Just as I am convinced that Sky News Australia exists purely for creating an faux-exotic authority to speak to American politics (because the viewership numbers inside Australia in no way look even remotely viable), I am also convinced that The Australian newspapers exists purely for creating an faux-exotic authority to speak to Canberra. Australia which is massively massive, has no easy and obvious ways of distributing a truly national newspaper. The Australian, which is created almost exclusively in the offices of Holt St Sydney, free-rides on top of the existing distribution networks of the other News Corp newspapers; plus it has the added benefit of being Canberra's de facto newspaper because Canberra has no printed daily newspaper of its own.
Essentially The Australian is a loss leader; which by its own admission existed to "lead the national conversation"; which I take to mean that being in Canberra, leading the national conversation means grabbing the ring in the snouts of the pigs in the trough and dragging them where the firm wants them to go. Also as a loss leader and being Rupert's special doyenne, I have questions as to what happens to it and indeed all of the mastheads once the old khan dies. I can not say with any certainly in any direction, what is going to happen to any of the News Corp masthead once Lachlan is actually free to do what he likes.
This week, The Australian ran this piece; which I think very much looks like it is trying to use its faux-exotic authority to speak to Canberra and pat the tory half of politics on the back, for being good little compliant tory apparatchiks.
The meteoric rise and rise of Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has taken much of the country by surprise – even her parents, Dave and Bess, who are now willing to entertain the possibility she may one day live in The Lodge.
- The Australian, 18th Oct 2023.
I am going to say this now, that the chances of Jacinta Price being Prime Minister whilst non-zero are well within the zone of statistical anomaly that they can be written off as such. This is a piece of journalism which I should be proud of as this plays with the theoretical toys of the law and parliament before it places them back in the toybox, to be shut out of sight and out of mind.
Jacinta Price is a member of the Country Liberal Party. The Country Liberal Party is the Liberal Party's provincial outpost in the Northern Territory. This means that while she caucuses with the Liberal Party, she is not a member of the central party. The is different to the Liberal-National Party in Queensland which was formed as a result of the Liberal Party itself suffering an existence failure in Queensland and the then Queensland National Party assuming the apparatus of the Liberal Party in that state. The National Party in Queensland is unique in that it was able to hold government in Queensland's state parliament in its own right for a while.
Whilst it is true that there have been National Party (and previously Country Party) Prime Ministers, the National Party has always been the smaller of the two broad caucuses which have formed the coalition since 1923. The National Party has only really managed to convince the larger of its coalition partners that there should be a National Party Prime Minister, for a grand total of just 89 days since Federation. 80 days in total is not even one quarter of one year.
This is where the numbers game begins. In absolutely no scenario is it likely under normal circumstances, that a member of an even smaller caucus of the coalition is going to convince everyone else to put its member at the head of Cabinet ahead of their own. On the occasions where there has been a National Party Prime Minister, is has been because the United Australia Party and then the Liberal Party has been in so much disarray that National Party premiership was preferable to no premiership at all. Those occasions have been when Menzies spat the dummy and ran away to London during World War II, and in the wake of Harold Holt going off for a swim at Cheviot Beach and never coming back.
Under current circumstances, the obvious Prime Minister if the Coalition does manage to win government in 2025 is Peter Dutton. I can guarantee that Dutton's premiership will be run exactly the same way as his previous government departments have been; that is like a rural Queensland police office, where government whips will be replaced by government clubs. Please parse that last sentence with all possible meanings of words.
If Dutton is a one-term Prime Minister, then the next-next Federal Election would likely occur in late 2027 or 2028; which is when Ms. Price's seat as Senator for the Northern Territory comes up for reelection. Assuming that she also wins that election, the conceivably the earliest that a Price Government would be returned is in about 2030 or 2031.
Just think of the sheer unlikelihood of that. For the scenario in The Australian to play out, we would need a premiership from the Senate, being led by someone who to this point has not yet been proven to be a long term politician much less one in central cabinet, who can somehow convince not one but two caucuses to place her above their own, for the office of Prime Minister. Yeah, nah. What, bro? Daheq?
The Australian likes to occasionally run puff pieces and fly bits of utter madness up the flagpole to see how it flies; knowing full well that the chances of that thing happening are the same as Hades announcing that it will hold the NHL Final between the Montreal Canadiens and the Edmunton Oilers. This particular piece in The Australian's virtue-signalling campaign of the referendum, is kind of the very last piece of triumph which ticks the last necessary box before it goes back to its company wide standpoint of race-baiting, for which the firm's journalists have fallen foul of the law in the past.
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