Right now the energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, is trying to do something serious, something voters would expect their elected governments to do – achieve a truce in the decade-long climate and energy wars.



You can take any position you like on Frydenberg’s national energy guarantee, you can assert it’s the cure for cancer, or a fourth-worst policy option hopelessly compromised by the delicate startle reflex of the Coalition party room – but one thing is beyond dispute. The energy minister is trying to get something done, and he’s pushing ahead, despite the fact things internally are feeling shaky, and despite the inclination of some colleagues to cue up another round of Canberra’s favourite binge watch – Survivor, Parliament Island.

Politics should be about getting things done. The business is supposed to be organised intellectual conflict and its synthesis. But for some it’s about confecting an endless state of war with your opponent, and preaching righteously to the converted.

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Everything is tribal, from the politics of destruction to the media organisations seeking to commodify tribalism – as a means of surviving the great technological disruption of the past 10 years.

Frydenberg to warn Abbott allies against 'extreme ideologies' on energy Read more

So when someone breaks out of the various cults of diminishing returns and makes a stab at progress, when they make a run for it across open #auspol terrain in a numbed state of shock at their own audacity, the punishments back at My Feelings Trump Your Facts HQ, can be swift and severe.

We’ve seen one such example play out over the past couple of days. Frydenberg, during an appearance on breakfast television late last week, rashly removed his cult goggles and observed, out loud, with people listening, what the rest of us can plainly see.

Tony Abbott is intent on causing trouble. “He’s always going to try and cut across what the prime minister has been saying lately,” Frydenberg said on the Nine Network.

Given that Abbott has set about destroying every attempt Australian policy makers have made at climate action over the past decade, either on his own side of politics, or on the progressive side, Frydenberg’s insight was a distance short of penetrating. It was just bleeding obvious.

In what universe is it OK to retail a private conversation in public, as some strange little game of one-upmanship?

But tolerance for reality is low on the Sky News night shift. If you’ve never watched, and let’s be honest, most of us haven’t – just picture Fox News mini-mes, on the hunt for their reality TV president.

Unlike the Sky day shift, which likes its political journalism fast and straight, the nocturnal crew maintain a simple credo: be strident or remain silent. In this Hobbesian universe, people are either on the team or off it.

Frydenberg, in calling out Abbott, had apparently committed a thought crime that had diminished him in the eyes of conservatives and hurt him with “the base” – also known as the increasingly unrepresentative sample of people who still maintain rigid partisan loyalties.

Let’s hand over to Peta Credlin now, talking to Andrew Bolt, deep in sundown territory. “I’ve had a conversation with him,” Abbott’s former chief of staff told Bolt. She wasn’t going to divulge details, apart from noting that Frydenberg – who people might remember is a cabinet minister – had been in Principal Peta’s office explaining himself.

“I’m not going to get into it on air, but I don’t think you’ll see that again,” said the former staffer, serene in the obvious overreach.

Unfortunately it is not a new phenomenon for media folks to blur the lines between commentator and backroom player, but one of the most corrosive things in the modern media environment is the commodification of this mini-industry.

Frydenberg on why energy policy is no sop to Abbott – Australian politics live podcast Read more

These days we don’t just have the odd person hoping just a little too fervently, overstepping just ever so slightly, we have a small production line of people who are sometimes players and sometimes bystanders, generously sharing their insights. The proliferation is such that journalism might have to consider a new code of conduct.

In what capacity, exactly, is Credlin admonishing Frydenberg? As Abbott’s former staffer? As a player in Liberal party circles? As a media figure, carrying out a small pro bono sideline in life coaching?

If the admonition was carried out as a media figure – and let’s be honest, all of us in the journalism business have been known to periodically tell politicians precisely what we think of them and their various courses of action – in what universe is it OK to retail a private conversation in public, as some strange little game of one-upmanship? For a Twitter moment?

Frydenberg, for his part, reports that he’s unmoved by the admonition.

It’s all just one big meh. “I stand by my words and I’ll continue to call it as it is,” he says.

