Comment

Already the leaflets from people chasing votes are flooding into citizens’ inboxes. Former Labor man Warren Mundine, now the Liberal Party pea for Gilmore, is up and at it. His email to electors claimed: “I’ve spent my entire life in regional Australia, helping to create jobs and build communities. I’ll fight for you and stand up for our region’s needs.”

Consolidated Newspolls show a swing against the Coalition in every state. Government MPs are hoping that the budget will give them some momentum to save them, but that is optimistic.

In essence, we now have a full-scale turf war between two crucial components of the democratic state – an independent judiciary and a free press, both seeking to defend their respective territory.

It’s the annual speech day at St Brutes, the very private non-selective school and training ground for future Nasty Party boiler room operatives and their underlings in Cockies Corner at the other end of the dorm. The headmaster, Mr Morrison, was hoping for a speech day built around the theme of “fair dinkum” – to reflect the authenticity of Australia and its values. A cat was set among the pigeons, though, when it came to light that “fair dinkum” was actually an authentic Chinese expression from the goldfields of the 1890s.

The Prime Minister’s Office insists Morrison only learnt about Broad’s use of a website for ‘sugar daddy’ arrangements on the day New Idea broke the story. It is simply an incredible and grave dereliction of duty on McCormack’s part. He lamely claims he doesn’t ‘tell the prime minister everything about every member of parliament’ because he ‘has enough on his mind’.

Change the date, don’t change the date – I am agnostic. I think a national day could be a valuable tool in the binding of a nation, but only if it finds ways of including the three narratives, as Pearson has described them. I can imagine a three-stage national day of the future, one that stretches from our long First Nations history, through the narrative of the British arrival, to the waves of immigrant arrivals and life here now. Past, present and future.

The fate of the nation hangs on the outcome of the Wentworth byelection two Saturdays hence. Judging by the sheer volume of corfluting, flyers and associated bumf, the Nasty Party doesn’t regard this as a stroll in the park. Letterboxes are crammed with a blizzard of election excitements and the shopping centres choked with campaigners trying to press screeds of nonsense into the paws of citizens, who themselves are trying to flee the horror.

Turnbull allies in the parliamentary party are increasingly sceptical of Scott Morrison’s ‘I knew nothing’ stance. One says Morrison confidant Stuart Robert, a former soldier, planned the manoeuvre with military precision, dudding Peter Dutton and Turnbull in the process. So with emotions still so raw it is little wonder the newly minted prime minister runs for fairly unconvincing cover every time the issue of the ‘coup’ is raised.

We carefully considered the history of our struggle, the many broken promises, and the way the Constitution and political system excluded us. We learnt from the way our representative bodies have been repealed in the past. We contemplated why so many royal commission and expert panel recommendations have disappeared into the abyss in Canberra. After all we went through, does Snowdon really believe we are so detached from the realpolitik?

We now see the shining brilliance of the Liberal–One Nation media reform agenda: the absorption of Fairfax newspapers into Nine Entertainment’s culture of chequebook journalism, hidden cameras, patsy interviews and Eddie McGuire game shows. All under the chairmanship of Peter Costello, one of the smuggest Nasty Party politicians in living memory. The quid pro quo for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation’s support of the “reform” legislation was to do over the ABC. Bingo, two “reforms” in one hit.