For all that news, not much to say

This is one of those weekends when it’s been easier to decide what not to write about than to land on a suitable subject.

So I’ll avoid the buzz around Caitlyn Jenner, whose emergence was treated as something other than just another exploited Kardashian moment leading to the inevitable reality TV show.

I’m sure we’re all happy that Bruce finally found the appropriate gender, but any 65-year-old who agrees to be pictured pouting in their undies on the photoshopped front page of a glossy magazine doesn’t deserve to be taken too seriously. So I won’t.

We should skirt around the apparent demise of Sepp Blatter because he’s yet to leave the stage and has the ability to rort the system all the way through to Christmas, if allowed. Lots of time to talk about him in the coming months.

The only thing that might need to be said is that the Jordanian prince who challenged Blatter should now say what he was offered to drop out of the second vote for the FIFA presidency after getting a 133-73 first-round result that forced another ballot. It’s an issue, particularly if he intends to run again.

Best left unsaid is the absolute certainty that Blatter’s removal alone will not fix the corruption plaguing world soccer, nor answer the hanging questions about Australia’s World Cup cash payments.

And I won’t trouble you today with the ABC’s continuing obsession with the blood-letting rituals of the Federal Labor Party other than to say that only our national broadcaster would think we needed to be burdened again with the bickering between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.

Wasn’t six years long enough?

That neither ego seems able to confirm anything the other says in the documentary series that starts on Tuesday will surprise few who endured with a questioning mind their duplicitous time in politics.

While I could find nothing wrong with Adam Goodes’ war dance on the grounds that he’s a paid entertainer and it was very entertaining, I’ll avoid commenting on the Greens MP in NSW who thought Parliament was the right place for a motion labelling Collingwood president Eddie McGuire a boofhead because he was critical of the footballer’s performance.

Nothing needs to be said about the fact the motion passed with the support of all parties to condemn McGuire for saying correctly that Goodes did a “made-up dance”. Goodes confirmed its origins when he said he pinched the choreography from a young indigenous team, the Flying Boomerangs, who created it to perform before their matches.

While few would demur that McGuire is a “continual boofhead”, name-calling is a waste of any parliament’s time and not worthy of comment.

And let’s also avoid the vexed issue of same-sex marriage on the basis that this week’s political opportunism on both sides shouldn’t be rewarded.

This is a long-standing policy conundrum that Labor failed to fix during two recent terms in government — when it bragged of controlling the legislative agenda with the ability to get the numbers in both Houses.

It is an issue for which its time has well and truly arrived — and good luck to those who are comfortable judging the quality of other people’s love and outlawing society’s recognition of it.

I’ll also decline the opportunity to pass the judgment that the most hated person in Australia should be the one who designed a poll that determined the 10 people we apparently dislike the most.

That it was gleefully unveiled at a conference called Mumbrella360, trumpeted as Australia’s biggest media and marketing event, gives a good idea of where that business is headed. So I’ll ignore it.

And this weekend I’ll resist the temptation to join the fevered speculation about which member of the Abbott Cabinet was responsible for leaking to Fairfax Media details of some of its deliberations.

I’m old enough to remember when Laurie Oakes was leaked an entire Federal Budget two days before its release. The Fraser government survived and the offended treasurer John Howard went on to bigger and better things.

It’s probably a bad look for journalists to threaten the stability of our system of democratic system of government by encouraging Cabinet leaks. So I won’t.

By the way, the main story in that 1980 Budget was about measures designed to cut the deficit to $1.6 billion. Fraser had deficits in all but one of his government’s seven Budgets, four of the red ink results being Howard’s.

That should lead me nicely into an examination of WA Labor’s controversial Debt Monster stunt, but it’s another subject that will not be the focus of this column on the grounds that trivialising political issues is hardly the way to get the public to take them seriously.

Forgive me also if this column fails to take seriously those members of Colin Barnett’s team who don’t realise what party they are in and are openly opposing the now-enshrined, debt-reducing Budget policy of selling the TAB.

They should not be given any exposure for being too dim to realise that a government’s only legitimate role in gambling is to tax and regulate it.

And Liberals are still talking about “supporting” industries in a week when Alan Bond and Brian Burke were both back in the news. What could you possibly say?

So with little space left now for the big issues, I’m tempted to get back into China’s attempts to reshape the geopolitics of the Indian Ocean rim by adding a chain of islands to the South China Sea where only rocks and reefs stood before — presumably as holiday resorts for its soldiers.

But that’s out because I commented on the consequences for us on these pages midweek.

If you missed it, try under a neighbour’s budgie or visit your local fish and chip shop.