Dogs, fleas and even a few quite worthy candidates

Relief, dear readers, is at hand. Only a few days to go and the nation can return to the apathy in which it allows itself to slumber.

No more of those Clive Palmer advertisements that make you want to throw a brick at the television. No more fear that if you turn on the radio or pick up a newspaper you will be exposed to rubbish that Palmer can afford to peddle and fund. The Palmer ego is so big that he is the only person in this country who does not understand the opprobrium most people have for him.

Remember when his nephew was darting from one hiding place to another in the back blocks of Bulgaria to avoid being questioned by Australian authorities? At least he was one fugitive who could live a five-star life while on the run.

Pauline Hanson, according to one rumour, has retired to a nunnery to recover from the disasters that have been the men she chose as One Nation team members. James Ashby, Fraser Anning and Steve Dickson have all contributed to One Nation’s dramatic fall from grace. It may be an old saying but it holds true: “You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.” While many decent people may inhabit the fringes of our society, it is an absolute certainty some pretty weird sorts are hanging around as well.

Even the Greens, who would lay claim to having some sort of an organisation, still have real difficulty in finding normal, sane, decent candidates. They used to say the only certainties in life were death and taxes. To that add the social media posts of any political candidate.

This has been a remarkably civil election with precious little mudslinging.

Modern election campaigns naturally focus on the leaders of the Coalition and Labor. For months now, though, other figures have emerged who perform consistently well. Josh Frydenberg is a classic example. Some politicians convey an earnestness about them so well that people are prepared to believe what they say — up to a point, of course. Frydenberg and Mathias Cormann are in that category. Both are well versed in almost every aspect of government because they are across most of the policy areas.

I sat on the expenditure review committee for a few years and can recall one occasion where Barry Jones, who could remember what he had for breakfast on the same day from decades past, had no idea of how to argue for his cause and was being taken apart. The ERC could be a very high hurdle to jump at times, with people such as John Dawkins and Peter Walsh, both possessed of big brains with considerable talents in putting their points of view. Jones had no hope of handling them and I was forced to race into Bob Hawke’s office and plead with him to save Jones and restore some of the science budget. Jones was in the Centre-Left, the same faction as Walsh and Dawkins, but factional loyalties were left at the door when it came to ERC meetings. It was at ERC meetings where you could see the gift Paul Keating really had. While I did not always agree with his judgment, there was no doubt that Keating possessed a very, very big brain.

Labor is fortunate that the party has a couple of heavyweights in the economic portfolios to keep Frydenberg and Cormann on their toes. Chris Bowen and Jim Chalmers are a formidable duo and neither is afraid of hard work. There is a case in this era to provide a Canberra residence for the treasurer. The mountain of work the treasurer has to climb grows every year and, while I know some treasurers may like to stay close to home to make sure they are on top of what is happening in their electorate, their main business is in the nation’s capital.

There has been some criticism over the past few days about Australia’s vetting of migrants and those coming in under refugee programs. It is a bit rich to have a crack at the Prime Minister when it is obvious that so many of the records of Syria’s citizens have been lost over more than a decade of constant, destructive civil war. The mess that is the Middle East has been going on for decades and no improvement is on the cards. When Australia agreed to take in thousands of Syrian refugees, we signed up to an agreement that guaranteed that a few ne’er-do-wells would gain entry to our country.

Under the reign of Julie Bishop, the only criticism I could make was that we didn’t have a policy on how to handle China. Indeed, if we do have such a policy it has been kept secret from us.

Having the US as the main country defending us in the event of a major world conflict while relying on China as our main trading partner has proven to be a very sticky business. With only a few minor hiccups, however, we seem to have been able to keep all our trading balls in the air.

I am at a loss to explain why the news that China attempts to keep tabs on Chinese living overseas comes as a surprise to anyone. The regime can reach out and touch any one of the more than a billion citizens of whom it is in charge of in a flash. It runs a Big Brother regime the likes of which Orwell could not have imagined.

Keeping tabs is fine provided that is where it ends. While allegations of the Chinese issuing threats to those in the diaspora concerning relatives they have back in the mother country are unsavoury, it is almost impossible for a totalitarian regime to resist the temptation to broaden its control.