A little trust among ministers would not hurt Throughout the twists and turns of this parliamentary fortnight, we have heard many reflections on the Gillard government's flawed internal processes. The desirability of achieving better internal process was a recurring theme as the ministerial body count rose on Friday. Outgoing resources minister Martin Ferguson described the government's recent deliberations over its contentious media package as a "debacle." Mr Ferguson is completely correct. It was a debacle. But there are a couple of points to make about this. The first is the media package was not the first Gillard government policy to be held tightly within the leadership group, dumped on the cabinet without warning and then shunted through caucus. As internal trust has corroded progressively (largely because of leadership tensions) several policies have followed precisely this same trajectory. Because many ministers hold contentious things out of cabinet until the last possible moment because of concern about leaks. Trust within the cabinet has broken down, not because of paranoia or people jumping at shadows (although there is plenty of that) but because of quite rational reasons. Ministers will not have full and frank discussions around the cabinet table if they think they will wash up in a media outlet somewhere. And that has been the reality often enough to create a self-defeating dynamic. The cycle feeds itself. Broken trust feeds bad process, which fuels broken trust; then government people (who may or may not have leaked information for their own purposes) complain about bad process. Silly really, isn't it? This government has never had a particularly robust "cabinet government" tradition. Kevin Rudd did not encourage it, and while Julia Gillard declared after the leadership coup in 2010 she would encourage it, the practice has not reflected the aspiration. Friday saw a big pool of talent leave Gillard's frontbench - institutional men like Simon Crean, Martin Ferguson, Kim Carr - and a future party leader in Chris Bowen. It was a terrible day for a government in desperate need of a good day. But by and large, the government in exile, the ministerial cadre around Kevin Rudd, is now in exile. Will it make a difference to the quality of collective decision making? We shall see. Julia Gillard has lost a lot of firepower, a lot of heart, a lot of experience, a lot of talent. But in theory at least, she has an opportunity to kick-start her cabinet.