One overarching theme of the 2007 Federal Election has been what Labor pariah Mark Latham has just termed the 'zenith of policy convergence'; in narrative terms, the occlusion of any progressive remnants in the Federal Labor caucus by the more conservative ones. This goes without saying. In practice it has meant nothing short of a coward's revolution, get over the finish line, regardless of the sport.

The problem isn't a political one, but one of complete and overarching subjugation of policy to politic - by which we can dispense with the veil and call roundly, the state of Australian media. Those whose careers are birthed out of this mire have long noted the deep idiosyncracies welded into the structure of our newspapers, television stations and radio networks. We demand a different breed of political engagement from both candidates and media denizens than any other democracy.

One rule, above all, lies etched in stone above every archway - Don't take the punters for mugs. You can lie, as long as you apologise. You can get it wrong, as long as you buy the next beer. This tender punch-and-judy dramaturgy simply doesn't fly in American or British political media.

American politicians live and breathe by their trajectories; they have to be smooth and unthreatening shooting stars - the media complicit in the automatic selection of the least different newcomer and the dismantling of those who dare to challenge the status quo. One big mistake and its over. That is, one big idea and its over. Howard Dean springs to mind.

Britons love their stump speeches, and demand of the politicians the most inventive collage of the major twelve magical words; hope, opportunity, change, action, the future, our children, best and brightest, compassionate, tough-minded, vigilant, decent and finally, hard-working. The media glumly trots out the variations of these terms until someone is bold enough to stray from the formula. George Galloway springs to mind.

So there is something entirely unconvicing about recent articles in The Age, The Australian and Crikey.com.au describing this election about being a morotorium on 'experience versus ideas' - its plain to all that neither party has people with the intellect or nous to gather either. Since the vast majority of election coverage relates to the real competition of narratives - the running of the polls and the running of the columnists - we can also dispense with certainty with that most gross and hideous lie - 'electability'.

One phrase rings out of American journalist Matt Taibbi's 2004 Presidential campaign diary, 'Spanking the Donkey'; "substance is impossible". Enjoy the electric force that exists in your mind when you read those three words together. Consider everything that has happened in the past four weeks.

Tony Abbott's late arrival is a perfect metaphor for the country we find ourselves in. A clearly drugged-out and inconsistently religious figure blusters in without apology to lose a contest of ideas and declare himself the winner regardless. We are lucky in that, unlike the American press (who could very well declare it 'a gutsy move'), or the British press (who may not report the lateness at all), we are at least given the common decency of having the absurdity of the situation brought into question. But here's the problem; Abbott's failures are narrativised into 'a bad day'. The broader issue, of whether this person should even be allowed to drive let alone hold office, is completely off the table. We have lost even the most basic apparatus of outrage.

Kevin Andrews' hilarious two-act performance of the Haneef affair and comments on African immigration are not 'campaign negatives'. They aren't 'problems for the Howard team to neutralise'. He is manifestly poor at this job, even by Coalition standards, and should have been stood down long ago.

Yet we find it impossible to have this discussion in the national media spaces because to say it means you are partisan. This same system refuses to deal with anybody who isn't - who doesn't have a thumping, combative approach. You can't push on principles on either side of the debates because to do so in partisan. But you can't get on the air unless you are. The whole thing would look like a Dostoevsky plot, if we were only allowed to kill some of the actors

To have a discussion in the media about the growing necessity of splitting up the political class and its apparatus for the good of everybody involved is by definition, not possible. You can't stick buttered toast to a cat and expect antigravity. All media coverage of this election - even true dissent - is subsumed into the pulping, frothing, overwhelming legitimacy stamp for the political elite.


The complicity of the media apparatus, blogs included, in oversaturating the political machine with coverage (or if you like, fuel) is utterly flawness.  Without so much as a whisper, something dry and resolute in the heart of Australia was sold out for greed, boredom and the fun of the fight. In John Howard's Aspirational Nationalism, bad government is only bad because it effects the next vote. People accuse his government of being moralistic. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is only discussion of morality in that it corrals attitudes. Clusters form.

Down the dark decades of shrinking faith, we may look back on the breif window of Mark Latham as a memory of heaven. Notice how people from both sides refuse to speak his name, or enter into a debate with his comments? Hawke is too distant now for many but can still bring together the baby boomers missing the days when televised politics meant that politics was a farce, as opposed to tragedy. Keating is universally understood now as The One That Made Howard Possible - and Johnny has repeatedly refused to acknowledge him, the barbs slung on him still stinging after a decade in office.

To me, the greatest issue of the campaign is the searing hatred between John Howard and Peter Costello. When asked if he thought Costello would make a good Prime MInister, Howard could only say that he thought Hawke ended up being a much better statesman that Keating. In other words, "not only is Costello not leadership material, but if he gets there, it won't be long."

In this sort of environment, where the current leader of over a decade, who looks up to Thatcher and Reagan, is now out of ideas and out of friends - what can be said about the health of the political system? How desperately obvious it is that the Liberal party's Costello orthodoxy wants to mailbomb Malcolm Turnbull, whose ambition and lazy relationship with the truth makes him a far better candidate for top job of the post-defeat Liberal Party? How desperately obvious it is when not even rhetoric - but rhetoric about rhetoric - given this week's apology about apologies takes centre stage, that Burnham Wood has come to Dunsinane?

Howard is a decade deep in an authoritarian conservative government, for some reason wanting to stay - and has run completely dry of political capital to spend, and finally, words themselves. I imagine him being torn from Kirribilli by the fingernails, recounts demanded, a concession speech alluding to a comeback, the works.  

As for the Labor competitor, not one positive thing can be said about the public appearance of this person aside from the obvious; that he is somewhat less asinine, incrementally less warmongering, a shade more humane, vaguely less turgid than the current situation. Rudd may as well stand in front of a banner reading "Yes, this is the best we can do."  

Now imagine that there was a moment of sanity, that behind that caucus room, a plan for a future Australia is being hatched. Surely only a drugged-out creep would sniff out the secret to the press, in some over-air-conditioned airport lounge. This represents our only hope. That 'changing it all anyway', whatever it may mean, frankly represents the sheerest optimism we can have.

That roulette wheel is much more preferable than watching this campaign. The Liberals tell us to go for growth... except growth pushes up interest rates... which is why we need Workchoices.... to keep wages down.... so we can go for growth.... and Workchoices means growth since its put wages up. They are allowed to get away with this and the only place we can reasonably expect to be played out is through Labor campaign material and a few key blogs.

Substance. Is. Impossible.

Not just hard to find. Impossible.

I want Julia Gillard to be Prime Minister. Not because she'd be good at the job. Because we would be able to find all the PR teams who've been burped out of the top universities into cushy jobs in the political reporting system. We'd be able to find them all and we'd be able to bury them alive somewhere in the scrub in Gippsland. Because every one of them would write one of two divergent pieces. One would be "Now Comes The Test: Is Australian Really Ready for a Female PM?" and the other would be "Style At The Top". The authors of the first would be required to strip naked before entering the pit, and allowed to write a final letter. The second, no such romance.

Latham had it half right, there is a convergence going on. But it is increasingly clear that even the PR and advertising apparatus of the two parties is a smokescreen. The policies are now just pure electioneering. We talk about Labor taking steps to the right, but the Coalition just wrote a 83 million dollar cheque for the ABC to launch a kids channel. Try explaining that to Ronald Reagan. Or Thatcher. The parties aren't converging together. They're converging towards the media. The negative ads, the positive ads, they are all now finally selling the same product.

A cold-war era soviet television producer once joked that advertising in Russia was based on the idea that advertising simply needed to be there to give television its formal properties. At one point, they advertised tap water with the slogan 'Tap water: its in your house.' The politics of this campaign are there for the same reason. To give it form, nothing more. Only the slightest glimmer of hope exists, maybe the refunding of higher education, the reorganisation of the health system, a 50-year moratorium on nuclear power (its not hard, Peter, just tell them how much water they use!), and then if we really smoke the best drugs we have, actual action on reconcilation and gay marriage rights. Instead, we are meant to aspire to a redress of the national debt sheet and to get back the rights we until recently had. None of it matters though, not to the political machine. These things are issues. They are food.

So let us finish with those two moments again; the sweaty Tony Abbott walking into a debate, late, angry, unapologetic and the unguarded Peter Garrett, dryly waving off Steven Price (of all people) and Richard Wilkins (of all people) and dropping either the worst off-the-cuff remark imaginable, or a glimmer of hope for those of us with aspirations of a fair and decent society.

That the very best we can hope for, the dreams of many of us, is being discussed as a campaign positive for the Coalition tells you precisely where we are. That Abbott walks the earth tells you precisely where we are. George Megalogenis at the Australia begins his new column with this: "John Howard and Peter Costello are asking voters what no incumbent has dared to ask before: to see politics as an extended piece of jazz. We are meant to be transfixed by their search for melody." The point isn't that they're in trouble finding that tune. The problem is we've gotten to the point where we think its okay to wait.

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