Splitsville, Population: Everyone

Roughly six months after the collective shrug of the hung parliament and the creation of the patchwork Gillard Government, federal politics has once again tread new grounds of confusion. There are splits everywhere; in Cabinet, in the opposition leadership group, in the senate, and in Barnaby Joyce's top ten head voices.

In Cabinet, there is a near continuous fire sale of Kevin Rudd's programs and policies. Disaster rebuilding has provided the perfect excuse to dismantle much of his legacy, and Rudd is noticeably and justifiably pissed. He recently stormed out of a cabinet meeting, but quickly got his staff to book a plane that he would be late for, just in case anyone asked why.

In general, Government policy is fluid. A bill to appropriate money was passed without its consent, to avoid a constitutional crisis they meekly acquiesced and amended their own bill, setting an appalling precedent. Health reform is now whatever the State Premiers will sign. Thus the agreement entitled "Hey, do you want free money for shit?" was enacted. The Premiers looked as if they had tripped over bag of unmarked non-sequential $100 bills on there way to their car that morning, the PM looked like a senior citizen who hands out lollies to children just to get attention.

The Opposition meanwhile, smell blood in the water, but they can't decide what to do about it. They cannot decide whether they should be overtly or covertly racist, whether to blow a dog whistle or commit the political equivalent of a hate crime. Andrew Robb cannot decide whether he can stand the sight of Joe Hockey for another two years, Joe Hockey can't decide whether 'humanity' in politics is a good thing or not, Abbott is unsure whether Scott Morrison is a just a dick or a portrait of Machiavellian brilliance. Julie Bishop is just unsure, but she sure can stare at things.

The upshot of all this is that we can't decide what to make of all this either, the nation is currently split exactly 50-50 on two-party-preferred. Does anyone care? Probably not. To paraphrase one of the world's great fictional drunken cynics, maybe we're just hoping that when we flip the coin it will explode and kill us.