As Malcolm Turnbull was speaking, the space-time continuum shuddered in its orbit.
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He was being interviewed by former defence minister Christopher Pyne - who's still out there, still causing trouble. But it seems Pyne wants more than consultancies and money, so he's now pretending he's a talk-show host.
The only difficulty is that apparently he couldn't find any real guests with something interesting to say, so he dredged up the ghost of Christmas past, only to find the former PM still insisting - surprise surprise - that he "had no doubt" he would have won the election.
There's nothing that quite screams "yesterday's man" as much as insisting that you really should be "today's man" too.
Surprisingly, perhaps, both Tony Abbott (who Turnbull knocked off) and Julia Gillard (who deposed Kevin Rudd) believe the same thing, as indeed did Rudd back in 2011. Perhaps Pyne is lining these former leaders up for interviews too.
And while he's at it, he could have a speculative chat about alternative universes with Bill Shorten, too, about how he would have won if he hadn't been facing Scott Morrison. After all, that's exactly what Labor's election review found. If Shorten had just dropped the dividend imputation policy, actually campaigned on the three days just preceding the election (instead of then taking time off to remember Bob Hawke) and just done a few other things differently, he'd have won the election too!
The federal Nationals are, today, little other than a joke ... there's absolutely no plan to address the one essential issue in all of their electorates. Climate change is their Voldermort; the issue that can't be named.
Isn't visiting the nursing home of former politicians great? Even Paul Keating was there this week, still attempting to define the real world from the sidelines and fishing up bizarre conspiracy theories explaining away inconvenient facts. By the way, has he ever told you why he should really have won his final election, the one that saw him dispatched, with extreme prejudice and a swing against him of more than five percent.
Scott Morrison didn't bother attempting to engage with the deluded residents of the political nursing home. Instead, he responded with a brilliant display of political smarts.
Asked if his predecessor could have won, he responded quickly and firmly. "Oh yeah, absolutely. There's not many people who doubt it."
That swift, direct response offered a snapshot of exactly why Morrison is PM today and Turnbull's not. Where do you take an answer like that?
His focus is on the one world that counts, the real world, the one that's around us today, and not some speculative future that doesn't exist.
Hypotheticals are fascinating but, as it happens, a complete waste of time. In my own favourite alternative world I'd be a handsome multi-millionaire - but still married to my current wife, of course, because, darling, how could anything be better. (I'm not going to even risk thinking about alternatives there...) The point is two-fold.
Firstly, we have to deal with the world as we find it, not some imaginary construct. Secondly, the way we formulate our thoughts and phrase our choices risks turning our words into babble unless we make a strong effort to keep things clear and banish fantasy.
Which leads to a counter-example. Again Morrison, however this time a very botched attempt to shape debate and a total failure to accept the need for cut-through strategies to turn an issue around. The whole point of the 24-hour, social media whirl in which we live is that it needs to keep consuming: the debate doesn't shut down or, in this particular case, wait for the fires to stop burning before it can be discussed. An agile politician, one with a plan, would have recognised this. Morrison failed.
The point is we can't wait to talk about what climate change is doing to the country, because there will be nothing left if we do. Of course it's a "thing", and of course we know what's causing it. People realise that as long as the debate revolves around simplistic formulations like this we'll be caught up in trench warfare, struggling to even see an objective, let alone ever breaking through to the green fields beyond.
Adam Bandt's note of triumph as he declaims about the fire equally understandable - and totally worthless as a political strategy. Instead of treating climate change as a right and wrong issue, people are desperate to know what can be done to address the situation. Yes, this will require long-term solutions, such as addressing greenhouse emissions, but the countryside has other immediate needs as well. Incendiary comments provoking reactions from opponents are, understandably, both cathartic and satisfying: what they conspicuously fail to achieve, however, is any shift towards a solution.
The federal Nationals are, today, little other than a joke. The party's in a swamp, trapped between cardboard-man Michael McCormack and the random musings of Barnaby Joyce. There's absolutely no plan to address the one essential issue in all of their electorates. Climate change is their Voldermort; the issue that can't be named. That's exactly why they're attempting to make this an emotional issue: they've got no policies to deal with the biggest problem their constituents face.
The way to reveal this isn't by engaging in more sledging; rational debate is always the better answer.
The Mayan civilisation used to imagine us walking, backwards, into the future. It makes sense, We have perfect vision of what's happened in the past, but can't see what lies ahead. That's why using your words well is so important. You may not be able to reveal the future, but at least you can work out where you are.
- Nicholas Stuart is a Canberra writer.