Australia is caught in a bizarre warp at the moment. We have a national election in September and the incumbent Labor Party is heading for obliteration with the Party conducting an internal power struggle that defies description. The Prime Minister is deeply unpopular and is being poorly advised (as evidenced by the sequence of strategic disasters). The politician she deposed as PM is popular with the people but hated internally and he also proved to be a policy disaster. The current PM should step down to limit the electoral damage that will be wrought on the Party in September (that is, save some seats) but she won’t and the other character won’t challenge because he is behaving as the wrecking ball – bitter, revengeful and, most significantly without sufficient support (just). Its a tragic comedy of epic proportions. The Opposition is gliding into power without coherent policies and will reinstate the agenda it pursued when last in power (1996-2007), which means attacks on welfare and unions and handouts to the rich. Anticipating the change are the employer groups which are increasingly claiming they are being disadvantaged by excessive wage outcomes in Australia. Same old. It doesn’t help when the media produce headlines such as “Labour cost growth hits business hard”, which are not sustained by any coherent analysis that follows. It is a bizarre time.