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"All of us are determined to lift our game and the fundamental point I make is that the solution to all of these things is good government, and good government starts today," a chastened Tony Abbott told the world after surviving a revolt by his party's backbench two years ago. It didn't apparently. Or so Malcolm Turnbull thought; six months later, Turnbull challenged him, and Abbott was out. The Coalition caucus that contemplates the Turnbull government in action has much the same membership – if smaller – as that which judged Abbott, first with expressed frustration and then exasperation. Many talk about the day of the 30th adverse Newspoll, but that's a public judgment. Inside the Coalition caucus, members must be wondering just what this government is doing to lift its game and to deliver steady government without convulsion. Not much, it seems, judging by its stumbles and pratfalls of the past month. And virtually all self-inflicted, or a consequence of ordinary journalism, not a result of a particularly sharp or rampant opposition. The Turnbull government just can't seem to get its act together, let alone devise coherent policies likely to renew public or professional confidence in its guardians. Look at the muck splattered this week, for example. Judging the outcomes of political mud fights is easier than it looks. First, everyone, in politics that is, loses as the reputation of players on both sides declines further. Even the public feels diminished and dirty. Second, governments almost invariably lose more than the opposition, because voters hold them to a higher level of responsibility for the general behaviour of the Parliament. That's one reason why, sometimes, oppositions engage in consciously disruptive conduct – such as that engineered by Abbott and Christopher Pyne – during the Gillard era. This hardly enhanced Abbott's reputation, but it served him in that it accentuated the appearance of chaos and disorder in the way Labor was managing the business of government. No one could fairly blame Turnbull for the bitter and spiteful first parliamentary session of 2018, but he is probably the biggest loser of all. At the end of January, some observers could see some blue sky amid the clouds – some hope that government might be getting its act together, and some signs that the Labor advance was losing momentum. Turnbull and his Treasurer, Scott Morrison, had some positive economic news to sell, and a bit of an agenda to put forward. It seemed imaginable, if still unlikely, that the Coalition could turn things around in the next 18 months, and be returned to government. If, that is, the government could only stay focused, stay disciplined and not get distracted, least of all by its own internal arguments, contradictions and personal brawls. That was then. It's all in ruins now. First, thanks to Barnaby Joyce. He took up all the oxygen in the room. And for far too long, even after it was clear he was unsalvagable. Turnbull ultimately disowned both his deputy and his type of misconduct – but, on the way, he created fresh distractions as people discussed and debated his tactics with the Coalition partner and the efficacy of a ban on ministers bonking members of their staff. Though few could, or should, argue the principle of the ban, the discussion may have caused some of the nervousness or spite that led to the extraordinary, and deeply unworthy contributions, from Jobs Minister Michaelia Cash, and the ill-advised veiled threat and innuendo from Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton about the less than exemplary moral lives of some of the opposition's leading figures. Cash has a certain scrappy and triumphalist mode that may suit a party with some momentum, but she has rarely, in politics, shown much evidence of judgment or considered strategy. She has caused the government many more problems than she has fixed, and some of them, such as her office's leaking of advance information of federal police raids on union offices, have yet to be resolved (despite, no doubt, the very best efforts of AFP officers and journalists to conceal their own role in the flow of advance information, and "heads-up" to ministerial officers). That Cash was at one time the person nominated by government as the minister representing the interests of women adds an extra tang to the brain snap that had her threatening to name female staff in the opposition about whom rumours circulated. That she seems to have perceived that Doug Cameron had been about to make a similar slur on her staff only underlines some characteristic faults: rush to judgment, characteristically by misinterpreting the evidence, an ultra-aggressive snap response that cannot have been thought out, workshopped or rehearsed, then, after the enormity of her response was obvious, the most mealy-mouthed and sulky withdrawal "if anyone was offended". Her colleagues – including, publicly, Abbott – were as scathing as the opposition. Turnbull's insistence that her response was an understandable reaction to being "provoked" by Cameron was entirely unconvincing. Turnbull has to spend too much of his time, and too much of what is left of his moral credit, defending indefensible conduct by his ministers. Equally characteristic was not only her own slowness in recognising the damage she had done (indeed, it is unclear that she does yet) but the slowness of the government to address the problem. No one could claim there were sharp political reflexes in the Prime Minister's office, or among the circle of close advisers. Dutton's intervention was more considered, and, as so often with anything he does, a good deal more menacing. That is, of course, because there are skeletons in the closets of some of the opposition – at least if extra-marital relationships, divorce or being open to exposure for some disparity between the public appearance and the private reality are scandalous or hypocritical. The carrying-out of any threat to point the torch into any particular dark corners might well cause embarrassment; the fear of such embarrassment might well lead some to counsel backing off from any sort of morals attack. But it's a two-edged threat. There are, equally, Coalition MPs (and senators) equally vulnerable to such attack. Some are even more at risk not because they are more wicked, but because Coalition voters are thought to be much more concerned about issues of chastity and fidelity. All sides of politics – minor parties as much as the major ones – have dirt files on the other side (as well, of course, as on factional enemies within their own party). The environment and lifestyle of a parliament is conducive to temptation, but also to intense gossip. Parties do "opposition research". They do it on the other side but also on their own prospective candidates, so they know weaknesses and vulnerabilities before they commit, and can, if needs be, prepare lines of defence and counter-attack if worst comes to worst. In the United States, candidates have professionals do research on themselves so they have some independent assessment of the sort of attacks that might be made on their character, record or abilities. At the peak, of course, parties conduct focus groups on lines of attack on opponents. It's true that "going negative" and attacks on character sometimes work, even as voters (or commentators) affect to be shocked and disgusted at the way those throwing the mud have got into the gutter. That said, such tactics usually fail, and frequently rebound. Mud-throwers are usually as vulnerable as their targets, even if they hadn't realised how much. Character attacks in particular have habits of going off in unexpected directions, most often inconvenient ones. Those who throw mud are remembered for it forever – and not only by the other side, the media or the electorate, but by their colleagues. But the pity about it all, Turnbull ought to reflect, is that the various difficulties and distractions that have been hobbling effective government, and the effective selling of the government, over the past month have not been the Labor opposition's fault. Labor kept mum on Joyce; it decided, more than eight months ago, it wasn't going to go there despite the juicy gossip coming out of Tamworth, ministerial offices and the Canberra social scene. Perhaps it was partly for fear of counter-attack on its own, but one should take it that some decency, sympathy and respect for privacy was also involved. Most politicians simply don't want to get involved in that sort of point-scoring. The staffing of Cash's office was open to legitimate question, if only because there have been some well-reported movements within her office, and suggestions that she has difficulty in recruiting, managing and keeping good staff. No one has suggested that any of these movements have had anything to do with prime ministerial edicts about personal relationships. (It is, incidentally, a public scandal that modern governments, Labor as much as Coalition, now seem to think they have a right to conceal the names, and the pay grades, of ministerial staff. This is happening while the sizes and costs of such staff balloon out; as the power, arrogance and functions of such staffers increase; and as the willingness of ministers to accept responsibility for what staffers do declines. Even in these internet days, it's time to restore a printed government directory, in which the names, phone numbers, (these days) email addresses and functions of ministers, ministerial staff, and SES officers, was available to all, as it was, say, in Bob Hawke or Malcolm Fraser's day.) If just to underline the fact that most of the government's problems have come from own goals, Julie Bishop has gone "all theological" about who is a partner and who is a nominee, to explain the supposed lack of need for her (non-resident) boyfriend to need have to disclose his financial interests. In black-letter law, she might be right, just as Turnbull and Joyce might have been right, in making casuist distinctions about the status of his staffer/girlfriend. There are enough opposition folk with ambiguous arrangements or records of their own claims for rights, allowances and entitlements, that one can be sure that any questioning in Parliament will be muted. But as Turnbull and Bishop know all too well, such "explanations" completely fail what some politicians call the "pub test". All the more so when an apparently wealthy partner has been indulged by the taxpayer with tens of thousands of dollars worth of travel. Perhaps he – or Bishop – had a right to claim such sums, but, on the face of it, the taxpayer's generosity has much exceeded what most other spouse/partner/nominees have received. That some of the travel has involved sheer self-indulgence, at AFL finals for example, will also annoy. One can expect that Bishop will realise this in due course – as Abbott and others have done in the past after loud public reaction – but with the form of this government, it will be after a period of continuing damage and distraction. Meantime, other Liberals, and some staffers associated with others, such as Abbott, are again the subject of adverse comment because they have been involved in soliciting, receiving or distributing largesse from Chinese businessmen with reputations of being all too close to the Chinese government. Including, of all things, the businessman with whom Labor albatross Sam Dastyari had such a fruitful relationship, one which led senior Liberals to describe Dastyari himself as being an agent of China. Receiving money from overseas interests is not yet illegal. The Turnbull government has legislation that would have this effect, but the Coalition parties are not bound to it until the Governor-General has signed the law. But another reason for caution (as at least one potential recipient, Andrew Hastie, seems to have realised) is that ASIO had explicitly warned about such donations, including from this very source. Both of the main major party organisations have long histories of evading the clear meaning and intention of electoral funding laws, though the use of associated organisations, the laundering of donations through other branches of the party (including the ACT), and the disguising of donations as payments for services, or fees for conferences and dinners. As NSW's ICAC has shown persuasively, this is the very stuff of corruption, perceptions that politicians are crooks, that rich people, or rich donors, get special access or special favours, and that government is for sale. That's an image just as debilitating of the reputation of politicians, as the idea that they are rorters, or that they are given to cheating on their spouses and playing cute with their "entitlements". While we are talking about it, you can be sure that it is distracting ministers from what they should be doing. Even diligent and focused ministers, if any, must feel themselves swimming through molasses. Jack Waterford is a former editor of The Canberra Times. jwaterfordcanberra@gmail.com

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