‘And just when it looked like Labor might hold on to power, Chris Bowen came thundering into town to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the 2025 election.’ Will this be the final sentence when the TV screenplay for the increasingly likely Coalition victory at the next election is written? If it sounds a tad melodramatic, that is only because we respect Labor’s fondness for TV soap opera scriptwriters to craft public narratives, rather than getting ministers, such as the NDIS’s hapless Bill Shorten, to choose their own words.