Palmerama

Clive Palmer and Al Gore. Just think about it for a second.......yup it actually happened.

I've woken up in stranger situations

Lets have a quick run-down on how we got here.

You see, Clive Palmer rode into Canberra last year on a beast named 'anti politics'. Canberra had never seen such a sight before......well at least not for years. What did it all mean?

Clive, for his part, couldn't quite believe what he was seeing either: everything was fake. All the structures the insiders were so very proud of were just cardboard cut-outs, like movie sets. Once Clive got close enough it was blindingly obvious. Why couldn't they see?

Yet, when he asked all the thronging insiders "what do you see?" they all shouted "RESPONSIBLE ADULT MAJOR PARTIES WITH VERY IMPORTANT POLICIES"

"Ah!" Clive thought, "They're all under a spell!"

So he decided to see what would happen if he just gave it all a little.....push.

And everything began to collapse!

And all the insiders shouted as one "STOP YOU BUFFOON! YOUR STUNTS ARE WRECKING ALL THE WONDERFUL THINGS THE RESPONSIBLE ADULT MAJOR PARTIES HAVE CREATED!"

But Clive said "Its not real, you idiots! The people should see! Why are you hiding this from them?"

And he didn't stop, he kept pushing and pushing.

And all the insiders were VERY angry with Clive! Naughty Clive!

Such is the fairytale of current politics in Australia.

Stating the obvious is not allowed in politics in this country

So now we are up to date, what does it all mean? Is it a stunt or a joke?

I think the press gallery keeps making the mistake of casting Palmer as a buffoon or a joke. It stops our political journalists from actually being able to see what is going on. I understand it's difficult: what to do with a very powerful political figure that doesn't fit neatly into your left-right schematic of Australian politics?

Palmer has created a many headed hydra of a problem for the government. Firstly, Carbon pricing as an idea will now be debated up until, and past, the next election. This is not the clean ending Abbott and co wanted. In fact, when you take into consideration the building international pressure to act, it's the worst possible scenario you can imagine. It means that it is almost certain we will have some sort of ETS as a policy post 2016, or whenever Abbott is turfed.

Secondly, a large and important part of the mitigation mechanisms is going to be left in place. This is another headache for the government, and especially Abbott because it serves to remind his supporters and party backers just how impotent he really is. The risk for Abbott is that after he gets a double dissolution trigger, he will feel forced to pull it for fear of looking weak. Nobody should be under any illusion on how that will turn out. It will mean an election where everyone else but the LNP has a viable climate change policy, in an international situation of building pressure, and a business community that can now clearly see the writing on the wall. It will mean certain defeat because of the government's toxic unpopularity; and it will mean a bunch of nutters will fill the senate, making it far worse and unworkable than it is now.

But you don't really get a sense of this new reality from what is being written or said about Palmer and Gore. As an example, watch last week's 'Insiders'. Yes, I know it's really boring. What you will notice though is just how angry Farr and Coorey are about the whole thing. Like, really pissed. They do not like Clive at all, he upsets them.

Why?

Clive makes the media look very silly. Here they are just trying to report what this government they shoe-horned into power is doing, and Clive makes them into idiots and liars before the week is out. When a minister vomits out a press release and journos like Coorey just reprint the talking points verbatim, it must be pretty upsetting to then have it all made to look so mistaken by Clive. The same can be said about all the cross-benches. It's as if the press gallery says to itself:

"How dare these buffoons and bumpkins come to our parliament! Who do they think they are? They are certainly not the sort of people we want making decisions!"

The subtext, of course, is that they are the sort of people that should be making the decisions.