January was growing sillier and sillier. Very little was happening and the political commentariat -- especially the Canberra Press Gallery -- were almost choking on their re-runs of old data. Then voila! Along came Julian McGuaran's defection which set off a minor cabinet reshuffle. At last, something to write about.

As my former colleagues in the media usually do, they went into overkill and pretended they knew much more than they really did. No matter, the copy looked pretty good. Editors were pleased. Readers were still enjoying their holidaze and didn't care, weren't even aware of errors. Maybe it didn't matter a lot. Callow people must play games.

One error of judgement was that Brendan Nelson got a promotion when the PM moved him from Education to Defence. A step up, the commentariat agreed.

Really? In peace time, the Minister for Defence is required to preside over military forces who have too little fighting to do. They buy items of equipment which might or might not come in handy if a real war broke out. The Minister for Defence has to pretend he understands strategies, war games, materiel and over-the-horizon radars.

When Kim Beasley was Defence Minister, he had himself photographed beside bombers and in tanks. He read a great deal about Gallipoli and the Kokoda Trail -- the last big war and the war before that. He couldn't read much about the next war because nobody knows the how or where or why or when of it.

We can only hope Mr Nelson will do some good and not much harm while he is mothballed in the ADF.

The true winner in he shuffle was Julia Bishop who came from nowhere to take Education. No, she has not been a teacher or lecturer. She has been a lawyer and, apparently, a vigorous worker on the Coalition side of the House. Since the House is half full of lawyers and the ground for educators is thin, this need bring no surprise. How many medical doctors have been ministers for health? I asked one practising medico and the only one he could think of was Sir Earle Page. Page? You are probably too young to recall the giggling old fusspot from the Clarence River area. There was one more recently -- Dr Wooldridge who began well but left in high dudgeon.

Education, unlike Defence, can never doze away in mothballs. There is no peacetime for this work. The need for ever more and ever better education is always there and always urgent.

We can hope that Minister Bishop will do well, although education is not her own discipline. Values count for more than expertise. Having worked through her own course of learning, we can hope she appreciates the value of learning and the life of the mind.

It is not enough to embrace sound values: a politician ought to be able to express thoughts, plans, cases in language that attracts and moves people at large. It is not merely a matter of using short words or simple sentences. Bob Brown can do that for the Greens but he does not connect with people outside the green movement.

Sir Jonathan Porritt came to the point when he joined Fran Kelly on Radio National's Breakfast program at the end of January. He, a veteran of Friends of the Earth and other environmental groups, was running a surprise line -- that the hope of saving the globe must lie with capitalists. What? The big time polluters, the bottom line devotees, the merchants of full-steam-ahead-and- devil- take-the- planet? Yes, them, said Sir Jonathan. They can make the critical decisions, at least some can be brought to see that the environment offers good business and is worth doing. (The title of his latest book: Capitalism as if the World Matters.)

The green movement, he opined, had failed to engage capitalists because of poor presentation. The Greens had always presented their solutions like nasty medicines, matters of grim and joyless duty.

"The Greens need to learn a new language," said Sir Jonathan Porritt and almost took the wind out of Fran Kelly's sails.

It's a thought that might be studied by educators and scientists who want to persuade Minister Julia Bishop to do good things. Vice chancellors tend for speak in dry, almost bureaucratic styles. Research directors tend to speak disdainfully, as though the hoi polloi won't understand them, health researchers talk about studies and percentages and statistical margins. Their values are fine: their language is often self-defeating.

Which brings up the Australian of the Year, Professor Ian Frazer. His values were quite thrilling and his style was a match.