No sooner had I finished having a few laughs at what appeared to be the total gibberish being spoken by Glenn Milne and Gerard Henderson on Lateline tonight about the aftermath of Walletgate, than I saw this story relating the opinions of Howard backer Peter Lindsay MP. I think it can stand without further comment. As the PM says oh so postmodernly, the interpretation you place on it is up to you. You may have a “divergent view”, just as the PM has. Now I’m off to watch an episode of Twin Peaks, just to maintain the mood.
“This is a matter which should stay within the government and never enter public circles,” Mr Lindsay said on ABC radio.“Peter’s decision was to burn his chances of ever being leader, or to say nothing. And he’s chosen to burn his chances of ever being leader. Peter may never be leader of the party.
“This is just, politically, the wrong decision for the Costello camp to continue to push this. And I think they just pushed it right off the agenda.”
Mr Lindsay said Mr Costello should have held his tongue rather than contradict Mr Howard’s version of the events of 1994, when Mr Howard allegedly gave an undertaking to Mr Costello to serve one and a half terms as prime minister before retiring.
“There are times when you say things and there are times when you don’t say things,” he said.
“There are issues that you keep behind the scenes, and issues that you put in the public.
“This is not an issue which should ever be in the public, because it’s not the public who decides who’s the leader of the government, it’s the partyroom and the backbench.
“We’re interested in the problems of the people of Australia, not in the ambition of one politician or another.”
Elsewhere: More comment from Tim Dunlop and Suki.
I notice from Lindsay’s website that he has never actually been in opposition. He was first elected in ‘96 and has been in parliament since. I guess he figures that the Liberal party has some divine right to rule.
I hope Labor picks up on this and prints out the following words very clearly on posters all over his electorate in the lead up to the election next year:
Indeed. Perhaps he ought to take his own advice:
Back to Agent Cooper!
These succession deals suck don’t they – not just for the right either. I’d rather go back to the ALP’s ‘34 faceless men’ era …only with one proviso. That the ‘caucus’ be radically enlarged and networked. 3.4 million faceless people?
And as part of a general move away from representational ( and terminally corrupt) politics that is really only a cheap simulacrum of democracy to a more accountable and directly democratic netcentric model this might just work to end all this Ottomon empire stuff about who takes over when.
And that fresh model is one where delegates are tasked with attending and reporting back to constituent assemblies… but not actually voting on important issues. That they are, in fact mandatable, recallable and rotatable ‘ciphers’ almost for the base assemblies.
This has much more in common with libertarian socialism than trad democratic socialism for as Zapata once said, ‘ A strong people don’t need a goverment’
Shame no one suceeded Emiliano.
Ted Lindsay was also the dude who called for all the (Black) inhabitants of Palm Island to be forcibly moved to the mainland. Provided they weren’t moved to his electorate. Class act.
mick, it’s not the public who decides who’s the leader of the government, it’s the partyroom and the backbench.
That is absolutely true though. In a parliamentary system the voters have zero say in choosing the leader of the majority party.
We may as well adopt a presidential system with a separate executive; as everyone is under the impression we have one anyway.
Yes, it’s true, but it’s contrary to both perception, as you say, cam, and also to a lot of the thrust of Howard’s rhetoric about “insults to the people”. And the way he’s said it is particularly ill thought out. Taking up Howard’s stuff about interpretation, it’s pretty easy to see which “divergent view” most voters would adopt on Lindsay’s take.
Wrong Lindsay Kim. Ted was an ALP member, Peter is a Liberal. Look before you leap.
Oops, yeah, but it was Peter Lindsay the Liberal who carried on about Palm Island.
Does anyone else get the feeling that the Government is starting to unravel? Freudian slips like Lindsays seriously threaten to reveal the truth about this mob to the public.
Whaty can I say but Hoorrrayyyy!
PreDawnLeftist:
Yes, me too (as I have said elsewhere).
Having a bicker over who will be Boss would have been a 3-day wonder at any other time than now …. immediately after causing so much anguish, distress and anger by turning everyone’s career into little better than a casual job, after replacing experienced native-born workers with foreign ones who are less so, and on and on; their timing was unbelievably bad. If their little bicker was deliberately concocted, their timing was incredibly stupid. Either way, this little show has inadvertently put a tiny bit more weight on the other side of the fulcrum and the beam is starting to fall, slowly at first but as it gathers momentum, it will come crashing down …. bringing down Howard, Costello, Downer and the whole Liberal Party. They can still cause us a lot of mischief and harm but nothing can now save them from the political scrap-heap., nothing at all. It will be interesting to see which survivors from the wreck of the Liberal Party go to which other party.
Don’t start cheering until we are certain that this callous and careless bunch are replaced a strong, efficient, capable and responsible government that actually works effectively.