Christopher Pearson, Club Sensible, and the Dr. No's gather for a feast of ongoing nattering negativity ...

(Above: an earlier incarnation of Tony Abbott as Dr. No?)

Here at the pond we splashed out, invested heavily, in predicting the day when the white ants would come out to feast on Tony Abbott's hold on the opposition leadership.

Now with the dollar won, and safely in the piggyback, and we dream of a splurge, a feast of oysters and champagne, it's time to settle back to read Mark Kenny's Tony Abbott might look safe but for how long?

The heretical Kenny predicts that things might get a tad sticky for Dr. No if all he can offer is No.

This is an area of policy that the punters understand a lot more deeply than many politicians, Mr Abbott included. Assuming the Parliament runs its three year course, the NBN will have rolled out ultra-fast broadband to more than a million people by the time of the next election making it literally irreversible. "What is our policy then?’’ asked one Liberal. "Merely saying 'no’ will look a bit stupid then won’t it.’‘

Now even some big business interests are calling for a price on carbon sooner rather than later. And the big miners have demanded that the deal over the Minerals Resource Rent Tax not be tinkered with or scrapped. In every case, the Abbott policy is encapsulated in one short word: 'No’.

Lordy, the irate Kenny then demands positive policies:

Mr Abbott remains in a strong position but for how long? His best hope lay in developing solid and importantly, positive policies based on more than just saying no to what the Government proposes.

Positive policies? Will a positive ion do the trick?

We so shocked and disturbed that we immediately raced across to Club Sensible to see what Christopher Pearson might make of it, as he rests from his board room labours presiding over the wreckage of SBS and takes up his pen to scribble umbrage and outrage for The Australian.

Phew. What a relief. The nattering nabob of negativity can always be relied on, and the siren song of 'no, no way, no how, nix, nihil, nothing, nada' continues to ride high in Barnett an accidental witness to mining tax disaster.

What to make of all the false alarums that have littered the newspaper this week? How to deal with these hideous mining giants and their wretched ways?

First of all, of course, we need to see the glass half empty, and it's Gillard, not Abbott in trouble:

It depends on how much trouble her minority government finds itself in a year down the track.

Take that, club Kenny and your insensible chit chat.

By then, ruling from the sensible Centre may no longer be an option.

We had a presentiment of that outcome this week when BHP Billiton's Marius Kloppers called for a carbon tax. Kloppers may head the world's biggest mining company, but he's as much a child of the zeitgeist as most of his contemporaries on issues such as anthropogenic global warming. He was also probably glad to intervene in a way the government would find helpful after the hostilities over the resource rent tax.

Ah hah. You see, he's not really a big businessman. He's a child of the zeitgeist. It takes a level headed member of the board of SBS, as it drives that organisation into the ground, to apply rigorous scientific credentials to the matter of anthropogenic global warming.

Which leads me to an aside. Do the denialists ever bother to pause and wonder how they're constantly recognised as a secret coven with their very own password? Well here's a clue. They always talk about anthropogenic global warming, and they love to shorten it to AGW, to show that they're on top of the catch phrases that count.

Then all you need to do is nod wisely, and say 'oh you're a believer in AGW, are you? Off with the pixies eh, or perhaps a child of the zeitgeist.' Knowing the words to the dawning of the age of Aquarius for a hippy sing along helps smooth any awkward scientific moments ...

See that's how you do an expert scientific rebuttal. Oh and insinuate that Kloppers' beliefs are not held rationally, or from an understanding of the issues, so much as a peace pipe offering following tax hostilities.

You can of course apply this kind of logic to any indication of sincerely held understandings. Oh he would say that, or he would agree with that, you murmur, with a thin lipped smile. I understand they had a squabble over changing nappies a week ago, so him conceding there might be scientific arguments in favour of global warming was probably an attempt to produce domestic harmony. And avoid changing nappies ...

Of course it's just all part of the befuddlement and confusion arising from Club Sensible's desire to spread as much heat and avoid as much light as can be managed in a single column.

In the beginning, so to speak, Pearson steps into unexpected light - it's always unexpected when he steps into the light - and so takes back his bearings. A vast relief for those used to finding Club Sensible always in the dark, and with bearings lost.

And who'd have thunk that, bearings recovered, David Burchell's prediction that soon there would be commentariat commentators discovering former Chairman Rudd was some kind of long suffering St Sebastian, or simple minded Jerry Lewis patsy sold a dump by his slick smooth Dean Martin sidekicks - a notion ridiculed at the time in the pond - would come to pass.

But now it has, and not just amongst the likes of delusionists like Philip Adams speaking to an audience of one gladioli (and just why did the arrogant preening wretch put his producer credit after director Bruce Beresford in Don's Party), but also amongst prattish commentariat commentators. For example, Pearson on the mining tax:

What seems clear is Swan and Henry lulled him into a false sense of security. They apparently expected the announcement would be such a great coup that it would silence all the critics except for a few grumpy billionaires. So, despite having undertaken to do so, somehow they didn't bother to canvass it with the companies or the premiers whose revenues would be most affected.

On that reading of events, Rudd has reason to feel that Swan and Henry in effect betrayed him, whether consciously or otherwise, and is unlikely to forgive either of them this side of the grave.

What on earth to make of a scribbler so far removed from his own Club Sensible? It was Swan and Henry what done it? And Rudd an innocent lulled and gulled and led astray and duped and betrayed?

What on earth are we to make then of this delusional scribbler berating former Chairman Rudd for his control freakery?

Kevin Rudd's micro-management rendered his government dysfunctional.

In recent weeks there has been no shortage of people, especially within Labor's federal caucus, conceding that Kevin Rudd was politically and personally dysfunctional.

Now that he has gone to the decent obscurity of the back bench, it's time to canvas a broader issue. Just how dysfunctional was the Rudd government?

Clearly, the two questions are related. A prime minister less concerned with micro-management and more trusting about the judgment of his ministers could have made a far better fist of the job.

You know, trusted Swannie.

And there's more, as this scribbler berates Rudd up hill and down dale for his gang of four ways. Back then of course the aim was to blame Gillard for being a part of the gang, and for helping in the sidelining and the encouraging of the iron fisted rule, over reliant as it was on relatively inexperienced staffers, and a PM who simply wouldn't listen to anyone.

Oh hang on, I see that was Christopher Pearson scribbling Cabinet found governing a puzzle, before he found the light, came in from the cold, rediscovered his bearings, and determined that former Chairman Rudd was a hopelessly naive chap who could easily be led astray - his simple minded trusting way - by evil Swannie and wombat loving Henry.

Is there no end to callous duplicity and an unquenchable capacity for paranoid conspiracy theories in the world?

Back then of course former Chairman Rudd and his gang of four were responsible for every unspeakable evil in a world gone mad and wrong.

These days, with the newly deputised foreign affairs man swanning around the world, it's Swannie and Treasury who must carry the can, what with their rubbery estimates, and their small amount to be garnered from the tax.

That's right. This week, the news is that the shattering burdensome shocking tax that was going ruin the nation might now only cost the squillionaires $2.5 billion over two years.

What a shock and a disgrace. It seems it might not ruin the nation or the mining industry after all. How surprising.

Oh wait a second, it'll ruin the nation because we're not garnering enough from the tax ...

What then can Club Sensible do to ramp up its nattering negativity? Why talk of the Greens and a 50% resource rent tax, and then hail Bob Brown as a kind of super bully with a take no prisoners negotiating style. And it's true. He certainly took no prisoners, nor even a policy outcome when it came to the government's ETS.

Perhaps he'll have better luck bullying The Australian and its nattering scribes.

But back to Pearson, who suddenly in the best Club Sensible style, has developed a healthy Tea party fear of big government and big business doing big deals in secret:

Gillard, who vowed only days before the election that "there will be no carbon tax" under a Labor government was saying on Thursday that "it would be simplistic to rule it out".

Of course Kloppers is one of the Big Three and has the luxury of a special tax deal cut with the government behind closed doors just before the election was called. It seems highly unlikely that most Australian miners will share his enthusiasm for a carbon tax.

Oh fickle, perverse, secretive, furtive, disagreeable big business big miners to so cause Club Sensible such heart burn.

Here we were thinking it the monstrous Greens and the evil socialists were ruining the country, but now it seems big business has joined the 'Dr. Yes we can' brigade of new paradigmists avoiding old atavisms ...

So what is it we've learnt from the natterings of Club Sensible this week, apart from the evil ways of big business, ex-chair Rudd's heartfelt innocence, and the joy of conspiracy theorising?

Well surely it's the pleasures of expounding over a good port while sitting in a leather chair ... further proof if any is needed that the much reviled chattering classes and elites are alive and well ... and not in the inner west, so much as in the house of Murdoch.

Meanwhile, we take a more aloof view of worldly proceedings:

Buddha said: "I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of dust motes. I observe treasures of gold and gems as so many bricks and pebbles. I look upon the finest silken robes as tattered rags. I see myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of fruit, and the greatest lake in India as a drop of oil on my foot. I perceive the teachings of the world to be the illusion of magicians. I discern the highest conception of emancipation as a golden brocade in a dream, and view the holy path of the illuminated ones as flowers appearing in one's eyes. I see meditation as a pillar of a mountain, Nirvana as a nightmare of daytime. I look upon the judgment of right and wrong as the serpentine dance of a dragon, and the rise and fall of beliefs as but traces left by the four seasons." (here)

Yes, yes, Buddha (stamping foot impatiently), that's all very well, but how soon before Dr. No goes down, and Gillard's in disarray, and those big business miners set up shop with the bullying Greens to ruin Club Sensible's understanding of Global Warming.

Stick to the point Buddha. Enough with the stuff about serpentine dances of dragons, and get with the serpentine blather ...

(Below: and now it being the weekend, something for gentleman readers from Dr. No, so that they might consider the Freudian implications of conch shells. Never let it be said that Dr. No and Buddha and conch shells and Tony Abbott and Christopher Pearson have no business being on the same page, for taking that kind of stance would be the purest example of nattering nabobs of nincompoopish negativism. The sort of thing we expect of pusillanimous pussyfooters, hopeless hysterical hypochondriacs of history, from the effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals. So it goes, for no particular reason, and so Vale Spiro).