By Mark Kenny

A version of this article was originally published by The Canberra Times.

For an objectively failing operation, this big-spending, policy-lite government gets plenty of latitude from its mainly male media pals.

Latitude that was conspicuously short-lived when Labor circumnavigated the global financial crisis just months after it was installed.

And latitude that betrays a curiously, a-journalistic aversion to news and to the prospect of parliamentary replenishment.

You might think the emergence of highly credentialed female competitors to the major parties is a hell of a news story, right? You might even imagine it is a potential source of future news yarns if they succeed in injecting fresh vim into a discredited public discourse - journalism included.

Yet many reporters seem lazily inclined to adopt the sneering tone of the government in which community candidates are viewed as aberrations, electorally immature, and a risk to stability.

I'll return to the disparagement of female independents shortly but first, let's look at where stability has got us because, if the status quo is to be defended, it should first be owned.

While we cannot know how things would have turned out under a Shorten Labor government, we can observe that the Coalition has saddled the nation with accumulated deficits of $224.7 billion by the middle of this decade and gross debt equally nearly half of Australia's projected GDP. All without a decent reform agenda.

Then there's the domestic tub-thumping over Beijing punctured a fortnight ago by the Sino-Solomons pact in Australia's "backyard". Red-faced, the government still cannot make up its mind whether to plead total surprise (intelligence failure) or longstanding awareness of the situation (policy ineptitude).

Add to this a deepening housing affordability crisis about which nothing structural is being done, the scandalous betrayal of the national interest in not pushing the world towards faster greenhouse gas reductions, the broken promise to create an anti-corruption body and the failure to rise to the generous Uluru Statement from the Heart, some five years after it was made.

And what about the reprehensible state of aged care, Robodebt, serial failures during the pandemic, the cynical pre-election acceptance of a New Zealand refugee resettlement offer which was going to restart the boats, the wilful underrepresentation of women, the $4.5 billion submarine capability gap and the only half-credible deep sixing of budget repair.

Austerity, you may recall, was a can kicked down the road in 2021 with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg saying budget repair would wait until the unemployment rate had dropped "comfortably below 5 per cent". Now, thanks to more than $300 billion in borrowed stimulus and the closed international border, it is under 4 per cent.

But first, an election.

When independent candidates are grilled on which way they would vote in a hung parliament, this is the unspoken backdrop - broken promises, drift, pork barrelling, and fungible values, the very lingua franca of machine politics, on both sides.

Nearly half of all voters (48.5 per cent) put their faith in Labor at the last election. They were backing a bold, redistributive agenda which would have ended tax refunds on share income to people who had paid no income tax to refund, narrowed capital gains tax concessions, tightened negative gearing rules, legislated a 45 per cent cut to greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and brought an increase to the immorally low dole. In election 2022, all have been ditched.

Obsessed with the workings of the political machine rather than the problem solving it is supposed to undertake, political commentators routinely laud such U-turns as electoral realism. Hard-headedness.

This is politics viewed from the inside, stripped of policy, unencumbered by enduring values, relieved of the need for vision, courage or longer-term national interest considerations.

Yet voters shouldn't give two hoots about the game itself, nor the career progression of any given politician.

So why all the scrutiny of single-seat independents and so little of the major parties' multiple backflips, broken promises, and dismal fails?

Perhaps it is because their existence hangs a lantern over the non-delivery of vital policy demands made by voters. As Allegra Spender said during the Wentworth candidates' debate: "If moderates had really stood up on these key issues, if they had made the difference, I don't think I would be standing."

Notice that while these independents are campaigning on policy, (corruption, climate, sexism, waste) the case made against them by the Liberal Party and its media vassals is exclusively political.

You would think the most important question in this election is who an independent candidate would side with in the event of a hung parliament, even though they each have only the slimmest chance of being elected. It is a hypothetical within a hypothetical.

Clearly terrified, the Liberal men are having their work done for them as dog-whistling questions fly at these candidates in a bid to "smoke them out" as Green-Labor stooges, Trojan horses.

Why not harangue Morrison on whether he'll retain the leadership in opposition? Would he quit parliament forcing his Cook electors into a costly byelection? Would Peter Dutton or Frydenberg remain out of politics permanently if they lose their seats? Alternatively, would either seek the leadership?

The best guide to the contribution of any new independents is the performance of the current crossbench.

MPs like Helen Haines (Indi), Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo), Zali Steggall (Warringah), Andrew Wilkie (Clark) and senators like Jacqui Lambie and Rex Patrick have made excellent contributions on policy.

That is what the new teal candidates offer, too. Which makes it all the more disappointing that media keep harping on about the balance of power. They've got to get elected first. And even then, their vote may, or may not, be pivotal.

Surely the real question is: why are the Libs so vulnerable in their once safe seats?

Mark Kenny is a political analyst for The Canberra Times. He is a professor at the ANU Australian Studies Institute and host of the Democracy Sausage podcast.