Christopher Pearson, Tony Abbott re-dux, and how to do no harm with a maximum of pain ...

(Above: David Pope in the Herald Sun, 5th August 2007, found here in the NMA's collection of political cartoons, part of our stroll down memory lane with the greatest hits of Tony Abbott).

To lose one minister may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose a couple looks like carelessness; to lose twelve seems like a fitting number for second eleven cricket team. (after Oscar Wilde).

More sand runs through the hourglass of our lives, and it's hard not to notice NSW ministers falling, like fiendish drop bear koalas, from the gum trees out the front, landing with a splattering thud on the tar. Keneally in crisis, shrieks the header, but it's just another day in rain sodden Sydney.

But as usual, our interest these days is not in actual political commentary, but in the expert political commentary to be found in The Australian.

And who better than the unpartisan, objective, considered Christopher Pearson? His header gives a clue: Can-do politician with a do-no-harm approach.

Yep, you've guessed it, the can-do politician, who managed to make a messy contribution to the Health portfolio during his time in power, and currently is maintaining a do-no-harm-approach, except for boat people and labelling gays as threatening, is Tony Abbott, and he's once again the subject of an uxorial frenzied tribute by Pearson.

Pearson even manages to dig the Green Corps initiative out of the ground in which it's been buried without ceremony this past decade.

At best you can call it one of those socialist government initiatives beloved of befuddled Liberals who believe in the power of big government to get alienated youth out to work, and amazingly you can find online a self-serving assessment of the program by the department here as a MS doc. It conforms to the rule that when writing a report it is essential to know the outcome, since nobody much minded when the notion of a Green Corps was buried, until of course Abbott returned to the smelly corpse as his notional response to climate change. Yep, a Green Army, a bit like those gimmicks for tradesmen, herded under advertising slogans like the Blue Army.

But I already sense a restlessness, punters in the crowd asking once again if all The Australian's commentariat ever does is write hagiographic portraits of Tony Abbott as fearless leader in waiting?

Amazingly, the answer is no, as this weekend, Peter van Onselen offers up Failings don't hand mandate to Abbott.

I wonder if he's made to wear sackcloth and ashes for stating the bleeding obvious, which is that the love affair with Chairman Rudd has ended but many people prefer the embrace of the Greens than to fall in to the arms of Tony Abbott. Van Onselen even dares to offer a few mild criticisms of Abbott's posturing.

On asylum-seekers:

Liberals spend so much time talking about hordes of asylum-seekers making their way to this country by boat you would swear the problem were akin to that of illegal immigrants crossing the Mexico border into the US.

On consultation:

While Malcolm Turnbull ultimately lost his job because of a failure to consult with his partyroom over what it wanted to do in response to the emissions trading scheme, Abbott has treated his back bench with even more disdain, failing to consult it before announcing policy positions across a range of areas, including on refugees. He is getting away with it for now because the opposition is competitive in the polls. If that changes Abbott will rightly be called to account, and that's when his poor personal ratings will go against him.

And after mourning the loss of a few remaining wets in the party, most notably the always attractive Petro Georgiou, he notes a lack of appeal in Abbott as the Liberal machine goes about its business:

Throw in Howard's stalwart media man, Tony O'Leary, who has been brought back to manage the Opposition Leader's press office, and authentic Abbott has been replaced with stage-managed Abbott as he gets dragged from media stunt to media stunt.

Oh no, not the authentic Abbott, lost under the bus. More kool aid for Mr van Onselen, please. Meantime, if we quickly don Pearson's polaroid rosy three D sunglasses, we're back into another flurry of big government socialist activities, courtesy Tony Abbott, this time the Job Network.

Ah the job network. Handy work if you can get it. It reminds me of Senator Hutchins immortal line:

... it is of no surprise to me that the Job Network is in difficulty. Where I come from in Western Sydney we would refer to Mr Abbott as someone who has `sexy fingers', because we would say that everything he touches he stuffs. If you look at the way in which he has handled this portfolio and the way in which he has handled a number of things in his political career, you would expect the outcome that we are seeing today where Labor has to introduce legislation in the parliament to make sure that there is an authority to monitor the crumbling Job Network system.

Sexy fingers! Well it was before the budgie smugglers.

There's more on this bit of fun here in pdf form, in an extract from Hansard, including some hearty commentary on the rip offs and rorting associated with the Job Network scheme.

The Job Network has failed to assist long-term unemployed people to find work. The intensive assistance program for the long-term unemployed has failed—37 per cent of job seekers were in work three months after receiving intensive assistance, compared with Labor's 59 per cent under our former wage subsidy program and 41 per cent under our former training program. In fact, the OECD has reported that it has created the same amount of jobs as Labor's Working Nation—but Working Nation was not plagued by phantom jobs like those in this system.

Never mind, it handed over some tasty cash - $3 billion spent on the program at the time of the debate to turn Christian charities into job placement centres - and if it had been done by a Labour government, it would have been hailed by the commentariat as a kind of pink batt approach to unemployment and soundly boxed around the ears, before being sent on its way.

Not to worry, because soon enough Pearson is haring off after Abbott's stint in the health portfolio to discover further triumphs, perhaps worthy of a decent old fashioned Roman vir triumphus, with memorial.

The latter years of the Howard government are often characterised in terms of burgeoning middle-class welfare so it's worth noting that public hospital expenditure rose during Abbott's four years in the portfolio from $7.5bn in 2003-04 to $9.76bn in 2007-08. Medicare rebates were extended for allied health professional services, including dental treatment. General practitioner places rose during those years by 25 per cent and the number of places for medical students nearly doubled.

Although Abbott is a pragmatist, he's by no means a doctrinaire neo-liberal.

Say what? Now we're supposed to celebrate Abbott as a determined exponent of middle-class welfare, using government cash to buy votes and piss money against the middle class wall?

Oh no, say it ain't so Nick Minchin and Eric Abetz. Do you have a viperish Christian socialist and expansionist government spender in your midst? The sort of idle riff raff who might offer a stay at home mom a handy $10,000 for doing the right thing, and staying at home? While sinking the slipper into dole bludgers who understand nothing of working for a handout?

Yes, yes he is, he's a big spender, and he wants to spend a little time with thee, as Pearson ends his piece with this sort of self-serving tosh about doing no harm, while offering up more of the small family routine:

"I had to weigh theoretical gains in economic efficiency against maintaining the social fabric and to acknowledge the non-economic factors [that] play such a big role in how people actually behave. I kept Coles and Woolworths out of pharmacy, for instance, not because I questioned their ability to manage dispensaries but because I doubted that replacing family-oriented small businesses with the departments of big businesses would improve anything except price. As a conservative, I was reluctant to change a system that worked without compelling reason ... 'do no harm' should be the first rule of government as well as the foundation of medical ethics."

The reality is that Abbott was an indifferent Minister of various bits and pieces, and he was always willing to do the bidding of his master. His principle role was as attack dog for the Howard government, a job he performed with relish and conviction, but when asked to do actual things in a dull and responsible ministerial way, he frequently lost direction.

That's why the punters have been ambling off to the Greens to make a point, and why van Onselen can end his piece thus:

Rudd has done enough to deserve to lose the next election; the problem is the Coalition hasn't done enough since being booted out of office to deserve to win it. More time in the wilderness is the answer, unless we see a lot more to make Abbott and his conservative team more appealing.

Meanwhile, it wouldn't be Pearson if there wasn't a viperish sting in the tail of the column, nad here it is:

The Liberal preselection for the marginal federal seat of Adelaide will be decided on Sunday. To my astonishment, Christopher Pyne and Alexander Downer have seen fit to endorse Houssam Abiad, a candidate who joined the party and nominated on the same day nominations closed.

Oh yes, they play it hard in Adelaide in the Liberal party. Here's Houssam Abiad making vexnews.com as being favourably quoted in The Guardian, the official weekly newspaper of the Communist party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist). Pearson knows the party line, and faithfully trots it out:

Abiad was born in Australia but has spent 15 of his 33 years living in Lebanon. He has two main claims to fame. He reportedly addressed a Hiroshima Day rally in August 2006, saying: "Today I condemn all forms of terror. Today I am truly a proud Australian, a Palestinian, Afghani, Iraqi and Lebanese. This war has to stop. This is not a war against terror. This is a war of terror." In March 2008 he signed an advertisement deploring the 60th anniversary of the foundation of Israel as " a triumph of racism" and describing the event as "al-Nakb", the catastrophe.

Now there's a first class example of how to do no harm, with hobnailed boots and steel capped toes!

Sssh, he's a Muslim, and he has a Facebook page and he calls himself an Adelaide entrepreneur and businessman. Fifteen years out of country, and perhaps not even a birth certificate from Hawaii. Say no more!

Next week, how Tony Abbott can turn water into wine, and not just an average quaffing vin ordinaire, but a proper Appellation d'origine contrôlée. And we all know what that means ... second eleven.

Now excuse me, we're off hunting for NSW Labor party ministers. It's quite jolly and good exercise, and the chances of sighting a working Minister is much harder than spotting a drop bear ... that's why Ministerial hunting is so much more challenging and interesting than bird watching ...

(Below: and while we're at it, celebrating Abbott in cartoons, here's a Moir).