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Brisbane: Australia has some sophisticated politicians and some good ideas. After all, that's why I'm here, to do some policy learning. But you wouldn't think it if you were following the campiagn in Beaudesert.

#1: Warwick Capper's short political career is at an end and he can return to Surfers Paradise. Having undertaken to launch his campaign with placard waving bikini clad girls, he failed to file his nomination papers. Add a 'r' to his name and it would be a good pseudonym for a student writing in the Warwick Boar.

#2: The seat is currently held by the LNP although the incumbent is not standing again. The LNP candidate was arrested and fined for storming the set of Big Brother apparently to promote his rock band. I know the federal environment minister is an old rocker who still does the occasional gig for a good cause but ...

#3: Pauline Hanson has already had a go at free trade. Immigrants next? Of course, there's always a market for nativist populism, even more so in a recession. In vox pops, some voters praise her for her honesty. So accepting Australia as a multi-cultural society is not honest?

At least it's a distraction from increasingly grim financial news.

Quantitative easing

If reports in The Australian are to be believed, the Bank of England is poised to introduce quantitative easing. Electronically created money will be transferred to the accounts of banks to buy up bonds.

Against the background of ever more gloomy financial news, not least bad results from HSBC, this is the last shot in the locker. It effectively undermines the authority of the Monetary Policy Committee which in many ways has been the central economic-policy making institution since 1997.

Is this the end of depoliticisation as a fashionable academic concept? Those who would defend its value would point to its cyclical character. The preferred default position for a capitalist system is an automatic decision rule not tainted by poltical intervention.

Brown features in Queensland poll

Brisbane: With the Queensland state election now under way, voters watching television this evening were confronted with the grim visage of Gordon Brown in an election advert. For reasons best known to himself, the LNP opposition leader seems to be in denial about the fact that there is a recession. His words of repudiation were juxtaposed with those of the British prime minister and President Obama.

At least the election is providing a little light relief. Former fish and chip shop owner Pauline Hanson at one time led the populist One Nation Party. She then went on to found Pauline's United Australia Party. This could start a fashion: Dave's Conservative Party or Nick's Liberal Democrats.

Now she is standing as an independent in an electorate south of Brisbane. Confronted with old allegations about the misuse of election funds, she had an impressive temper tantrum on television.

One of her opponents is a former rugby player who is being backed by a mens' magazine and has free false teeth as part of his platform. Read more here: Beaudesert

And we thought that Lembit Opik had a few kangaroos loose in the top paddock!

Whingeing poms

Canberra, ACT: Seen in Britain a couple of days before I left a roadside sign declaring 'Welcome to our third world country. No salt.' I suspect that those who use this phrase, one often heard in relation to delays on the railways, have never been to a real third world country.

The Adelaide Sunday Mail carried a column about all Britain's social problems, not that Australia is free of them. The columnist said that Britons themselves had labelled the ceountry a 'broken society'. Actually it was Dave Cameron.

In doing so, he may have made a mistake. Deep rooted and extensive social problems are unlikely to be solved by political action. Indceed, the perception that 'they' can or should sort it out may be part of the problem as it absolves others of responsibility.

I am sure Harriet Harman, who is the social engineer par excellence, believes that government could solve all these problems. I see that she is manoeuvring to be Labour leader after the next election.

No crisis - meat raffle tonight

Adelaide, South Australia: I suppose that sign seen in an Adelaide street tonight is one way of responding to the recession. Actually it hasn't fully hit home here yet, although some primary industries have taken a hit. But interest rates are still at 2.25% and the Reserve Bank has said it may not lower them any further.

Opposition politicians seem to be engaging in a bout of infighting among themselves, but it's probably no more undignified than a spat between Peter Mandelson and Starbucks.

The r-word is much in evidence. That's fine if it means avoiding the kind of catastrophic market failure represented by a collapse of the financial system. What is different is the call by one trade union leader for controls on foreign ownership and the restoration of export licenses.

Similar protectionist calls have been heard in Britain and other parts of the world, some with a xenophobic tinge. But remember that the old 'mixed up' economy was a notionally market economy that was unable to function as such and hence deliver the benefits of competition.

They don't know what they're doing

One of the most interesting figures in the latest Populus poll in The Times is that over half the electorate think that neither Mr Brown nor Mr Cameron know what to do about Britain's economic problems.

Not surprisingly, it's the Lib Dems and other minor parties who have been the main beneficiaries of the slump in Labour support. They now account for 30 per cent of voter preferences.

Labour has dropped back five percentage points in a month to 28 per cent. It's not as bad as last summer, but as the reality of the recession bites, the Brown bounce has deflated.

British jobs for British workers

Gordon Brown's periodic attempts to wrap himself in the union jack do himself no good and he has got hoist with his own petard with his 'British jobs for British workers' slogan. Regardless of the complexities of the Posted Workers Directive (of which I had never heard before) and of various legal cases, the underlying principles are clear: freedom of movement of labour within the EU and open competition for procurement contracts.

There's a head of steam behind all this and it's not surprising to see protectionist responses in a recession, but the more momentum they gather, the greater the risk of it turning into a depression.

Quite how the government is going to get out of this is difficult to see, complicated by the fact that different messages have been coming from Alan Johnson and Peter Mandelson, although the former has admitted that he spoke out of turn and has backed down. The room for manoeuvre is quite limited, as there is a contract and that contract is influenced by the fact that Portuguese and Italian workers are cheaper to employ than British ones.