Nikki Savva, Gerard Henderson, and forget the group hug ... bring on the grapefruit ...

(Above: between banning Galaxy Quest and group hugs, or banning The Australian and Nikki Savva, the pond always opts for the latter).

It's obligatory at moments like this to provide a link to the blogger Grog's Gamut Spartacus no more while at the same time avoiding any links to the House of Murdoch's rambling incoherent petty minded rationalisations and excuses for outing him.

If you suffer the preening offensive righteousness and the hob nailed boots and the piece of 4 x 2 as the thuggees go about their dobber business , at least you should get as many hits as you can muster ....

But then pleasure in taking a vindictive, vicious baseball bat aspproach to proceedings, rivals, enemies and anyone else within range is also handsomely on view in Nikki Savvas's offering Just bring back the biffo:

Federal parliament is no place for namby-pamby cry babies or sooks. Nor should it be.

That brought back fond memories of playground bullies jeering and sneering about cry babies and sooks. It seemed to conjure up the mentality of some knee capping politicians and the bullying ways of the House of Murdoch, especially The Australian, all in one sweet sentence.

Savva proceeds to offer up the mentality of the NSW Labor right as proper thinking:

Neither is it a place that offers solace to rats. The side from which they rat despises them and sets out to destroy them, and the side to which they rat also despises them and never trusts them.

Rodents might roam the corridors of the press gallery with impunity, but it would be about the only place in that building where rats were given refuge.

Yes, yes, and next week a thought piece on the ugly nature of the NSW Right and its sordid ways with rats in the ranks. Forget that blather about a more gentle polity. That was just another lying scumbag politician of the lowest water ...

Savva spends her entire piece celebrating that kind of baseball bat 'Balmain boys don't cry mentality' without pausing to wonder how the independents and the Greens have now ended up holding the balance of power. And why Abbott, who might have won a majority, now writhes just a bare toehold away from power ...

What precious will actually do with the ring and the power is another matter altogether ...

So when parliament sits tomorrow, after the formalities of today, it will not be beautiful, and promises to get very ugly.

So what? Parliament should be robust and boisterous and occasionally disrespectful. It is the place for people to fight over ideas, not roll over.

Fight? In the manner of Chinese burns and wedgies and yah yah yer hair's on fire? As opposed to reasonably rational and coherent discourse, sensible policies with a positive - dare we say it forward looking - tinge, and the odd display of humanity?

... parliament's first act should be to outlaw group hugs. Hugs have a place, maybe at kindergartens or on sports fields (although the sight of grown men embracing and getting teary whenever they kick a goal is enough to make grown women cry), but should not be encouraged just because politicians agree on something.

There's plenty more in the piece scribbled in ferocious support of a ferocious bullying workplace environment and culture - the NSW Labor right must be chortling with pleasure at the way their approach to politics has seeped into The Australian and in to the Liberal party - but it made me wonder why anyone bothered with this kind of superficial ditzy tough moll in a film noir routine. Savva seems to think she's in a Raymond Chandler novel, where it's obligatory to slug the dame with a gat ...

I'm not big on group hugs, but it brought back sweet memories of Galaxy Quest.

I suppose Savva would prefer James Cagney smashing a grapefruit into girlfriend Mae Clarke's face as a way forward in relationships ...

So naturally it was pleasing to see that Abbott will act like a playground bully and lout when it comes to arranging a pair for Julia Gillard - if you can stand visiting The Australian a couple of times in a day, you can read all about it in Tony Abbott gets tough on pair for Julia Gillard. Yes, the ongoing reduction of politics and the media to the standard of a playground fight is proceeding well, and promises ongoing greatness for the lucky country ...

But it's Tuesday, and that means we always take a look at our favourite prattling Polonius, Gerard Henderson, this week as he flings The power of one is all Labor needs out into the marketplace of ideas ...

Henderson purports an even handed temperament and bias, and opens by tut tutting about old fashioned hyperbole and exaggeration in relation to the current political situation.

As is usual, Polonius reverts to history in his quest for reassurance, as he explains the ship of state will continue to sail on its stately way ...

This is the same majority as that achieved by Robert Menzies when he formed a United Australia Party-Country Party government, with the help of two independents, after the 1940 election ...

Um, the parliament which resulted lasted just thirteen months, from September 1940 to October 1940 ...

Sure, there was a change of government in 1941. But there was no constitutional crisis and democracy was never endangered.

Uh huh. You can see where this is heading, though in a more nuanced and subtle style than Savva.

Henderson spends the rest of his piece berating the independents, those rats in the ranks. First rat to be given a clobbering is Tony Windsor for comparing the Nationals to cancer ... clear evidence of Windsor's hostility to the Nationals, of which he was once a member. Rat.

Then Oakeshott is clobbered for running a line that was embraced by anti-Catholic sectarians, which dared to suggest that Abbott could not be fully trusted because he is a traditional Catholic. Sectarian rat.

So I guess we should all welcome Cardinal Pell's ongoing behind the scenes contribution to Australian politics.

As usual, in the Henderson way, he disremembers that infamous bit of disremembering by Abbott back in 2004 on Lateline:

TONY JONES: Tony Abbott on another matter, have you met Archbishop Pell during the election campaign?

TONY ABBOTT: Not that I can recall.

TONY JONES: Not that you can recall, because we believe that you've had at least one meeting with him quite recently? You don't recall that?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, when? Where?

TONY JONES: At the presbytery in Sydney.

TONY ABBOTT: Ah, actually now that you do mention it, I did met with Cardinal Pell. So what?
Why shouldn't I meet with Cardinal Pell?

TONY JONES: Why couldn't you recall meeting him, I think, 10 days ago?

TONY ABBOTT: Look, whenever it was, so what? Why shouldn't I meet Cardinal Pell. Cardinal Pell is a fine man. (there's more excruciating bits here)

Yep, couldn't lie straight in bed let alone on television. Meanwhile, an education funding system that doles out the cash to Catholic schools now hands out lavish sums to schools based on Exclusive Brethren and scientological principles ...

But back to Henderson, romping through the field, tagging Bandt and Wilkie as leftists, Windsor as a hater, and Oakeshott a distruster of Catholics ...

As for the way politics will be conducted? Well Henderson's already given a clue with his 'Phantom rough on roughneck independents' routine, but for additional clarity he wraps it up thus:

Those who voted for the Coalition should expect that Abbott will represent their views ... In other words, democracy as usual.

Yep, bring it on. The ferocious nattering negativity, the assaults on sooks and cry babies, the ratbaggery, the childish thuggee treatment of politics as a blood sport.

And Henderson? Why he's just Nikki Savva, with or without the manly well plumped up shoulder pads ... standing by, waiting for Mr. Abbott to slap around a few sooks with his gat ...

As for the pond? Come on down Mr. Cagney. Show us how it's done ...