DEEP in the bowels of Julie Bishop’s office, a phone rings.

Moments later the door to the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister’s inner chambers opens and a staffer enters.

“The Indonesians want to speak to you Minister. They sound a bit excitable.”

“Oh Christ. Don’t tell me we’ve misplaced another guided missile frigate inside their territorial waters?”

“No Minister.” He rummages through notes: “Something to do with ‘besar bacot’.”

Bishop frowns.

“I looked it up,” the staffer adds helpfully as he backs out the door. “It translates roughly as ‘big mouth’.”

There is a slight thud as a Ministerial forehead connects with a freshly polished desktop.

“What has he done now?”

Through a door now only a few inches ajar, the staffer replies: “Apparently he sort of, a bit, and I’m sure it was indirect – just Tony being Tony you know – linked our post-tsunami rescue and aid effort to the Bali death sentences.”

“So what,” asks Bishop through clenched teeth, “exactly did he say?”

“Well, he, aaah, warned – no, no, reminded – yes, reminded the Indonesians of the $1 billion we gave them in disaster aid while asking for clemency for the Bali inmates. Sounded reasonable to me.”

There is a brief silence broken only by a dull slapping noise as an open palm meets the Foreign Minister’s face.

“And what did the Indonesians think?”

“They may have misconstrued it as something of a threat, but I can’t be quite sure given they started screaming about sovereignty and hung up after I tried to remind them that at least we stopped the bugs.”

“Get me their Deputy President on the line. And bring a mop and a bucket … ”

media_camera Prime Minister Tony Abbott with Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party Julie Bishop at Parliament House, Canberra. Pic: Gary Ramage

You have to feel some sympathy for Julie Bishop, by all reports a competent and respected Foreign Minister able to navigate the often treacherous shoals of diplomatic double speak.

We hesitate to use the term shirt-front, but by Tuesday Bishop was conceding that well, yes, the Indonesians may have considered Tony’s somewhat robust comments a tad “unhelpful”, but she’d managed to hose things down and didn’t want to say anything which could jeopardise the appeal process.

Good government in action.

Given the events of the last few days though it would appear that the key to good government is whipping up fear and anger by demonising third parties.

We started rather gently with the Indonesians, all things considered, but still managed to get Australians resentful about our northern neighbour’s intention to execute two of our mob even after we’d tipped all this cash in their direction. Bloody ingrates.

By Monday it was a flag-drenched call to country, with dark warnings of death cult terror, immigrants and Muslims, all of which were conflated together as being contrary to “our values”.

media_camera Prime Minister Tony Abbott in Parliament. Pic: Getty Images

Those values apparently enshrine naked misogyny, intimidation and bribes, as we saw with the public excoriation of Australian Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs.

This attack was led by Senate Committee chair Ian MacDonald – paid an extra $22,000 for his troubles – who seemed quite proud of the fact he hadn’t read the Forgotten Children report, which is at the heart of the furore, because it was “partisan”.

How he knew it to be partisan without bothering to open the damn thing is hard to fathom; perhaps he read about it on Andrew Bolt’s blog?

media_camera Queensland Senator Ian MacDonald after admitting he did not read the report for the committee he was chairing where Gillian Triggs was being questioned. Pic: Gary Ramage.

During the course of this painfully unedifying spectacle Triggs testified she had been asked to resign by Attorney-General George Brandis (via an emissary) and offered the incentive of another unspecified post if she cut short her tenure – a term, it should be noted, that is for a fixed five year period to avoid just the sort of political interference on display on Tuesday.

The Federal Police have now been called in and I’d argue the estimation of Triggs in the minds of many Australians has risen immeasurably for her poise and resilience under the most appalling pressure.

Seriously, all that was lacking was a wicker man and a mob of angry villagers with flaming torches.

media_camera Professor Gillian Triggs during the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation committee hearing. Pic: Gary Ramage.

So by Tuesday evening we had ticked off banging the drum about Indonesia, Muslims, immigrants, wimmin – especially very smart, outspoken and independent ones – and anything un-Strayan.

The theme continued yesterday with Abbott deeming it necessary to fly in a private jet from Canberra to Sydney to stand in front of a yellow wall and announce he was going to make it tougher for foreign investors to get into the residential property market.

This will be achieved by (here’s a novel idea) enforcing existing regulations and also introducing a $5000 “application fee” for un-Australian buyers – presumably to ensure no death cult shelf companies are stockpiling home units in Parramatta.

The logic basically boils down to some foreigners are more equal than others and while this will have zero impact on spiralling house prices (unlike winding back negative gearing lurks) it plays well to the Pauline Hanson brigade.

The goodies and baddies foreign investment box having been crossed, we moved to an assault on dole and pension bludgers, with plans to “simplify” (dangerous little euphemism that one) our welfare system.

God only knows who is left to attack. At this rate by the weekend the Greens will have been declared under a federal version of Queensland’s VLAD laws, the government will have lost confidence in the Federal Police Commissioner and the Australian Bureau of Statistics will be under fire for its partisan production of weak economic data.

But at least we won’t have invaded Iraq.

paul.syvret@news.com.au