One MP recently described December as the political killing zone. Last week's events in Canberra and Macquarie Street have once again proved the truth of this statement.
I have written before about how the end of a parliamentary sitting sends people berko. So does the prospect of sitting on the opposition benches (Labor in NSW) or being there already (Liberals in Canberra).
In the case of NSW, we have a government that has run out of ideas and has little better to do than eat itself, as it grinds on to the next election. Unfortunately there is more than a whiff of Joan Kirner and Carmen Lawrence about Kristina Keneally, and it is hard to see how she can bring State Labor back from the brink. The political cycle is against it.
In Canberra, the divisions that saw Tony Abbott elevated to the leadership are more serious, as they represent a deep ideological divide between the conservative and small 'l' liberal wings of the party. These tensions have existed for a long time but strong leadership and being in government kept these tensions in check. The ETS debate brought them sharply to the surface, but in reality divisions exist over other issues as well.
These are the kind of ideological chasms that result in the formation of new political parties.
The Liberal leadership woes were not helped by the fact that Malcolm Turnbull had political enemies even before arriving in Canberra. People like Tony Abbott, Bronwyn Bishop and Sophie Mirabella faced off Malcolm and others ten years ago during the republican campaign. There is no love lost between them (or the factions they represent) and it was no surprise to see their support for Turnbull quickly wither as numbers wobbled on the ETS debate. None of this was assisted by Malcolm's difficult personal style of working with others.
What is startling about these developments, however, is that we now have at three major party leaders (Rudd, Keneally, Abbott) who are quite public about their faith. Moreover, Keneally has a degree in theology and has already admitted to being 'a person of prayer', as she greeted well-wishers outside her church on Sunday. While this provides no particular mandate for a Christian voice in politics, a prayerful leader of either political persuasion is a development to be welcomed.