Three parts politics

1.   I used to find Tim Dunlop a tedious bore when he had a gig as a News Ltd blogger, but in small doses he's occasionally OK.   Here, he complains about the easy ride which the media (including Fairfax) seems to be giving Tony Abbott now.   It's all "oh well, he doesn't want to discuss his actual policies yet; we'll just have to leave his inconsistencies and shallowness alone then."

I would add - Chris Uhlmann on the ABC gives him the easiest ride of all.   This is always puzzling, given his wife is a Labor MP.   Uhlmann used to express skepticism about climate change, although I have not heard him comment about it for a long time.   If one thing has become clear in the last couple of years, it's this:   amongst political commentators, and economists, climate change skepticism is a reliable sign of unreliability.

2.  Bernard Keane on Crikey writes that the winter break has actually not gone too bad for Julia Gillard:

But the winter break certainly didn’t play out according to opposition plans. July 1 came and went without any drama associated with the carbon price. August 1 then came and went without drama. Yesterday’s jobs data for July saw a lift in employment after June had seen a sizeable fall. Non-official inflation data suggested our main concern might be deflation, rather than the rampant price rises predicted by the Coalition. Even many Liberal voters, far more likely to see the economic cloud than any silver lining, professed to have not seen any price rises.

Then there was the curious framing exercise, delivered via a one-two punch from first Wayne Swan and then, this week, Julia Gillard. Swan risked ridicule by embracing his inner Boss, but the Springsteen stuff enabled Swan, and Labor, to get a cut-through message out about its values in a way that just another speech, just another interview, would never have done. Moreover, it complemented one of the government’s few reputational strengths, the impression that it is more inclined to manage the economy for working Australians rather than business, as voters tend to think the Coalition does. It also comes at a time when the government has near-utopian unemployment, inflation and interest rate figures to boast of.

I think he's write, and the surprise bounce in Newspoll would have been welcome with open arms by the PM.  I like the way Bernar refers several times to Abbott's flakiness.  He has him down pat, explaining Abbott's inconsistency with his others in the Coalition as follows:

Manifestly, Abbott was let down by his staff, who failed to brief him, or gave him dud advice in encouraging him to wish away a key factor behind rising power prices. It also confirmed the impression that, once you get him off attacking the carbon price and asylum seekers, Abbott is a flake. Malcolm Turnbull, for all his many and varied faults of political style, was across most issues as leader because of his genuine interest in public policy. That’s why he was able to offer intelligent en passant comments on the electricity issue this week.

Part of the impression of Abbott’s flakiness, of course, is that he prefers a political approach to policy, which is why he’s now adopted a media policy of wanting freedom of speech for News Ltd but greater censorship of the internet, a stance that grates with those of us who like consistency and rigour, but that maximises his political interests.

But Bernard is a realist:

This government’s history is to follow up a good fortnight like the one it has just had with some sort of self-inflicted debacle that reverses all the momentum and ensures that Abbott’s flakiness is never subjected to sustained pressure.

True.  But maybe it will change, one day...

3.    Alan Kohler is well worth reading on the electricity prices issue.   Everyone is right, apparently.