The spill is on, Tony Abbott is in, Joe Hockey looks to be taking inspiration from Peter Costello in wanting the leadership without getting blood on his hands, Kevin Andrews has ruled himself out and George Brandis has now shown his hand and come out in support of Malcolm Turnbull.
As for Turnbull, well he’s not going down without a fight.
Meanwhile in news that makes complete sense, the Oz reports that Nick Minchin was a tobacco skeptic.
Senator Minchin wishes to record his dissent from the committee’s statements that it believes cigarettes are addictive and that passive smoking causes a number of adverse health effects for non-smokers,” the committee’s minority report says. “Senator Minchin believes these claims (the harmful effects of passive smoking) are not yet conclusively proved. . . there is insufficient evidence to link passive smoking with a range of adverse health effects.
To support his claims, Senator Minchin drew on a study commissioned by the Tobacco Institute of Australia that “concluded the data did not support a causal relationship between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and lung cancer or heart disease in adults.
Place your bets, and bon mots below.
Update: Tony Abbott wins the final ballot by one vote 42-41 over Malcolm Turnbull with Joe Hockey surprisingly eliminated in the first round.
Update [RM]: Details at The Age. Key piece of information – somebody voted informal.
Update [RM]: Possum points out that Fran Bailey, should she have been able to vote, would probably have voted for Turnbull. So would Kelly O’Dwyer and Paul Fletcher.
Update [RM]: Bob Brown said at his press conference that the Greens would not support referring the CPRS to a Senate committee and won’t be supporting the CPRS in its current form. The Liberals have now said that if the bill is not sent to a committee, they’ll vote it down. The upshot – unless there are a lot of Liberals crossing the floor, the CPRS will be defeated a second time in the Senate, and a DD trigger will be explicitly on the table (at least as I understand it).
Update [MB]: New post – CPRS defeated.
Lemmings to pull back from brink: Turnbull wins, Hockey Deputy (or should it be a senator? if so, Brandis Deputy
Coming soon: Night of the Long Knives
Bolta takes holiday to Tuscany
Not sure that I care now – listening to Bronwyn Bishop on AM this morning sounding as if her hair had finally decided to strangle her can hardly be bettered.
ABC reporting Hockey has 30 definites, Abbott 30-odd, Turnbull no chance. So its down to the undecideds.
“Abbott 30-odd”
succinct but true!
I cannot offer bon mots, monsieur but this from the Oz online will have to do:
““We’ve got Mr Arrogance (Malcolm Turnbull) who says, ‘do it my way or else’.”
“We’ve got Mr I Don’t Know (Joe Hockey)
“(And) Mr Abbott (who) is Mr Rational.”
Liberal frontbencher George Brandis told reporters he would be voting for Mr Turnbull.
“I made a commitment to him,” he told reporters ahead of the meeting.
So George is Senator Commitment.
Update from previous thread.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/11/29/hockey-the-new-costello-howard-has-lunch-andrews-deals-himself-back-in/#comment-840663
Nick Minchin, it is reported, began the day with his usual fare…. Fruit Loops.
Here’s hoping for an Abbott win for maximum entertainment
This “free vote” idea, cobbled together on the run to save hide, sounds like a recipe for complete chaos and disaster, as I think Judith Troeth and Gary Humphries have been trying to say overnight and this morning.
Maybe the dopey dills and the knee-knockers will pull back from the brink, with Brandis showing the way.
Bernice@2: “Bronwyn Bishop…sounding as if her hair had finally decided to strangle her…”. Lovely.
God has spoken.
and the winners are: aBBOTT AND bISHOP
42:41
NO BALLOT FOR DEPUTY
and of course, us (the very admirable Australian people);
“May we just say we are honoured and humbled, we will now MOVE FORWARD; let all the cares and woes and sorry strife and hurtful words be in the past; we will fight them in the ditches, the hedgerows, the slums, the board rooms, the greengrocer shops, the news rooms, the public schools, the cricket grounds, the beaches, the beer barns [who wrote this tosh??????]; and we will never surrender. Now let’s just see what the Senate does, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Good Morning to you all!”
Wonderful. Wonderful.
Oh happy days! Mad Monk for PM!
That could have been a tied vote if Fran Bailey had made it.
Liam: how do you spell schadenfreude?
42:41
as far as I can see, you couldn’t have a closer result (“mathematically”)
*****
So, which Senators will STILL cross the floor?????
A-L-E-X-H-A-W-K-E
Gerard Henderson points out:
26 + 35 + 23 = 84
but
42 + 41 = 83
Was there one crucial abstention?
If that person had voted, would the second round have been 42-42,
or
43-41
??????
Andrew Bolt has succeeded in his mission to destroy the Liberal Party. Will he out himself as a Labor man now?
Tony Abbott as Opposition Leader. O.M.G. Can life get weirder? What happens next?
See comment 13 Ambi
This should prove entertaining if nothing else.
That was totally awesome. Abbott had my bet from Friday night. This is going to be some of the most entertaining politics over the next 12 months ever.
This is crazy. They really have hit the self destruct button here. A year ago anyone mentioning Abbott as leader would be laughed out of the building. They are committing electoral suicide, and I’m really going to enjoy watching it!
The white smoke is up the chimney. That’s the Liberal Party on fire.
At least Greg Sheridan will be happy. ‘Yay’.
The climate chips in with a timely contribution: The hottest November on record in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and possibly elsewhere.
If we’re to have a climate change election, Rudd should make sure its held at the height of summer.
Fran would never vote for Tony.
Abbott supporter Michael Johnson gave an outstanding performance on Lateline last night. At the end of the interview, the score was Jones 2, Johnson 0.
Did Fran Baily also miss the vote between Nelson and Turnbull, or am I inventing memories?
The vote on the first round was Abbott-35, Turnbull-26, Hockey-23. That adds up to 84. Yet only 83 voted in the second round. What’s the betting that Turnbull didn’t vote?
I guess no-one picked Hockey to dip out on the fist round and the MSM certainly underestimated the support for Turnbull. But Hockey has learnt the hard way that people won’t vote for you if you don’t stand for anything
BA Santamaria- Abbott’s guiding light.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B.A._Santamaria
Hottest November on record in SA also, cs.
From Samantha Maiden on Twitter:
“There was one informal vote in final 42 41 result #spill”
Accurate? Maybe…
ABC is reporting there was an INFORMAL vote in the second round….
1. How can you vote informal in a two-candidate ballot?
2. What’s the money is what a Turnbull vote….?
Easy; vote for John Howard…
perhaps Hockey didnt vote after getting knocked out?
Party room voted 55-29 (or something like that) to block ETS according to Iron Bar.
Wilson Tuckey just described himself as the ‘village idiot’
@ steve
Thats the first sensible thing Tuckey’s said all day!
Good God! Who will erect the gallows? Poor old Malcolm, eh. And he was so confident.
Bwwaahahahahaha!!
AVENGE, O Lord! Thy slaughter’d saints, whose bones
Lie scatter’d in the Canberra Caucus Room;
They who cleansed the party with a brand new broom
To rid our assemblage of Howard’s taint,
Forget not the lying picture he did paint
Of one big happy family in the Liberal fold
Progressives purged by preselection’s machinations roll’d
Party unity faked with praises feint!
Whilst Abbott and Minchin rule the day
With cat’s paw Hockey (an ordinary Joe)
O’er Menzies’ party tyranny doth sway
Those triple Tyrants: Liberalism’s mortal foe
Treacherously connive to get their way,
And deal our party a mortal blow.
This made me spill my coffee. Add that to Michael Johnson’s ‘Hockey doesn’t have a spine quote’ and we are going to have an entertaining few weeks of politics!
re: informal vote
as has been tweeted, maybe someone just wrote ‘kill me’ on the ballot
So wait, the Libs have just voted to give a double dissolution trigger with Tony Abbott as leader?
Oh, my. Oh my.
The informal vote was probably Joe Hockey
On the down side guys…this does raise the serious possibility of Abbott as PM.
Laugh? Remember how we laughed at John Howard.
Turnbull staying… for now.
Abbott, Hockey, Belinda Neal… what is it about former Presidents of the Sydney University SRC?
I’m wondering what this means for the Coalition’s climate policy. I think it can’t be for an ETS of any kind and it won’t be for a comprehensive carbon tax. If it is a denialist, do nothing position they are dead meat.
This leaves perhaps a mix of a bit of extra tax, some incentives, a stronger MRET and more regulation.
BTW I’ve just heard an lower house Lib suggesting that the CPRS might still pass the senate in spite of the 54-29 vote to refer it to a senate committee, or if that doesn’t happen to vote it down.
This has just maybe put an additional Senate seat into play. Senator Humphries last night on Lateine was firm in support of the ETS. He will not be a happy camper. Tony Abbot might just what it takes to see a Green take his ACT Senate seat.
@44 Totally agree Tsk, this is a bad result. To the extent that Abbott isn’t deposed in the near future, this is going to see the ALP moving to the right and yeah, who would have thought Howard would have been PM?
Well, we await the first of a series of NewsPolls that show the rapid descent of Abbott’s approval rating into single figures (could it start in single figures) and the govt’s TPP ascend above 60% followed by the inevitable destabilisation as the spineless ones worry about their tenure. I mean a 1 vote majority is hardly a ringing endorsement. There was plenty of tutt-tutting when Malcom’s margin over Nelson wasn’t thought to be large enough. The only downside for the govt. that I can see is that they’ll have trouble getting anyone to take notice of anything they’re doing as the press will be mesmerised by the Libs sideshow.
Someone has counted 8 Lib senators that might cross the floor and vote for the CPRS. They only need 7. Surely that can’t happen, or Abbott’s leadership will be a complete farce from the outset.
Bolt: “The fightback has at last begun” (I read so you don’t have to).
Nobody’s gonna kick Manly-Warringah around anymore! We win (by half a vote. Gerry didn’t know about Fran. Tony will dissolve parliament, dismiss Rudd and rule by fiat. Or maybe by Hyundai.
“The only downside for the govt. that I can see is that they’ll have trouble getting anyone to take notice of anything they’re doing as the press will be mesmerised by the Libs sideshow.”
Yep, after all this, I wonder if the ABC will give Labor equal time?
Abbotts leadership IS a complete farce from the beginning, Brian… presser coming up in 2 minutes.
Don’t forget when Howard was voted in as PM, the Keating government was on the nose. I doubt that will be the case at the next election, if Abbott is still the opposition leader. He will have given just about everyone the hump if he lasts until then.
“Or maybe by Hyundai.”
Bentley, for goodness sake, Sir ‘enry.
(Oh Jesus, Chris Uhlmann has already pulled out the rosary beads and started genuflecting at the Tony Abbott feet.)
Sorry – am stuck in wireless free zone. Can someone confirm visual sensory data to the extent that Abbott is confirmed as leader of opposition. This is Major Tom to ground control…
The Libs will now vote against the tax en-masse. They have voted for this new leadership and it will now be seen as the only principled thing to do.
And the discipline of the right wins again. The only consensus that was ever going to matter was theirs on their terms. The left of the Lib party will be too tired to keep fighting this over Christmas and will fall in behind Abbott for the good of the party.
We should now see a strengthening of support for the Lib’s in the media. Let’s face it, the shaking of the tree by Bolt et al was just to dislodge what they saw as rotten apples.
In a way this is good for the News Ltd papers as despite Howard being seen as still being influential… it was News Ltd journos again that proved that they and their boss are the true kingmakers.
HeyyyyyyAbbott
Quick, what’s the Papal position on climate change?
Incredible turn of events in Australian Mad Men. Glued to set. Please let there be more episodes.
So long Mal, and thanks for all the electoral campaign soundbites. I predict 2010 will bring ALP v Greens contests in all inner cities, for the first, but not last time.
Does this mean George Pell will be promoted into the shadow cabinet?
Barrie Cassidy: Tony Abbott is the new Steven Bradbury.
Anthony Nolan: 100% confirmed. Tony Abbott is Oposition Leader.
I remember a column by BA Santamaria recommending that Australia ought to acquire nukes in order to repel waterborn refugees from the heathen north. A new policy coming up from Abbott then on asylum seekers? Our very own Duke Nukem? The possibilities are endless.
If the required number of Senators cross the floor to help pass the ETS, then I can’t see how they can continue in the party, considering what has happened. Having said that, Minchin et al asked for it. They were threatening to do the same thing.
The main problem with living outside the law is that you no longer enjoy the protection of it.
Abbott on CPRS: ‘Requires consideration’ … ‘Can’t just wave this through the Parliament’ … ‘By secret ballott … approved this course: first seek to refer to committee. If unsuccessful, oppose legislation in Senate.’ … ‘That is the Right thing to do.’
Can I just point out that in line with right wing groupthink Turnbull’s narrow win last week didn’t mean the ETS issue was decided.
However Abbott’s win by one vote gives him a clear mandate to oppose the ETS scheme.
tssk: yes, our Tone might become PM.
It’s like this when Collingwood’s in the Grand Final. In order to have the pleasure of seeing the Magpies thrashed (again), one must suffer the terrifying possibility that they could win.
Brian, this morning on AM Senator Judith Troeth, a Liberal supporter of the ETS, was waxing lyrical over the possibility of a “free vote” under Tweetiejoe (though shje planned to vote for Malcolm T). She said it would be easier for 10? 11? 12? Lib Senators to vote with the Govt.
So now the question is: will some of those 11(?) cross the floor, ignoring a Party room vote, after a week of turmoil?? I’m not sure that Senator Troeth will.
Brian @ 51: if the Senators crossed the floor and the ETS passed, it would be the Liberal Party version of the 11th Nov 1975: Prime Minister sacked after long deferment of Supply Bills, but Labor Senators are unaware of the sacking. Suddenly the Coalition Senators pass the supply Bill, easing the way for the incoming caretaker PM.
Could the Govt Senators have fillibustred in 1975? Probably not, but they might have had pleasure in procedural ructions or displays of pique, long laments for Gough etc. …?
RE: the informal vote. There was a cracker of a line on #spill just now about how, the vote counters were perplexed to find one vote which simply read “I AM THE LEADER”.
Who is the besuited dwarf filmed during this crisis wandering the corridors of power with (other?) Liberal heavies?
Abbott promises a “good and clean contest” at the next election… yeah, right.
Than you Andos. Baisse moi.
Cue footage of Abbot professing to know about climate change while never reading anything about it.
Tremendously mixed messages from Abbott. Economy, broadband, ETS, interest rates. Surely a bit more focus was required.
Preferred PM after today: Rudd 90, Abbott 10?
Just watched Michael Johnson’s performance on Lateline. Good to see somebody who stands for somethink.
Confirmed: Tony Abbott will campaign the next election on a platform of “John Howard was totally awesome, so elect us!”
Now back to workchoices, and NOT REJECTING IT. Another bat for labor to hit him with.
I wonder how long it will take before ten members of Abbott’s 42 get so sick of being on the wrong end of his “people skills” that they’re in his office presenting one of those co-signed letters.
On the up side, Abbott is a very easy read – like Nick Minchin he has a habit of shaking his head when he’s not convinced by what he’s saying.
Abbott just atttempted to channel Paul Keating: “If you don’t understand it, don’t vote for it, if you do understand it, you’ll never vote for it.”
good stuff at crikey. Possum points out that if fran bailey could vote it would be 42 all, also that Kelly O’Dwyer and Paul Fletcher would have voted for turnbull. This is an even bigger disaster for the liberals than they could have foreseen.
Abbott: “I would like Joe to be my shadow treasurer.”
I hope we have a blooody long hot summer!!!!!!
A cyclist has reportedly been seen riding rapidly around Canberra, stopping and alighting briefly to vandalise “No Right Turn” signs in a show of fitness and strength.
An excellent outcome. Abbott as leader after Libs put on Three Stooges routine for amusement of all. Dirty knuckle dragging libs finally outed as remnant New Guardists. Hopless ETS bill (as per Green’s critique) rooted in senate. What next?
Q :And you said climate change is crap.
T: Hyperbole, O.K.
Can I please be judged only on what I have said in the last three minutes?
Possum on the numbers today: http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2009/12/01/abbott-the-numbers-point-to-grief/
Short version: its not over.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Hoping everyone read and enjoyed Annabel Crabb’s excellent online piece for the ABC early this morning, with specific reference to the ‘three Catholics’ ripping their party apart. And now of course we have a leadership team of Abbott and Bishop. I wish this wasn’t so much more sinister than Abbott and Costello.
An amazing result, likely to be at least as troublesome as the Latham one (also one vote, I think) was for Labor.
Libs starting to resemble Dad’s Army by the day – maybe they’ll recall (Ratty) Captain Mainwaring from retirement.
Tssk, I enjoy your hilarious takes. I meant to ask you from an earlier thread if you’d managed to get a bet on a Rudd dismissal with a caretaker Lib Government a la 1975. My guess is that the odds for that are currently about 800,000 to one. Might be a handy flutter of 50c.
Hopefully the voters will recognise the dangers of electing a theocracy.
And to think that the Liberal Party almost didn’t come into existence because the NSW delegation objected to the Victorian delegation having ONE Catholic among its number.
It has taken a long time but on the other hand, Rome wasn’t built in one day.
Tone rule is Rome Rule!!
This is a nice How Do You Do.
LE: Nah, the Pope is part of the conspiracy.
[ahem]
Paul Norton – I just about chocked on my toast when I read that! LMAO
Brian Costa on Bush Telegraph had an interesting commentary yesterday. In short, the Libs will lose seats in the next election, mainly in metropolitan areas. This will have two effects.
First, the big C conservatives will be in the ascendancy in the Liberal Party.
Secondly, things are looking good for the Nats. They won’t lose anything, but will be more important in the Coalition because of the ratio of numbers will tip their way.
He reckons the Nats need the Libs, so there will be no break there, although there will be brand differentiation, which is happening now. The Nats and Libs are joined at the hip in Qld and they would struggle to get a senator up by themselves in Victoria.
All this is good for Labor, because the middle ground is being vacated by the Coalition. The Greens may profit, but their vote comes back to Labor in the long run.
One unnamed moderate Liberal MP, quoted by AAP, put it less tactfully, saying the party had “f…ed ourselves over”.
“That’s just vaguely sectarian innuendo”.
Whats “vague” about it?
Now I’ve stopped laughing, as Pollytics points out, Abbott’s win will in no way offer an end to the brawling within the Libs. While their stand on deferring or not voting for the current ETS legislation may hold them steady in the polls even til Xmas, once we’re post-Copenhagen, they HAVE to present a cohesive policy position concerning climate change.
By mid-January, the ALP’s strategies as to both Abbott and the Libs in general will be in full swing. What will also have come up is the intense dislike of Abbott in the fusty heartland of white bread Anglican Liberalism. Tony will need far more than a Bishop to survive the next 6 months. The chances of Abbott as PM? Absolutely totally nil. The Libs have Hockey as leader in reserve, not to mention Turnbull glowering Keating-like from the back benches to fall back. Abbott is expendable, he will serve his purpose of stiffening party resolve not to act on climate change, but he will not win an election.
Suspect the 1 vote margin also reduces the likelyhood of a split between moderates and minchoviks, as Abbott is more than vunerable to a spill. If both by-elections fall as expected, the Libs shift nominally back into the moderate side of things.
Hopefully my grinning muscles will get some relief before the first-Abbott Newspoll is released….
Katz@69: “Who is the besuited dwarf filmed during this crisis wandering the corridors of power with (other?) Liberal heavies?”
I thought I saw a rumpled dwarf with hanging glasses on the sidelines in the party room…Bob Ellis?
Hat-tip to Dimples Crabb for quick-witted and entertaining commentary as it all happened. She made up for the appalling commentary by Chris Toolman, whose polly character readings are painful beyond belief. Turnbull apparently failed because he was not able to “take the punishment” like Brendon Nelson, and because his combative manner on sunday was not liked by “some people”. And Abbott is apparently “very deep”. Really, Toolman is such a tool.
That secret ballot in the party room on the ETS bills was a surprise – well, not apparently to the Mad Uncle, whose has taken credit for the whole thing. There is still some way to go in the senate. Please let the bills be voted down, so that we can go straight to all the drama and hilarity of a DD in Feb, during a heatwave (and as Dimples cleverly remarked – during the monsoon season, with no refugee boats on the horizon).
And Malcolm rides off into the sunset with a dazzling smile and jaunty wave of his hat. Hi Ho Silver and Away.
@ Pavlov’s Cat: That is an hilarious article. My favourite line:
“There was People Skills on Sunday, prancing about in the shallows wearing naught but a scrap of lycra, a lifesaver’s cap and a fascinatingly goatish pelt.”
Don Wigan, I don’t think that the dismissal will be neccessary now. I think Abbott will push for a double dissolution and chance winning the election. All he needs to do is put this up as a tax and leave the climate out of it and he’s onto a winner. Especially when the media shift onside behind him (with a reluctant ABC but they will need to keep bagging the ALP regardless to show ‘balance.’)
The leader that the Parrot (and his sour, belligerent listeners) want.
And almost nobody else. Oh well, they can at least provide some sense of drama to this slow-motion fail fest.
I propose some militant action for the denialist dittoheads. Like the US Teabagger activists, they can hold Coal parties, bring back the steam train, dress-up as a chimney-sweeps and hold coal-fired BBQ’s.
Have the cliche’s begun yet on Tony taking the gloves off, being in the blue corner, fighting until the end etc etc?
This is fabulous news for those of us who wanted something better than the the Rudd/Wong polluter-porkbarrell.
Now the way forward lies in the ALP negaitating a deal with the Greens that just two people out of Xenophon, Humphreys and the retiring Troeth can accept.
That sounds a lot more plausible.
It’s worth remembering that just a few years ago Abbott and Latham were both tagged by Michael Duffy as the two finest politicians of their generation.
The Momentum is Growing!
I’d like to correct my snide observations about a mandate of one over the ETS bill.
According to http://www.smh.com.au/national/shock-result-as-abbott-wins-liberal-leadership-by-one-vote–ets-dead-20091201-k1uz.html
He actually does have a mandate to block the bill now. This could get interesting. As much as I despise Abbott (oh why oh why are we such haters) I wouldn’t underestimate him. Now I’m off to eat humble pie.
Katz @ 69:
Don’t know, but I’m sure I saw on TV news last night Hockey in a huddle with a representative bunch that included Minchin a suited Graeme Morris, former head of Howard’s office and now private consultant. He was also part of RN’s Australia Talks panel last night.
In his press conference Hockey said he didn’t know Turnbull was going to stand. Turnbull had told the whole world in a press conference. Surely this is gross incompetence in Hockey’s office.
Fran @ 106:
Rudd can avoid this by calling a DD up until 7 August. I wouldn’t rule it out.
Rumours at least 4 Lib Senators will cross the floor – and when you think about, if you were a lib moderate, knowing the numbers will swing back to your side as early as the two by-elections next week – where’s the downside in crossing the floor?
There isnt one. And the denialists must know – deep down – they deserve a knife in the back. More episodes to come….
My evil plan is coming a long nicely. The possibility of a Hockey compromise was the only sticking point. Now that is out of the way.
Roll on the DD. If Rudd can’t smell blood now there is no hope for any of us.
The only way to get a credible 21st century alternative party is to destroy the liberal party.
Roll on the elections.
Abbott “humbled and daunted” by the task of leading the Liberal party to its next electoral humiliation.
I’m not going to leap up and down about this. Abbott is not to be under-estimated. (though I have to admit having a leader who thinks climate change is crap coming up with a Liberal Party policy on Climate change won’t do him any favours.) If he runs on the increase in prices in power bills through the ETS/CPRS he will get traction in the electorate. Never underestimate the power of the hip-pocket nerve. (Menzies in 1949 on removing petrol rationing when it was obvious it was to the detriment of the Empire at a time we were all imperialists?)
While I believe people frequently chose to make political decisions for the good of the future of humanity, the cynic in me says selfishness nearly always wins.
I agree Paul. I’d make snide jokes about running on a “Hide the decline (of the Liberals)” but I know he coould get traction on this. Andrew Bolt on The Insiders gave a preview of what we could expect. I think Abbott is in a strong position.
I’ve got word on the “No” vote.
Dennis Denuto had passed Wilson Tuckey a note saying “Would you like a glass of water?”.
tssk @ 116
Except for that whole being Tony Abbott thing.
Judy Brett reckons that main culprit here is $mirker- he might have held the party together but shirked.
She also thinks Lib backbench conservative rhetoric is forming around a small vs big business divide, with Turnbull’s position on the ETS seeming to side with Woodside etc. Some possible implications here for the sort of Phillip Blond Red Toryism that David Cameron’s lot are espousing. Yabbott’s Mersey Hospital-takeover was in this style, and might indicate where the hair-shirted one wlll go.
Brian said:
Nor I, and there are some arguiments fo it, but really, isn’t it in his interests to
a) allow the internecine fighting within the coalition side to keep going?
b) preserve the synchronicity between the two houses by having a half-senate post August 7 2010? A DD means that the next half senate occurs mid-2012 which would mean another House of Reps election then too, unless one wanted a senate-only election then.
Really, does anyone who can be candid think that Abbott will still be tenable six months from now? It’s hard to imagine. Less than six months ago Abbott wanted to pass the CPRS unamended. He may come to make Nelson’s approval ratings look flattering.And of course if Higgins and Bradfield go to the coalition, the two Liberals are going to find Turnbull’s policy preferable.
Turnbull will be in full vision thing mode for much of the year and what will Abbott be able to say? Nothing that Minchin won’t get to vet first.
Vatican’s Address to U.N. on Climate Change
Abbott has a bit of ‘splaining to do.
Now watch the big News Ltd wingnut machine start winding up with a campaign in support of the Abbott-Minchin and smearing the ETS as economically and fiscally irresponsible. Rudd will be portrayed as on a global ego trip. The ABC, of course, will echo The Australia’s talking points.
The next election won’t only be about the ETS. Like any other election, there will be a range of issues, including local issues in every electorate and the impact of the different personalities standing in every electorate.
The Libs don’t have a chance, especially with Abbott. Remember how hopeless he was last election? Remember him turning up late to a debate, swearing on mic to Roxon, insulting Bernie Banton? He truly was the Lib’s weakest link. What’s going to change?
Fran Bailey’s my local member. She’s rather eat a snow leopard than vote for Abbott.
Except that position will be going absolutely nowhere after Copenhagen. Expect import tariffs on countries that don’t play ball on matched reductions. The US, China and EU all love a bit of righteous protectionism.
The Mad Monk is “daunted” but also “exhilarated.” Sounds like he is in love. Better break out the condoms.
What will change Fine is that he will have the full support of the media behind him. I mean the narrative writes itself. The underdog to Rudd’s dominance striving to save poor families from a tax they can’t possibly afford to pay.
Paul Burns:
Paul,
if there is something you don’t want to undersestimate, its the electorate.
Forget Abbott. The last good Abbott ever had was today. He will be toast at the elections, and the Libtards will be toast at the elections.
Put simply, no party here has ever not been wiped out when it went to the elections with a dumb-arse policy.
ugghh! should read:..the last good day Abbott had was today…
In regards to a Double Dissolution election; what Fran said. Holding a DD (in the first half of next year) would really only serve to shorten the Government’s next term by a year. Screw that. According to Antony Green, Labor would also be unlikely to gain a majority of Senators at a DDE, meaning they would have to negotiate with a (most likely) Australian Greens balance of power.
Despite all of the media hype, a DDE seems the least likely outcome of any of this crap.
Fine: “The Libs don’t have a chance, especially with Abbott. Remember how hopeless he was last election? Remember him turning up late to a debate, swearing on mic to Roxon, insulting Bernie Banton? He truly was the Lib’s weakest link. What’s going to change?”
What going to change? Well, this time around he has the added pressure of being leader. The wingnut are now the actual face of the liberal party today. His personality will soar. And I mean: his personality. If you thought he was bad last time around…watch this space.
An American equivilent would be forcing someone like Karl Rove out from under a rock and in broad daylight for the electorate to decide. Watching Australia deciding on a fullblown Liberal rightwing nutbar team is going to be great.
Katz
Abbott didn’t write that press release, and climate change is hardly a dogmatic issue.
Now, I don’t subscribe to absolutely the same Catholicism that Abbott does (although Abbott’s would be closer to mine than our esteemed blog host), but having him called out because of it raises my hackles. He is the Member for Warringah, not the Member for St Peter’s Basilica, and his views are sincerely held.
Remember than Abbott was made to look reasoned and measured by Catherine Deveny on Q&A regarding the issues surrounding Abbott and his religious beliefs.
And that will be good for Abbott as he will run the line that the ALP is “scared of calling a double dissolution.”
So in the end the Lib’s do have the power to call the shots on this.
Will the CPRS bills be voted on today? Anyone? Has anything been heard from anyone in government?
If they are referred to committee, both Freehills and the Association of Corporate Counsel have issued advice that such action may still act as a DD trigger:
“There is High Court authority that ‘prevarication’ will constitute rejection, potentially in failing to vote on Bills. However, it is not clear when that point will be reached.”
Allens Arthur Robinson offers up this analysis of the McFarlane/Wong amendments, emphasising that these amendments are a one-off offer – they pass this sitting or they will lapse. Given the forward-looking nature of the permit system which was intended to begin mid 2010, how will Abbott & Minchin address the growing concerns of the big end of town who now have no idea what might suddenly appear in the debit columns and the unpleasant prospect of a Greens dominated Senate, much less likely to heed their cries for assistance.
http://www.aar.com.au/pubs/cc/cuccnov09.htm
I look forward to the next round of political donation disclosures.
I want to know what the Acting Prime Minister thinks.
tssk, whatever you’re smoking, I’d quite like some.
“Remember than Abbott was made to look reasoned and measured by Catherine Deveny on Q&A regarding the issues surrounding Abbott and his religious beliefs.”
Well, that’s all very subjective HC. I read it the complete opposite of you.
Policy now neatly intersects with Abbott’s conscience Silkworm: emissions cannot be capped.
Brendon @ 128,
I really hope you’re right. But I’m not sure. So far as I can see there are only two good things to come out of today’s ballot. The Liberal party leadership pool has been reduced by one, namely Hockey.
And Malcolm Turnbull will be on the back bench making trouble for the ultra-rights, and I hope he makes a hell of a lot of trouble.
I’m at all looking forward about a mooted $400 or more increase due to electricity bills next year, due to the CPRS, but, because I’d never vote Liberal, I’ll grin and bear it. And, as much as I hate paying off such an increase, I guess a bit of me will feel good about doing it, because in the winter of my life I’m doing something good for the future of the planet and the kids. But will the majority of the electorate feel that way? I fear not. I’m more inclined to think they’ll reason “We survived Howard so we can survive this prick. After all, he is going to stop me electricity going up.”
Rebekka, I’m just looking at worst case scenarios. But really. Does anyone doubt that Abbott will not be painted as the statesman of the people by the media?
Okay usually I’m against cheap anti-Catholic jokes but Peter that’s the one-liner of this thread. Gold star A+ would LOL again.
I would have thought it was pretty clear, regardless of your opinions of the contents of their arguments, that the person talking louder, jumping up and down on their seat, and using “undergraduate” humour would be interpreted as being the less measured and reasoned person in a debate.
Not at all HC. Not when faced with a mysogynist zealot who’s anti contraception, anti-abortion and anti- no-fault divorce.
This from Bolt:
“Abbott’s first mistake: to give deputy Julie Bishop a cuddle during the press conference and call her a “loyal girl”.”
Eeeewwww.
Anyone have a link to this?
Peter Kemp:
“emissions cannot be capped”. Best belly laugh so far.
Let’s not laugh for too long. People like Paul Burns@115 and tskk@103 are sounding the warning also. Today’s plot has been a long time in the hatching. It could have gone very wrong but the manipulation of Hockey, Andrews and many others, even the know-alls in the media,would merely have added to the excitement the plotters must have felt. The talking heads and scriptwriters (aside from the verbal prostitutes of the MSM and the talkback courts) have skilfully laid out their themes for many months. The promise of a “mother of all scare campaigns” – presumably financially backed by supporters like Clive Palmer and the rest of the coal lobby here and in the U.S. – will play very well in the Australian voting community, provided people buy the “if you don’t understand it, don’t vote for it” bunkum they are attempting to pin solely on Paul Keating. That was the GST which was only about money. This is about a looming threat to Australia, it’s people, it’s future both physical and economic. I’m not happy with the proposed ETS but at least it got something on the table and I’m not the one in Parliament trying to find a workable solution. The Greens have also got a lot to answer for. Life should teach us we don’t always get what we think we should.
The only shots the liberals can calls are these ones:
Combet has in part answered part of my question – he’s just announced that the Wong/McFarlane amendments will stand indefinitely (which makes Turnbull’s rush to the party room last week appear as a rather nasty piece of political manipulation of the ALP’s part…)
But the mooted $400 increase in domestic electricity bills sounds a bit sus – AEUs will be increased to 228.7 million, AEUs wont be lost if and when generators shift to low emitting forms of generation, and windfall gain test now wont apply til 2017 at the earliest.
Doh! FYI, I had put in this totes hilarious screenshot from the Russian Roulette scene from “Deerhunter” to make the point. But the comment thingy stripped the code.
As, like any other ALP leader, Rudd would rather chew his own foot off than hand the balance of power in the Senate to the Greens, there won’t be a DD. Which means we’ll never get to see the electorate kick Tony to pieces because he’s only going to be leader long enough for the polls to demonstrate what electoral poison he is, then Turnbull and/or Hockey will call for another spill, with, as has been mentioned above, a party room with three more moderates in it.
So this result is funny, but won’t lead to as much fun as we hope.
Not when faced with a mysogynist zealot who’s anti contraception, anti-abortion and anti- no-fault divorce.
So the opposite would be a ultra-feminist zealot who is pro-abortion and anti-marriage. She also strongly advocates hate, which is always abhorrent.
There are essentially different sides of the same coin. I was just pointing out Abbott presented more professionally, and in people taking in your message, that is pretty important.
Weaver, I think Rudd would much prefer the Greens having the sole balance of power in the Senate, compared to the current mess. But it doesn’t really matter. The Greens are as likely to get balance of power with a half-Senate election as they are with a double dissolution. A D-D would just bring it about sooner.
But I agree that a D-D is still not overly likely at present. If things get even worse for the Libs in Feb/March, the chances would increase.
Just have to agree to disagree HC. I suspect you don’t realise how much women hate and despise Abbott. He’s electoral poison. Chris Uhlmann said earlier today that even the wives of Lib MPs have said they’d never vote for Abbott.
I also need to point out that being an ultra-feminist zealot who is pro-abortion is simply a common-sensical position for women. And that being pro- no-fault divorce is not being anti-marriage.
However, I do agree it’s a mistake to harp on about his Catholicism.
Howard, Abbott’s personal beliefs are a matter for him.
The fact that he has repeatedly demonstrated he will use whatever power he gains to impose them on the rest of us makes them fair game.
Mediatracker – it was always going to be a helluva fight to drag the ALP towards realistic policies for AGW. The current ETS is dismal. Labor is still the captive of neoliberalism despite Rudd’s disavowals. It is just that this way the skunk Liberals are blown from cover sooner than later.
HC suggested:
No it wouldn’t. The opposite of a person who is a misogynist zealot would not necessarily be a misandrist, but someone who regarded everyone as having equal eithical claims upon the rest of us. This would describe many who could be described as earnest feminists — “zealots” if you like, since we are only attibuting “zeal” for their ideas to them. The opposite of an anti-abortionist is someone who is pro-choice, as the anti-abortionists persistently recognise when they attack abortion service providers. The opposite of someone who thinks fault-based divorce is a good thing is someone who thinks it retrograde and oppressive and often absurd in its consequences.
Abbott for the record doesn’t advocate “hate” but his does advocate policies which would generate great harm and angst and which are thus deeply subversive of the interests of communisties embracing diverse interests. The opposite would be someone who put the interests of human communities in all of their diversity first.
“In a way this is good for the News Ltd papers as despite Howard being seen as still being influential… it was News Ltd journos again that proved that they and their boss are the true kingmakers.”
Or true clownmakers that will lead the Libs to one of their worst defeats ever…and leaving most of their top pollies in the mud. The Murdoch media & their chosen ones should be getting used to falling into their own black hole by now.
N’
Paul Burns @128,
I have a good strike rate for this type of thing. The only thing that will spoil this narrative is if Rudd hesitates. He must go for a double dissolution.
As for Abbott, he does not have the smarts of Howard. Nowhere near it. And Abbott like Hockey is a team man, not a leader. This is all foriegn to his strengths. He is electoral poison as leader, and you can smell it a mile off. But the wingnits had no-one else! And the people aren’t buying the right wing smear campaigns of a decade ago, and News Limited which will go in boots and all for the Libtards only know that way of doing things. But there has been too many children overboard and WMD scandals since then.
The Liberals (as they are) will be destroyed in the upcoming double dissolution. And if we don’t have one over this, I’m never speaking to Rudd again.
A great day for Australia and the Liberal Party.
Unfortunately I have to wait until the weekend to celebrate it appropriately with some very un-PC binge drinking.
I’m going to have to disagree as well.
I don’t find Deveny as pro-choice, which is an acceptable way to see things if you firmly believe life starts at birth and see abortion as purely a women’s issue.
I think she is pro-abortion. Not that there should be an ability to choose, but that the choice should be made.
I feel sad when Abbott, who has used his power to act on his convictions (:0), gets criticised for saying something like “100,000 abortions in Australia per year is a tragedy”. He’d be a lot more credible if he called out the Catholic Church on it’s refusal to accept preventative contraception, which is always preferable to abortion.
I also don’t like anyone being criticised for being a Catholic. I mentioned Deveny, and the discourse went from there. Apologies to everyone who’d rather get to other issues.
I just can’t see the scare campagin against the ETS resonating like the GST.
Even if we are talking about a $400 increase in power bills (less than $8 a week assuming there is only one bread-winner). Low income earners are compensated to the $ and mid-income earners are compensated for most costs. The louder they Libs get on this the stupider they look, if this was a tax why are the proceeds redirected back in the various payments to offset price increases.
Howard, “Not when faced with a mysogynist zealot who’s anti contraception, anti-abortion and anti- no-fault divorce.
So the opposite would be a ultra-feminist zealot who is pro-abortion and anti-marriage. She also strongly advocates hate, which is always abhorrent.”
You don’t have to be an ultra-feminist zealot to despise Abbott’s policies. Most Australians are in favour of abortion being legal, contraception being readily available, and no-fault divorce. Even Roman Catholic Australians.
And the opposite of a misogynist who wants to take away women’s rights isn’t an ultra-feminist zealot “advocates hate” (I can just see us marching through the streets with banners saying ‘yay, hate! up with hate!’), it’s just an ordinary, reasonable person. Like most Australians are, thank f*ck.
Oh yea! Verily verily I agreeth with thou Razor. I am breaking out the Moet as we speak.
How many Catholics are there in Australia? This could be a strong new base for the Libs.
And as for calling Deveny pro-abortion: ” don’t find Deveny as pro-choice, which is an acceptable way to see things if you firmly believe life starts at birth and see abortion as purely a women’s issue.
I think she is pro-abortion. Not that there should be an ability to choose, but that the choice should be made.”
That’s utter rubbish. Deveny has kids ffs. Like most people, Deveny is just an advocate of women having sovereignity over our own bodies.
Howard
Speaking as someone who was raised as a Catholic, I like it when the Catholic Church gets a pasting. It really is one of the most reactionary and harmful mass instituions in the world. (no pun intended)
If Rudd wants a DD, he’d be best to go sooner rather than later. A hot summer + people switching off for holidays would probably be the biggest stabiliser of the current 2PP he could hope for. Whether it’s worth the trade of -1 year to his second term is another question, however.
“The Greens have also got a lot to answer for.”
Oh, yeh, mediatracker@146.
Standing up for, and sticking with, what you believe is the best policy is just so overdone these days. Look at successful Tony, he flips his climate change plan from week to week.
Howard C
“Remember than Abbott was made to look reasoned and measured by Catherine Deveny on Q&A regarding the issues surrounding Abbott and his religious beliefs.”
The Blessed Catherine could make ANYONE look reasoned and measured. She’s a shocker.
There appears to be a sort of delicacy on LP around Abbott’s Catholicism as if religious belief is somehow of no consequence. I don’t think so. My own view of the Catholic Church is that it appears to be more of an institution for providing safe refuge for abusers and fresh supplies of the vulnerable for abuse than anything else. Objections to this view will need to cite plausible evidence contradicting the Irish report on abuse, for starters.
@132
That’s because Abbott is reasoned and measured, and Deveny is barking mad. Mullah Omar would appear reasoned and measured sitting next to her.
tssk, I am glad to see you were only looking at worst case scenarios earlier.
On your most recent comment, when you look at voting behaviour broken down by religion, however, many more Catholics vote Labor – and many more Protestants vote Liberal/Coalition. Abbott’s going to be a problem for at least some of those Protestant voters, and as his Catholicism is out of touch with most Australian Catholic’s beliefs (and they’re mostly going to vote Labor whether Abbott or anyone else is leader of the Libs anyway), it’s not going to do him any favour with Catholics either.
I (also ex-Mick) interjected with sectarian overtones deliberately: cos it only plays badly on a small rump in the Right. All upside!
Scenario: 7 pissed-off moderate liberal senators cross the floor on ETS, killing the Abbott leadership stone dead on day one, with zero risk, as numbers swing their way after the two by-elections on Saturday (presuming he Greens dont win
)
What *exactly* is going to stop that happening this week? loyalty to the backstabbing coven of creeps on the denialist side?
Say what you like about one or two things I said, but Catherine Deveny is. not. like. most. people.
And read her columns – she hates people she hasn’t even met. People who aren’t public figures, or even legitimate objects of ridicule.
Non of that cheese-eating surrender monkey stuff for me – time for a bit of agrian-socialist economic nationalism.
Nah, bugger it. Why slumit? Break out the Krug.
No Anthony. One need not contradict or deny evidence of abuse in the Church to deny your thesis that it’s “more of an institution for providing safe refuge for abusers and fresh supplies of the vulnerable for abuse than anything else”.
For instance, it’s more of a property empire than that. It’s more of a charitable organisation than that. It’s more of a religion than that. It’s more of a network of schools and universitites than that.
Overall I can’t say I’m a huge fan, and the abuse is major and shameful, but there you go… Hyperbole won’t get you anywahere.
tssk – Malcolm and Joe are also left footers – why the sudden revelation?
But I’d rather chat about the Liberal Party than Catherine D. Sorry.
“left footers” = rock-choppers?
I’d rather chat about the cricket.
Razor, can you possibly be serious? What is your definition of a bad day for the Liberal Party?
If there are any moderators about, I think you might need to do something about #171.
Lighten up Howard.
I said that Abbott had some explaining to do.
Abbott clearly believed that climate change was important enough an issue to depose his leader and to risk splitting the party. Abbott disputes human agency in global warning.
On the other hand, the Vatican has accepted AGW and has pronounced it an existential issue.
Abbott has made his own association with the Catholic Church a matter of public discussion. He has shown by his actions that his religious affiliations are a matter of public interest.
As anti-ETS spokespeople have said, Australia makes a minuscule contribution to carbon emissions. Worldwide, Catholics produce far more carbon than Australians.
If Abbott does not believe this to be an important issue, as a prominent Catholic he would be far more efficiently employed convincing his fellow Catholics that the Vatican is wrong on this issue.
Were he to do that, Australia as a major exporter of coal, would have a more secure economic future as coal supplier to the world’s Catholics.
Yet, Tony Abbott has done nothing I know of to lead misguided Catholics away from the superstitious AGW preachments of his own Church.
Tony Abbott may want to explain this apparent oversight.
Howard: “And read her columns – she hates people she hasn’t even met. People who aren’t public figures, or even legitimate objects of ridicule.”
What, like Andrew Bolt?
Did you miss the bit where Ms Deveny is a humorous writer?
hu?mor?ous??/?hyum?r?s or, often, ?yu-/ [hyoo-mer-uhs or, often, yoo-]
–adjective
1. characterized by humor; funny; comical: a humorous anecdote.
2. having or showing the faculty of humor; droll; facetious: a humorous person.
I have read her columns, actually, they’re funny. She doesn’t hate people, she’s making with the humour.
And who died and made you the arbiter of “legitimate” objects of ridicule anyway?
“Worldwide, Catholics produce far more carbon than Australians.”
benediction?
I found her article on Chadstone Shopping Centre completely unfunny and dripping with contempt for people she has never met. I wouldn’t say hate though.
I think if you’re going to sail that close to the wind in the contempt/derision/hate stakes, you’d better be a fucking whole bunch funnier.
Not only benediction, Joe.
Worldwide, Catholics drive around in their cars (not only the popemobile), burn hard fuel (no autos da fe at all nowadays), manufacture steel and other useful products, and generally produce CO2 like every other inhabitant of the planet.
And there are more than a billion of them. There are only 20m Australians (many of whom are also Catholics).
You do the sums.
Funny that. Maybe it is, in fact, of no consequence whatsoever.
Pav – bad day for the Liberal party is being led by a Wet and bent over the table and reamed by the ALP on a huge new tax and transfer for no measurable benefit.
“bad day for the Liberal party is being led by a
Wetliberal”I’m not so sure.
Who cares about friggin’ Deveny?
And what’s wrong #171?
Or #170 for that matter?
Other than that, as you were, with Razor providing the laughs, not that we need them on a day like today with the Abbott and Bishop leading the charge back to the future.
Nothing, now. The previous #171 was probably defamatory (ie potentially expensive), and has been, I think sensibly, removed.
Given that global warming, according to Abbott is not man-made, it follows it must be animal made. (For the purposes of this policy suggestion for the Liberal Party I am going to assume people are animal, not human (ie Darwin is right.)
Obviously then, under Abbott the Liberal Party intends to do the following:
1. Fund CSIRO research into how to stop people farting, burping and – breathing out.
2. Kill off all four-legged animals in Australia.
Makes sense to me. I mean, it will reduce non-man-made carbon emissions, won’t it?
Yeah. Right. World population, the Pope, the Catholic Church, anti-abortion politics as well as anti-contraceptive attitudes all have nothing to do with Tony Abbott’s religious beliefs. I agree. A gentleman is entitled to his private views. Oh yeah but, unless he is in public life in which case they count for something, eh?
“I think she is pro-abortion. Not that there should be an ability to choose, but that the choice should be made.”
This sounds like a load of semantic nonsense. If I think that there should be a right to choose then it is logical that a choice should be made. If I remove the right to choose then no choice can be made. I think you’re making a fool of yourself as Abbott would if he was asked to rationally defend what is actually dogma.
Paul, I really think they would split over whether Darwin is right or not.
OK, so Deveny is humourous.
I could agree. Which is why her clown-like performance on Q&A made Abbott look considered and reasoned.
Thanks for (eventually) making my point for me.
HC
And on power bills, we’ve had a shocking (pun) increase in the last year with another in the offing. I don’t see that Barnett and co have suffered too much.
Razor has a point. This thread is a circle-jerk about how the Liberal Party has put their foot right in it (when not treating AGW themed super-tax as a common sense idea)
The Liberal Party (victorious faction) see it from a diatmetrically opposite perspective. They have just improved their chances of an election win. And they see super-tax for no discernable gain, based on shaky research, to be insanity.
Turnbull has been a dead man walking for most of his leadership, though he may not have known it. No matter what the Liberals did, they could only have improved their chances.
The Liberals who defied him didn’t do it because they woke up one morning & decided to destabilise the party. They are many things, but above all they are politicians who desire to (a) keep their seats, then (b) be in government. They rebelled because they (perhaps via their constituents) grew tired of an opposition party that had a policy of opposing nothing. Rudd has given some pretty good free kicks, but Turnbull took advantage of none of them.
Expect that to be different with Abbott.
Lots of politicians make bad calls. (eg, supporting Mark Latham as Prime Minister material). Nobody in this thread should make the mistake of thinking that because some Liberals have made a move that they personally would not vote for, that lots of other people won’t vote for it.
Either way, the (new) leader of the opposition can expect a much harder time from the news media than his predecessor got, and the Prime Minister can expect one helluva lot more scrappiness from the opposition leader.
What is it with the Micks and Murphy’s Law?
“the Prime Minister can expect one helluva lot more scrappiness from the opposition leader”
That’s a good thing?
Hey SATP,
I think you should volunteer to help the Libs out. Your kind of chirpy optimism is just what they need. I know it brought a smile to my lips.
I suppose the difference is, Howard, that no-one’s asking the Australian people to vote for Deveny to lead the country.
In that context, Abbott is far more of a joke than anything Deveny could come up with.
Of course a lot of people will vote for him, SATP. The rusted-ons. The questions is, will enough people vote him. The answer is simple: no.
Steve I was getting so close, and you interrupted me. Now FDB’s gonna get the soggy saos.
They didn’t base that on the flipping reams of polling available that says a) Abbott is the worst choice and that blocking CPRS is the worst choice.
Like it or not Steve, you have to acknowledge that on this issue your desires and opinions – like the minority that got victory today – is unambiguously out of step with what the vast majority of the electorate, and crucially the electorate that could change their votes, are thinking, by every availabile metric we have. Abbott must be a religious man; a miracle is the only way this could improve the Libs’ lot.
The fact is, you and your flat earth brethren are irrelevant in this discussion; you have played yourselves out of the game and will ne’er be consulted or taken seriously about this – not because of the obdurate ignorance, but because you don’t have the votes, and even if you did, you wouldn’t vote for Labor (or anyone else) in a pink fit.
To SATP & co – CPRS or ETS or whatever we shall call it is NOT A MASSIVE F**CKING TAX SWINDLE. That description is inaccurate and plays to the gallery.
I have significant problems with the Bills, however they are designed to provide the necessary reforms, controls and financial compensations to shove, push, cajole the main producers of carbon pollution within Australia toward modifying their investment planning and strategies, current practices and outputs in order for reductions in Australian emissions to occur.
Very Keynesian. Is that the problem? That it dares to raise the suggestion that the threat of climate change may be one of those occasions on which the market, unfettered and free, will be a spectacular failure if we were to rely upon it to lower our emissions?
IF there’s a DD election, it’ll be like 1987. It won’t be fought on the bill that caused it, it’ll be all about the opposition.
The Greens will try to make climate change the issue, and I’m sure we’ll have some success, but the main game will be the ALP hammering away at Abbot and the divisions within the Liberals.
d
Rebekka @ 172
Turnbull is a Catholic convert. Hockey is a wog Catholic. Kevin Andrews, Andrew Robb, George Brandis and Christopher Pyne are Catholics, and Concetta Fierravanti isn’t an Ulster Scots name.
Six of the last seven Liberal leaders in the NSW Parliament, including two premiers, have been Catholics (Nick Greiner, John Fahey, Peter Collins, Kerry Chikarovski, John Brogden, Barry O’Farrell). Only Peter Debnam, who Sussex Street and its allies claimed to be part of an Opus Dei plot, was a protestant.
An ETS seeks to put a price on the emission of CO2 by selected industries — currently this cost is internalised by the community and externalised by the emitters. Strictly speaking there is already a price on CO2 emission — it’s just that this price is being borne by the public at large rather than those doing the emitting and their beneficiaries. The benefit of this extenality can be seen as a subsidy from the commons to private interests.
A fair ETS would settle this cost wholly on the emitters and their beneficiaries relieving the commons of this burden. Accordingly, it is not fair to call it “a tax”. Done correctly, it is a form of cost recovery which effects an end to a structural anomaly in which benefits were privatised and losses socialised. A tax might of course be pressed into service of the same end — cost recovery, but this would not describe the ETS, which creates, after all, a form of property in the commons, unlike a tax.
The Murdoch papers are already giving a hint as to what we can expect in the coming election campaign. Look at the front of today’s Daily Terror in Sydney – a story about how the ETS will decimate the budgets of working families by driving up electricity bills. You can always rely on Murdoch’s hacks to do their master’s bidding.
Bernice@204 – who cares if SATP, Razor etc think an ETS is a giant tax? These people have had a schizoid break with reality. I mean, they actually think the Liberal party is now in a killer position to fight the next election. That’s just nuts.
Claims that electricity bills will rise by 50% or $400 a year, and fulfil the Tele’s prophesies are presumably relying upon the Frontier Economics analysis from August. The original Bills were the basis of this modelling. In particular see page 43 of the report
http://www.apo.org.au/research/economic-impact-cprs-and-modifications-cprs
where such predictions are based upon initial permit caps being removed in 2011. The report in fact suggests increases of $260-280 in the first year, not $400.
This is no longer relevant as numerous amendments will affect price increases; as outlined in #148. Domestic power costs will NOT rise by $400. Nor does the Tele discuss the compensation outlined in the bills for low income earners. Naturally.
Is the Pope a catholic? Coz Deveney’s catholic. And Liam’s catholic. This blog is catholic. The catholics down the street are catholic. And now Abbot’s been outed as a catholic. Where is this all going to end?
Patrick B, I am persona non grata in Liberal Party circles. They’d not care much for the smell of me.
PatrickG, please note I said the Liberals “improved” their chances of an election win. They were going nowhere fast with Turnbull. Perhaps they have doubled their chances (Two percent instead of One percent!)
I fail to see how you can comment on my desires & opinions, when I haven’t given any. Do I gain or lose from the passage of an ETS?
You presume to know my voting intention. Please provide the basis for this statement.
I heard Laura Tingle report that Abbott’s election was caused by a giant stuff up by moderate Libs. After Hockey lost the first round, instead of all of his votes going to Turnbull, some of them thought that as he would win easily, they’d give him a scare for being a naughty, disruptive boy and vote for Abbott instead. They misjudged and too many of them voted for Abbott!! Could this be true?
The informal vote simply said, ‘no’. WTF! She also reckons that the Abbott camp was shocked he won. This all too weird.
Tim, I wish it didn’t matter what SATP believes but as Mr Denmore #207 pointed out, Murdoch’s media is already ramping up the lines of attack for the next election. And I am getting immensely frustrated at having conversations with people who are being worried and frightened by such claims. It’s not just about what impact it may have on anyone’s chances in the next Fed election; it’s the notion that whatever actions any party takes on the matter of climate change action is going to be extremely expensive and largely borne by the average punter. Rudd & Co have manifestly failed to explain CPRS and watching action on climate change being derailed by yet more falsehoods needs to be noted.
I am sure that the media will do everything within its power to put a gloss on Abbott.
How long they will be able to do so before his dreaded foot and moth disease kicks in critically is the question.
He has already dropped himself in the doggy doo twice in his first few minutes as leader of the various factions that nominally are named the Liberal party.
He has refused to rule out the resurrection of workchoices and had sent the message out that the name is dead ….
Secondly he referred to Julie Bishop as a good ‘girl’.
Apparently she has yet to reach mature woman status.
Steve don’t be cute: you’ve outlined many times on LP your disbelief in climate change and your desire for the policy to be blocked. I’m not saying your opinion on this is irrelevant full stop (though now that I think about it…), but in context of what the Liberal party needs to do to get back in power, it is most definitely irrelevant.
Also, I refute that they’ve improved their chances one iota, but the next newspoll will settle that one for us.
Fine, that would be a staggering testament to the party’s incompetence if that’s the case.
There’s also a weird meme going on at a horse-racing blog I frequesnt which has a lot of anti ETS people. They seem to have a strange bleief that the ‘tax’ money is going to the UN. They keep going on about an ETS meaning billions of dollars being snet back to the UN, which is a hated organisation. So, there are some strange ideas being circulated.
Have a look here at http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/new-liberal-party-leader-tony-abbott-tells-how-he-plans-to-beat-pm-kevin-rudd/story-e6freuy9-1225805683742
”
Trust me, when this is represented as a tax it will lose all support. I’ve said this over and over, Australians really care about the environment…except when they have to make the sacrifices for it.
This Whitlam meme keeps running around, I’m sure that a dismissal might be in the works.
Yay! Workchoices is back on the table. This will get him the support from business. Poor Abbott. The media are already slamming him and going light on Rudd. I’m off to write to the Tele and tell them to stop being so biased and pro Rudd.
When they started charging us for water that used to be free, was that a tax? No.
Business paying its own previously submerged costs, will horrors never cease?
Oh yeah, plus it comes with full compo package for low and middle income earners – or at least it did before the Libs team got at it.
The upfront cost of the CPRS will be large. And it will be borne by everyone. That’s the nature of changing over a massive segment of our infrastructure. Now, whether or not that cost will be seen as worth paying is the argument. Those who want to see a reduction in carbon pollution had better get used to the idea that they will need to convince the doubters that a very real cost now is in the long-run a good investment that will reduce the far greater costs that we’ll incur if the climate is screwed.
That’s another reason the Greens should’ve helped the ALP ram this thru now – so that time can be bought – before the doubters get across the fact of the big costs in store for all of us.
It’s one think to recognise the danger of climate change – it’s a far greater thing to put your hand in your pocket to do something about it.
Fine @ 212
Perhaps the fact that 23 voted for Hockey in the first round showed that many moderates were a little disenchanted with Malcolm? It was 26:23 Turnbull: Hockey after all.
Virtually a dead heat amongst those Members & Senators.
I’m not so sure about the “give him a scare” hypothesis. Wouldn’t he already be frightened by scoring only 26 out of 84? I mean, these turkeys knew the second vote was to be the FINAL vote, did they not?
****************
Tone rises to speak: “I’m the Member…”
“YES, we know you are, Tone!”
Re-Member the Member.
A Knight to Re-Member (Sir Robert).
Diss (dat) Member
“So, there are some strange ideas being circulated.”
Here at an inner city campus of a major metropolitan university, we’ve got heaps of LaRoucheite stuff going up on every notice board. “Carbon Trading is Nazi style genocide” and posters of Obama and Rudd with Hitler mustaches on them.
d
Ambigulous, I’m just reporting Tingle’s version of events. Who knows what really happened? It sounds such a farce which ever way you look at it.
Tssk @217, I’m having a little trouble taking you seriously, mate.
I broadly agree Wbb – but the whole picture will change considerably when our trading competitors all have schemes. Then the whole argument about ‘disadvantaging our industry’ flips 180 – it’ll be disadvantaged by not having a scheme.
I also tend to think the ALPs position is only made more vulnerable by the fact its a crap scheme environmentally. How long will it bear scrutiny? Why gift the Libs an all pain / no gain argument?
I think it’ll travel better with some Green cred – so much of this is pre-Copenhagen thinking. The game could change overnight with even a moderate international agreement.
I’m just a pessimist and a cynic. It’s amazing how quickly the media has moved behind Abbott. It’s almost like they were hammering the Libs until the ‘right’ person was in charge.
PS. And also Abbott has already taken Rudd to task about rising interest rates.
Darryl Rosin at 221, this flirtation with wingnuttery seems to be a mirror image of what went on at campuses in the ’70s when a chunk of the student population had pictures of Che Guevara on their walls and looked up to the Baader-Meinhof gang. Left-wing radicalism or right-wing radicalism. It’s a phase. They’ll grow out of it.
Now what was the one I heard? That’s it. In the first round some Turnbull voters went for Abbott so that Hockey, who they thought the real contender, would be out of the race. Then they forgot they were supposed to vote for Turnbull, instead of Abbott, in the second round. Something like that. Confused themselves.
Tssk – ‘scuse my French, but so what? they’re 57-43 down in the polls, a complete shambles, heading into another record summer, when no boats will arrive because of the monsoon, and interest rates are lower than they ever were under the Libs.
I for one couldn’t be less concerned about Abbott’s prospects.
Fine @212,
for that story to be verified all the moderates would have to be gathered in the one room and asked these questions:
Did you vote for MT or JH in the first vote?
Did you vote for Abbott in the second vote, and why?
I’m pretty sure that hasn’t been done yet.
We have to take it as fact that the liberal party has lurched from the very right to the far right.
Have a look at the web polls on various newspaper sites. Abbott is hitting it out of the park.
I’m going to tune into the ABC tonight. I reckon they’ll run Abbott’s line on interest rates but not the Federal Reserve’s response to it.
(For those who are interested my first response to Abbott being selected was laughing for about three minutes. But seeing the media response has taken the wind out of my sails. Another smashing by Rudd isn’t going to sell papers. A close race is a much better narrative to run.)
Tssk, you need to get a grip. The newspaper website polls are about as reliable a guide to public opinion as Alan Jones’ audience of wheezing iron lung dwellers and rest home wheelchair nazis.
Dunno, Abbott might end up being poison for the Libs but on the otherhand the Bolts and their bosses will now have someone to lead their ideological crusade which could be interesting for Krudd and Pong who really have made a fist of the ETS and the public sentiment for change.
If Abbott and Minchin can repress enough dissent in the ranks while the media circus gets on board with the right wing agenda anything could happen. The problem I see is despite Abbott’s liability with women voters, a hard line conservative approach aided and abetted by Murdoch may end up dragging public debate even further right of centre. Ultimately Abbott could just be a kind of sacrificial straw man who helps to consolidate the truly conservative right wing forces of Australian politics and exposes the lack of coherence and consistency in those that oppose them. Once that happens the MSM will do their bit and Labor will start to look a whole lot less invincible.
I think the Hawke/Keating years might be useful for people to reflect on. They won a few elections quite well and decided they were the “natural” party of government in Oz but the ideological right never gave up, found its man and eventually undermined them at the polls. At least Hawke and Keating lent to the left occasionally where as this mob seem to have an almost pathological fear of anything that even vaguely left of centre.
Overall I don’t like this development or some of the rhetoric I heard supporting it over the last few days. The only upside for me is that it might actually make the ALP realise what it is to be a party of the left and act accordingly.
Just my 2c. Of course if all of the women of Australia really do dislike Abbott then we might be saved and none of this will come to pass.
Here’s the SMHs online question and response:
Did the Liberals choose the right leader?
Yes – 21%
No – 79%
Total Votes: 10654
“Abbott is hitting it out of the park.” This is sarcasm right?
SATP, Razor: In normal circumstances a 1993-style GST scare campaign on the ETS might well work, but these are not normal circumstances. Here are a few reasons why they’ll lose, and lose big:
1) They’re up against a new government that’s only two years into its first term and hugely popular — ahead 60-40 (or near as dammit) since they were elected.
2) Australia escaped the GFC largely unscathed, and like it or not, the public will give the Rudd government some credit for that
3) The Coalition is hopelessly split down the middle, and the punters will view them as an unmanageable rabble and completely unelectable until they can show some discipline. However, I’d be astonished if the Liberal moderates can shut up for more than a week.
4) Abbott has baggage, like “climate change is crap comment and these gaffes from the 2007 campaign: his attack on Bernie Bantam (the asbestosis campaigner) his non show on the debate with Nicola Roxon, saying “bullshit” to Nicola Roxon, his attack Tim Costello on the foreign aid issue etc etc.
5) Turnbull has provided the ALP with hours of election material. e.g. “We can’t be a do nothing party on climate change”
6) If Rudd has any sense, he’ll hold the election at the height of summer, with bushfires raging, dust storms rolling in from the outback, floods in the north etc.
I invite others to add further reasons.
tssk,
….All Murdoch’s editorials and all Murdoch’s campaigns
aren’t going to put the Liberal Party back together again.
7) the coalition is an unelectable rabble led by a fringe lunatic
My money is on the lowest coalition vote since 1983.
Women may dislike Abbott. But if he can sell the ETA as a massive tax, if he can sheet home interest rate rises to Rudd…he can tug at their purse strings. They might decide feeding their kids is worth holding their nose while they vote. (Having said that, I wouldn’t vote for him in a pink fit. But I think the media is going to love this.)
And now there’s talk of Nick Minchin being put in charge of Communications. Great. Net filter here we come!
Brendon…I hope so. I really do.
Tssk, the ALP got to do the “massive tax” thing in a far more effective way—without the climate change rejoinder—in ’98 and lost.
“…the Prime Minister can expect one helluva lot more scrappiness from the opposition leader.”
Talking of scraps, Steve, I can imagine Gillard and Roxon salivating in anticipation. Tony does seem to have a problem with educated women. Who knows? Even Julie Bishop as his deputy might give him a hard time. I don’t think Rudd’s going to lose too much sleep about it – may even enjoy being distantly nice to him.
Tssk, please keep posting ‘em. It’s so rare to get what I assume to be a Liberal supporter with such a wacky sense of humor.
8/ Abbott supports Workchoices, even if under another name.
9/ Abbot has Julie Bishop; Rudd has Julia Gillard
10/ The News Ltd papers have a woeful record of reading the public mood
11/ The Libs’ most marginal seats are in urban areas where support for an ETS is strongest
12/ Business leaders, including many friends of Turnbull, are disturbed by the Liberals’ swing to the far right and want certainty on the ETS
13/ Anybody who has attended an international business forum in the last two years will tell you that climate changes is the number one topic among corporate leaders globally; these people won’t look favourably on a party of denalialists
14/ While the Libs distrust multi-lateral solutions to global problems, THAT is the way the world is moving. Rudd can say you either deal yourself in to this table or you stay outside with the loonies
15/ Minchin, Bernardi, Mirabella, the entire WA contingent of knuckle-dragging crazies. Just put them together in a TV ad (alongside the quotes from Turnbull of recent days) and watch the public run.
David_h@233, Howard eventually won against Labor by abandoning his more electorally unpopular ideological positions and looking non-threatening to the electorate. Precisely the opposite of what this mob are now doing.
Now do people believe me that the Liberals are a fringe far-Right party?
I must admit I knew they were nuts but not this nuts. Abbott even borrowed a line from Barry Goldwater about not being an echo of the Government.
“Tssk, the ALP got to do the “massive tax” thing in a far more effective way—without the climate change rejoinder—in ‘98 and lost.”
They did, however, pull a 4.6% 2pp swing and won 51% of the vote. The Liberals can form a government with about 49% if memory serves.
d
And it happened when Labor had been in government for 13 years, not 2 -3 years. Very different set of circumstances.
Labor already have their first attack ad out. Highlights: Abbott saying climate change is ‘crap’ and reminding people how much Abbott loved Workchoices and still does. The next election won’t just be about climate change either.
I predict a massive drop in support for the Libs among women.
Abbott?
Ha ha ha ha h ha a ha ha ha ha ha ha……………….
I can’t fracking believe It.
This has gotta be a new low. Even for the Liberals.
Tim @ 243 Perhaps. Look part of me thinks the Libs are completely off their rockers and they will wake up one morning and go what the hell have we done. And I hope they get totally hammered on the weekend in the by-elections because it will put the wind right up them. On almost every possible analysis it looks good for the ALP, but part of me still worries that the right wing fruit bats now running the libs might get lucky. And I don’t know if I could stand Bolt and Co getting anymore exposure than they currently enjoy, which is just going to happen, at least in the short term.
Daryl Rosin said:
They can in theory, but it very much depends on where that 49% is distributed. If it’s concentrated in strong coalition or strong ALP seats then it won’t be close to enough.
If a CPRS comes in one can assume the government will not forget to emphasise the compensation they are giving out to low and middle income families in compensation.
16) Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide have just experienced their hottest November on record.
For those worried about the Great Big Scarey Tax Scare, here’s a sensible article by George Mega.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/the-bottom-line-will-be-no-different/story-e6frg6zo-1225803975039
And Fran Barlow is right, either Lib or Lab can win with a minority vote if they play the marginals right.
PatrickG – the reason the increases in WA power prices have barely caused a ruffle is because prices didn’t go up for about the previous 10 years under an ALP government. The general public can accept that they need to go up and a ten year freeze requires a lot of catch up. Joanne public doesn’t put muchweight in the argument that it was a Coalitin dominated Legislative Council that caused the price freeze in the deal to break up Western Power.
Just when you think they havn’t got any feet left to shoot off, the bastards sprout stumps and stampede deeper into the wilderness. The Party of R.G. Menzies has gone GOPper feral. Not so good for democracy, but deeply, personally satisfying for some political junkies. This tory rabble is the true legacy or “bequeatement” of El Rodente.
The Monky King’s attempt to charm the women of Oz will be one of the season’s highlights.
For all those writing off the Monk – you all seem to have forgotten that Howard was also written off. Then again I never thought that someone like KRudd could win – so there you go.
One of the reason that the ETS/climate change action polls so well in urban liberal electorates is that there has yet to be a concerted campaign to educate voters on either the reality of the uncertainties of climate science nor the expected costs of the taxes that warmers want to impose to “fix” the problem.
The ACTU funded Anti-Work Choices campaign demonstrates just how succesful a targetted media campaign can be. Unfortuantely I doubt the rationalist side of the climate change debate can bring such monetary fire power to the table, yet.
What do people think about Hockey’s go at the leadership? Was his decision to allow a conscience vote on the ETS:
a. the closest he gets to lateral thinking
b. a sign of Republican tendencies
c. a way to throw the ballot without offending anyone?
Not sure Hockey is clever enough to think of c.
Shame on LP bloggers generally and particularly Katz @ 70 and even Brian @ 110 that no one either knew or bothered to find out the identity of WA Senator Alan Eggleston, the “besuited dwarf filmed walking the corridors of power with other Liberal heavies”, a comment which in itself was patronising at best and disablist at worst.
Senator Eggleston was born with Achondroplasia dwarfism in 1941. He became a WA Liberal Party Senator in 1996. Regardless of my strong left leanings and acknowledging my general disinterest in his political career, I have always admired this little guy’s guts and the at times surprising “liberal” spirit which earned him the nod on the Senate ticket for a major political party, and a conservative one at that.
If I have somehow overlooked an earlier note than this on Senator Eggleston ignore my rebuke, otherwise I hope Katz will accept my criticism in the spirit offered…ie. a warning that even we egalitarian lefties can be insensitive and obtuse when carried away by the ghastliness of the right!
“PatrickG”
Did you mean PatrickB? Anyway I don’t see that your point makes much difference if you have been living in WA for the last 10 years. It’s still a 25% increase on what you have been paying. I guess most people are cashed up enough to absorb it and don’t keep a long historical record of their power costs.
It won’t be the sole or dominating factor, but I suspect it will be the most significantly a trigger intrudes into the campaign. There will be electoral kilometrage for both the Greens and for the ALP in it, while given this week the Libs can’t duck it (and of course the denialist faction will be convinced that there is advantage for them!)
(Actually the Australia Card got more of a run in 1987 than most trigger bills do! But there there was clear electoral disadvantage for the govt in it.)
Oh and “Joanne public ” probably has a hard time knowing what the Legislative Council is let alone how it may have been constituted at any point in time.
The cartoonists and political commentators must be doing high-fives and whooping for joy.
They’ll be able to mine this rich vein of lunacy until the next election, as Abbott enthusiastically leads the Liberal lemmings off a cliff. How much fun is that!!!
Hope they make the most of it.
After the election the Feral Liberals will probably get some sense bashed into them by the electorate, and have yet another spill for someone more reasonable and moderate. Good for the rest of us; bad for the cartoonists!
By the way, perhaps Rudd could do worse than finding a good meaty job for Turnbull? He is a moderate, supports climate change and supports a republic, amongst other things. He was becoming potentially the best asset those Ferals had for attracting swinging voters away from Labor (check those polls for Turnbull support by Labor voters). Sequestering Turnbull elsewhere might leave the Liberals without any good alternatives after Abbott takes them to the slaughterhouse?
Question: with Fran Bailey coming back from her ear infection, and the two new members O’Dwyer and Fletcher coming into parliament next week, and all 3 being Turnbull’s mates…
Can’t Turnbull call a fresh spill next week and turf out Abbott?
I mean, in his position, I would. Why not?
Enemy Combatant @254, very well said!!!
Not least: “The Monky King’s attempt to charm the women of Oz will be one of the season’s highlights.”
Yes, indeed. About as gruesomely captivating as watching reruns of Fawlty Towers.
He started well already with that patronising comment about Bishop, already in his first press conference as newly minted leader. After just declaring that he was now totally different…
Kiashu @262, Yep I reckon he should give Abbott a taste of his own medicine.
He’d be better off waiting until Abbott has a few ghastly poll results hanging around his neck, and a few serious gaffs, wouldn’t he?
Quietly collect supporters. Then nail the duplicitous bugger.
Fran Barlow@120: “Really, does anyone who can be candid think that Abbott will still be tenable six months from now? It’s hard to imagine.”
Agree, and that’s why Abbott was sounding so gung-ho for the fight today, “I’m not afraid of a DD” etc. He really wants the bills voted down, and an election asap, so he gets his one shot at the top job, before all the wet wusses organise against him. His strategy is simple: bull at the gate, max aggro, right now.
In the meantime, I would really like to hear more about Judy Moylan’s comment that she has never seen “such treachery” in 16 years in the party..
before ETS: costs socialised (ppl affected by climate change). benefits privatised (consumers of electricity/products/etc).
after ETS: costs socialised (ppl affected by climate change). benefits privatised (‘green’ technology/ppl favoured by the government etc).
progress imo.
Rational: a. & n. Endowed with reason, reasoning; sensible, sane, moderate; rejecting what is unreasonable or cannot be tested by reason in religion or custom.
Rationalism: n. theory that reason is the foundation of certainty in knowledge
The utilisation of the term rationalist in relation to climate change deniers is interesting. Incorrect but entertainingly interesting. One could deduce (but not assume) that the prophesy concerning Abbott is just as incorrect.
Dr Scrooge
Not quite.
Before ETS: costs socialised (ppl affected by climate change). benefits privatised (consumers of electricity/products/etc).
After ETS: costs privatised (consumers of electricity/products/etc). benefits socialised (stabilised climate, cleaner air, less acid seas etc available to all
Well, Our Tones’ economic credentials are already on the line.
drscroogemcduck @ 266, your argument is one that can be used to defuse the inevitable line from the conservatives that the ETS is all about protecting big business at the expense of small businesses.
Among the fastest growing entrepreneurial small businesses right now are those that cater to the market for smart energy solutions at home – in terms of better insulation, more efficient use of electricity, solar panels etc;
If you believe in market economics, you believe in market solutions, guided by government incentives.
“Actually the Australia Card got more of a run in 1987 than most trigger bills do! But there there was clear electoral disadvantage for the govt in it.”
Did it? It’s been a while now, and I was but a wee thing, but I remember after the election there was quite a bit of a ‘hang on, wasn’t this election supposed to be about the Australia Card?’
d
Kiashu@262
Because it would be pointless. He’d be in charge of a party of nutbags. All the issues would be unresolved and it would look like desperation and they would be slaughtered all the same. His victory would be pyrrhic and it would look like it was all about him — which is what many suspect already.
He was dumb to take the leadership in the first place, unless he was looking to engineeer precisely the result we have seen today, play martyr, wipe out his enemies on the right at the subsequent election and then begin rebuilding the shattered party as a party of the centre perhaps somewhere between the British LDP or Cameron’s Conservatives.
Some of the polling suggests the “moderates” will suffer more than the conservatives in the next election, so logically, keeping the “moderates” as the cleanskins during the coming period should be high on his agenda. I foresee some vision thing speeches.
Elise that would be awesome. A leadership spill by Turnbull. That would be massivly funny. But given the sudden media boost I reckon the Libs are going to settle down now. I’d like to echo Razor.
For all those writing off the Monk – you all seem to have forgotten that Howard was also written off. Then again I never thought that someone with principals could ever win an election against Howard and a compliant media.
One of the reason that the ETS/climate change action polls so well in urban liberal electorates is that there has yet to be a concerted campaign to scare the shit out of voters on either a new tax or rising interest rates.
The ACTU funded Anti-Work Choices campaign demonstrates just how succesful a targetted media campaign using real people can be against a scare campaign using made up stories with made up smiley actors. Unfortuantely I don’t doubt the stupidity of people when faced with possible long term dangers vs short term issues. And of course those nasty greens and warministas with teh money keep bothering big business, oil and mining interests.
Fine @ 222
apologies: I was doubting Ms Tingle, not you.
I must learn not to Ape Tone’s Pugilism.
a low Tone …
lol. The ABC went completely the opposite way I expected playing a “worst of” Tony’s moments. It was almost like “20 to 1″
Elise and Enemy Combatant @ 254 – I reckon that “the Monky King’s attempt to charm the women of Oz” had begun with the display of his hirsute and athletic body for our delectation at Bondi Beach even before today’s challenge. Similarly we can expect more enthralling wet suit shots of him surfing the waves, muscularly pedalling his bike and excelling on the footie field. Some of the “yoof” vote will possibly be attracted and some of the ladies for whom beefcake has its appeal. Let’s not underestimate him! Is it by chance that so many photo opps. are offered to journos at weekends or at early morning doorstop returns from a sweaty run?
Not being fond of hairy men, however trim and muscular, I myself am immune. I find the Abbott persona totally unattractive. His careful pauses as he chooses his words to answer questions always suggests to me, not thoughtfulness, but prevarication.
Appearances aside no matter how hard he tries this leopard has other more pronounced and indelible spots which he will never be able to hide from Australian women. This man has no heart as he showed with his slur on Bernie Banton, and indirectly all other asbestos sufferers. Okay so he apologised. Has he apologised to the thousands of women denied RU486 or to the other 100,000 women he offended when as Minister for Health he deplored the annual number of abortions. Many of those women made moral and difficult decisions about termination of their pregnancies and for some there will a lasting emotional toll. They don’t need a politician preaching to them as well!
Don’t get me started me on Tony Abbot! I’ll leave it to other women to finish this……..
Bernie Banton pulled a stunt – all power to him for the campaign that he ran, but he was playibng hard ball politics and he pulled a stunt. Apart from the pereption is the reality of politics reason for apologising, Mr Abbott did nothing wrong apart from calling a spade a bloody shovel.
Keep on banging away, though.
“The ACTU funded Anti-Work Choices campaign demonstrates just how succesful a targetted media campaign can be. Unfortuantely I doubt the rationalist side of the climate change debate can bring such monetary fire power to the table, yet.” – Razor
Has anyone actually seem this mythical beast yet?
Reckon
In 83, Fraser stockpiled minor bills he he had low commitment too including sales tax measures. The GG actually required Fraser to provide written advice that these bills met the Constitutional requirements; provision of such was part of the delay Fraser had in getting the dissolution (the other was turning up unannounced at lunchtime!) that allowed the promotion of Hawke as leader. Anyway, when Fraser tried to attack Labor over tax-grabbing a journalist asked if he intended to pass the Sales Tax legislation if reelected, to which he had to say that he wasn’t committing to allowing Hawke to claim “well he’s just lied to the GG”. So that was probably the most spectacular single intervention into a campaign but after that the bills disappeared.
In 75 Fraser used Whitlam’s stockpile. Needless to say his access to the pile was more significant than its content.
In 51 the Commonwealth Bank Bill was the trigger, but it was a mere legislative stalking horse for the Communist Party Dissolution Bill.
74 may have been an exception? Certainly it is the only time the bills have been significant after the election.
ROFL. That would be 20 years, since such an assassination wouldn’t it? Which was certainly smoother than this one, choosing not to go on Four Corners to talk about it until after it happened.
Great, 2 extreme right wing authoritarian parties fighting it out for power.
E.G Howard brought in welfare payment controls for Aboriginals (suspending the Racial Discrimination Act to do so). KRudd kept that and has now extended that to everyone (then we can put back the Racial Descrimination Act again .. for what that is worth, might suspend that next week for some reason or abother).
Both fighting for the corporate dollar, both agree on war, tariff cuts, overpopulation, education cuts, clearing the land of those pesky Aboriginals, ‘national security State’, tax breaks for the big boys, support the ‘rentier class’ .. et all.
Hey I’ll vote for Tony .. after all what’s the difference ….
Oh there is one difference, the CPRS is a polluter subsidy designed to screw average Austrlians (watch your energy bills go up as nearly as fast as CO2 emissions and big CEO bonuses .. and big jobs to retired politicians).
Yep, better to go with the Liberals with this one, at least the average person doesn’t get screwed any more than they are already being screwed.
Patricia WA @276, I’m right with you there! Abbott looks like an unrefined hairy ape to me. And his neanderthal opinions and behaviour match his appearance.
No doubt some stupid people are attracted by this hairy ape strutting about thrusting his pecs at the cameras in the epitome of an alpha-male gorilla.
Did you notice his over-familiar behaviour and patronising remark about Bishop already in his first press conference as newly elected leader? Bishop’s face was a poker study in wooden facial expressions that didn’t match her effusive words.
Oh no. Tony Abbott on the 7.30 Report on being asked by the red fox about the time he knocked Jo Hockey out on the football field. “Well Kerry, I injured myself as well. I broke my knuckle…”
lol
This is what Tony allegedly said about Bernie Banton razor.
See! Tony not patronising someone because they are dying slowfully and painfully. What a hero!
The Anti-Work Choices campaign was a no-brainer. Everyone knew of people getting sacked for no reason. It was an easy message to deliver.
Telling the electorate that every single major scientific intitution in the world connected to climate change are a bunch liars, is not a campaign I would take on. The Brish Conservative Party, the Vatican, the Us government, the Chinese government, NASA, American Geophysical Union, Geological Society of Australia, Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, the Royal Meteorological Society (UK), World Meteorological Organization, the International Arctic Science Committee….basically everyone that really counts says global warming is real and a problem that needs to be addressed.
The only scare campaign is “Has the Liberal Party gone stark raving mad?”
Comparing Howard to Abbott for a leadership position is just silly. Howard was NOT written off in 1996. Malcolm Mackerras predicted Howard would win the next election back then even while poor old Downer was still the leader of the opposition. I remember hearing a Malcolm Mackerras on 3LO back then and he said Howard was light years ahead of anyone else in the Liberal party and that every western state that has had an incumbent government unexepectedly win (Keating 1993) it always produced a subsequent landslide for the opposition in the following election. Mackerras claimed that had been the pattern since 1945 for western democracies, and he was proved right.
Bob Hawke predicted in 1996 Howard was the biggest risk for the ALP prior to the election. He was right.
Nobody….absolutely nobody, thinks of Abbott in those terms. He is not leadership material. He would make a good deputy, maybe. But not a leader. And people like that absolutely never do well.
Razor @ 255
“One of the reason that the ETS/climate change action polls so well in urban liberal electorates is that there has yet to be a concerted campaign to educate voters on either the reality of the uncertainties of climate science nor the expected costs of the taxes that warmers want to impose to “fix” the problem.”
tssk @ 273
“One of the reason that the ETS/climate change action polls so well in urban liberal electorates is that there has yet to be a concerted campaign to scare the shit out of voters on either a new tax or rising interest rates.”
So much fun in the echo chamber. C’mon guys – how about an original thought. Or else find a room.
No probs, Ambi – I wasn’t offended.
As a Labor supporter I can well remember the willing suspension of disbelief, the wishful thinking, the delusions we tried to maintain with Mark Latham. There were even very positive polls for a long time that seemed to contradict our deep misgivings.
Tony Abbott is Mark Latham without the charm.
Yeah Brendon, we’ve all heard that: “I got sacked for nuthin’”
Fine. You might want to read over my paragraph more carefully. Or will I have to start using sarcasm tags?
There was nothing “alleged” about it. He said it live on camera.
There’s a big difference between the ETS and the GST and Work Choices. One of the many reasons voters were against the GST and Work Choices was that they just couldn’t see the pressing need for them, or any need at all. They were seen as harsh policies to solve problems that didn’t exist. Pet issues for flat-tax and anti-union ideologues. Voters just don’t feel that way about global warming – especially younger voters.
One of the dangers for Labor was that it would take things for granted, would sleepwalk through the next election. That’s no longer the case. Whatever his chances, Abbott stirs something visceral with the Left. Like Work Choices, he’ll certainly motivate all sections of the Left to contribute and get involved in the election. Most of the Left will stop grumbling about Rudd, too, when they peer into the Abbott abyss – 2 years into a Labor government and I fear memories of the horribleness of the Howard years have already begun to fade.
Ginja @286 Latham had charm?
Yeah Tim I was being cautious. (Funnily enough not five minutes later I heard it on the TV.)
You obviously have no working class roots or connection. The trick is if the boss wants you out because you are pregnant, then he sacks you for “nuthin’”…get it? Or do I have to draw you a picture?
Or in the case of my daughter when her boss found out she had type one diabetes and told her off for not telling him. She said she put it on the application. He said not good enough. A week later he did not give a reason for letting her go. Thats how it works.
There is no protection if you can sack someone and give no reason. It makes every protection for an employee moot.
Can you rename yourself “Steve At The Melbourne Club”?
Just a suggestion.
No, David h, that was the joke.
I wonder how John from Wollstonecraft is feeling tonight? Two days ago he was the kingmaker who was getting lunch dates with those who wanted to be leader. Yet tonight I suspect he’s quite happy with the outcome. Does he not have the influence that wss being claimed for him two days ago – or did he pull a fast move either on Hockey or with him?
I think Steven the ones who could argue they are kingmakers are the three wise men of the Christmas tale. Ackerman, Blair and Bolt. I wonder what gidts they will present the new sprog?
OK. That was a bit much even for me but any cartoonists who want to run with it are welcome.
Tony Abbott’s interview by Kerry O’Brien on the 7.30 Report confirmed he was a tool of Minchin and Minchin’s masters. Folks, the political process in Australia is corrupt beyond redemption.
Here is the line we will be hearing a lot of: “$120 billion’s worth of taxes on the Australian people” by way of the new response to the ETS. This line was most likely handed to Abbott as a scripted slogan, scribbled hurriedly by his political masters.
Abbott revealed which he is willing, nay, rampantly eager, to repeat the refrain, ad nauseam, as he did on the 7.30 Report.
O’Brien very quickly ran down the logic of that down but Abbott was not deterred but kept on parroting off the refrain – he was speaking not to O’Brien but to spouting propaganda out to voterland.
Expect to hear a lot more of that from now on. Simpleminded and relentless.
Clearly, the main polluting industries who are facing a reduction in profits if their activities are somehow fettered, go to a pimp master who marshalls political whores to do the polluters’ bidding. In Australia, one such whoremaster, is the Institute of Public Affairs.
Long before the Liberal Party tied itself up in knots over this, the IPA had the Liberals’ script ready. In September this is what the IPA’s Climate Change Commissar, Tim Wilson, had to say: “And while Rudd and Wong seek to pass their emissions trading scheme they will be committing Australia to unilateral action to harm our economy.”
cf http://ipa.org.au/news/1956/pass-the-climate-parcel
IPA has a link to the Liberals through one of its directors John Hyde, the Libs’ one-time ideologue. As Kate Legge writes in today’s Australian, Nick Minchin has a track record as a denier of any scientific link between passive tobacco smoke and health:
“Senator Minchin wishes to record his dissent from the committee’s statements that it believes cigarettes are addictive and that passive smoking causes a number of adverse health effects for non-smokers,” the committee’s minority report says.
“Senator Minchin believes these claims (the harmful effects of passive smoking) are not yet conclusively proved. . . there is insufficient evidence to link passive smoking with a range of adverse health effects.”
IPA donors over the years have included Western Mining, BHP Billiton, Clough Engineering, Monsanto, British American Tobacco, Caltex, Esso Australia (a subsidiary of Exxon), Shell, Woodside Petroleum, Gunns and Philip Morris, among others.
The fix is in.
The thing about the swipe at Bernie Banton was that it revealed something about Abbott that it’s impossible to cover with spin – how he’s a total political creature, that he can’t even keep his trap shut when confronted with a dying human being.
That’s the defining trait of him and the Minchinites – they see dark plots by the Left everywhere.
Tony Abbott has always seemed to me like a uni student that has never grown up – still fighting student politics, still filled with teenage bile. The question is why are people like Abbott, from privileged backgrounds and handed every opportunity in life, so angry? Bernie Banton had a right to feel angry at the hand he was dealt, Abbott seems filled with rage that he was given a Rhodes scholarship.
Nothing about today’s result changes my point of view – which is that the likely required strategy and timing is everything.
I still tip that eventually, these two factors will favour the popular choice Joe Hockey.
Lucky for Hockey that in one way that he wasn’t given such an unlikely task of making Rudd a one term PM. Let the conservatives have “their” party back until such a time that the broad church feels the need for broad voter support and accepts the possible repositioning of their party that may be demanded.
…From Justin
I think we should give both Turnbull and Hockey credit. In the face of total defeat both in the end resisted pressure and held their convictions.
If they cross the floor when the vote takes place I’ll be doubly impressed.
If they don’t then what price their souls?
Abbott just worked out he was going to have to take the Parcel of Leadership (hot potato!) some time before the next vote and now he’s gotten in early enough to pass it off in time for someone else to get destroyed when the music stops.
The really interesting thing isn’t who the Libs have put in, though, so much as the fact that they are split, vehemently, nearly exactly 50-50 on the ETS.
Lefty E said”when no boats will arrive because of the monsoon” who are you? Abbotts twin from the left?
Sir Henry, always enjoy reading your analysis. Reminds me to always look behind curtains and check out under the sink.
Now wasn’t there are ‘ramping up’ going on over at talk back …. you know, 2GB they say…. kinda of, what was it again…’cash4 c spin.
Should add, I came across republican website explaining how to do multiple email petitions on massive scale. Well it, helps to explain this wing nut rupture or tsunami they experience over there.
Carbonsink #237: Hammer, meet nail!
“unilateral ets” I keep hearing that but doesn’t the UK and EU have an ETS?
Don @ 243, Botox Barbie may be educated (she’s a lawyer, so I’m not sure), but she’s extremely stupid. I don’t think she’ll be threatening Tony’s manhood.
Ginja I just wasn’t sure, maybe you were a taxi driver or something? But I should have guessed, I mean you actually talked about Tony Abbott as though he was a real person and not some escapee from the madhouse.
Agreed, Elise, and tho’ he was suitably suited up in his interview with Kerry O’B, it was he who drew attention to his appearance at Bondi with a knowing smirk. Frustrating as it is you have to acknowledge he is a much more competent politician than Turnbull. With apologies to lean and hungry looking men remember how dangerous this Cassius-clone has already shown himself to be to his good friends Malcolm and Joe and will undoubtedly be to the government.
PS. Apologies are also due to the many hirsute LP bloggers out there. With Elise and me it’s rather like the “gentlemen prefer blondes” syndrome in reverse! Anyway my son is an hairy man and women love him!
It’s hard not to imagine that this is the Libs’ Latham, only either two years too late or two terms too early.
I actually tried to discover his identity, googling all sorts of identifiers, including Tom Sharpe’s deathless “Person of Restricted Growth.” I came up with nothing.
So thanks PWA for identifying “the little guy”.
If I had noticed a suit-wearing 8 ft giant and failing to identify him via google, even after using the identifier “Person of Unrestricted Growth”, and then inquired who was that “besuited giant filmed walking the corridors of power with other Liberal heavies” would that be disablist too?
Good work in the slips, Sir Henry. IPA fingerprints on it alright.
Of course, if those 2nd raters were any good, they’d be earning zillions with the right-wing A-team, not pushing copy for 5 figures in a dodgy thinktank.
Katz, the disablist.
I’ll ask the question: is it horribly sexist to describe Minchin running up and down the corridors as running like a schoolgirl?
I didn’t see the height challenged guy, but Abbort in his liberal leader regulation budgie smugglers looks nearly fit enough to find Harold Holt, which I think is a secret quest placed on all failed liberal party leaders – although I think he jumped the gun a bit.
Christopher Pyne’s slip on Lateline about needing to get the party back on track for the benefit of amongst others – “our donors” (or as he says “aar donors”) – was a sure sign that Sir Henry’s #300 comment is pertinent. Mich Hooke and some other industrialist on Lateline Biz were very fired up, chipper indeed. We are suffering a coordinated rear guard action.
A hell of a lot is riding on Copenhagen.
It really is Wbb. But even a moderate agreement will see these parochial nobodies off to knackery where they belong.
Let’s face it, they’re hardly master strategists – if Fran Bailey hadnt been crook this morning they’d still be nowhere; and they’ve handed their opponents two election victories to delay it all by 2-10 months.
Yes, LE. And I suppose if the ground does shift with US and China taking a stand at Kopenhaven then the Minchinites have got nowhere left to go except to plunge into the abyss. It’ll turn into a wait for US legislation strategy obviously – but I think the electorate might run out of patience with the obfuscation at that point.
So yes – hopefully just a dead cat bounce. After this the real fight – a worthwhile fight – can start ALP v Greens. (With the Lib base talking to themselves on talkback.) Although with the current Lib config the Greens won’t have a preference weapon.
Katz, that’s the first time I’ve used that word “disablist” which is apparently in common use. Even as I wrote I was aware of being judgemental and almost refrained from submitting. If it was over the top it was probably a projection of unacknowledged guilt for my own reaction when I first saw Alan Eggleston with other prominent Liberal pollies who by the way are very much at their ease with him. He is well known here and I was surprised that even Brian did not recognise him.
David Rubie, in my long life I have learned the futility of wasting time in worrying or complaining about sexism. I can’t imagine Senator Minchin ever running up and down corridors. He would never be that spontaneous.
Patricia WA, I didn’t see the footage of Eggleston and just used Katz’s remark as a hook to mention Morris in a huddle with Hockey and co. But sorry if there was offence.
I did see footage (twice) of Minchin running along the corridor!
Grace @ 267, here’s more.
I’d guess that her estimate of “a third of the Liberal party room believing that climate change is either not real or a hoax” would be pretty accurate and more accurate than the “half” or “more than half” attributed to the Minchin quote.
Bad enough, though.
Off topic I don’t understand why business leaders aren’t concerned about global warming. It’s as if Ben Elton had never written Stark.
The answer is yes.
You are attributing character to identity.
If you remarked upon a school girl running up and down the corridors like Nick Minchin you would not be a sexist. The presence of a school girl in that location would in itself be noteworthy. To notice that she was behaving like Nick Minchin would amount to praise of her acting abilities.
If I said that I noticed Nick Minchin walking around the corridors of power like a dwarf, I’d be disablist (even if I modified the noun with the the adjective “poison”.
If I said that I had noticed a dwarf walking round the corridors of power like Nick Minchin … well I guess that you can deduce the rest.
So said Judy Moylan from the link Brian provides. It is actually for “obstruction” that the opposition has branded itself. As if Labor did not win the last election and have the right to make changes.
If she looked closely she would see, with just one exception, Mal continued that behaviour and maintained that perception. It is not a good look ,on that she is correct, it is just that she cannot see what her hero has been engaging in.
If you look at what the other side is saying (go to the big three opinion pages) Rudd is illegitimate. That’s why all the talk of having him dismissed constantly.
And they have a point now. Abbott is the opposition leader. However Rudd can’t get the bill passed without his support. Ergo Abbott is essentially the gatekeeper of legislation now. Turnbull always was but seemed to be putting principal above politics.
well tssk, we’ll have to give those learnhards another spanking lesson in legitimacy tssk – bring it on. Election now!
And when they are reduced to a bleeding pathetic rump, whimpering under the onslaught, cursing the hubris of the idiots Howard left in charge, maybe they’ll to learn to respect a mandate.
Dead party walking.
I’d like to correct a mistake I made when live posting last night when talking about the Abbott/Hockey fotball match thing. In my defense I was lauging my head off.
From http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2009/s2759022.htm
I don’t think that answer came out quite the way he intended.
“Turnbull always was but seemed to be putting principal above politics.”
Such nonsense! He was just as much captive to the right wing jive as is Abbott. He just spat the dummy on the climate change issue. Stop attempting to re-write history ,tssk. His obnoxious positions are on the record and did not move on from Howard.
Tssk: why are private school Tories always trying to prove how tough they are? Joe Hockey even said he did a stint as a jackaroo the other day. Methinks though dost protest too much – the rest of us see their inner Christopher Pyne.
joe2. Really? I prefer to think that he looked into the abyss at the last moment and turned away. Otherwise why not just go with the flow and avoid the leadership challenge by caving into the right?
….I got my thou mixed up with though – I’d better get that right, Abbott probably has a policy of taking us back to ye olde English.
I agree Ginja. I went to private (and public) schools and I remeber all too well the sort of kid that would punch someone smaller than him then complain that his hand got hurt.
“Sir! Sir! It’s not my fault. He keeps attacking my fists and feet with his nose!”
tssk, he stood up for the first time against the right over the ETS which just happened to be a gift to big business. See his asylum seeker dog whistle and his dodgy utegate scam. The man has grown in stature in only those completely blind.
$mirker tips a bucket on Turnbull
Trouble is this:
The corollary of this point is that the Liberal Party, like all major parties, has been for a long time dying from the grassroots up.
The Liberal Party is now a cabal of ideologues, monomaniacs, obsessives and conspiracists — think Godwin Grech. The Liberal Party has never been less representative of public opinion than now. John Howard sent the Party hurling down the road towards alienation. Tony Abbott will accelerate the process.
More than half the parliamentary party knows this. That is why they did or would have voted against Tony Abbott.
Howard, and now Abbott, are true Leninists. “Better fewer, but better!” Lenin sloganised.
That slogan is Abbott’s slogan.
Thanks Katz. Brain synapses getting a work out like that might be a good substitute for coffee. Haven’t had my first yet and already the neurons are firing up.
Perhaps my hesitation before making that comment was more about the logic than anything else.
And yes, Brian, I did see Minchin darting across the corridors. Girlishness was the last thing that came to mind. Perhaps rat-like scurrying? Could Peter Singer object to that?
Judith Troeth speaking in support of the CPRS bill. Not sure if she’s going to cross to vote for it.
yeah spotted that one 2 Katz, but its problematic since how can anyone take costello seriously on the the subject of Liberal leadership? I don’t know whether its the first bit of mainstream revisionism of recent liberal history or maybe just a cheap shot from someone who coveted the top job but never had the guts to actually do anything about it but its bound to raise a few hackles.
Didn’t take long for the pro-nuclear fan club over at the Oz to claim their man.
Didn’t take long for the pro-nuclear fan club over at the Oz to claim their man.
The ETS has just been voted down in the Senate: 2 Liberals crossed the floor, Boyce and Troeth.
Boyce and Troeth won’t last long. A brave stand indeed.
Troeth is retiring at the next poll.
The boyce of troeth!
It would depend entirely on which aspect of schoolgirlishness you were referring to. Were his boobs bouncing?
Schoolgirls don’t have boobs, P.C.
Not that I should notice, anyway.
No doubt he would have done the same for Senator Boyce if he hadn’t felt that the gesture might be misinterpreted.
… and if Senator Minchin were wearing his St Trinians’ uniform … again …
Back in the good old days such behaviour might have qualified a colonial chappie for a life peerage and a seat in the House of Lords.
And now the SMH is on board.
It’s on. Rudd had better win this one. Otherwise we’re screwed.
“I’ll ask the question: is it horribly sexist to describe Minchin running up and down the corridors as running like a schoolgirl?”
Only if he is wearing Tony Abbott’s budgie snugglers.
Senator Minchin really really really hates being laughed at. Anyone who has worked with him will tell you it drives him absolutely nuts.
Please keep it up.
One would have expected Mr Abbott to have been pottie-trained by now.
Oh, David, what a sad, sad adolescence you must have had.
I could have sworn that five years at a girls’ school, years spent making many of my own clothes, not to mention the daily sight of my two sisters and the full-length mirror in my room, must all have counted for something. Oh well. I’d forgotten that only blokes know anything about breasts.
And why isnt the Minchin Run up on YouTube yet?
By ‘David’ I meant, of course, ‘Joe2′.
You must have gone to a school full of late bloomers joe2!
Katz @ 352,
Its Nick Minchin Tony has to potty-train, Kastz.
OTOH, maybe Nick Minchin was really running to the loo he got so so excited about Abbott jumping into his puppet box. What’s the bet Minchin will tangle up the strings?
tssk: ” think we should give both Turnbull and Hockey credit. In the face of total defeat both in the end resisted pressure and held their convictions.
If they cross the floor when the vote takes place I’ll be doubly impressed.”
As both Turnbull and Hockey are MPs and therefore sit in the House of Representatives, and the vote was in the senate, there was no floor for them to cross.
P.C. and dj Note: important qualifyer…..
“Not that I should notice, anyway.”
(I say this as one male with four sisters which may explain things.)
Geez tssk, settle down. The SMH has always been ‘on board’. Why do you think they employ the likes of Devine (she seems to be in the paper every day!), Sheehan, Henderson and previously that Rudd obsessive Crabb? And you think anyone listens to them?
Erk. You are right Rebekka. Lucky them I’m guessing!
I’m still amazed that Hockey allowed his name to be associated with the spill motion. Even for him, this was in contemporary parlance, epic stupid.
What can he have been thinking? Nothing with more depth or quality than you’d find in the gutter after someone has heaved up his three beers and a pub lunch.
Three little maids from school are we
Minchin, Heffernan and Tony,
Filled to the brim ideologically,
Three little maids from school.
One little maid who all unwary
Finds the Leadership, quote, “scary”
Not at all like the seminary!
Three little maids from school
From three little maids take one away
Then keep subtracting, as we play
“Which moderates will be allowed to stay?”
Three little maids from school
Three little maids from school
etc. etc.
Another one Hoges from the Gondoliers which needs no modification:
Or as the waspish Gilbert once said to Sullivan:
Pavlov my adolescence WAS a sad tragic affair leaving me a twisted and manically depressed human being, and it is true that I know nothing about breasts… but thankyou for bringing it up in this place
I share your pain david.
Pavlov’s Cat wrote:
No, he affects a kind of feminine flounce clutching important looking papers to his chest. I make no inferences from it, but I made an off the cuff comment to a workmate after we watched the footage. Said workmate (on the boofy side) impugned the good senators sexual leanings in a jolly manner intended to bring Minchins public conservatism into disrepute. I didn’t mean it that way, just in the sense that some people throw a ball “like a girl” (from the shoulder, rather than the hips, through inexperience rather than physiology).
So, perhaps it’s better not to say Minchin runs like a schoolgirl clutching his papers to his breast with the carefree movement of an adolescent untroubled by the problems of the world, but better to say he runs like somebody who rarely gets excited by anything and he was bloody excited the other day.
I am also untroubled by Abbotts budgie smugglers, as rather thankfully, Mr People Skills wasn’t excited.
Well, Dave Rubie, Tone may have been excited, but you might not have noticed. As in: “Is that a peanut in your budgie smugglers, or are you just pleased to see me?”
When all else fails, insult their manhood.
A serious issue has been raised: “is the garment for smuggling budgerigars, Mr Speaker, or for snuggling budgerigars?”
Second Reading speech,
Indigenous Avian Export Control Bill 2009
“When all else fails, insult their manhood.”
He’s a hood but he’s no man.
What we have here is a rather magnificent eggcorn, possibly created by accident with a mere slip of the typing finger.
With Hockey as his Treaurer, one would have to say that Abbott is in possession of a huge budget smuggler.
Indeed, joe2. Real men don’t try to prevent women having reproductive freedom.
[Bows. receives applause.]
PB on the origin of the term “budgie snugglers.”
I’m quite deaf in the right ear. Some time ago when the TV press was talking about Peter Debnam in the last NSW state election I thought the journalist said budgie snugglers not budgie smugglers.
But I suppose its use here actually originates here on LP on 2 december 2009 @ 2.19 p.m.
If anybody at some time in the future wants to contact the Macquarie Dictionary ….
I prefer budgie snugglers.
“Budgie smugglers” has connotations of predation, avian cruelty and criminal activity.
“Budgie snugglers” has connotations of gonadal nurturance, protectiveness and affection for Australia’s favorite minor parrot.
Congratulations PB!
No wucking forries, mate.
I got a question out of this.
Hockey says he was assured by Turnbull that if there was a spill, Turnbull would not stand.
Is there something missing?
Why would Turnbull give that assurance, and what was the quid pro quo, if any?
There is Turnbull hanging on for dear life and he tells Hockey he is going to fall on his sword for….nothing. Because Hockey is a good guy, or something. Doesn’t sound right. To me, Hockey is not telling the whole story.
I would speculate that Turnbull, who conned Hockey, was out conned by Abbott.
And then, having lost the battle, Mal pointed the finger at Julie Bishop for treachery.
In a case of that well known cowardly technique…. “look, over there”.
I wouldn’t say his attack on Bishop was cowardly. Childish, vindictive….and kind of cowardly.
Seems they all knifed each other one way or another. Which is not surprising, geven the way thay were carrying on. Not to be trusted.
I just find it most interesting, that out of all this, it is the sole women involved in this treacherous powerplay who is needing to assure, and be judged, on the issue of loyalty.
In circumstances Turnbulls attack on her is a pretty weak (and cowardly) effort.
I still find it amusing joe2 and look forward to more backstabbing and cowardly attacks over the coming months.
Still if every aside and snipe straight after defeat from a fallen leader was made public, I’m sure none of them would look too good.
And as for Bishop making public the story about her former leader, it doesn’t say much for her, either. When you think about it.
I am not a big Julie fan, Brendon but I can see why she might want to straighten the record when colleagues had taken to calling her a cockroach. I still get the feeling she copped more because she is a women.
Joe2 and Brendon, is it cowardly to speak your mind to someone in a private email?
Julie B’s leaking of that and her rush to protest her loyalty brandishing her voting slips smacks to me of a touch of the guilts.
Similarly Sloppy Floppy Joe’s self justifying story that Malcolm told him he planned to give up if he lost the spill motion doesn’t ring true either. The public certainly weren’t in any doubt about Turnbull’s intention to fight on to the last stand. My reading is that Joe, weak unprincipled ninny that he is, was thrilled by all the attention into standing. He was probably fooled into adopting the “conscience vote” suggestion by others like Minchin who knew him well and wanted Abbott to be able throw his hat back into the ring without loss of face.
Not sure of the timing, but yes, I can imagine Minchin was dancing down the corridors with girlish glee when such a ploy succeeded!
And what does it say about the Liberal brand of “loyalty” when Turnbull is deserted, supported publicly only by two fine women senators, while the others to a man seem to have closed ranks behind Tony Abbott. Significantly, Bishop and Hockey, the two who most loudly protested their loyalty have now with indecent haste joined his shadow cabinet.
Congratulations and thank you:
* the amazing Paul Burns
* the Katzian wit
* erudition aplenty, Dr Cat
I agree about the nurturance: helping and sheltering the tiny buderigars with warm affection; a far far better use of his scrotal items than could ever have been envisaged.
Please excuse me while I step outside to vomit.
I have horrified meself.
cheerio