Those still shaking their heads at the endless bromance between the premiers of NSW and Victoria were given a clue to its origins this week, when Keating re-emerged, at least in print, with the publicising of a private conversation between the former prime minister and the premier of MelDanistan.

It was Keating who apparently cajoled Andrews into some across-the-Murray collaboration with Dominic Perrottet.

WILLING

Keating said that Andrews might find a willing partner in order to “do things”. By which he meant seeking governance reforms.

If so, good on them all, you might say, if what they are seeking is itself worthwhile. But the partnership is still peculiar, and for many on the Right, an utterly distasteful development.

The NSW Premier has previously outlined his own motivations for the most peculiar bromance to have emerged in Australian politics since who knows when.

He wanted to give himself “cover” for certain COVID-related actions by bringing the Victorian Premier on board to release announcements either jointly or in sync. And thereby neutralise potential opposition to his own decisions.

“Look, Chris Minns and the medical-COVID industrial complex, Andrews is doing the same thing as me!” A possible interpretation of Perrottet’s motivation for his unexpected teaming up with a rabid progressive and socialist is that he is willing to set aside any ideological qualms he might have about the partnership in the higher pursuit of “reform”.

But for Andrews, who has shown to date not the least desire to be a “reform agenda” type guy, it was more “Paul told me to”.

Another interpretation is that both Premiers sense they lead “old” governments in much need of a refresh.

This is what one political scientist (Geoffrey Robinson) has argued, in an article in The Guardian headlined as follows: “Dan and Dom: the two premiers leading a vibe shift in Australian politics”.

Robinson states: “We’ve got two State governments, both of which are probably sort of showing their age and have got to that stage where problems are starting to accumulate.

“So it’s good for them to be demonstrating a collaborative, proactive approach to addressing the problems.”

The article continues: “Victoria and NSW premiers, Daniel Andrews and Dominic Perrottet, couldn’t be more different: one is a progressive from Labor’s socialist Left faction and the other a conservative from the Liberal Party’s right.

“But together, they represent a political vibe shift – a sense that long-term ambitions for their States can be achieved, with cooperation paramount.

“Both men are shrewd politicians. The duo sensed the public’s fatigue with the hyper-partisan politics of the pandemic early on, and worked together to progressively ease COVID restrictions. They have since gone on to push for ambitious reforms to health funding, tax and education in their States.”

ABRASIVE

A refresh for electoral gain I can buy. But a fundamental shift in Australian politics, and a break from ScMo’s more ideological and abrasive approach? I don’t think so.

That is not the Scott Morrison that I recall, and the “hyper-partisan politics of the pandemic” are a myth. A fabrication in search of a theory.

Morrison’s creation of the National Cabinet and his own ceaseless stroking of Andrews must have escaped the journalist’s mind.

Seeing this strange, new partnership as some sort of game changer attributes far more weight to the current mutual back-scratching than the reality will bear.

One might conclude from this bromance for the ages, and for the NSW Premier’s astonishing participation in it, that there are now three types of Liberals (apart from the usual chancers and time servers who endlessly grace us with their presence).

There are “moderates”, aka progressive, green-left implants.

Then there are believing conservatives, animated by their world view which directs their political actions.

They are now very few and far between in the Liberal Party, with the forced exits of Kevin Andrews, Amanda Stoker and Eric Abetz, and the voluntary exits of Nicolle Flint, Craig Kelly and George Christensen.

It is these activist conservatives, conservatives who want to be conservative, that the modern Liberal Party doesn’t want, or feel that it needs.

Finally, there are the conservatives that are like “private Christians”, who “personally” oppose abortion-on-demand but don’t mind in the least that it is “the law of the land” (as the abortionistas like endlessly to repeat).

These are conservatives for whom their primary motivation for being in politics is not to advance a conservative world view or specific conservative policies.

Of course, privatising faith is an ongoing objective of secularists who want nothing more than the disappearance of Christian thought and action from the public square. Dominic Perrottet-types are godsends – pun intended – for them.

Think of Type Three Liberals as political bi-sexuals. They don’t mind batting for the other side.

The NSW Premier seems to have emerged as a Type Three Liberal.

TECHNOCRAT

In other words, he is not primarily in politics to advance conservative causes, and it is therefore open to us to regard him as a CINO (conservative in name only). At bottom, he is a technocrat. Read “doing things” and “reformist” as merely “technocrat”.

Perrottet’s predecessor as premier was Type One. A leftist robot, as one unkind descriptor put it.

The (God help us all) leader of the “Right” in the Rum Corps State is one David Elliott, the former Police Minister who impersonated a police officer to bully a teenage driver and who found himself in London during the bushfires of 2019-20. When he was Minister for Emergency Services.

His latest foray into the limelight occurred recently, when he took issue with Matt Green’s apparently jovial banter with a reporter during the ghastly election campaign which many interpreted as an act of bastardry and sabotage.

With conservatives like Elliott, who needs moderates? Whatever else his political motivations are (probably to engage in factional warfare), we can safely put Elliott down as Type Three. (Where does ScoMo fit, you might well be thinking?  I am torn between chancer and Type Three).

We have seen this type of across-the-aisle bromance before in Australian politics.

I refer to the warm partnership between Nick Greiner and the late Wayne Goss, respectively premiers of NSW and Queensland during the early 1990s.

They, to, wanted to “do things”, in particular in relation to the reform of Commonwealth-State relations. But they were both policy wonks and men of modern management theory.

Greiner, especially, was known to be in thrall of new public management thinking, which gave us such gems as public sector outsourcing and huge pay days for mediocre public servants.

RUDD

They were also egged on by two background boys, also policy wonks. The man in Sydney was Greiner’s chief political theorist, Gary Sturgess. The man in Brisbane was Kevin Rudd.

Between the four of them, they set out to “do things”, very much in a collaborative vein.

What separates the 1990s pairing from the Andrews-Perrottet bromance is that, in the latter case, ostensibly, one of them is a communist and the other at least a nominal conservative, whereas the former were both simply centrist policy reform guys.