Gerard Henderson, Malcolm Turnbull, Joe Hockey and sage advice from a meandering Machiavelli ...

(Above: this handy map of the seat of Wentworth is published by loon pond as a civic service. Warning to country folk and suburban dwellers: if in town in Sydney, do not go anywhere in this electorate, lest you visit art galleries in Paddington, and acquire a taste for Bill Henson, because next thing you know, you'll be downloading child porn from the intertubes and supporting terrorists on tea and scone days in the CWA hall).

Perhaps the thing that most drives me to despair is the relativist, cynical, chardonnay sipping latte loving, basket weaving thinking of inner city dwellers.

They have no substance, no convictions, no beliefs at their core. These shallow folk are, as a result of their cynicism, shifty, brazen, and insubstantial.

Contrast conviction politicians who say what they think, and think about what they say. In the good old days, these were conservative politicians, who knew what they stood for, and stood for what they thought they knew, and they had principles and backbone.

They didn't read Machiavelli, but if they did, it was only to disdain his self seeking and vain celebration of power without principles. Okay, that's not so much the real Machiavelli, but when given a choice between the facts and the legend, as John Ford once said, always print the legend.

And now, thank the lord we have astute political commentators standing by, ready and willing to overthrow those kinds of toothy, aged conservative values - where a man knew he was a man, and did manly things - by insisting that the way forward is the way back, and bugger principles.

Relativism and vote-seeking and a lack of principled stands are all the go, and who better to advise on this and sundry matters than Gerard Henderson, whom we once thought a prattling Polonius, but now realise is a maundering Machiavelli.

You see, you must go where the votes are, as laid out in Henderson's guide to the modern politician, Stick to your guns, Malcolm, the party doesn't need you.

Much of the piece is cheerful advice to Malcolm Turnbull confirming that his decision to simply bugger off is the right one. And to keep buggering off. And having buggered off, to stay buggered off.

And who can argue with that. After all, the dear man cared about climate change and believed in markets, and we don't need that kind of clown in parliament when global warming is a myth, and the last thing you should employ in dealing with non-issues is market forces. Fancy a Liberal party man thinking the markets can do anything!

But the most delicious advice, the most potent musing of the Machiavellian sage, comes at the end, as Henderson explains, in his very own relativist, subjectivist way, that principles mean nothing, and all that counts is the relentless pursuit of the suburban and regional vote where the marginal seats are.

Take the matter of Bill Henson, where Turnbull failed to join in the witch-hunt, or mutter the shocked banalities of the eternally dull and greying Chairman Rudd.

Then there is the matter of social policy. It makes no sense for the Coalition leader to be outflanked by Labor on social issues. Yet this is precisely what occurred in 2008 when Bill Henson's photography of nude prepubescent children became a matter of controversy. As David Marr wrote in The Henson Case, Rudd went further than any politician in condemning the pictures while Turnbull “was the first politician of any stature to question Henson's ordeal and put in a word for freedom”.

In a sense, Turnbull emerged as the political hero of Marr's book. That might have won him support in Wentworth. But Rudd's condemnation would have had majority support in suburban and regional Australia where most marginal seats are. There is no reason to question Rudd's sincerity on this issue. It's just that his stand also made political sense.

You see, better to be a doofus like Chairman Rudd - and let no one question his sincerity as a doofus, since doofus is as doofus does - than to actually have a brain and exercise it, and refuse to indulge in a Salem witch-hunt.

Why that could turn you into a hero in a David Marr book, which is one step shy of getting cast as Satan in the bible, and while it might win you support amongst the perverts, renegades, dissidents, outcasts, loons and outcasts of Wentworth, surely one of the most seedy and degrading electorates in the land, that's not going to score you votes in Penrith.

Oh I know Wentworth contains the best and the brightest of the eastern suburbs, those rich folk who infest Double Bay and Darling P0int and Point Piper and Bellevue Hill and Vaucluse and Dover Heights, but trust me, the seediness kicks in when you're surrounded by Kiwis in Bondi, and worse still by the deviates around Paddington and Darlinghurst. Artists and galleries!

I always tell my country kin to avoid Oxford street for fear that the dragons will eat them.

Forced to represent this vile constituency, no wonder Malcolm Turnbull lost his way on the matter of art.

Worse still, it seems Joe Hockey is also lost.

The other candidate in last year's leadership ballot was Joe Hockey, the member for North Sydney. In a speech to the Grattan Institute in March, Hockey expressed concern about the anti-terrorism laws introduced by the Howard government and supported by the Labor opposition under Kim Beazley. The legislation has led to a number of convictions in both Melbourne and Sydney. As the Finance Minister, Lindsay Tanner, has pointed out, it's unusual when a senior Liberal politician criticises Labor from the left. On the anti-terrorism legislation, Hockey is closer to the Greens.

Once again, Hockey's position may have appeal on the lower north shore. Yet it is unlikely to engender support in the outer suburbs and regional centres. The same is true of Hockey's criticism of the attempt by the Communication Minister, Stephen Conroy, to stop child pornography on the internet.

Dear me, poor Joe. He seems to think Stephen Conroy's internet filter might have something else about it than a simple, futile and foolish and doomed to failure attempt to stop child pornography on the internet.

Well that certainly won't play in the suburbs. Enough of this principled chat Joe, just fall into goose step with the master censor.

As for your burbling on about freedom and the finer points of anti-terrorism laws, you don't want to get labelled a nice guy Green. Gasp. Not when the tough men on the left, the hard men, the hollow men, can have a go at you for actually thinking about an issue, and perhaps even taking a principled stand. Talk of individual liberty and privacy and freedom from oppression in the beehive is just one step short of treasonous thinking. Next thing you know you'll be playing Woody Allen doing Z in Antz.

You see, that way you can only become a loser Joe, and losers come last, and the most important, the only point, in politics is to win. And once you've won with a lack of principles you'll never need to take a principled stand, ever again.

Turnbull and Hockey are admirers of Menzies. But Menzies was more socially conservative than Labor – and the Liberals have never won an election on a libertarian agenda.

Turnbull has had an impact on Australian politics – in both government and opposition. He made his own decision to resign and he would be well advised to stick by his initial judgment.

Want some advice Joe, since it's too late for Malcolm, since he's buggered off, and should stay buggered off?

Follow Adolf Hitler. His musing on pornography always played well in the suburbs:

The fight against pollution of the mind must be waged simultaneously with the training of the body. To-day the whole of our public life may be compared to a hot-house for the forced growth of sexual notions and incitements. A glance at the bill-of-fare provided by our cinemas, playhouses, and theatres suffices to prove that this is not the right food, especially for our young people. Hoardings and advertisements kiosks combine to attract the public in the most vulgar manner. Anyone who has not altogether lost contact with adolescent yearnings will realize that all this must have very grave consequences. This seductive and sensuous atmosphere puts notions into the heads of our youth which, at their age, ought still to be unknown to them. Unfortunately, the results of this kind of education can best be seen in our contemporary youth who are prematurely grown up and therefore old before their time. The law courts from time to time throw a distressing light on the spiritual life of our 14- and 15-year old children. Who, therefore, will be surprised to learn that venereal disease claims its victims at this age? And is it not a frightful shame to see the number of physically weak and intellectually spoiled young men who have been introduced to the mysteries of marriage by the whores of the big cities?

No; those who want seriously to combat prostitution must first of all assist in removing the spiritual conditions on which it thrives.

Which is to say the internet. It goes without saying that Hitler was always disturbed by the internet, indeed saying he hated it isn't too strong, and he was always keen to censor it, and in the process produce something of a bonfire of the vanities on which sundry works of art (those by Bill Henson in particular) could be heaped and burned.

Oh and Joe you might also consider his anti-terrorist policies, which were impeccable, and turned Germany around in quick stix time.

Sheesh, I see that once again I've broken Godwin's Law, and the swear jar money is now filling to the brim, and here we are at the end of April, and it's a long time until the jar can be broken open and used to fill the Xmas stockings. Ah well plenty of teeth-rotting chocolate this Xmas, a small price to pay to learn the principles of political expediency and servile catering to the whims of the outer suburbs.

Ain't we lucky that Gerard Henderson lives in Penrith, and so has his pulse on the suburban heartbeat and marginal seats.

Never mind. Here's a tricky question for you. As you can see from our Machiavellian advisor, Joe Hockey might play well with the lower north shore, but that too is a seat full of dissidents and deviates. Don't let the way it nestles up against Bennelong and is full of businesses fool you. Dark things happen in Kirribilli - I know, I've lived there - and that junkie Brett Whiteley once lived in Lavender Bay. Say no more.

So who represents the equally decadent lower north shore of Clifton Gardens, Mosman, Balmoral, Beauty Point, Seaforth and Balgowlah under the title of Warringah? As fine a crop of latte sippers and chardonnay swillers as you might wish for, no matter how you might try to dress in the hippie surfer grommet tourist scum littering the beaches of Manly and Curl Curl.

Why, it's Tony Abbott. Does this mean that deep in his soul Abbott too is a libertarian free thinking panderer to the Greens and terrorists?

I must confess my head began to throb and pulse at the implications, but I am pleased to know that in this land of the beehive, a libertarian agenda will never be allowed to thrive or flourish. And that principles and sensible intelligent policies are not what's not needed from politicians, not when there's hysteria to be cultivated and votes won in marginal seats in the suburbs and intertubes to be filtered and ever more repressive laws to be enacted.

Yet another cogent political lesson from our prattling Polonius nee Machiavellian marvel.

Bugger off Malcolm Turnbull, and toe the conservative Catholic line Joe Hockey, and let's see how that plays for you at the next election.

No more of this principled chatter or dallying with actual ideas or attempting to appeal to the middle, where Marr-ite acolytes might think the likes of Conroy and the dull Chairman Rudd have gone off the rails.

Why I feel a poem coming on, and as always T. S. Eliot has one handy. First and last verses, and the rest available here, offered up in the vain hope of becoming hero in a David Marr book, but sadly realising that day will never come:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

(Below: James Gleeson doing an antipodean Dali with We inhabit the Corrosive Littoral of Habit. A feeble attempt to become a David Marr hero. Silly Gleeson never understood the value of the suburban vote).