Malcolm Turnbull needs to give up on placating all those who still long for the departed Howard’s firm hand. The Liberal Party needs to eschew stunts and populism and restore its tattered economic credibility (which was actually junked by Howard and Costello themselves – that was obvious enough in last year’s election but now it’s plain as day). It also needs to move with the times and take a responsible position on an ETS and trim its sails to fit the socially liberal winds that have been blowing – unsniffed as they were by the Tony Abbotts and Nick Minchins of the world.

But Turnbull is completely capable of squibbing all this. He may mistake the need to placate the diehard Liberal Right and “defend the legacy” as necessary pragmatism. If he does, he might be safer at the despatch box, but he will be repeating the same mistakes that brought Nelson down. Though without the jam and baked beans.

Turnbull’s selection of a Shadow Cabinet will give us a big clue as to how he’s going to shape the Opposition. Shadow Treasurer and Shadow Climate Change Minister in particular. And make no mistake, he has to shape the Opposition, not try to keep all its factions happy. A very difficult balancing act indeed, because the structural faults in both the party and in its electoral position haven’t been magicked away.

Elsewhere: Some more analysis from Sam Clifford at Public Polity. Update: And more from Pavlov’s Cat.

Blogosphere roundup: More commentary from Possum, Politically homeless, Andrew Bartlett, Corporate Engagement, Musings of an inappropriate woman, Road to Surfdom and Woolly Days.

Another one for the blog roundup: what it feels like for a boi.

Wait, there’s more!: Joanne Jacobs, The Poll Bludger and John Quiggin.

You have to wonder if there’s not some level at which this is a bit of subconscious revenge on Peter Costello, whose book launch tomorrow will now surely be “overshadowed”, as the meejah like to say.

Let’s see if the Turnbull boosters’ claims that they already have the numbers are right. Or will Malcolm Turnbull even put his hand up? What happens if he loses? Surely he couldn’t stay on the front bench. Nelson must be dreaming if he thinks this will end the thing. If he marginalises Turnbull to curry favour with the hard right, he’s still got a divided party. If he keeps Turnbull on the front bench, he looks weak. But at least it might kill off the Costellology.

Update: Michael Brissenden reported on the 7 30 Report that Nelson had been more angry than ever seen before (is that possible?) at a party room meeting and had promised to “clean out” his office and the front bench if he wins. He could lose endless commentator Tony Abbott for a start, and the promise regarding the office presumably refers to his habit of going off the reservation and making policy unilaterally – for instance with the $30 a week pension increase. Presumably the implication that Nelson will be clearing out his desk is unintended, but maybe interesting in a Freudian slippy sorta way.

More strange is a reported promise to “toughen up” the line on climate change while simultaneously walking away from the carping opposition to same sex rights in the Senate. This sounds like a typical Nelson left/right straddle to me, but apparently he’s going to show a “different” side to his leadership. More props? No more truck trekking? Who knows?

Turnbull is standing by the way.

More: Possum has posted Nelson’s press release.

Update: Bruce Billson, the Shadow Minister for Communications (who knew?), duly communicated on Lateline tonight. It wasn’t 100% clear, but he seemed to be suggesting that Malcolm Turnbull might remain on the front bench if Nelson wins. Yeah, right, that’d be smart. But it does show that Nelson’s inclusive or something. Oh, and “strong action on climate change without wrecking the economy” may or may not be a different stance from their most recent unintelligible confusion. But communications expert Billson appeared pleased that it was a nifty soundbite. Who thinks that somehow all this isn’t going to be over tomorrow morning?

Decided [by Kim]: It’s Turnbull by 45-41. New open thread here.

Update [by Kim]: I’ve put up a post with some analysis of what Turnbull needs to do here.

Elsewhere: Hoyden, Surfdom, Poll Bludger.

<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/nelsonbeans.jpg"

Photo courtesy of Grodscorp.

Boycott the thing, I say!

Ps: The crew at the Opposition Organ were in a collective sulk over the weekend with the entire news analysis section or whaddeveritis full of Cossie this or Cossie that. In Crikey, Bernard Keane underlines one of only two serious points to be made about the whole memoir touting/breathless speculation show:

“Agenda journalism is a dangerous pursuit,” wrote Frank Devine in The Oz last week, quoting John Hartigan.

“It makes newspapers tediously predictable at best and, at worst, cumulatively untrustworthy.”

It was good to see that old Frank is still capable of writing cogently, even if it is the same right-wing bile he’s been vomiting for decades. But his description of his own paper was spot on. Tediously predictable and untrustworthy — especially when it tries to play kingmaker.

The other point?

Andrew Robb’s argument that the best thing for the party is for everyone to knuckle down and get on with their jobs is true enough, but it’s not going to happen. Not with Costello still on the backbench, not with everyone waiting for Nelson’s next gaffe, not with the clock ticking, every second and every opinion poll taking Nelson closer to the end.

And not with Tony Abbott and other, more anonymous, Liberals opening their yaps every day to offer their own self-interested take on events.

The only people knuckling down and getting on with the job will be Kevin Rudd and his ministers, confident they can operate without serious pressure from the other side. And Rudd only looks vulnerable when he’s under pressure.

It’s not as though Kevin Rudd and the government couldn’t do with a bit of, well, opposition. You know, in the real sense, not populist bollocks designed mainly to try to get Brendan Nelson an extra point or two in the almighty Newspoll.

The IMF didn’t think so. The Fin has obtained leaked Treasury documents prepared for discussions with IMF officials last year. The upshot of the story can be summed up by its tagline – “Peter Costello’s fiscal policy was potentually more damaging than any other period since the Whitlam years”. IMF wonks were deeply concerned about a stimulatory budget and fiscal policy at a time of economic over-heating, and the article by Paul Cleary concludes:

… from 2003 onwards, Costello executed a sustained expansion of fiscal policy during a sustained upswing in the economy. Looking further back, his predecessors had only engaged in such a policy during recessions. The result of this outbreak of bad policy in the last years of the Howard government is likely to be a long period of inflation and weak economic growth, and it may take some considerable time, and pain, to get the balance back in the right order.

For all I know, Costello might blame John Howard for this in his memoirs, if he mentions it at all. That was certainly the line he took in interviews for the Van Onselen and Errington biography of Howard which came out last year. But it begs the question of how a weak Costello completely failed to restrain the fiscal profligacy of the PM.

Costello’s anodyne musings on economic policy have been subjected to an unwarranted level of parsing and “Costellogical” deconstruction. In truth, it may be that the record suggests that he was among Australia’s worst Treasurers.

None of this, or Costello’s confirmation of what almost everyone who wasn’t a member of the punditariat knew all along, appears to have stopped either the endless media speculation about his leadership prospects or the constant talk of a coup against Brendan Nelson. Bizarrely, there’s still an arcane discussion going on within Liberal ranks about the appropriate level of deference to Howard Costello is supposed to adopt in his memoirs in order to keep his non-existent leadership ambitions alive:

Mr Howard is likely to become enraged by any criticism of his wife. Opposition insiders last night said reflections on Mrs Howard were one thing he would not accept.

However, Liberal frontbencher Tony Abbott said he had been assured the book was measured and paid appropriate tribute to Mr Howard.

Abbott himself is now being compared to Sarah Palin, so ludicrous has all this become, and his incessant public commentary on the polls and the leadership, which Joe Hockey was quite right to say is totally counter productive, may be a reflection of his own ambitions for the Deputy’s gig.

This mob very rarely seem to have anything to say about their own shadow portfolios, expending all their energy on plotting and commentary on their internecine disputes. It’s obvious that they’ve still got one eye looking over their collective shoulder to their former Dear Leader, who haunts them from beyond his own political grave. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that Howard and Costello’s legacy is deeply flawed.

Some bright spark within the Opposition might like to consider the unglamorous but essential strategy of actually doing some policy hard yards, rather than placing all their eggs in the twin baskets of stunt-dom and the watch for the next leadership messiah.

Extensive Olympics coverage over the past two weeks may have pushed politics out of the minds of many Australians and be responsible for the minimal changes in the latest Newspoll of voter sentiment and no improvement for the coalition.

Right. Yep. Because the natural order of things is that the Coalition vote should always be rising and its failure to do so is an aberration to be explained away by… stuff that happened in the same fortnight. Whatevs.

Meanwhile, Dennis Shanahan puts it all down to the waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting for Costello to release his book. Which, by the way, the ABC is giving free publicity to by televising a National Press Club speech by the former Treasurer on the day of its release. What’s with that?

But note the common assumption that the Liberals should be gaining were it not for their leadership woes. Really? How do they know? Because they do. It’s not argued. But it’s there as the background assumption on which all the rest rests.

Elsewhere: For actual commentary on the poll, go visit Possum and the Poll Bludger‘s crew in comments. The Poll Bludger also links to the rather interesting Essential Research poll (Labor 58-Coalition 42) which shows that there’s a 7% negative differential between state and federal ALP voting intentions among its sample.