It might be time to give Peter Dutton a rest.
Don’t “rush to failure”, he told colleagues this week, not sounding like a man rousing his troops.
It might be difficult to feel sorry for Mr Dutton when the night before he had delivered a speech to the house shot through with carefully chosen reckless language about the Voice to Parliament risking “re-racialising” the country.
But words like this travel on the strength of the steam they generate en route to their target audience.
Becoming outraged by them is a bit like a Chinese finger trap – resisting only makes them more appealing to people who already feel disdained by elite institutions.
Nor is it easy to think of what other issue Mr Dutton could feasibly make into a political centrepiece without his party room bursting at the seams.
But after some reports of an upsurge in social media accounts – most of which, a study found, are pseudonymous – posting hot rhetoric it is only obvious which causes this is not helping: The referendum and the quality of our politics.
Last week it was a critic of the government’s model to allow the advisory body to make representations to the executive (not just elected MPs) who did that.
Former shadow attorney-general Julian Leeser has decided to vote for the Voice even if his amendment is ignored, which is why he resigned from the front bench.
He has worn more consequences for reconciliation than many ever will – and taken a bolder ethical stand against party politics than any frontbencher in years.
“They say, ‘We’re really pleased you made that decision’, or ‘We’re not sure we agree with the decision but we are pleased you took a stand’,” he said in a weekend profile by the Sydney Morning Herald.
“I think that’s what people are looking for in their parliamentarians.”
Another piece of potential partisan catnip was elicited during an interview with Lidia Thorpe on Sunday, when she said she had faced racism while in the Greens’ party room.
“I think we all need to look at ourselves within and eradicate that and make our workplaces safer,” Senator Thorpe said.
More interesting, though, were her reasons for both being ambivalent about the Voice referendum or achieving change generally through politics which have excluded Indigenous people.
It’s hard to argue that this is a view that should not be represented in this debate or the Parliament but this might have been overlooked when she was pilloried for dudding a political party when she resigned from the Greens.
As politics has otherwise moved to the centre, the Voice has become especially charged after an election in which voters rejected ugly politics but are yet to see a change.
But institutions improve gradually and in the direction of wherever the public’s attention is focused.
It’s a good week to not get distracted.
Mr Albanese has invited commentary on his new national strategy to attract overseas workers to the traditionally disadvantaged (aged-, nursing-, child-) “care” sectors on Sunday.
Improving workers’ conditions and thus the standard of care was at the core of Labor’s election platform.
But one piece of early feedback warns a new labour agreement for migrant workers in aged care shaves off the usual skilled visa pathway to residency and a work requirement that could lead to a proliferation of short training college courses beloved by dodgy migration agents.
As for the mystery of which partners at a giant accounting firm could have been involved in a tax leak scandal that has been compared to a betrayal of Australia?
Those names have been redacted in a Senate committee which has heard the firm and others like it have hollowed out the public service.
Finding out things people don’t want us to know isn’t easy, when, as the Federal Court found this week, even a two-year delay to have the government review a freedom-of-information request decision is not “unreasonable” when there’s not enough money in the information commissioner’s budget.
