As you know, politics is now part of the entertainment industry. As a result, journalists and the commentariat demand a regular change of cast, characters and plot and if they don’t get it, they just make it up. This is why, having had the equivalent of a decent interval and an ice cream, they have recently come back into the theatre for the second act but found it a bit dull, so they decide they are bored with poor old Anthony Albanese and start the rumour mills of ALP leadership rolling again. Expect a lot more of this from now on. Alright, I know the ALP generate a fair bit of this speculation themselves and there is no shortage of volunteers who are prepared to take over the leadership from young Anthony, some of whom might even get a better result for them than he will. I could not vote for the Labor party in a fit, but Albanese should be given a fair go to prove himself in at least one election. Every leader of the opposition deserves that chance. It takes time to settle in, work up policies and win public support. More importantly, our system of government needs and benefits from a strong opposition to keep the government on its toes. There is no hope of doing this when there is this continuous backdrop of instability, gossip and undermining. I wish they would just leave him alone so that we can see what a government he would lead looks like. It would be intriguing to see, because it could hardly be more profligate, more committed to big spending, debt and government controls and more denuded of competent people than the present lot.

Speaking of the entertainment industry, the tragi-comic opera of Harry and Meghan rolls on with a rare interval of dignity that we can all share, with the birth of their second child but, naturally, the baby had to be given the suitably eccentric name Lilibet, presumably as a poke in the eye to the Queen. The whole narcissistic performance from perpetual whinging about the imaginary injustices and insults done to them to the hypocrisy of keeping the titles and the privileges while abandoning their duties, is one long and ghastly performance that deserves to stay stranded in the Oprah Winfrey show, with everyone babbling on about mental health and racism. At least the Duke and Duchess of Windsor had style. And how ironic it is that our local republicans are so cock-a-hoop because they think the Sussexes have given them the perfect argument for junking our system of government and turning it into a republic. ‘Look’, they say, ‘the Sussexes are a freak show and as long as we keep the monarchy of which they are part, we will be ridiculed for having them and their family as part of our constitutional structure. So let’s go for a nice, responsible republic that would be free of all that vulgarity.’ Republicans are pretty stupid at the best of times and, not surprisingly, they have got this issue completely back to front. The Sussexes will never be on the throne, so we are safe from them if we keep the monarchy, and one of the mysterious wonders of the monarchy is that it usually comes good with a monarch who fills the role with dignity and a sense of duty. But if we had a republic, the Sussexes are exactly the sort who would either be elected or appointed as President, not them literally of course, but their type. We would have vain, media darlings, all show and no substance, permanently pandering to short-term fashions and of course going on the equivalent of Oprah Winfrey and babbling on about racism and mental health, while they compete with the elected prime minister for popularity. They would be the Eddie Maguire and the Ita Buttrose of their day. The strength of a monarchy is that it weeds out the Sussex type; the weakness of a republic is that it puts them back in.

My mother used to say we should give credit where it is due, a notion she had frequent occasion to send in my direction. But one of the achievements for which the Morrison government deserves credit, and lots of it, is putting the states back in their box on treaties and international agreements which are the proper role of the commonwealth and not the states. I have been surprised it has had so little coverage, but the government has at long last lived up to its responsibilities and legislated to prevent the states from entering into treaties, with the ultimate sanction of cancelling them. This new law was brought in because of the deals being done by China, including those that establish Confucius institutes to teach us how wise the Chinese are and how stupid the rest of us are. It has been a great reform of the law to ban these arrangements. But there is a major treaty brewing that the government should knock on the head, but which, so far, it seems reluctant to do anything about. That is the declared policy of the Victorian government to make a so-called treaty with the aboriginals. A nation or state cannot make a treaty with itself or part of its population. This will divide the state as nothing else could do, and it is pure racism, as it will be ushered in by the virtual parliament that Victoria is establishing for them, elected on a racist franchise and a racist electoral roll. The media in Victoria is currently being deluged with government propaganda for the ‘treaty’ in a way that is reminiscent of the race-based propaganda so beloved by dictatorships and it is here and it is being done now. It is, of course, also part of the continuous campaign to denigrate the European race and its achievements. It should be stopped and Morrison can do it by exercising the exclusive treaty-making power of the commonwealth – now!