The last things they need are ideas – an update

Monday, 6 July 2009    

He’s doing a good job under difficult circumstances and the last thing we want to do is develop a tradition of knifing our leaders.

Tony Abbott on Brendan Nelson 26 August 2008

We have a good leader, he’s going to lead us through to the next election and we’ve got to get behind him.

Tony Abbott on Malcolm Turnbull 29 June 2009

Oh no! Here we go again! First it starts off with the psychological profiling. If Albanese was playing with the minds of the Liberals when he compared Turnbull to Latham, he must have also been playing the media as well. Since the ute-gate debacle and especially since the poll collapse, we have had a rash of personal analyses on why Turnbull’s personality made the cock-up inevitable.

Unless Turnbull has had a knock on the head, presumably he’s got the same personality that was supposed to guarantee his success when he took over the leadership nine months ago. Then, according to one commentator, “A brilliant advocate with a personal presence, Turnbull has all the attributes to make a real success of the Liberal leadership and to make a dent in Kevin Rudd’s popular domination.” Now nine months later, the problem is that Turnbull has acted too much like an advocate and not enough like a politician.

Turnbull may be politically naïve but his personal attributes are pretty irrelevant. Of course Turnbull has now been finished by his handling of the ute-gate affair, but only because he never was looking like he would succeed in the first place. This has nothing to do with his personal attributes but the political position he found himself in. He was head of a party that is torn between doing what is popular and sticking to its values that have now become irrelevant. If Turnbull was going to keep control of his party then it meant having to take up positions that made him unliked either by the public or his party. No wonder he grabbed what seemed like an opportunity to break through the stalemate irrespective of how weak the politics of it were.

But behind all the personal profiling, it is possible to detect a shift in the discussion in the fall-out from the Turnbull implosion. Having seen the failure of what was supposed to be a popular politician, there is now a sense in the party and the media that the problem is more than just a need for a popular leader, but a new set of ‘values’.

It’s unlikely to make things better. One sign of this shift in thinking is the fact that the media, and apparently some in the Liberal party, are now seriously considering the one politician who polled worse than Turnbull in the last Newspoll, Tony Abbott. He is supposed to be coming out with a book in a couple of weeks, Battle Lines, which is meant to set out his values coming from somewhere between his own personal experiences and God, but with the electorate probably not getting much of a look in.

There is only one political/ideological/theological question the Liberals need to answer at the moment, what does business want? The answer is easy. Hand-outs please, and who has the money?

Rudd’s more like Latham than Turnbull is

Monday, 29 June 2009    

The media summing up of last week often owed more to explaining themselves out of a mess than how Turnbull got into one. So the Murdoch press, who thought the original charges against Swan were so serious, then had to find a reason why the whole affair swung so sharply the other way (and viciously going by today’s polls). So we have Rudd the political dynamo and a Labor party ‘machine’ that appeared seemingly out of nowhere to steamroll Turnbull. Read more …

Flashpoint – an update

Thursday, 25 June 2009    

The Labor Party used to rejoice in leaks when they were in Opposition. They used to publish press releases when they … a couple of Cabinet documents fell into their hands and of course, the Labor Party’s view – someone who leaks to them is a heroic whistleblower. Somebody who leaks to the Liberals is a dangerous mole who should be persecuted. So the fact is we don’t comment on that actually any more than journalists.

Malcolm Turnbull The 7.30 Report

I tell you what, this is a Government which is using all the agencies of the State as a form of political coercion and intimidation.

Tony Abbott AM

Turnbull may think the difference between a mole and a whistle-blower just depends on which side of the political fence benefits from it. But in fact, things have changed. Read more …

It’s the politics, stupid

Wednesday, 24 June 2009    

So let’s see if this is right. Turnbull, one of the Liberals’ more successful fund-raisers, who probably owes any remaining support in the party to that fact, decides to attack Rudd for giving special favours to a political donor. This must be especially useful the next time Turnbull asks business donors to give the Liberals something a little bit more than the part-time use of a ute. Read more …

Flashpoint

Tuesday, 23 June 2009    

What’s happening is ordinary people aren’t allowed to talk to the elected politicians they put into power. We’ve come to the situation where you can’t do it any more.

John Grant talking to The Australian 20 June 2009

That’s the trouble following a weak political class. You go out of the country for a few days and you come back to find the jobs of its leading figures are suddenly on the line. Read more …

Poor Costello: Used to the end

Tuesday, 16 June 2009    

It is with immense sadness that this blog, in conjunction with The Australian newspaper, must announce the end of its dreams to see Costello drafted to the leadership of the Liberal Party of Australia. Read more …

The unpopular Mr Rudd

Monday, 15 June 2009    

Kevin Rudd has woken to the reality of incumbency after six months in office, bringing to an end one of the longest honeymoons for a new government in memory.

Gerard McManus 29 May 2008

… the worst parliamentary performer as Prime Minister since Billy McMahon

Tony Abbott 25 February 2009

We’re talking about this because we don’t really know who Kevin Rudd is. We’re trying to come to grips with who is the real man here, and we’re having difficulties.

Glenn Milne Insiders 14 June 2009

Read more …

Peace dividend

Friday, 5 June 2009    

For a new government not to lose a senior Cabinet member within the first eighteen months is not being ‘remarkably free of accident-prone moments’ as the media seemed to be suggesting yesterday – unless, of course, you compare it to the hapless start of the Howard government which lost five Ministers in the same time. Read more …

The true meaning of spin

Thursday, 4 June 2009    

If the coalition had a real economic attack on the government, yesterday’s GDP figure would not have caused problems for it.

But since they don’t, it did. Read more …

The re-election campaign begins

Wednesday, 27 May 2009    

To get a grip on the politics of climate change, let’s again clear up a basic confusion in the media. In terms of political tactics, the economic downturn does not make the government’s climate change agenda less urgent, it makes it more so. Read more …