Christopher Pearson, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Fraser, and a cup of tea dear?

(Above: back to the future with Malcolm Fraser).

The indefatigable if ponderous Christopher Pearson is now in full scale electioneering mode, and week after week he can be reliably expected to find fresh crises demanding a response at the ballot box.

A couple of weeks ago, the ETS was all the go:

Q&A is (rather clunkily) interactive and, while Wong was equivocating, a tweet flashed up demanding that someone ask her why, if Labor still believed in climate change, they didn't take the country to a double-dissolution election on the issue. It was the question of the week, of course. (here).

These days there are other questions of the week, one asked adroitly by Lenore Taylor, regarding Tony Abbott's ambidextrous relationship to climate change:

His personal views about climate science also appear to vary according to his audience.

To audiences such as the listeners of climate sceptic and 2GB host Alan Jones he says things like ''in the end, this whole thing … should be a question of fact, not faith - and we can discover whether the planet is warming or not by measurement and it seems that, notwithstanding the dramatic increases in man-made CO2 emissions over the last decade, the world's warming has stopped''.

To the environmental business leaders on Thursday he had a differently nuanced argument: ''I am confident, based on the science we have, that mankind does make a difference to climate, almost certainly the impact of humans on the planet extends to climate.'' (Abbott no Captain Courageous).

Not to worry, this week in A failure to negotiate and bad leadership, Pearson finds a new crisis of belief and policy for the week, and it is of course the mining tax.

Which suggests he must have indolently filed his column a little early, since he's missed out on a truly meaningful cudgel, with Chairman Rudd and his minions making a fundamental mistake in the fight against the mining giants - Taxpayers fund Swan's ad blitz - which provided this kind of more up to date commentary from the likes of Michelle Grattan, with Ad campaign will trash PM's reputation.

Oh well, that's next week's crisis of the week.

Unfortunately what Pearson offers up - along with the crisis du jour - as incisive insightful commentary reads more like a paid political speech for his master, delivered off a stump somewhere in the Domain to an uncaring crowd:

If elected, Tony Abbott would do whatever he thought necessary to restore Australia's reputation as a stable jurisdiction for international mining investment.

Surely we can find room for General William Tecumseh Sherman's approach to politics and the joys of Sherman speech? If drafted, I will not run; if nominated, I will not accept; if elected, I will not serve.

Now there's a political stance I can understand.

The rest of Pearson's diatribe is so wholeheartedly one sided and dully predictable that it's impossible not to stifle a yawn, and think back over the pleasures of Ashkenazy and the SSO doing Mahler last night. The maestro always whips up a sweat, though the week before I had the fear that the symphony might have actually killed him off before our eyes up there on the podium ...

But I digress. The only reason for reading Pearson - and these days the reasons grow less and less by the day because of a festering abundance of displays of filial devotion to his master - is to enjoy the sting in the tail.

This week there's a little flourish of bitchiness at Malcolm Fraser, most appropriate just at the moment that Tony Abbott has announced he's determined to revive the Pacific solution, to the anger of his few remaining actually liberal backbenchers.

Yep, forget the mining tax as the crisis du jour, this weekend the weekly crisis was supposed to be Abbott tries for Tampa poll.

Not so, according to Pearson, trying to keep the team on song.

This of course requires in passing the obligatory disavowal and ritual disembowelling of that past, but still grumpy, talkative, cantankerous curmudgeon, the head prefect, aka the Nareen squatter:

Malcolm Fraser's disavowal of the Liberal Party will not come as a surprise to anyone who's heard him on the subject at any time since 1985. The wonder is that at his age he still has such a burgeoning sense of moral vanity and the need for approval from people whose first instinct is still to despise him.

As we've noted here before, it used to be that it was the Labour party that devoured its own, and jokes about righteousness and zealotry and ideological pureness always focussed on the arcane ways of leftists:

Reg: ... Listen. The only people we hate more than the Romans are the fucking Judean People's Front.

PFJ: Yeah ...

Judith: Splitters.

PFJ: Splitters ...

Francis: And the Judean Popular People's Front.

PFJ: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Splitters. Spiltters ...

Loretta: And the People's Front of Judea.

PFJ: Yeah. Splitters. Splitters.

Reg: What?

Loretta: The People's Front of Judea. Splitters.

Reg: We're the People's Front of Judea.

Loretta: Oh, I thought we were the Popular Front.

Well it's clear these days that conservatives care just as much about ideology and about splitters like Malcolm Fraser. So much for the broad church. Sing the Latin mass or bugger off. In happier days, Pearson wasn't quite so dismissive, as opposed to anthropological ...

Fraser's Western District squatter origins appealed to old sectarian attitudes within the Liberal Party, although he wasn't himself noticeably bigoted and Bob Santamaria, a good judge of character, always had a soft spot for him. His reign was the last hurrah of a particular style of Anglo-Australian-ness. Despite his opposition to racism and apartheid, for example, he didn't for a minute believe that Jack was as good as his master ... (Christopher Pearson: Catholics flock to cabinet).

And speaking of the commentariat devouring their own, what better way to waste an hour of your life but to read Gerard Henderson's Media Watch devouring Christopher Pearson moralist?

Meantime, even richer is Pearson's portrayal of Abbott's relationship to the gang of four genuinely liberal Liberals left in the party, and his caring approach to them, which found Judith Troeth hearing about the coalition's new policy over the radio (Lib anger at refugee plan).

Here's how Pearson spins it:

The last of the Fraser Liberals, all four of them, joined forces to deplore Abbott's announcement this week that the Coalition was going to curtail temporary protection visas for unauthorised arrivals and reintroduce a version of the Pacific Solution. Much was made of the fact, especially by the ABC, that the new policy wasn't taken to a vote at a party meeting, as though it might not have won enough support.

The truth of the matter is that Abbott was mindful of just how isolated Judith Troeth, Judi Moylan, Russell Broadbent and Petro Georgiou were going to be in the party room.

You see! Deep down Tony Abbott is caring and sharing, and deeply worried about the emotional stability of the few remaining wets in the party when confronted by their loneliness and isolation.

There was no suggestion of stifling dissent. Having occasionally been on the receiving end of displays of majoritarian hubris himself, especially around the time of the republic referendum, he thought the most sensible thing to do was give them a polite, private hearing over a cup of tea.

A cup of tea!

Yes, just as I thought Pearson's column was going to tip over into cataclysmic tedium, and brain munching ennui, he delivers the capper of the week. Abbott gave them a polite private hearing over a cup of tea!

By golly, Tony Abbott is going to lead Australia into a tea-led recovery.

Unless of course the splitters spoil the broth with their milk and sugar ways.

Time for that oldie but goldie by Tony Hancock, and his performance in Look Back in Hunger in the East Cheam Drama Festival:

MOTHER: Would you like a cup of tea, Jimmy?

JIM: Tea? Tea? Is that your answer to it all? Tea? The panacea to the middle class! The answer to all the problems facing mankind today? Have a cup of tea, Jim! You both make me sick. You're dead, both of you. You're both mentally dead. Your souls are drowned in tea. Your minds are clogged up with tea bags. You're like two slop basins swimming around in a sea of tea! Just like this country, the whole rotten system, stained in a tea of apathy!

BROTHER: What's he mean, Mum?

MOTHER: I don't think he wants a cup of tea.

Not a cup of tea with Tony Abbott? But it makes the pain go away ...

(Below: Tony Hancock with a cup of tea, and perhaps thinking from beyond the grave on Tony Abbott and tea?)