FEDERAL finance minister Lindsay Tanner is not a team player. We saw this on ABC1’s Q&A last week when he flagrantly and selfishly ignored the Kevin Rudd communication rulebook.

The Rudd manual has been in operation since day one of this government and is exactingly enforced on all members. It decrees that ministers, when speaking in public, and particularly when answering a question, shall only employ generalities and clichés. They may waffle, boast of the government’s bravery, deplore the opposition’s negativity, even discuss the weather, but they must not go into policy detail.

Treasurer Wayne Swan is a walking distillation of these laws and didn’t need to be told twice. The same seems to be true of climate change minister Penny Wong; doing scores of interviews on the government’s emissions trading scheme without once trying to explain how it would work takes amazing discipline. And despite the current hoopla surrounding deputy PM Julia Gillard, for all her undoubted attributes and talents she has never...