It’s been a gruelling few months for Nicola Roxon: hundreds of interviews, hospital ward photo-ops, meetings with bureacrats, talkfests with premiers. So who could blame her if, for just an instant, the discipline of polli-talk fell away — as it did last night, in a Lateline interview with Leigh Sales:

LEIGH SALES: …has the federal government spent more than it wanted to to get the states on board?

NICOLA ROXON: No. This was part of a planned negotiation process…

So that’s what it was. A “planned negotiation process” that started and ended with posturing by premiers who needed to appear macho to their constituencies — especially in Victoria which is seven months away from an election — and posturing by a prime minister, also months away from an election, who needed to to secure the sweetest victory of all on the sweetest issue of all, health.

A “planned negotiation process” aided and abetted by a compliant media who played along almost as participants in a process that, at every stage, delivered confected conflict designed for audiences and voters and pollsters and pundits.

Now for the next “planned negotiation process”…