturday night, the majority of Australians voted Labor or Green.

Or it could go the other way. Anyone who saw Abbott's speech on Saturday night should be in no doubt that he will govern as though he enjoys a healthy majority. This could enable him to cement power in 2013 or earlier, consigning Labor's 2007-2010 government to a mere interlude across two decades of conservative rule. The immediate future of both parties therefore hangs on a few postal votes in seats like Hasluck, Corangamite and Dunkley.

Before we speculate on such matters, there is plenty left to dissect from Saturday night's fascinating results. As in the United States and Britain, regional differences in voting allegiances now loom large in this country. Queensland and Western Australia are again a sea of blue, while Victoria is a progressive strong-hold. The nation's regional distribution of party allegiance has become more complex and subtle, and the result is more independents and minor party representation.

As we know, Queensland was critical. The sunshine state swung hard against the government and towards the still-untested Liberal National Party, delivering the Coalition a swag of Brisbane seats. Western Australia also looks set to return 12 of 15 seats to conservative members. In contrast, Victoria's small swing to the ALP underlines its status as the home of progressive politics in Australia.

Crucially for Labor, the New South Wales party was able to hold on to key marginals like Lindsay, Robertson and Dobell, which is the only reason Julia Gillard is still a chance to form government today. That's worth remembering when you read the many commentators blaming New South Wales numbers men like Mark Arbib and Karl Bitar for the party's misfortunes.

There is no doubt Bitar has run a terrible campaign. But many are also pointing the finger at Queensland's increasingly unpopular Premier, Anna Bligh. As Dennis Atkins points out, Labor knew it was in deep trouble in the Queensland marginals from early June. The LNP's campaign material in Queensland was carefully targeted at Bligh, and overtly linked her to Julia Gillard in its election-day bunting.

There are many factors which may have contributed to Labor's bloodbath north of the Tweed. The dumping of Kevin Rudd was obviously one. So too was the mining tax, in seats like Flynn. In suburban Brisbane, however, it may simply be that voters are weary with two decades of Labor incumbency. Labor has been in power in Queensland for all but two years since 1989. In that time, the population of south-east Queensland has expanded rapidly and the state has struggled to deliver infrastructure to match. Queensland is also heavily indebted - much more so than the federal government - and it was this deteriorating fiscal position that led Bligh and her treasurer Andrew Fraser to controversially back-flip on the issue of privatising state assets like Queensland Rail. The Coalition's campaign message about Labor's debt and deficit played perfectly to those with a view of Queensland Labor's competence.

And then there was the Greenslide. This election was a critical test for the minor party, if only because of the expectations of success that had been built up. Remember all those stories before the election about how the Green vote was "soft"? There was no sign of that softness on Saturday: the Greens recorded their highest ever vote. They picked up more of the swing away from the government than the Coalition did. And, unlike in other elections and for other minor parties, the Green primary vote also translated into seats: a Senate spot in every state and of course the historic lower house seat of Melbourne for Adam Bandt.

The rising Green tide is now a serious threat to Labor's inner-city heartland. On Saturday night, most attention understandably focused on Adam Bandt and Melbourne, but the Greens recorded large primary votes in many Labor seats. These seats matter more than many realise, because they are often where Labor parks high-profile ministers. In Martin Ferguson's seat of Batman, the relatively unknown Alex Bhathal polled second with 24 per cent. So did Tony Hickey in Tanya Plibersek's seat of Sydney. In Anthony Albanese's seat of Grayndler, Sam Byrne pushed the Infrastructure Minster close to defeat with 25 per cent. In Brisbane, Andrew Bartlett polled 20 per cent; a substantial preference leak to the LNP probably sealed Arch Bevis' fate.

And it's not just the inner-city: the Greens recorded substantial swings in regional seats like Fairfax on the Sunshine Coast, Forrest in south-west Western Australia and the key marginal of Corangamite in coastal Victoria, where Mike Lawrence's preferences kept Daren Cheeseman in Parliament. All over Australia, the Greens are now the third force in Australian politics. Saturday's results mean they will almost certainly control the balance of power in the Senate until 2017. By that time, they may well have four or five members in the lower house too.

In the long-run, the rise of the Greens poses inexorable problems for the Australian Labor Party. Philosophically, it marks the end of the long alliance in this country between trade unions, their political representatives in the Labor Party, and the other progressive forces of politics. Labor is at much at fault as it is a victim: by moving steadily rightwards in fear or pursuit of the rightwards march of the Liberal Party, it has left behind many of its more progressive supporters, and even some its left-wing union base. Some of those supporters have now found a new home with the Greens.

In this campaign, for instance, Dean Mighell's Electrical Trades Union in Victoria donated $325,000 to the Greens' Victorian campaign. The reason Mighell gave was the Greens' industrial relations policies, including their support for the abolition of the Australian Building and Construction and Commission.

Electorally, the rise of the Greens will almost inevitably force Labor into a coalition of some kind with the environmental party. Simple numbers dictate this outcome: as the Greens continue to eat into Labor's inner-city base, it will make ever less sense to run three-cornered contests. This will be hard for the proud Australian Labor Party, which may never again govern nationally in its own right. But binding the Greens into a governing coalition acknowledges the electoral arithmetic of Australia's centre-left voting base, which is now split irrevocably between the two parties.

In the meantime, we are going to get a minority government. I welcome this. For too long, the major parties have treated the lower house of Australia's Parliament with disdain bordering on contempt. It's a long time since Question Time has been about genuinely holding ministers accountable, or even seeking genuine information about government policies. It's been a long time since the Parliament acted as a genuine check and balance on the increasingly centralised exercise of executive power in Australia's political system.

If minority government leads to even a few simple improvements to the democratic accountability of our national government, as independents like Rob Oakeshott are signalling they want it to, then it will be a positive thing for Australian democracy.

Don't be fooled by those claiming we need strong, stable government. We need responsive and accountable government even more. Forcing a government to negotiate every single piece of legislation through both houses of Parliament may improve our democracy, not weaken it. I'm looking forward to the next three years.

Ben Eltham is a writer, journalist, researcher and creative producer.

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This election The ShadowLands blog has monitored the ABC websites Unleashed and The Drum on a weekly basis for political bias during the election campaign.

Each time a value-laden remark was made about Julia Gillard (or her campaign) that was positive or negative, it was noted as G+ or G-. For Tony Abbott, it was given the value A+ or A. We have not included the business sites or the election blog in this analysis, but do include blog entries published at The Drum.

We make no claims about the infallibility of this method - there are mistakes, omissions and value judgments. Sentences with multiple clauses of criticism or praise received only one plus or minus value.

However we do claim that the results are indicative of systematic, structural, left leaning bias at the ABC opinion websites. Even a large number of corrections are unlikely to change the overall findings.

Many stories demonstrated political leanings, but did not have declarative statements about one candidate or the other, so were recorded as having nil positive or negative statements. However an analysis of these stories, we believe, would also show an overwhelming lean to the left. You would be hard pressed to find any articles by country people refecting the values of the National Party, for example, or conservative comment by religious leaders.

The results
We counted 327 negative comments about Julia Gillard and 353 about Tony Abbott. There were 197 positive comments for Gillard and only 65 for Abbott.

This means that Gillard was criticised 1.6 times for every time she was praised, while Abbott was criticised five times for every time he was praised.

Another way of looking at it, is that while Gillard and Abbott received roughly the same amount of criticism, Gillard was praised three times more often.

The breakdown
The raw numbers do not quite convey the viciousness of some of the personal attacks on Tony Abbott or the softness of praise directed towards him. Bob Ellis praised Abbott as much as any writer at the Drum, but buried it amongst reams of vitriol.

The lopsided result was helped markedly by the ABC's chief online reporter, Annabel Crabb who, the figures demonstrate, was amongst the most partisan pro-Labor writers of all contributors. Crabb recorded 18 gushing positive mentions of Gillard and only three grudging positive mentions of Abbott - and they were largely of the sarcastic variety:

"His mastery of the form, Rooty-honed, was obvious as he flowed confidently down the steps, off the stage, to assume his customary position, mike in hand, among the people."

Crabb did not manage to make a negative mention of Gillard until week three or a positive one of Abbott until week four. She also managed to report on a plan by Gillard to lie to journalists and then mislead Parliament as an amusing anecdote, rather than as a serious character flaw in our Prime Minister. Crabb also complained about how much Abbott attacked Gillard at his campaign launch, although closer examination showed it was about the same amount that Gillard attacked Abbott at her launch.

This contrasted markedly with Glenn Milne who, although having conservative leanings, was compelled to break a negative story about Abbott's use of funds while promoting his book. Unlike Crabb, Milne appears to view journalism as being something other than pure advocacy work.

Another of Gillard's biggest fans was Malcolm Farnsworth who provided 18 truly gushing mentions of the Prime Minister. Farnsworth joined Gillard on the campaign trail. For some reason, nobody from the Drum or Unleashed appears to have followed Abbott's campaign. What is likely to be remembered by the rest of us as the turning point of the campaign - his appearance at Rooty Hill, was either mocked or ignored.

John Hewson criticised Gillard 10 times and Abbott four times, but praised Gillard and Abbott about the same. The figures support what we suspected. During this election, Hewson has cemented himself as the ABC's preferred pet Liberal representative - harmless and completely tokenistic. He provided commentary, but did not represent conservative opinion on any substantive issue, nor has he yet provided any indication of writing ability.

Dominic Knight was equally willing to criticise Abbott and Gillard, albeit usually from the left. However, while things were going disastrously for Labor and in the midst of the leaks and the Mark Latham soap opera, Knight apparently could not see any themes, writing: "The overarching narratives in this election, though, have been far harder to pin down."

From this, I can only surmise that when Knight views Keystone Cops, he must reckon he is watching a documentary.

Some genuine conservative comment came from Chris Uhlmann, Tom Switzer, and a few one-off contributors in the final week to help even the ledger, but in the end, the number of conservative articles was simply overwhelmed from the left.

In conclusion
I accept that this is not a perfect analysis, and results will be disputed, but it points to concerns among conservatives that deserve serious investigation. Luckily, the ABC is capable of tracking sentiment regarding election candidates, as they have on Twitter sites at Campaign Pulse. We call on the ABC to run this program at The Drum and Unleashed and release the findings publicly.

An aside
As an experiment, we submitted some comments to ABC Online over the course of the campaign:

"To be fair to Julia, she is a genuinely strange looking woman" and "She took a married man from his children and is likely to treat her country no better."
What the moderators were not to know is that these comments were created by making slight alterations to what was, presumably, paid content in The Drum, and inserting Gillard's name where Abbott's used to be. They were rejected.

Another of these comments was published. It was fashioned after a statement by Bob Ellis claiming Abbott caused the premature death of Bernie Banton, and a comment made about Abbott by Marieke Hardy:

"Maybe we should ask Julia Gillard if her Government hastened the death of four ceiling insulation installers. Personally I'm of the firm belief that Gillard's personality is borne of the loins of Satan."
The moderators accepted the comment, but it caused outrage:

"What a disgrace that such disgusting comments from Gavin got through the moderator."
"...Personally I'm of the firm belief that.... your comment is the most ridiculous one here. Cowardly and absurd. Simply Appalling."
There was no similar commentary to be found underneath the original slanders, indicating that conservatives have long since started to abandon the website.

The editor appears to view the site as an antidote to conservatism published elsewhere, not as a place that is representative of the taxpayers who fund it. As we suggested a long time ago, it is simply morphing into another Crikey.

Gavin Atkins is a blogger for The ShadowLands. This article originally appeared on the blog.

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The coverage has not been surprising. Bob Brown called it a "Greenslide" and the "birth of a new political movement." The Age reported breathlessly, and without a hint of irony: "There is a new light on the hill, and it's bright Green." Elsewhere, The Age reported that up to four state seats could go to the Greens in the Victorian election in November, and heralded a "coming of age" for the party which is "difficult to disagree with."

Well, I beg to differ.

Let's examine the raw numbers to evaluate exactly what the Greens have achieved.

First, consider the ultimate triumph for Greens' supporters, and the achievement which has attracted the most hype: winning a seat in the House of Representatives for the first time at a general election, in Melbourne. (The Greens won the normally Labor seat of Cunningham at a by-election in 2002, when the Liberal Party did not field a candidate.)

Whilst winning a seat in the lower house is obviously significant for the Greens, it isn't as simple as it has been presented in the media. Counting is still underway, and numbers may shift up or down by a percentage or two, but at the time of writing the first preference tallies were approximately: ALP 40%, Green 36% and Liberal 20%. After preferences were allocated, the Greens took the seat 55.7% to 44.3% over the ALP.

Despite getting a smaller proportion of the first preference vote than the ALP (and 64% of Melbourne voters opting for a party other than the Greens), the Greens still won the seat. The reason they did so is simple: the Liberal Party decided to print and distribute how to vote cards that placed the Greens ahead of Labor, and the vast majority of Liberal first-preference votes flowed to the Greens.

Had the Liberal Party allocated preferences to the ALP ahead of the Greens, Labor would have comfortably retained the seat. Perhaps for strategic reasons, the Liberal Party sought to divert Labor resources to defending Melbourne from the Greens that would have been otherwise spent in marginal seats against the Liberal Party. There is no guarantee they will make the same assessment the next election, so the Greens chances of retaining the seat will depend entirely on a decision by the Liberal Party. It's possible, though unlikely, that a Green will also win in the NSW seat of Grayndler from Anthony Albanese. But again, if they do so, it will be courtesy of Liberal Party preferences.

The other crowning achievement for the Greens at this election has been increasing their Senate presence to the point where they are likely to hold the balance of power, after July 2011.

For the first time, they've won Senate seats in Victoria and Queensland. They're also likely to elect Senators from NSW and South Australia, whilst their incumbent Senators from Tasmania and Western Australia were re-elected.

But their win in NSW simply offsets their failure to re-elect Senator Kerry Nettle in 2007, and despite optimistic predictions, they've failed to elect an extra Senator from Tasmania or even come close to electing their high profile candidate in the ACT. Their wins in both South Australia and Victoria are also likely to only come at the cost of a third ALP Senator in each state, and will therefore not impact the anti-Coalition numbers in the Senate. It's only in Queensland where Greens take a seat from the Coalition, and this result was hardly surprising given the Coalition unexpectedly won four Senators from Queensland in 2004, only three of whom had a realistic prospect of re-election.

Nationally, it appears the Greens have polled approximately 11%, an increase of less than 4% on their 2007 result. No doubt many Greens welcome this rise, but it is nowhere near the 16% forecast by Newspoll in May, nor the 15% estimated by Neilson in June.

Worse still, this failure comes amid the most fertile political ground the Greens have ever enjoyed. Many traditional Labor supporters were disenchanted by the party's decision to remove Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister, as well as the ALP's failure to deliver an Emissions Trading Scheme and their attempts to look tough on border protection.

The fact remains that nearly 90% of Australians rejected the Greens on August 21, despite all the hype and positive media coverage they received. So while this election certainly wasn't a disaster for the Greens, they have again failed to live up to expectations.

They also owe much of their success to the Liberal Party's decision to preference them in key seats. One suspects Adam Bandt will neglect to mention this in his maiden speech, but he would be wise to do so, given his hopes of re-election hinge on the same decision being made next time.


James Paterson is a student at the University of Melbourne, and a former Liberal staffer. In 2009 he was President of the Victorian Young Liberals.

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I have been asked to write on how I would negotiate with the independents and Greens.

You should start with a realistic, apolitical, assessment of the main reasons for the outcome of the election, importantly "the message from the people", beyond the myriad of factors that have determined the outcome in specific seats.

In simple terms, the electorate wants the focus shifted from the "game" of politics to the "business" of government - that is, from seeking to win the daily media cycle(s), to delivering outcomes, from spin and slogans to substantive, deliverable policies.

The electorate was apathetic about both parties and their leaders, the negativity, the lack of vision, the lack of policy substance, the simple fact that they were being treated with contempt, in everything from the way Rudd was removed, thereby usurping their "right" to pass judgement on him and his Government, to the emphasis on bagging the other side, rather than being prepared to offer and debate the detail of real policies that would "solve" the obvious and worsening problems, that impact on their daily lives and their future, the cost of living, health, education, transport and other infrastructure, overall economic management, as well as some more visionary responses to climate change, population, ageing, immigration, refugees, broadband, the possibility of a double dip recession internationally, etc.

Beyond this, there is the loss of faith in Parliament and our political processes, from the sad joke that is now Question Time, through to the "corruption" of electoral funding, the lack of bi-partisanship on the "big" issues, and so on.

There are many buttons that triggered the overall frustration, disenchantment and sense of being disenfranchised in the electorate. They felt that they were presented with little to choose between the spin/rhetoric of the two major parties, and the two leaders that had got there through disloyalty. They were relatively unknown and untested as leaders, both with debatable pasts as Government Ministers. Voters were forced to choose the least worst, and essentially didn't really like either. In these terms, a hung parliament should be no surprise - the message is don't take us for fools, or for granted.

The support for the Greens was largely a protest vote, as it assumed that "they will never govern", although some were conned into believing that they had a better policy on climate change, for example, even though they didn't negotiate and voted against the ETS. They did not offer a comprehensive, integrated policy platform, more a grab bag of populist/sectoral promises and initiatives. They are still, nevertheless, in the eyes of many, the "true" left wing of the ALP.

Second, it is important to recognise the nature of the independents, Katter, Oakeshott and Windsor, and the aspiring independents, Crook and Wilkie. The first four are ex-Nationals, and Wilkie an ex Green, but you shouldn't quickly assume that any of them will easily return to the fold. The first four have a significant regional focus and legitimacy, although Katter is thought to have almost a sole focus on his electorate. However, all would claim discontent/disenchantment with, and protest against, both major political parties.

All are "mavericks' to some extent. All will cope differently, having been suddenly thrust onto the national stage, and now under the national spotlight, subject to intense media scrutiny. While they will all want their egos stroked, with too much there is a danger it will go to their heads. In saying all this, I have assumed that Greens' Bandt will join with the ALP.

Against this perhaps oversimplified background, there are two broad approaches to these negotiations, first, continuance of the "grubby politics" by simply attempting to suck up to them with flattery, and attempt to buy them off with promises/policies/handouts, or, second, to attempt to elevate them beyond their electorates and themselves, by making them a part of "new government", fundamentally committed to jettisoning the old game of politics, and focusing on the business of government. Of course, there is a third approach, namely attempt to do both, do the former, but dress it up, spin it, as the latter.

The factional leaders/ALP strategists behind Gillard, desperate to vindicate themselves for dumping Rudd and the poor campaign, to whom winning is everything, prepared to say or do whatever is required to win, as if they are still playing university politics, the only way is the first approach, but perhaps sold as the second.

The bottom line, although they will not admit it, is that they would have won under Rudd. My ALP pollster source tells me that Gillard's best would have been Rudd's worst. When he was removed, Rudd was in the two-party lead in Newspoll and still way ahead as Preferred PM and, as Twiggy Forrest has revealed, on the verge of announcing a compromise on the mining tax. Of course, these "bosses" have been desperately spinning that while it was tough with Julia, it would have been a Tsunami under Rudd, and implying that Rudd undermined Julia and her campaign with the leaks that killed the first two weeks of their campaign.

It couldn't be, of course, that they called it wrongly. That Rudd's removal was little more than a very personal vendetta by a few factional heavies that Rudd had previously dispensed with by saying things like, "I don't have to listen to you f—ckers", which had brought a response like, "we may lose the battle, but we will win the war", such that at the first opportunity they seized the moment and the media to dispense with him. They then pushed Julia to an early election, attempting to capitalise on her expected honeymoon, and the saturated media coverage on her being Australia's first female PM, but not giving her any real chance to establish herself as a leader, both here and internationally, and with three awkwardly cobbled together responses on the mining tax, asylum seekers and climate change.

Of course not! But, if they don't win this election, if they don't do a deal with these independents and the only Greens MP in the Lower House, and retain Government, you will be swamped in the recriminations. The recriminations have already started with the comments yesterday by Morris Iemma and Anna Bligh.

To lose, they will have sacrificed Gillard and her very promising career, a career I had predicted three years ago would have seen her take over from Rudd in the middle of his second term. They will be held accountable for having gone off half-cocked!

But, imagine that Gillard, who was increasingly, visibly pissed off in the final days of the campaign, and since, will want to have something to say about all this, but will she be able to, in ALP factional terms, will they let her? Can she publicly call the likes of Bitar and Arbib to account? Nevertheless, expect the "new Julia" to present it as having listened to the electorate, promising a new broom, a new politics, some reform, outcome focus, and so on. But, will she now be believed? Is she damaged goods?

Hardly a prescription for the new catch phrase "stable government", win or lose!

On the other hand, Abbott is in the ascendency, now broadly being seen to have won the campaign, essentially by performing better than expected, particularly as being more focused and disciplined than expected, and as having unified the Opposition. But, he is still seen as much more negative than positive, reactionary, than visionary, a great Leader of the Opposition, but doubted as a PM.

The moment is his to seize, to position himself as a genuine national leader with a genuine commitment to real reform and change, but he will need substance to succeed. He will need to do, not just be seen to do, what many believe he can't.

His major difficulty will be to overcome all the past animosities that led Katter, Oakeshott and Windsor to leave the Nationals in the first place, and thereby to deliver a believable and deliverable political reform and a broader policy agenda to satisfy and involve them.

This will not be easy. Windsor set the magnitude of the task in his case in an early, off-the-cuff remark, to the effect that he gave up both smoking and the Nationals in the 1980s, and thereby avoided two cancers!

Broad based parliamentary and political reform will be a basic requirement for both parties: independent Speaker, clean up Question Time and Ministerial responsibility, elevate the Parliamentary Committee process, ban individual/corporate/institutional campaign donations, moving to full public funding of elections, etc.

Abbott will also need to surprise on key visionary issues, particularly broadband. He could do worse than give Windsor a key role in this respect. Ministerial appointments, "policy guru" type roles, with cabinet accountability, to involve should be considered.

This process of negotiation is only beginning. Given form on both sides, perhaps we shouldn't expect too much. But, this time, I feel that the electorate will demand real progress, otherwise we'll end up with another election in the near term.

Finally, it should be recognised that the next three years could be very tough for whoever wins Government. Political uncertainty will persist through to at least April next year, with the closeness of this Federal outcome, and State elections in Victoria in November, and NSW in March next year.

This will compound the problems of managing the very flat, non-resource sector of our economy, with many business failures and bankruptcies to come, and with at best a very flat recovery in the major economies, some slowing in China and Asia, and the risks of a double dip and further, significant financial market volatility. Our fiscal conservatives will be tested. Not to mention the crunches in health, education and infrastructure threatening on the horizon.

Dr. John Hewson was the federal leader of the Liberal Party of Australia from 1990 to 1994.

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We thought that by now the election would be over. Over the last 48 hours we have been bombarded with opinions; this country seems to have more constitutional experts than voters. But let me make some points about the opportunities for reform of our political system this presents - opportunities that the media coverage, reflecting an entrenched two-party mode of thinking, has largely ignored.

With the balance of power in the House of Representatives likely to be held by independents, now is the time to build critical information flows, analysis and independent policy advice to the parliament. This can be done by substantially expanding the resources, both quantity and quality, available to members of parliament through parliamentary committees and the parliamentary library. By far the best information I have read on asylum seekers in recent days has come not from the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship and his department, but from the Australian Parliamentary Library.

The Executive, through its domination of parliament, has monopolised information flow and policy advice. It is crippling our parliamentary system and stifling good policy.

The resources of the Australian public service are directed almost exclusively to serving the Executive and not the public through the Parliament. The result is an information deficit in the community and little independent advice to challenge the all-powerful executive.

The traditional governance arrangement of minister and department must also be reviewed. Ministers are struggling to fend off the special interests - polluters, miners and the AMA - with their 37 full-time lobbyists in Canberra for every Cabinet minister. Many government operations are highly complex, large and technical. They would be better administered through independent, professional and statutory authorities with governments providing the policies and principles to guide their operations. By default, statutory authorities must make public their advice and findings. The Reserve Bank is a good model to consider. It is independent, professional and largely immune to pressure from special interests. It informs and educates the community.

Other authorities, such as Medicare and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, should be instructed to facilitate public discussion of important health issues and help get us away from the current debates that are dominated by a two-way discussion between the minister and special interests.

There is a limited window of opportunity to countervail domination by the Executive and the Australian public service. The Greens in the Senate have some time to put in place new Senate arrangements through parliamentary committees and the parliamentary library. But the next government in the House of Representatives will run to an election as soon as it sees an opportunity to rid itself of irritating independents. The window of opportunity could be shut quickly. Quick action is necessary.

John Menadue AO is a Board Director of the Centre for Policy Development.

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As the counting in Saturday's federal election continues, many people are asking what happens next.

Who is the Prime Minister today? Who gets to form a new government? What is the Governor General's job? And what happens if neither Julia Gillard nor Tony Abbott can reach agreement with the independents?

The first question is the easiest. Julia Gillard is Prime Minister. However, her Government is still in caretaker mode. The caretaker conventions continue to operate until the result of the election is clear and a new Government is formed. The Government cannot make major appointments or dismissals, or significant legal or financial commitments, at least not without the agreement of the Opposition. Whatever the political inconvenience, this is not likely to cause any legal problems in the short to medium term.

The Governor General will eventually appoint a new government that has the support of the House of Representatives - that is, at a minimum, a government in which the majority of the House would express confidence if required on a confidence motion and (probably) that could pass an annual budget.

On current projections, neither major party will have 76 seats in the 150 seat House of Representatives in its own right. They will therefore be trying to get independent or Greens members to agree to support the government on important votes and perhaps even to join the government as an element of that support, as in Tasmania.

Following the recent UK election in which no major party secured an outright majority, it was asserted that the incumbent government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown had the right to have the first crack at forming a government.

Here, it seems much more likely that there will be parallel negotiations with both major parties. Some of the independents have signalled that they will regard the long term stability of the government that is formed, and its policies, as being significant in their decision of whom to support. That is entirely proper. There is no binding convention that the incumbent stand aside, or not seek to form a government with independents and others, if they win fewer seats than the opposition or a smaller percentage of the votes.

But, while she remains Prime Minister, it will be Julia Gillard who advises the Governor General whether she can form a government with independent and/or Greens support, which has the confidence of the House of Representatives. (The May 2010 UK election shows that the formal agreement need not necessarily be signed before the new Prime Minister is appointed if they are able to advise the Governor General that they will be able to form a government.)

If she can't reach an agreement with them, she may have to advise the Governor General that she no longer enjoys the confidence of the House of Representatives and resign. If there was genuine doubt about whether she could in fact form a government, she could insist on putting the issue to the vote in the House of Representatives rather than resign immediately.

If the LNP Coalition was able to reach an agreement with the independents, she could advise the Governor General to invite Mr Abbott to form a government. However, the March 2010 Tasmanian election shows that it is possible that the Governor General would refuse that advice and require the House of Representatives to meet and vote on a series of confidence motions.

Of course, it is entirely possible -- but perhaps unlikely -- that neither party can reach agreement with a sufficient number of independents and Greens to form a government that had the confidence of the House of Representatives.

In those circumstances, a further election may be necessary.

It is extraordinarily unlikely that the Governor General would order a new election unless the Prime Minister (who ever that was) advised her to do so. If the Prime Minister did so before the Parliament met, the Governor General could probably refuse the request and require the Prime Minister to see if a Government could be formed when the Parliament met.

How long can the uncertainty go on? Legally, for a very long while.

Under the Constitution, the Parliament must meet by late November, at which point matters would likely be resolved by a series of confidence motions -- either supporting the government, identifying a new government that had the support of the House -- or revealing that a new election was necessary to resolve the situation. (If a new election was required, it would be at least 33 days before it took place.) But on a practical level, it is extremely unlikely that the matter would not be resolved much sooner.

The situation we find ourselves in is unusual for the Australian national parliament -- the first hung Parliament in many decades. But it is not unprecedented. It is a fairly regular occurrence at state level. It is far from unusual internationally. (And of course it would be par for the course if Australia ever embraced proportional representation for the House of Representatives.)

Talk of a constitutional crisis is entirely overblown at this stage.

Professor Simon Evans is a member of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies at the Melbourne Law School.

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Remember this poll result from when the election was called?

People thought neither major party deserved to win and that disillusion, contempt, anger, dissatisfaction - whatever it was - was reflected in the vote on Saturday.

Our ballot papers do not include the option "hung parliament", so no individual voted for one, and yet, collectively, that is what the election delivered.

Let's not impose false narratives here. That we've wound up with a hung parliament is a by-product of the electoral system: it's not like we planned it. This limits how much we can read into the result, though some legitimate inferences can be made.

Consider: it has been a constant of this election that people are unhappy with our politics. This result (if indeed the parliament is hung) has delivered us a chance to genuinely test out an alternative approach.

We should give it a go. But I am not overly confident.

What I fear is not a hung parliament with the balance of power in the hands of a disparate group of independents and Greens (and a similar Senate), but that the media will be incapable of giving us the necessary breathing space needed to understand this opportunity.

Watching various press conferences over the weekend, there is already a sense from journalists that we need a decision sooner rather than later. To their credit, the independents and Greens are resisting this, but I suspect the pressure will grow quickly.

So first up, let's not let the media bluff us into thinking this is unworkable, or that negotiations have to be hurried.

As I've pointed out in articles here and elsewhere, our politics is constantly sabotaged by a media obsessed with trivia, or so intent on influencing the agenda that they have lost sight of their role as reporters.

Pressure for a quick resolution is part of the same problem. So journalists needs to take a deep breath.

Next, they could abandon the presumption that a hung parliament means instability. It is not proving that way in Britain, in Tasmania, or even in the recent history of South Australia. As Premier Rann pointed out on Twitter on Sunday morning:

In 2002 I entered into an agreement with Peter Lewis, an Independent who had been a Liberal for decades, which secured us Government.
Lewis became Speaker. We then negotiated with Rory McEwen, an Independent former Liberal to join our Cabinet.
Later we negotiated with National Party Leader Karlene Maywald to join our Cabinet. Both Rory and Karlene were full Cabinet Ministers.
In a first we signed a contract with each minister that enabled them to vote against the govt on legislation they could not support.
These ministers pledged to support us in no confidence motions. They guaranteed security for us as a stable minority govt.
It worked. A very strong, stable govt and we kept independents on for another four years even though we had a record majority.
They made us a better govt and brought a different culture and regional and rural perspective to cabinet room.
So the media need to test their own assumptions. They can legitimately point out that people are sick of the shallowness and the cynicism of the two major parties, but they also have to realise that they themselves are part of that problem and that people know it and are just as sick of them.

Beyond that, here's what I think we can say: The Labor Government was the on the nose for various reasons but their loss of support did not flow automatically to the Coalition as it might've done in the past.

The swing to the Greens was bigger than the swing to Mr Abbott's party and they have a legitimate claim on a balance-of-power role in the Senate and to be part of one in the Reps.

The correct conservative position on a hung parliament would be that the sitting government has the first call on being able to form a new government. This was the approach the Governor of Tasmania took (against expectations) when their state election returned a divided result.

If Labor and the balance-of-power brokers can't agree, then it is right that Mr Abbott be given the opportunity to form government.

Whomever forms government, the aim should be to serve a full term. There should be no attempt to engineer an early election, though, sure, one may become necessary.

Final point: we should be extremely grateful that our elections are run by an organisation with integrity of the Australian Electoral Commission .

In short, this is a bit of a running-with-scissors moment in our politics, but it needn't end in tears.

I didn't get the result I voted for, and I am certainly not an uncritical supporter of those who now hold the balance of power. But I am more than willing to embrace this opportunity.

Tim Dunlop writes fortnightly for The Drum. You can follow him on Twitter.

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Contrary to the current gloomy atmospherics, it is entirely possible that a minority (Coalition?) government could be a positive for both financial markets and the economy more generally in the medium term.

At the outset, it should be acknowledged that hung parliaments are not uncommon overseas, and will not, therefore, be overly worrying to foreign investors. Domestic institutions, on the other hand, have not seen one since 1940 and could, as a result, take more time to adjust.

Perhaps the biggest economic benefit of a minority government is that it will be hard to enact radical legislative change. In financial markets, change represents uncertainty, which feeds into higher volatility (read risk). The last thing anyone wants right now is more risk. In recognition of this, the Australian dollar fell by around one cent in early trade this morning in response to the weekend's news.

Assuming that the Coalition forms government, which may be a higher probability outcome if one takes at face-value the ostensibly conservative leanings of the three independents, investors will kiss good-bye to the much-derided RSPT and its love-child known as the MRRT. This will be a considerable boon for Australia's resources sector and should precipitate an uplift in equities valuations and greater long-term business investment.

Another economic win will be the ability to avoid a reasonable amount of the $26-43 billion in taxpayer money that was to be spent on the National Broadband Network (NBN). While there are doubtless many sound arguments for taxpayers to support investments in broadband infrastructure, the NBN suffers from serious financial flaws, which I have previously outlined here. A cheaper and more modular approach that enables the market to at least partly determine what technology solutions are delivered, and which involves more private sector money with appropriate concessions to the three independents in regional Australia, will be a lower risk outcome for the economy and the government's balance-sheet.

Assuming that an ALP in opposition is reflexively resistant to Coalition-initiated policy changes, which seems a safe bet in view of the highly partisan nature of politics these days, the Greens will be able to block legislation in the Senate. This means that the Coalition will struggle to push through substantive economic reforms in its first term.

Yet as others have already observed, control of the Senate is the exception rather than the rule. Most sitting governments have had to negotiate with a Senate in which the balance of power is held by independents (think Steve Fielding) and minority parties.

And while reform-hungry commentators might conclude that this is an undesirable result, the truth is that stability and continuity are valuable things for an economy that is hesitantly emerging from the GFC and about to embark on a period of above-trend growth. Governments of all political persuasions are capable of throwing sand in the wheels of progress. After so much recent turbulence, and ongoing instability care of deep ructions in the US and Europe, a minimalist and predictable manager might be exactly what Australia's economy requires for the foreseeable future.

The injection of at least three independents - Tony Windsor, Robert Oakeshott and Bob Katter - into the government of the day's decision-making process is much like the addition of independent directors to a public company's board that is controlled by insiders. We will likely see an emphasis on better governance and transparency, as the independents flagged on the ABC's special 7.30 Report last night. This should bring more rigour to the business of government with the cost being slower decision-making speed and arguably more bureaucracy.

One concern is that taxpayers will have to endure a new phenomenon, which one might term "green-barrelling", in order to facilitate the passage of Coalition policies through the Senate. This could undermine the Coalition's desire to quickly shrink the fiscal deficit and delay any return to surplus. But considering the state of the government's balance-sheet, which has little net debt, this is not going to be the end of the world.

A more disturbing outcome would be if such green-barrelling introduces additional inflationary pressures into an economy that is already operating near full capacity, which might compel the RBA to raise rates more quickly than would otherwise be the case. Market economists have already today begun noting that minority governments are not known for their fiscal discipline. This will mean that the market will almost certainly start pricing in higher interest rates in the medium to long-term as manifest in lower 3-year and 10-year government bond prices (as yields go up, bond prices decline). A knock-on effect will be higher fixed-term mortgage rates and a higher cost of debt for the public sector. Naturally all of this depends on what the 'green-mail' involves.

One would hope that the Greens' newfound electoral legitimacy would presage a period of 'base-broadening' via the development of more mainstream and sensible policy proposals. For example, Bob Brown has recently been an advocate of sound financial services reform, and there is much fertile territory for him to till in this arena. And if the nation ends up making greater than anticipated investments in technology to mitigate climate change, this will also be a good thing. Nobody knows with certainty what, if any, deleterious effects climate change will have. But it is prudent to prepare for the worst and take out comprehensive insurance.

A final important risk is that a minority government finds it difficult to make urgently-needed investments in the 'supply-side' of our economy. In recent communications, the RBA has belaboured its belief that Australia suffers from acute infrastructure bottlenecks that pose major risks to the economy's productive capacity. Critically, these will not be addressed by cutting population growth, as many politicians would have us believe.

The Treasury's long-term population projections, which find that Australia's resident population will rise by 60 per cent from 22m persons today to 36m persons by 2050, already incorporates a dramatic slowdown in overall population growth and net overseas migration. In particular, the Treasury assumes that our population growth rate falls from nearly 2 per cent per annum today to just 0.9 per cent by 2050 (averaging a relatively modest 1.2 per cent per annum between 2010 and 2050). They also fix net overseas migration at a constant 180,000 persons per annum between 2012 and 2050. Even taking these parameters, we are still going to have 7-8 million people living in Sydney and Melbourne within four decades.

Accordingly, the RBA believes that both the public and private sectors should materially boost their spending on infrastructure amenities (think energy utilities, rail and roads, water and housing supply) in order to avoid the higher interest rates that the RBA will have to impose to curb inflationary - and asset price - pressures in the absence of the required capital e