Insanity prevails in the post-election comedown

While there needs to be a deep examination of what happened with opinion polling in this election, there’s something more pressing that needs to be addressed, writes Dennis Atkins.

Here’s a tip for everyone racing to learn from the election held last weekend.

Chill out.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is the only one who appears to understand this.

He’s gone back to work without any great fanfare.

Morrison spent the first part of the week in his Sydney CBD office working on his new ministerial line-up and setting out a to-do list for as much of this coming term as he is prepared to consider right now.

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He finished the week with a genuinely smart political move — flying to far northern Queensland and visiting the people who are still recovering from the freakish weather earlier this year.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison visited Burke and Wills Campdraft near Cloncurry on Friday. Picture: Lukas Coch/AAP

It was a reprise of his drought visits after assuming the prime ministership last year.

The only indulgence Morrison entertained was to grant media interviews with his favourite outlets, Sky News and Radio 2GB and a couple of newspapers including The Courier-Mail.

As far as the media is concerned, he is “dancing with the ones who brung him” to use Ronald Reagan’s famous phrase.

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Elsewhere, people were trying to reinvent the wheel in seven days.

The Channel 9/Fairfax publishers have decided to dump their regular opinion Ipsos polling surveys.

Yes, there does need to be a deep examination of what happened with opinion polling in this election — and how the polls were seemingly wrong for not just those six weeks but perhaps for the last three years or more.

Utting Research boss John Utting, who has been working for the Labor Party since the late 1980s, has proposed a range of reforms for the polling industry which should be considered.

Most importantly, Utting recommends a national oversight organisation or “polling council” run by professionals with Professor Ian McAllister from the Australian National University suggested as a chairman.

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This is all good, well-considered advice. But Channel 9/Fairfax is jumping the gun, with a knee jerk response that does not augur well for the future.

Anthony Albanese will be Labor leader by Monday is no one else puts their hand up. Picture: Dean Lewins/AAP

The Labor Party is also jumping the gun by rushing to crown inner city Left-winger Anthony Albanese as the new leader.

The backroom boys made sure there was no contest after the one senior politician who might have taken the fight up to the Sydney MP, Queensland’s Jim Chalmers, indicated he had no fight in him.

So “Albo” will be leader come Monday night if no one else puts up their hand. The deputy looks like being Geelong-based MP and current Labor defence spokesman Richard Marles.

Albo, who appears to have a photo album of snaps recording his multiple visits to British extreme Left Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, will be cheered at the Woodford Folk Festival and inner-city craft beer hangouts.

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Whether he can connect with the aspirational tradies who drive Hilux utes and dream of investment properties is another thing.

Marles meanwhile is soon going to be haunted by his ill-considered comments about what a good thing it would be if Australia’s thermal coal export market collapsed.

This points to Labor making not one but two mistakes on leadership.

In reality, they probably don’t have any choice. Chalmers and Tanya Plibersek took themselves out of the equation,

Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen was only ever a contender in his mind and that of Paul Keating. If he had run, he would have struggled to get a quarter of the votes in Caucus, not to mention the party rank and file.

This leaves the ALP with no good choices. Albanese is going to perform quite well but the government is showing him a clean set of heels.

Many Labor MPs and commentators will mistake Albo’s easygoing style and the fact he is doing okay as a sign Labor is back in the game.

That will be a mistake not dissimilar to the many mistakes these same people made during the last term of government.

There’s a word for doing the same thing over and over again with the same results.

Insanity.

Dennis Atkins is The Courier-Mail’s national affairs editor.

@dwabriz