toughness and punishment, including tougher jail sentences for malefactors. He thinks ministers are too constrained by administrative law, procedures and requirements about natural justice, human rights, and due process. With the help of weak and woke judges and quasi-judges in administrative tribunals, bad people, or people we can do without, are getting away with murder, he believes.

The shortage of developed policy is not necessarily a big minus among ordinary voters. Most expect a return to the broad policies of the Morrison government and its style of operating. That ought to strike horror among those who saw robodebt, the scale of party-partisan rorting and the lack of transparency and accountability in that government, with Dutton as much responsible as any other senior ministers. But incompetence and maladministration are not to be taken as what voters want, even if there is a serious risk that it is what they will get. Rather they expect a government in which the Coalition will preside over the economy, responding to events without much in the way of an agenda.

In many respects, though they will deny this absolutely, they mean following the broad guidance of experienced and bland public servants with the attention to detail Coalition ministers and minders tend to lack. The task these days, after all, is more about outputs for favoured constituencies than outcomes for the citizens who need it most.

That, alas, under Albanese as much as Morrison, is the new reason for winning elections.

• Jack Waterford is a former editor of The Canberra Times.

QUOTE ENDS

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#JackWaterford 2/2

@CanvasesByPeter oh c'mon now, ease up on this poor little aussie battler. coulda happened to anyone, forgetting they owned a multimillion dollar property portfolio. who here can honestly not say that at some time they also forgot about their london palace?

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