A Newspoll sample of Coalition voters has found the preferred Liberal leader to be… Peter Costello.
No doubt coincidentally, Newspoll conducted the survey over the weekend at the same time as Liberal backbenchers were leaking furiously to The Australian.
It also comes amid a backbench move to draft Mr Costello to return to the political spotlight, despite his refusal to stand for the leadership after Labor’s election victory in November.
Liberal Party sources confirmed last night that the pro-Costello push was linked partly to backbench dismay over the ease with which Kevin Rudd was managing to discredit the Howard years with little resistance from the Coalition.
I suppose it hadn’t occurred to them that spectacularly losing an election (with John Howard losing their own seat) might be a sign that voters had had enough of the Howard years and might just want something different from the Libs.
Ironically, the poll also coincides with news that Peter Costello has signed a contract with MUP for his memoirs. If past form is any indication, $weetie will be dumping all over John Howard and his record in his scintillating life story. I doubt he’d have got a contract for the book if all it was going to be was a dry recitation of the Howard government’s record. He made it very clear post-election that his view was that blame for the loss resided with Howard, and made his criticisms of Howard’s policy settings very clear in an interview he gave to Peter Van Onselen and Wayne Errington for their Howard biography. And his memoir will be co-authored by his father-in-law Peter Coleman, who was one of the first out of the starting blocks after November 24 to tip a bucket on Little Johnny.
Costello will need to move quick smart as the new(old) messiah appeared at the Lib fundraiser in QLD ie God’s country and is waiting to be baptised
Costello has shown he doesn’t have te stomach for a fight. Rudd would have him for breakfast.
Well, with his parliamentary super I suppose he doesn’t need a job in the private sector. Because a very public 400-page dummy-spit ain’t exactly going to be a career-enhancer.
But he’s sooooooooo good at the dummy spit, Mercurius!
I suspect the bloodletting in Costello’s book will be a little less sanguinary than in Latham’s.
BTW, Newspoll had some interesting figures on preferred treasurer – any commentary on that? All of Rudd’s symbolic gestures will come to nothing if voters aren’t impressed with his team’s economic credentials. How can Swan be recording these figures at this stage in the political cycle?
Those figures, Bismarck, are for preferred Treasurer among Coalition voters.
So actually what’s worthy of analysis is the number of Coalition voters (and remembering that the Coalition is at 39% 2PP in Newspoll, we’re talking the base here) who think Swan’s a safer pair of hands at the Treasury than Turnbull.
Costello is happy to see Howard’s reputation trashed. But his problem is that his reputation goes down with Howard’s. Costello was the number 2 the whole time, and he was Howard’s annointed successor. Remember the joint appearance on ACA during the campaign. Joined at the hip, they were.
The backbench push reflects nothing more than (i) despair at Nelson’s performance and (ii) they don’t trust Turnbull so (iii) they turn to Costello by default.
But why aren’t they thinking about Marty Feldman with 2 X chromosomes aka Julie Bishop?
Bismarck, actually, having another look, I think I’m right in what I said at 6 but the way it’s reported is very confusing. Does anyone have a link to the tables? That should clear it up.
Oh, this is the Cossie thread.
Remember how sweetie was seen working so busily on his laptop in parliament recently? He obviously dipped out on all Mac style jobs, as well.
Splains everthink.
My apologies, Bismarck, you’re right and I’m wrong.
Swan 29, Turnbull 35, Uncommitted 30. 11% of Coalition voters preferring Swan as opposed to 60% preferring Turnbull with 24% uncommitted.
Table here:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/files/newspoll-22apr.pdf
I imagine it’s partly Swan’s public performance, partly a residual effect of the Coalition’s long term advantage on economic management, and maybe a reflection of the fact that the Budget is seen as the big test of a Treasurer. I think the uncommitted number is the most interesting.
Costello’s memoirs are good news for historians.Politically, apart from making Johnny look worse, if that’s possible, they’ll have as much impact as the Latham Diaries. Zilch!
Still, not fabulous for Swan – does indicate he’s failed to establish an ascendancy in the economic debate so far. There’ll be a lot of pressure on him on Budget night.
From the SMH
“The memoirs will be written in collaboration with Mr Costello’s father-in-law Peter Coleman, a former federal and NSW MP and editor of The Bulletin and Quadrant, MUP said.”
Would be a lot happier if Tanner was Treasurer and Swan swomething else.
13
I can just see them, down in the bowels of the good ship Liberal busily turning the brace and bit.
Mark – check out Swan’s support among Labor voters – 45% favour him, 23% favour Turnbull, 26% uncommitted. Not fabulous at all. My guess is that, among Labor voters, only Garrett has such weak figures.
joe2 – do you think $weetie was writing slabs of autobiography while sitting in the House? What do standing orders have to say about that? “Mr Speaker, I draw your attention to the conduct of Hon Member for Higgins, who is apparently documenting his big dummy-spit, here in the Chamber!” “Segeant-At-Arms, eject the Blighter!!”
Agree that it’s not fabulous, Bismarck.
When I posted about Garrett last week, I recalled the noises that Rudd made both shortly before and shortly after the election about judging Ministers on their performance. Obviously a large aspect of the Treasurer’s role is selling the government’s economic message. So, like I say, the Budget will be a big test for Swan.
Of course, internal as well as external politics would come into play with any reshuffle. Rudd knows that – despite the talk of objectively assessing ministerial records.
“I suppose it hadn’t occurred to them that spectacularly losing an election (with John Howard losing their own seat) might be a sign that voters had had enough of the Howard years and might just want something different from the Libs.”
‘Having had enough’ is now the line explaining the loss? It always seemed the main reason to me rather than the specifics of repulsion at WorkChoices or reacting to our involvement in Iraq but the cumulative effect of these issues lead to an overwhelming desire for change.
There was a meeting in Sydney about 2 weeks ago of some members of the Liberal Party . Robb, Hockey , Payne and others were in attendance as were regular party members. They were treated to an outline of the way ahead and I was surprised when a friend of mine who attended suggested they thought getting Costello back was the way ahead.
I mean by ’surprised ‘ I couldn’t believe they were serious.
But now this poll comes out and the name and role of Costello is being boosted so I thought I’d also let you know the other bits of gossip my friend picked up at the meeting -
This group ( perhaps someone more knowledgeable can point out which faction they represent ?) are vehemently opposed to Turnbull in almost any role it seems .
The strategy that will be used to attack Rudd will focus on his ‘ insincerity’. It is their contention that few PMs have been as self promoting and superficial as the current PM and the plan is to highlight that the actions of this government will be all about promoting Mr Rudd first and only.
This gossip may be way off the mark but with Costello being mentioned I thought I’d let other readers know the other thoughts of the meeting.
Ambigulous @17 it is surprising that no one picked it, in parls. I mean it is not as if his thoughts, since the last election, have been about anything other than… me, me, me. Notice, as well, how cleverly the member for Berowra has played the game, as well. When parliament, is televised, i think he is hiding behind a handy arch… the shadows shadow.
Anything to avoid a free trip to The Hague, i guess.
The thing that baffles me is that Turnbull is rating so highly as a potential Treasurer. What experience does he have that would warrant such confidence, apart from being a blowhard? I say let’s wait until Swan delivers the budget before writing him off; after all the country’s greatest Treasurer and spineless git took some time to find his economic feet.
Dollar $weetie $weetbacks badasssss song. Baby, it’s a whole new genre. I like to call it Laxploitation. It’s the story of a lazy lawyer who expresses interest in being the head of a criminal organisation, but only if they hand it to him.
Someone has to tell the Liberal party that political legitimacy requires knife fights. Howard understood it.
I’m very far from writing Swan off, jane. But the budget will be a big test for him.
(sorry, here’s a link to explain the reference)
jane,
wasn’t Viscount Turnbull once a Merchant Banker, as well as a Silk?
He therefore has all the requisites except for Liberal lineage (as in “Dolly had a Daddy”, etc.) He knows finance. He knows huge corporations. He has wealth. He can branch stack.
Hell’s bells, is there anything he CAN’T do?
Yeah. Win referendums on the republic.
Bilko re:
Whereas OTOH Cossie needs to do an excorism on himself and Howard to make up for his spineless performance re Howard for so many years.
(Nothing less than a wooden stake through JWH’s political heart will suffice during that double excorcism!–it’s a ‘baptism of desire’ for Cossie to redeem himself)
well, Paul Burns,
isn’t a Viscount allowed just one teensy-weensy slip-up? I mean, think of all the entertainment we had during the “Spycatcher” case….
Yeah. Agreed. S’pose being front-man for a republic and saying Howard broke a nation’s heart (which he did, but not over the republic – it was everything else he did) ain’t exactly part of the Liberal lineage.
Soesn’t look like the Liberal Party is gonna forgive Malcolm, IMHO.
Does this mean that Costello won’t be contending the Liberal party leadership?
Not at all clear, Peter Wood. He failed to “contend” the leadership while Deputy. Then he failed to contend when the Leader became an ex-MP. Does he have the stuff of “contending” within him? Is he really “foreman material”? time will tell…
Time already did tell. He’s had at least two chances handed to him on a platter (once at the beginning, another at the end) and baulked at both. He’s had at least two widely covered hissy fits in the time between those, and failed to even create a sliver of opportunity.
Costello will *never* contest for leader of the Liberal party. I’ll bet cash money on it. If shirking and sulking were olympic sports, he’d be on his way to Beijing right now.
OK, Peter will *never* contest. Will he stand if unopposed?
BTW, nice to see Senator Heffernan “crashing” a press conference being conducted by Senator Joyce. Heff has done it before. Perhaps he might consider a career change: guys called Heff are supposed to publish girlie magazines, non?
Sneaky Pete will sit back and wait for the rabble that JWH created to implode, and when all else is lost and the craven beings that are the liberal party come begging and pleading and grovelling for the new messiah, he will announce that as the parties saviour he is now available. But only when the grovelling reaches a new depth of despair. That’s when dollar sweetie will respond, once he knows that they are well and truly rooted. And not one minute before, such is his ego.
Malcolm Fraser’s Treasurer was even less successful than Costello, except he got two cracks at the leadership. I think the whole idea of the autobiography could be quite transformative, provided he doesn’t outsource it too much.
Murph@19: Thanks for that, brings back memories (wasn’t there but I can just imagine it, can almost nominate who was/n’t there)! The Turnbull thing will pass.
Mark@23: As I’ve said elsewhere, if Swanny lets Turnbull climb all over him he’ll be gone by Grand Final day, shortest serving Treasurer since Jim Cairns.
Ambigulous@25: never a silk.
On that basis, a thorough bleeding would appear to be splendidly restorative for an opposition party.
(Do Libs still bleed blue blood?)
Does Smirker have it in him to cut a few former valued colleagues through the carotid?
My guess is that he doesn’t.
mark says:
Wrong. Nothing “spectacular” about it. Howard lost the election by a margin of 2.5% (which I exactly predicted about a year out). This is roughly the median value for post war govt election losses. A fairly predictable, and moderate, loss given the govts extraordinary lenthy tenure.
Also, Howard lost his seat because McKew covertly played the race card, enlisting masses of grievance stricken Asians to get out the anti-Howard vote. Thats how the Cultural Left play politics, decrying a tactic in public and then pursuing it in private.
Mark, if you want to stay ahead of the curve and actually predict things you really need to ground your psephologic analysis in something more solid than knee-jerk post-seventies Leftism.
.
Shorter Jack: OTOH To predict anything and everything, you need a grand theory of wetness.
One of the anomalies of this recent federal election was that a perception of a spectacular loss was in fact a quite modest loss. Rudd won by presenting himself as “Howard lite”. Leads one to believe that there was no great repudiation of Howard, and the the country is somewhat comfortable being prosperous.
Other anomalies of the election including, but not limited to, the ALP presenting a cashed up millioniare exploiter of workers to challenge a humble suburban solicitor, the Liberal Party being thrown into disarray despite losing a fraction of the votes they are perceived to have lost, the Liberal Party choosing as opposition leader one who is more at home in the ALP, the ALP promising to scrap the howard government’s unpopular IR legslation but in fact just changing the name, taking it off the burner so it doesn’t bubble too much and most definitely NOT repudiating the legislation which allowed it & sending workers back to the state award systems.
espite the lack of leadership challenges by him, don’t all be so sure that Costello lacks ticker or the stomach for a fight.
He is without doubt one of the most savage parliamentary performers, whose oratory thrashings have gone so far as to drive an opposing member to a suicide attempt.
Disclosure: I could be spectacularly wrong. I spent years saying much the same thing about Simon Crean, who turned out to be possibly the biggest powder puff of a federal party leader ever.
He got less ‘umble over time steve, thus the result.
All bark, no bite? He might not take on a proven vote-winner in the ascendant, but a flailing Nelson is a different proposition. I was wrong about Crean too.
Robynne B wrote:
Yes and yes.
He’s not just all bark and no bite, his bark is wildly overrated too. Gurning and shouting on the floor of parliament does not make one a great orator, just a noisy one.
I’d write my memoirs too, regardless of the fact that they would be of no interest to the reading public, if I was being paid by the taxpayer to sit on the backbench of the Parliament and tap away on my laptop, instead of doing whatever I was supposed to be doing. But at least Costello’s there, unlike Dolly and Vale.
Ooooh Paul, that was sooooo unfair to Dolly.
Dolly does lunches, dontcha know?!! Lunching is very important (as is Dolly). Maxine used to be PAID to lunch – then write it up. Dolly lunches as a Performance Artist. He is Art Imitating Life. Then he puts on a Performance for Television or Radio. He is truly an Artiste. And like so many Artistes, he remains unappreciated by the dreary public, the unwashed, the lazy journalists. All the world’s a stage for Dolly, though it HAS shrunk a teensy-weensie bit since he lost that leading FA role.
Oh dear, another script to read: HOW on earth will one fit it all in???
Ambugulous @ 44,
I’m speechless.
Ambigulous:
SATP:
I’ll deal with the last quote first. Being able to make swingeing, savage speeches in a forum in which your side controls the numbers, the agenda and the procedure is not a sign of strength or courage. I’ve been to enough meetings and conferences of that kind to know that such behaviour is at least as often the trademark of the bully and the braggart who is often found to have no great store of plain courage when placed in less favourable circumstances.
Ambigulous, my view is that Costello comes from the kind of background, and belongs to the demographics, whose products never have to fight hard for anything in life, and therefore suffer from permanent underdevelopment of something in their character. The obvious contrast in Australian political history is with the bellicose working class boy from Bankstown, Paul Keating, who I have my criticisms of, but who at least had the bottle to see through his leadership challenge against Hawke. Costello displayed neither the ticker to put up nor the grace to shut up.
In fairness, he was hardly alone in the Howard Cabinet in this regard. It’s now well known that during the APEC meeting in Sydney last year, Howard learned that a majority of his Cabinet colleagues wanted him to go. He told them that if they wanted him out, he would only go if they were prepared to put their prints on a request for him to retire – he wasn’t going to jump of his own accord. They capitulated. To paraphrase Julius Caesar: weeny, weedy weakies!
I also compare Costello to Beazley. After the ‘96 defeat Beazley had the sense of commitment and responsibility to lead the Labor Party, even though I suspect he would have preferred to do something else with his life.
For all his problems (and I was never a Beazley fan), he kept the Labor Party together and competitive in the ‘98 election.
Costello, in comparison, just spat the dummy. This may have something to do the with the Labor Party’s tribal loyalism, as compared to the Liberal Party.
“Being able to make swingeing, savage speeches in a forum in which your side controls the numbers, the agenda and the procedure is not a sign of strength or courage. I’ve been to enough meetings and conferences of that kind to know that such behaviour is at least as often the trademark of the bully and the braggart who is often found to have no great store of plain courage when placed in less favourable circumstances.”
Oh, rubbish. Parliament provides the context in which these guys operate, parliamentary questions is theatre and Costello was a highly effective and often very funny player therein.
Julia Gillard has assumed a not dissimilar role in the new government, ceaselessly and often quite humorously and effectively skewering the opposition and we obviously wouldn’t declare her to be a bully and braggart. She’s simply exploiting the tactics that the House environment provides. So did Costello. So did PJK
A sense of proportion about this kind of stuff can come in handy.
Might have something to do with the fact that Beasley’s a thoroughly decent man, too. It seems Peter is not the only one in the Costello family capable of displaying rat cunning cobined with a lack of a bit of spine. Tim Costello put his wowserish Baptist minister ideas about booze on the final agenda of his strand of the 20/20 Summit without the othret 99 knowing, apparently.And, questioned anout it, responds with no comment.
“Ambigulous, my view is that Costello comes from the kind of background, and belongs to the demographics, whose products never have to fight hard for anything in life, and therefore suffer from permanent underdevelopment of something in their character.”
Of course! That compelling analysis obvious explains why Tim Costello is such a shallow, materialistic, self-interested fellow….
Ambigulous, I still reckon Turnbull’s main claim to fame is being a blowhard. And I think he sees himself more as a Grand Duke than a lowly Viscount. Despite his banking background, I think he’s a lightweight with little Treasurer potential unless it comes equipped with a mirror, but I take your point.
Murph @19, obviously the libs are still in a state of denial and can’t or won’t accept the reasons why they lost the election and the Rodent lost his seat. This will be their campaign focus? Rudd’s insincerity, self-promotion and superficiality? ROFL. Apparently hubris is still more important to them than having some decent, costed policies.
Talk about self-delusion. Ten years from now, they’ll still be in their bunker prostrating themselves before a statue of the Rodent, chanting their mantra, “We are the chosen ones. We are born to rule.”
Hilarious as that thought is, the real drawback is that there’ll be no effective opposition for God knows how long and that breeds a very lazy government as we’ve seen during the last 11.5 years and currently in the states. I don’t want to go through that again.
I never found costello the slightest bit funny, although he undoubtedly thought he was hilarious.
He was never popular with the elctorate and I think his bullying style had a lot to do with it. When he tried to broaden his appeal, his efforts were weak and dull. Remember his plea for more volunteerism?
I have a lot of trouble with Tim’s wowseriem as well.
Geoff, I wasn’t claiming that a taste for parliamentary theatrics (or conference/committee theatrics in humbler settings) is always associated with bullying and braggartism, rather that it can be and sometimes is, and that it is certainly not necessarily a sign of plain courage or resolution.
Also, my statement about Costello’s background is a statement about sociological tendency rather than ironclad causality. Some individuals have it in them to transcend such limitations, but I contend that Peter Costello has shown himself not to be such an individual.
Jane @ 11.33am,
I takes yer point about Grand Duke. Bein’ of the lower orders meself, was never one ter mix wif Dukes ‘n Earls ‘n Viscounts, ‘n may not recognise one if tripped over ‘im. So this Grand Duke of Turnbull, would ‘e be related to that “Grand old Duke of York” wot’s in that song?
“I never found costello the slightest bit funny, although he undoubtedly thought he was hilarious.”
Spot on!
Pete always exhibited that rather sad tendency, of the average schoolyard bully, to smirk at his own cruel jokes.
For those who are suggesting Costello didn’t have much ticker, see the below clip:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=aaLLP4sc_6Q
You’ll see how wrong you were.
My money’s on Costello hanging around like a bad smell and waiting for the party to come to him. Only then will he take the reigns and lose, then disappearing.
38 Peter Kemp Apr 23rd, 2008 at 6:55 am
I correctly predicted the exact election result six months out. And correctly predicted that Costello would not prevail against Howard, a year out.
Nothing to do with the Decline of the Wets. Although the ALP’s retention of Howard’s indigenous intervention and border protection policies proves this theory to a T.
Instead of trading insults lets compare scoreboards. I challenge Peter Kemp to put up some of his correct psephologic predictions. My guess is that, like Mark Bahnisch, he is “all hat no cattle” when it comes to positive predictive science.
I can’t see anything in either Costellos’ careers to suggest that either of them are particularly gutsy characters.
Peter has backed off from countless showdowns with Howard – not just on the leadership, but on whether or not he would walk on Reconciliation Day, for example. He was so terrified of changing anything that Keating had set in place that he lost a mint on the overseas money market.
And what has Tim done that was so hard? I’m not necessarily knocking the man, but it’s not as if he’s obviously suffered for his faith.
Paul’s surmise that Peter’s never had to fight for anything in his life seems fairly accurate.
I love the new line that’s being trotted out about the election result – that Labor didn’t really win by that much. Generally it comes from the same people who, before the election, were telling us all that winning 16 seats in one election was an impossibility and therefore Rudd could not win, no matter what the polls told us.
If winning 16 seats was impossible, than winning almost twice that was obviously some feat.
Mark says:
Well he would say that, wouldnt he. His memoirs will be self-serving rationalisations.
In fact Newspoll consistently put Howard as the more popular candidate than Costello, so far as LN/P politicians were concerned. Most of the LN/P caucus were aware of this and supported Howard along with the vast majority of LN/P voters.
But the pushy members of the Cabinet wanted Howard out of the way, supported by the Howard-hating media-academia complex. None of that push produced a correct predictive model of the election, Peter Brent excluded.
The LN/P lost the 2008 election for one policy reason and one political reason.
The policy reason was the LN/P’s stupid post-seventies obsession with union bashing. Work Choices was the one policy that really differentiated the LN/P from the ALP. It was easily the singles biggest vote loser.
The political reason was the LN/P lengthy electoral succes. In democratic politics, a government that survives into its second term generally faces a declining probability of winning further terms. Thats why they use the electoral pendulum metaphor – it generally swings back and forth over time.
So Howard can take some of the policy blame for the LN/Ps electoral loss. But Peter “Dollar Sweets” Costello was equally to blame in that respect.
And Costello just couldnt cut it with the general populace so he failed the political acid test. Thats why hes writing his memoirs now. Excuses, excuses.
39 steve at the pub Apr 23rd, 2008 at 7:32 am
That is exactly right.
The punditocracy in general have an interest in drumming up change. News is what sells newspapers. No news is bad news for those who write for their daily bread.
So the media-academia complex tends to overinterpret the change of govt into a change of the nation. Particularly the Howard-haters who just cant get their heads around the fact that Howard’s policies reflected popular preferences for a stronger, richer, prouder nation.
Costello has an obvoius interest in interpreting Howards non-capitulation to his demand that Howard overturn the wishes of the 2004 election as the death warrant of the LN/P.
Rudd will maintain most of Howard’s substantial policy settings in core economic prosperity, national security and cultural identity areas.
He may introduce drastic change in ecological sustainability policy. My prediction is that the LN/P will follow suit if that happens.
Only if you suffer from a nasty case of amnesia.
Most election outcomes in Australia could be turned the other way if you could handpick 20,000 or so votes and remove them.
To get Ratty over the line in 2007 you’d have to handpick over 100,000 votes.
That’s five time the usual margin of victory. That’s a landslide in Australian terms.
Ratty-lovers will just have to learn to live with that unpalatable fact.
Moreover, post-mortem, zombie-like, the Liberals have taken to eating each others’ livers.
An ugly but amusing sight.
61 Katz Apr 23rd, 2008 at 10:21 pm
That is blatantly false. Katz is stuffing psephological facts down the memory hole to suit his ideological biases.
The ALP’s margin of victory in 2008 was 2.5%. That is about the post-war average margin in AUS federal election.
But in the post-WWII era there have only been eight defeats of govt: 1949 ALP, 1972 LN/P, 1975 ALP, 1983 LN/P, 1996 ALP and 2007 LN/P.
SO Howard LN/P’s loss margin in 2007 was just about the smallest. (About the same as LNP in 1972).
So Katz should get his head around that “unpalatable fact” before trotting out any further psephological nonsense.
“eight” should read six defeats.
Links Jack, and I’ll believe you, but let’s see your predictive formula in scientific form. ie (A+B+C) to the power “j” equals Psephological Crystal Wetproof Ball?
Shorter Jack: A year ago I predicted the sun would rise in the east. (Most verily I say all this and more unto ye: ye brood of Wet vipers.)
Strocchers appears to be incapable of recognising the difference between apples and oranges.
His figures and my figures are in no ways contradictory.
Moreover, what argument is this strange little sentence the conclusion to:
Please stick to Grand Theories of Wetness Strocchers. You are much more at home in fields where facts don’t matter.
Paul Burns, 23rd April 10.03am.
So would you advise that I stick to my day job and not try out as an Events Impresario? Or Dolly Dabbler?
Ambigulous,
Dolly7 seems ro me to be something like something out of one of those utterly decadent 1920s/1930s Berlin Cabarets. Now if you’ve got something in that line …
Labor’s vote in 2007 was its second highest ever, after 1983.
No other opposition party has ever won from 16 seats down. After the 2004 debacle, there was every reason to believe that Labor would need two elections to win. One to get close, the other to finish the job. But they did it in one, and that in the face of $100 million of tax payer funded propaganda for the government, and in the midst of a huge economic boom. Oppositions never win when the economy is going well, but this one did.
The Prime Minister was even defeated in his own seat, FFS.
Labor’s win was huge and the Liberal Party knows it. That is why they are in disarray. They have no leader to speak of; they are repudiating their own totemic policies (IR, Climate Change, Apology) as fast as they can open their mouths; out thought and out fought by Rudd at every turn since the election.
They’ve got nothing and are nothing.
Paul Burns on decadent cabaret acts…
perhaps Bill Leak who decorates the Opposition Organ, has part of the act sorted?
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/gallery/0,25198,5024288-20581,00.html
ummmm…. about that link
today (24th April) it’s a Cossie cartoon, for the Dolly cartoon click back to 23rd April: Fishnet Dolly with Billy Bunter theme and Overtones of Tool with Tiara; on stage in front of an audience at the Hapsburg Cabaret [monarchist hang-out]
Ambigulous,
Got it, anyway. Thanks. Love it.
Bitte Schoen, Pauly.
How you like mebbe we set up leedle Berlin Cabaret here, ja? “Hapsburg Cabaret” for all those schweetie-pie monarchists not liking zis Weimar Republic, can cosy up mit boys in spangly uniforms und so much ladies, ach ve hef many more lovely times, jawohl?
Murf the surf@19
By Crikey! Can I detect a not so subtle “topic plant” regarding the supposed Opposition future tactics regarding Rudd’s focus of attention? Hmmm! Also if “your friend” was at such a meeting I doubt that Payne was present. Spelling of the surname may be incorrect. Perhaps it was really Christopher, who more logically fits with such a group.
Paul Burns@49
Your comment re “lack of spine” reminds me of the game we played at dinner last night – not to hazard a guess at what might or might not be in the book but to see who had the best idea for a cover. I won with my design of yellow stripes with no clearly observable spine.