All the talk is about the Speaker

Well so far its been all sound and fury, signifying nothing, as the Parliament of the Cat Wrangling begins…

The past and future Speaker rockets up to fourth as the first day of Parliament is dominated by procedural issues and him keeping the office and all its perks basically by default, while Slipper slipped in as Deputy, in a fairly strange tit for tat.

The freshly minted Sports Minister — surely the plummest job in the Outer Ministry, with a London Olympics coming up plus a whole lot of FIFA types to woo — heads further up the list as everyone tries to defuse the Delhi disasters. Almost a classic study in lowering expectations so that an average result will suddenly look heroic … although I’m sure that was not the plan.

Kevin Rudd maintains a steady level of coverage for no apparent reason, the chance of media coverage focusing on policies rather than personalities in these circumstances is surely somewhere around 0 Kelvin — defined on Wikipedia as the amount of warmth between the PM and her Foreign Minister…

The dust is settling out in real person land and the discussion is focusing on the person who ended up with the top job. Expect political interest to be at low levels for the non-tragics for some time.

Was it all a set up? Hmmm, brings to mind my favourite Napoleon quote: “Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence”.