Glenn Milne’s Sunday columns - since the election - have turned into a weekly chronicle of Liberal disunity. If he’s historically been known as “the poison dwarf”, you have to wonder about who exactly needs an antidote from him these days. His modus operandi is widely suspected to be writing up any “insider” leaks that come his way - and since they never come from the ALP - his column inches are the battleground for the opposition’s leadership wars. He’s become the enabler of the Liberals’ self-destructive pain.
The latest instalment in this chronicle of woe for the Libs is the suggestion that Alexander Downer just has soooooo much to offer the Libs, he’s willing to make the noble sacrifice of turning his back on lucrative private sector opportunities and a chance to sort Cyprus out on behalf of the UN to take a frontbench position - hopefully Shadow Treasurer. Presumably under Turnbull’s leadership, since I can’t see Malcolm stepping down for Dolly. Does anyone really believe that hordes of Liberals are begging Dolly to get back into the fray? (It was suggested on the SBS news last night that Dolly is being drafted back by his admirers.) Or is it more likely that he’s found the private sector fields on offer aren’t as green as he might have believed… and that he doesn’t want Nick Minchin to determine who gets his seat?
Has it occurred to any of these drongoes that leaking their vicious infighting on Sunday sets them up for a terrible start to each week’s media cycle?
Hello, Dolly!
Well, hello Dolly
It’s so nice to have you back…..
If I may be allowed to say a nice word for the lovely Alexander (no one else is going to around here) — and I should because he is a fellow South Australian — the UN thing shows that perhaps actually he wasn’t so bad as a diplomat and foreign minister.
After the federal election, Downer instantly lost whatever power he might have held with the UN. And it’s not as if Stephen Smith would have made it DFAT’s #1 priority to get Downer the Cyprus role.
So the UN Secretariat wouldn’t have approached him unless they actually respected his diplomatic skills. How ’bout that.
ahh but did the UN approach him or is it another Royal Garter story?
I just hope whoever in the Libs keeps feeding this stuff to Milne, if only because its fun to read. (And Labor needs all the help it can get with its reneging on petrol and grocery prices, pissing off pensioners and Rudd’s social conservatism coming to the fore in the Henson affair and on homosexual marriage).
That comment about Downer not wanting Minchin to pick his successor, Kim. Ouch!
And who would think either that nice Mr. Minchin (or Dolly)would swear like Gordon Ramsay. Would have loved to have been a fly on the wall there.
Downer was shadow Treasurer after the 1993 election under John Hewson until he became leader a year or so later. He wasn’t very good at it, though in mitigation few are.
Can’t see Downer having another crack at it at this stage of his life.
A little bird told me, and I believe it was reported somewhere, that the ex-PM has told dolly to hang around and stop the current Fibs crew from trashing the ex Fibs crew’s legacy.
I dunno, but it’s actually got some sense of logic about it unlike Nelson’s team.
Paul Burns, I (unfortunately) don’t think the henson and gay marriage issues will lose the ALP many votes to the conservatives.
We knew what we were getting with Rudd, in terms of social conservatism. Not happy, but no longer angry like I was pre Nov 2007.
wilful @ 7,
You’re absolutely right. But I didn’t think he’d be this craven this soon. Of course, he is better than the other lot of incompetents. Like you I’m disappointed but not enraged.
Dolly must have cast a quick eye around the LNP caucus and figured out he is the most prominent royalist and that alone is worth another crack at the big time. My guess is that he will massage this sizeable lobby for all it is worth.
Milne’s shelf life is linked to that of his contemporaries in the Liberal Party. He was the number one booster for Prime Minister Costello. Once he, Downer, Minchin et al go or lose their clout, Milne will be irrelevant. Perhaps Chris Pyne will talk to him, but otherwise Milne won’t adapt to a Liberal Party that has shrugged Howard off completely. He’s milking them while they last, getting less and less from it.
Milne won’t stick around hammering old themes entertainingly like Alan Ramsey, he doesn’t care enough about issues to do the polemic like Akerman/Albrechtsen/Bolt, he won’t ascend to the high Second Draft Of History plane that Paul Kelly seems to occupy, and he won’t do the hard graft that Michelle Grattan and George Megalogenis do.
Of all the ministers in the Howard government it is Downer’s whose legacy has been most comprehensively erased. Rudd speaking Mandarin in Beijing, the Bali conference, NATO - you’d think Smith had directly succeeded Evans as Foreign Minister. Only East Timor stands as a recognisable Downer legacy, and once Rudd/Smith/whoever deals with a post-Gusmao/Ramos Horta era, that too will have gone. Downer’s virulent reaction to Senator Russell Trood’s well-considered paper on foreign policy was instructive - even within the Liberal Party, nostalgia and personal fondness aside, his legacy is fading fast.
As far as Downer goes personally, he’s a big man in Adelaide and rather smaller elsewhere. His wife won’t go to Cyprus because it’s so beastly dull, darling, and for all his faults Downer is uxorious. Going to Canberra might increasingly be a grind for him, but where else would he go? Sitting around the Adelaide Club would get dull fast. SA State politics? Yeah, right. Washington? The conservative tide’s going out, all the haunts where Republicans endure Democrat administrations are already being inundated with CVs. What if the next Liberal candidate for Mayo were a moderate? What if that candidate lost to Labor? That would erase his legacy all the more, an appalling prospect for a proud man.
Australians and Americans tend to be crap at international disputes involving ancient ethnic hatreds - witness the squeamishness over Israel-Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan or Fiji. The Cyprus thing is too hard for Downer, and he knows it. Smith is appealing to Downer’s vanity, and (contra Paulus) he’s almost certainly seen some polling showing Labor looking good in Mayo.
Downer’s capacity for cunning plans is over. He’d never be truly convincing in a Shadow Treasury role - not to the wider public, not to businesspeople and their economists. He’d never nail Swan. As was said of Howard this time last year, he’s a man who should retire but has nowhere else to go. Interesting that the Liberals haven’t developed the capacity to diagnose and bury political corpses.