Nelson has thrown down the gauntlet and vacated the leadership which he will contest…….over to you Malcolm.

Still Rudd sails silently on….unquestioned……..achieving sfa.

Bernard Keane debated the pros and cons of a quick kill versus a lingering death (Items 1 and 12, Friday) but failed to analyse the stalling tactics employed by Nick Minchin, who is now calling for “clear air” in which Nelson is “given a chance to turn around disastrous opinion polls”. Minchin’s infectious optimism makes him the Pollyanna of the Liberal Party but Peter Costello made it clear on Friday not to expect his departure from parliament any time soon. There will be no “clear air” for either Nelson or Turnbull while Costello lingers on the backbench and lobs verbal hand grenades at past incumbents and other rivals, so there is no advantage for Turnbull in postponing the challenge. Although Turnbull himself wants to delay his ascendancy until Nick Minchin falls in behind him, that is not in the best interests of the Liberal Party and as any pig hunter, such as Bill Heffernan, would tell you, a quick and clean kill is better than a slow, painful and messy death.

Brendan Nelson was foolish to rely on the presence of Peter Costello to shore up his own weak leadership. He created his own clear-air turbulence and is responsible for his own demise. The voters don’t want Nelson; they want to test drive Malcolm Turnbull, instead.

Meaning a reference to a 5 day test match before the next election. We are at lunch on day 2. Nelson survived the fading light and the new ball. He doesn’t score many runs but doesn’t get out. He’s brave, tricky, cunning, likeable, loathesome and useless all in one complex Gollum like mix.

He can’t win the Test match but he can force everyone to watch even until a draw is declared. So is he a masochist in the hot noon sun of bad polling? I suspect he is … and the root of it all? Not so much congenital ambition, though there is that, as displacement to avoid the personal accounting of the hippocratic oath given no WMD/blood for oil in Iraq. That’s an instability that would have swallowed a lesser man before now and will surely swallow him eventually too …. like the fabled Gollum in lava of Mt Doom. God have mercy.