Julie Bishop’s been copping it from unnamed “senior Liberals” for her poor performance as shadow Treasurer, who’ve helpfully implied Malcolm Turnbull shares their worries, and suggested a few names to replace her (Dutton, Robb, Hockey) for good measure.
While Bishop has been massively unconvincing in the Treasury portfolio, it’s not only the Deputy Leader who should be concerned over this latest outburst of leaks to The Australian. Malcolm Turnbull and the rest of the Libs should also recall that Brendan Nelson was brought down as much by the constant dripfeed of negative stories to their mates in the press gallery, as by his own hapless efforts as Leader. What is now being done to Bishop (and the articles have been cleverly framed to keep the “narrative” alive for quite a while - by forcing her putative replacements to deny an interest, and thus further fuel the story) could be done to Turnbull tomorrow. As if to lay down a few markers, Peter Van Onselen published an otherwise bizarre op/ed on Saturday praising Peter Costello as the best available leader.
I’ve observed before that the opposition’s coziness with the press gallery does them no favours. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find a way of resolving problems internally rather than in newspaper columns.
Michael Costa has taken a leaf out of Mark Latham’s book… Forced out of office and Parliament? Write 

B… b… bounce?
Oks, there’s got to be some way to work this into a drinking game. Just to prove that political tragics are rooly cool like the kidz on West Wing and not strange nerds really.
Possum has enabled a feature on his blog where you can guess the size of any Newspoll bounce that might occur now that Malcolm Turnbull is Oppo Leader. Wisdom of crowds and all that. No mention of any prizes (hint! hint!*) - at least you can make a buck from the betting markets…
And I’ve got my own idea for a bit of crowd sourced political commentary. Let’s pretend we’re the press gallery and set a % which, if not met, will be decried as a setback, or completely unrelated and probably because of the current position of the moon in the lunar cycle, depending on what mood Dennis Shanahan et al are in. And then we can set a % sufficient to ensure the production of headlines like “Australian politics has fundamentally changed”, “the honeymoon is now over”, “Turnbull reinvigorates Coalition” etc, etc.
Be your own press gallery. Write your own political narrative.
Ps: If Turnbull can’t get 5% on the 2PP, he’s toast. Peter Costello is willing to be drafted.
*Update: Now there’s a prize!