The title of Australia’s First Popularly Elected Female Prime Minister is still up for grabs, and the obvious two contenders are Julie Bishop and Tanya Plibersek. As John Howard has observed, Ms Gillard was never actually elected PM by the people of Australia: she grabbed power in a palace coup and then failed to win in her own right.

Tony Abbott is more than capable of winning the next election, and possibly the one after, not through some creepy charm offensive but rather through the simple expedient of being a skilful, competent and trustworthy manager of the nation’s affairs.

But at some point, in the increasingly unlikely event of a challenge, or should he choose to hand over the reins of his own accord, the foreign minister is probably the strongest contender to succeed him, putting her in ‘poll position’ for the FPEFPM title.

Her current rival for such an opportunity, Ms Plibersek, has recently been caught loitering around the cutlery-sharpening quarters of Parliament House. The ebola crisis provided the ideal opportunity for her to trash her boss’s sensible bi-partisan approach to national security and get back to doing what she does best: sneering at the government. The cautious approach of the Coalition to sending health workers to help in Africa has allowed Ms Plibersek to get all hot and bothered and froth at the mouth about Tony Abbott as if she’d caught a nasty West African bug herself.

Gough Whitlam’s death has also afforded numerous opportunities for Ms Plibersek to spruik herself as the true heir(ess) to his big spending, ‘visionary’ legacy, popping up in a teary Chris Uhlmann interview oddly staged inside Old Parliament House. As Janet Albrechtsen recently pointed out, Ms Plibersek has never missed an opportunity to don the misogyny cap, nor to use our relationship with Indonesia for cheap attacks. Presumably she also helped tear down Richard Marles’ sensible approach to formulating a workable asylum seeker policy for Labor, based on turning back boats.

Ms Plibersek positions herself as far to the left as she can on climate change, Israel/Palestine, and so on; whilst the hapless Mr Shorten attempts to do the opposite in the forlorn hope of having a shot at winning in 2016. Indeed, Labor’s likely loss that year will already be in Ms Plibersek’s career plan as when she takes over the party.

As for Ms Bishop, we should remind readers we featured her on the cover of this magazine back in February 2013 under the unflattering but very prescient cartoon and headline ‘War horse’; accurately predicting she would prove to be ‘one of Tony Abbott’s best weapons.’ ‘Her ability to focus, laser-like, on a single-minded principle and prosecute her case, undeterred by personal attacks, is formidable,’ we said. The fight against ISIS, her approach to Israel and events in the Ukraine have proven the veracity of these words.

Unsurprisingly, she’s our tip for first (popularly elected) female PM.

Modeling the modelers

And so the climate change lunacy carries on blighting our lives. The hapless Climate Change Authority lives to fight another day; an ETS remains on the theoretical cards; and the long-suffering taxpayer will see around two and a half billion dollars frittered away on ‘direct action’.

Originally the cushy home of Tim Flannery, that canny forecaster who predicted our eastern seaboard would never see serious rainfall again, the CCA was due to have been abolished by now. Instead it will survive to ‘investigate’ an ETS. So much for election commitments – just so that the government can appease the opportunistic and hypocritical Clive Palmer and inflict upon taxpayers a wasteful scheme that many Coalition supporters had hoped would end up being blocked.

Meanwhile the planet, to whom so much ‘benefit of the doubt’ has already been given, stubbornly refuses to play along to climate change modeling and warm itself up to the extent Professor Flannery and so many others confidently predicted. As is now widely accepted, no warming has been measured for the past sixteen years, and despite the best efforts to locate it the mysterious ‘missing warming’ carries on eluding discovery in even the most obscure places (damn, it’s not at the bottom of the oceans after all!)

To add irony to such absurdities, a peer-reviewed survey in Organization Studies reveals: ‘only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis’. With climate change, even the modelers don’t follow the model.