Kevin Rudd and former New South Wales premier Morris Iemma struck a secret deal last October to cut the unions down to size after the federal election. But once safely elected on November 24, the Prime Minister squibbed on the undertaking, leaving Mr Iemma fatally exposed in his battle to privatise the state’s electricity assets.

Outgoing West Australian Treasurer Eric Ripper has been unanimously elected Opposition Leader by the state’s Labor Party caucus. Incoming Kwinana MP Roger Cook has been elected deputy leader, party spokesman Kim Chance said. The legislative council will be led by former minister Sue Ellery and her deputy will be Kate Doust.

Opening question time today, Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull challenged the Prime Minister to explain what he was doing to fireproof the economy in the wake of the crash of Wall Street giant Lehman Brothers. But Treasurer Wayne Swan accused Mr Turnbull of vandalising the surplus by blocking budget measures in the Senate.

Malcolm Turnbull and ill-fated former Labor leader Mark Latham share certain characteristics: a touch of brilliance, strong performances in parliament and some fatal character flaws. Like Latham, history and the electorate may still judge that Turnbull came to the leadership of the Liberal Party too early.

Labor’s hold on every government in Australia ended when state Nationals leader Brendon Grylls told a packed media conference that his party would form an alliance with the Liberals, their traditional political partners, to form a minority government. Until last week’s election, no Liberal leader had won a state poll since 1997.

For whatever reasons, Brendan Nelson’s poll figures are dismal, his impact nowhere to be seen, and under his leadership, the Opposition is going backwards. Senior Liberals need to learn from history and not make the same mistake they made with Howard in 2006: someone needs to tell him that it is time to go.

If both parties can come to agreement it raises the prospect of a bipartisan report that for the first time in the country’s history recommends the introduction of legislatively mandated caps on campaign spending. The model that has committee members most interested is the “cap and gap” system used in Canada.

For political fringe-dwellers like the Greens, there was no threat to Australia’s national security to warrant the 2005 anti-terrorism laws. The legislation was, they said, all a ruse to hide the government’s real agenda, ramming the new industrial relations laws through parliament during that first week in November 2005.

With the stench of the Wollongong Council corruption scandal, developer donations and the New South Wales State Government’s radical planning reforms believed to be the main reasons for the Labor Party’s fall from favour, the Premier, Nathan Rees, said voters had sent a clear message to his Government.

Both Costello and Hanson were third party figures who hijacked the national conversation early in the life of a new government. Costello did it by saying nothing; Hanson did it by saying things that had never been said before by federal politicians. Both became self-fulfilling sagas at around the same point in the cycle - after the new government had delivered its first budget.