The Canberra press gallery loves a leadership crisis. Suddenly large numbers of Australians who pay scant attention to the antics of politicians in normal times are reading their stories, tuning in to their endless speculations on 24-hour news, even following their tweets. The story is simple and stark: the personality flaws of the leader, the ploys of the challenger (or in this case, the non-challenger), the numbers, the race.

So we've had mass spill fever for well over a week. I would guess that every Liberal backbencher has been called 200 times by eager hacks trying to count the numbers.

Meanwhile, the more sage voices in the commentariat are solemnly warning us that the Queensland election and the Abbott challenge show that "the public is unpersuaded by the case for reform".

Well, I'm sorry, but from where I sit, far away from the Canberra hurly-burly, just another puzzled voter, it seems to me that the case for genuine reform has barely even been made in recent years – and that when it has been, all too many media outlets have been unremittingly hostile.

Labor's attempt to put a price on carbon – whether fixed or floating – may not have been brilliantly sold, but it was a genuine reform, advocated by almost every expert in emission-reduction policy in the land – and indeed, the world. Most News Ltd newspapers and columnists, an army of radio shock-jocks, and of course the fossil-fuel industry, were implacably opposed: but even the rest of the press gallery treated Abbott's remorseless campaigning against the "great big new tax" as an example of his supreme effectiveness as an opposition leader. The sheer silliness of the coalition's own "direct action" policy received much less attention.