One of Life‘s great little mysteries appears to have been solved by the Daily Telegraph this week.

Yes, folks, Mrs John (“Janette“) Howard is responsible for the Coalition‘s capital punishment “policy-in-use” (as opposed to its “espoused policy“¹).

Mrs Howard also revealed there were “five or six” areas where she and her husband disagreed, adding “all but two of those were there when we got married”.

Mr Howard admitted one was his wife’s support for capital punishment in certain circumstances.

And so this explains how we can have Mr “Janette” Howard on the one hand claiming that he doesn’t personally agree with the death penalty but, on the other hand, explaining that he can see others might and, yet again, that he will not raise a finger to interfere with the judicial murder of the Bali Bombers. Until now we thought he was trying to be “just a little bit pregnant”. Now we understand that he is simply saying what Janette has told him to say.

We have two things to say about this. Firstly, if Mrs Howard wants to make Australian Government policy, let her stand for election in her own right and influence Pauline Hanson Party policy herself.

Secondly: To the extent it is possible to understand the pain and anger of people who lost friends and family in the Bali bombings, we do understand. At least we know that how we imagine we would feel would be indescribable. We suppose that we can understand that people want the Bali bombers dead and punished. We suppose that it is possible to imagine that such retribution would help the pain to go away, although we don’t think it would, in practice. We think it would make us feel as sullied and evil and bloodthirsty as them. On the other hand we might feel that we don’t care. Just kill them. But. There is another issue going on. The bloodlust of those suffering from the Bali bombings might kill others as well – people they would rather not be executed.

The Bali Nine.

The mixed message that is being sent to Indonesia from Australia – that we believe in the death penalty for Indonesians but not for Australians, or that we agree with the death penalty in other countries but not in Australia – could result in the execution of at least some of the Bali Nine. The joke that is known as the Indonesian justice system may sense that Australians, including John Howard and Kevin Rudd, having been happy to see the death penalty carried out on the Bali Bombers, will look with equanimity on the murder of those stupid kids for crimes which would not even score a very long prison term in Australia.

No country will take any Australian representations for mercy for the Bali Nine seriously if Australians are sending messages that capital punishment is okay for Indonesians but not for Australians, or even for some crimes but not for others.

So the question is this: are those family and friends of the victims of the bombings happy and willing to see other Australians killed, to feed their lust for a blood sacrifice to avenge their own friends and family? Would that actually make them feel better? How would they then feel about the anguish of the family and friends of any of the Bali Nine who are murdered by an Indonesian firing squad?

Thanks, Janette, for your insight. When we want your opinion, we’ll give it to you.

[Deep breath]

Club Bloggery explains how The Australian is on the point of Jumping the Shark.

…over at the Oz, Caroline Overington was trying to argue that the rate rise would surely benefit the Coalition.

This was based on a small segment of Newspoll that measures voters’ trust in which party is best placed to manage the economy, but most of all on Overington‘s insight into the voters’ “gut instincts”.

As with all true believers, her certainty about this interpretation was in inverse relation to the evidence on offer – for Overington and a few of her fellow columnists, a view of the Coalition as inherently superior economic managers has turned into a quasi-religious credo. Judging by the 450-odd readers’ comments the piece received, the audience didn’t buy it.

[ ... ]

For some time now, TV watchers have pointed out moments when their favourite shows run out of puff, and “jump the shark” (a reference to a Happy Days plotline towards the end of its run). The Australian’s pundits, it seems, are now standing perilously close to the water’s edge, contemplating that a Labor win might very decidedly spell the end of their own happy days.

Values Australia is happy to declare that The Australian Jumped the Shark in July with a silly piece by Dennis Shanahan – no, we mean a really silly piece – which interpreted a clearly disastrous poll for the government as a presage of glorious victory. Using Newspoll figures that showed Labour’s primary vote increasing, Shanahan concluded that Labor’s lead had been checked and that the figures showed “Howard’s Poll Comeback“. Shanahan clearly has a desperate man-crush on John Howard and, as we said back in July, he should resign, perhaps to write fairy stories full-time. No-one who has any alternative or additional source of information and analysis could now possibly take seriously any analysis by The Australian.

^{¹See Harvard corporate management guru, Professor Emeritus Chris Argyris, on “espoused theory” vs “theory-in-use“.}

^{When someone is asked how he would behave under certain circumstances, the answer he usually gives is his espoused theory of action for that situation. This is the theory of action to which he gives allegiance, and which, upon request, he communicates to others. However, the theory that actually governs his actions is this theory-in-use.}

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