Official: Liberals are now Sydney moderates
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And so the moderate takeover of the Federal Liberal Party is completed, even if it won’t necessarily last that long. Malcolm Turnbull in charge, Julie Bishop still deputy but in internal exile in Foreign Affairs, Joe Hockey shadow Treasurer, Christopher Pyne made manager of Opposition business. Be gentle with him, Albo. And new finance spokeswoman Helen Coonan, who is aligned with the NSW Right, also happens to be one the party’s most progressive voices, especially on women’s issues. Call it the Sydney First strategy. In truth the takeover is partly accidental. Coonan had barely warmed the chair in foreign affairs — having been moved there by Turnbull from Human Services because he wanted to elevate Andrew Robb — but now she’s been promoted to a key economic ministry, up against one of the Government’s most formidable performers, because Bishop wanted Foreign Affairs and Hockey had been moved. Turnbull barely bothered to disguise the fact that this was a reshuffle designed to keep movement to a minimum. There’s nothing accidental, though, about Pyne’s promotion, although he had filled in for Hockey in the past. When Brendan Nelson, lifted to victory with the aid of the party’s Right in November 2007, allocated portfolios, he made an example of Pyne, who had dared to call for a more moderate path for the party and thrown his hat in for the deputy leadership. Nelson gave him the justice portfolio, the equivalent of throwing his scalp to his conservative backers. Turnbull corrected this, elevating Pyne to education, and has elevated him further as a reward for, well, not being made mincemeat of by Julia Gillard. At least, as Opposition Manager of Business, Pyne will spare us Hockey’s constant cries and groans of incredulity, as each statement from the Government and ruling from the Speaker prompted ever-louder howls of astonished outrage at the injustice of political life. In contrast, Nick Minchin now more than ever looks like Don Corleone in retirement. Watch out for him to start sticking oranges in his mouth and chase little kids around the Senate. The Liberal Party, eternally factionalised but without the party structure to deal with it, pays on results. Malcolm Fraser, who took the party’s progressive tradition further than any previous leader in areas like immigration and foreign affairs, engineered the dismissal of Whitlam, beat him twice and Hayden once. John Howard, who oversaw the removal of party moderates and oversaw a major shift to the Right, racked up four wins at his second go. Both were rewarded with undivided loyalty by their MPs. Fraser saw off a challenge from Andrew Peacock and Howard was so strong Costello never bothered. If Turnbull and the moderates succeed, they’ll earn the same support. If they don’t, the rubbish of the last fifteen months will continue to the next election and beyond. One the reasons it will probably continue is the selfishness of Peter Costello. Did he knock back the shadow Treasurership? If so, when? On the weekend? Previously? More to the point, who cares? Is there anyone on the planet who thinks he’d have accepted it? Or that he gives a stuff about the welfare of his party? Alexander Downer left. Mark Vaile left. Peter McGauran left. Brendan Nelson has now left. Costello remains, a permanent distraction, a constant jibe ready on the lips of the Prime Minister, who only has to gesture to him in Question Time. The selfishness of Peter Costello is now the last remaining stumbling block to the Coalition moving on from the Howard years and grappling with life after the financial crisis. While ever he remains, he’ll keep the focus on the Liberals. The Government will be quite happy with that. |
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25 Comments
Well who is Baltar????? Brendan Nelson?
Wilson Tuckey is more like Tigh than Hockey. Hockey’s more yer Tyrol.
I can’t hear “Final Five” without thinking about semi-finals.
Anyway James, the media focuses on dumb stuff like Costello’s leadership aspirations because they’re shortsighted and lazy. A piece about who said what to whom when is easier to write than some things, and leadership struggles and cabinet shuffles are easier for the reader to absorb and understand, plus it fits into a ‘narrative’ that is easy to establish because the story has been told a million times already. It’s just the names that change.
If you open up The Oz, or any of the Murdoch papers you’ll find exactly the same thing. Maybe from a slightly different angle, or from a pro-Liberal point of view or whatever, but the same thing nonetheless. Some columnists in The Australian find it hard to NOT write words upon words about Peter frakking Costello.
In using the words old hausfrau I am not referring to myself. When I see him going into the chemist, with the turned down mouth
All it needs is an old-fashioned scarf, such as the one QE11 wears, and the transformation would be instant.
Ah yes, the Fairfax Age and the ABC, those hotbeds of revolutionary energy, filled with little proto-Lenins and Maoist Third-Worlders. Quite. Nice little blog post James, although you forgot to tell us what you had for lunch and your current ‘mood’.
Sometimes I wonder whether you actually read some of the stuff you post, or whether you just boot up a bot program, set it to the maximum stupidity level and let it lose on Crikey.com.au
As for your question, Bernard, the closest thing to an anarcho-marxist would be an anarcho-communist ie Bakunin and Kropotkin.
@Jen: For those of us with half a brain and eyes to see it is the fatalistic laughter of the damned as we witness an insane ideologue sell the Australian people down the Swannee whilst the Fourth Estate cheer from the riverbank.
Further to my initial post I just watched Tony Jones interview Christopher Pyne on Lateline.
Any self-respecting journalist would hang his head in shame but not Tony Jones; he truly is shameless.
I don’t think even denialist dingbat Daniel, left-wing conformist as he is, would have a crack at defending that overtly partisan dross.
Christopher Pyne must have meditated or enjoyed conjugal bliss just prior to the interview because amazingly he kept his cool. Hawke or Keating would have told Jones to get f-cked on air.
Gee! I miss the old days……. when a spade was correctly labelled a shovel.
maybe ‘Liberals are now Sydney moderates’ - but Sydney moderates are definitely not Liberals!
Will you guys get your heads out of puerile indulgence on this fictional stuff and focus on how the Liberals can inject reality into federal politics. How on earth do Battlestar Gallactica characters translate to democracy going down the drain? We’re in a crisis and all you lot (Venise excepted) can do is exercise knowlege and intrigue on the mythical. Really Bernard…Baltar??
Despite the fact that you recurrently demonstrate that you have strong frivolous and simpleminded tendencies, I have not lost hope for you Daniel.
There was that time that a single sentence in one of your relentlessly silly posts actually was intelligent.
Although, perhaps it was just simply a reflection of the truth of the Infinite Monkey Theorem.
No matter. Try reading this ( for you one paragraph to be read several times a day before going to the next paragraph on each succeeding day):
http://www.thesydneyinstitute.com.au/downloads/SIQ33.pdf
The public morphing of the Liberal Party puts Baz Lurhmann’s Australia on the entertainment backburner. Live every day from the big tent on the hill comes the real Australia epic with tears, intrigue, sacrifice and passion. I reckon we’re just in the casting stages of the conservatives committing hari kari.
Well that means Turnball is Adama…and Hockey is Tigh??
Does that mean the Labor party are the Cylons? Oh my god is the Labor front-bench the Final Five?!?!
Oh Michael T you joker you, Pyne and that rhymes with whine, will need a quick operation to do something about ‘that’ voice and I don’t mean an op to his vocal chords. Albo will be licking his ample chops at the prospect of doing battle with the public schoolboy from Adelaide. The latest to be taken into the encompassing arms of the current temp leader of the Opposition. Not sure how he will get on with the majority of Turnbulls inner circle, not being a Catholic could be a problem, when it is time to genuflect in the presence of thy leader, who requires regular adoration from his selected bretheren, to satisfy his personal egotistical reverence. Another reason why Costello wouldn’t dream of being shadow treasurer, he bows to no merchant banker from Sydney. No Pete will sit back behind the annointed chosen ones and wait and wait and eventually when the time is right…………
Ranting raewyn would be well advised to desist from ingesting his vodka and raspberry by suckling on a straw especially in the early hours of the morning.
It’s not good look
(the ABC is notoriously biased)
ahahahaha
Whatever…………. but Labor = Resurrection Ship…… obviously.
Prince Pete of Malvern is to Felix Gaeta as Venise is Sharon Valerii?
JamesK: If you are going to have a crack at me please don’t use allusions to the Starship Galactica, or its crew, as I have never read/seen the thing. I like to think my taste in movies is a little more profound. Not much, but a little.
Who is Felix Gaeta: the singing cat? Who is Sharon Valeri: she sounds as if she was/is married to a member of the underworld. No offense intended.
I’ll bet Tony Abbott says HAITCH. Nothing like a good Catholic schooling to f*ck up the English language.
You should have a look at the shot (p 8 The Age 10.02.09) to see perfidious Pete, in all his lack of glory. Taken in the House, working at his laptop, he is glaring at the photographer. Or so he would have us believe. In fact he has just had a hair stylist produce a fringe from somewhere. Nice one Pete. How much did the electorate of Higgins have to a) Fork out for the hair do, b) to pay the photographer for what is clearly a visual Dorothy Dixer?
Hey it me! Your mate.
Costello without Abbott is no act.
Peter does have a problem which I have referred to before as ‘he’s ‘dumb’.
I know that is far too simplistic as is ‘selfish’.
He comes from good stock and he was recognised as smart when he was a young lawyer.
It’s as if he has sat in a toxic bath for too long and he’s damaged part of his brain which was once attached to very important other centres in his brain which also needed exercise for mental health.
The private world of industry seems to have made judgement with the paucity of ‘great offers’ that were publically called for and boasted of as just around the corner.
If there is something wrong with this man we should not be cruel.
i just came here to give kudos to the superb godfather reference
oh, and i think Pyne will eat Albanese for breakfast.
I had the misfortune to be listening to ABC News radio this morning.
What was remarkable was the antipathy towards the Liberal party-not for its nature (the ABC is notoriously biased) but for the extent.
I heard Tony Abbott who spoke well as usual but could barely conceal his disdain for the fatuous line of questioning as to whether Peter Costello had or had not been offered the Shadow Treasurer portfolio. From this was the by now news bulletin hammered “feverish gossip” quote which I see now forms the headline for a new and still more ridiculous Michelle Grattan piece in the online version of The Age.
Next, Joe Hockey. First question from an equally witless ABC interrogator: how did he feel about being second choice for the role of Shadow Treasurer? Second question: what was the Reserve Bank cash rate? Etc after vacuous etc.
This was while driving. On reaching my destination, I opened The Age newspaper. Another mistake. Apart from a preposterously partisan frankly puerile editorial on the Liberal reshuffle, there was the ever predictably ludicrous Tim Colebatch suggesting that “Australians need to spend, or they will face grim consequences”, Michelle Grattan who tells us “Malcolm Turnbull didn’t have an ideal field from which to choose a replacement. He also had the Costello problem.” and last but not least, Peter Martin ‘informs us’: “Joe seems to have trouble with his maths”.
Be careful Bernard Keane. The ABC and the Age are beginning to make you look like a reactionary Tory. Your post-modern moonbat editor may seek to displace you with yet another Crikey Anarcho-Marxist.
When is Guy Rundle returning from the National Health Service?
The transition is almost complete. The old guard is on the next train out. There can be no more excuses as to why the engine doesn’t run. If the Libs are going to get back in power they need to win NSW in an emphatic manner so in the short run there is probably sense in boosting that state’s profile in the shadow cabinet. There is one final move they need to make. . That move will effectively neutralise all of the current weaknesses in the Liberal Party platform and I am waiting to see if they can work it out.
Ask Rundle.
More like the initial stages perhaps?
“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions”
I usually let the rubbish the bludger jamesk, who obviously has no job and is assisted in his pathetic life by the very govt he hates, with handouts from c/link, go by. However this time the bias he shows (and the love for the pretty boy Pine) HAS LET THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG. Get out of the closet you pathetic person, you are a latent queer exposed.
At this rate Peter frakking Costello will end up like Felix Gaeta.
Can one actually be an anarcho-Marxist?
(serious question)
Isn’t the final stage of communism something like anarchy because the need for government has dissolved in the utopian bliss?
I’m asking again: Did anyone see the shot of Pete the mule of Malvern in today’s Age? He just doesn’t get the inalienable, non-controversial, proved not once, but two hundred thousand times, the absolute, total, complete, and un-nerving truth. The clod continues to believe he still matters in the affairs of state. There is never ending trail of broken clôches and crumbled pies where his large clogs have trodden. It continues on to the never-ending stars. It never comes to an end. His continuing presence on the outskirts of Turnbull’s Liberal Party should, by now, have become a terminal irritant to said Mr Turnbull. Until you sack him Malcolm, you will never get rid of his stench. It’s the open drain which follows you Mr Turnbull. Do something about it!
Every minute he is allowed to linger corrodes Mr Turnbull’s credibility. He has reduced vast acreages of the voting public to shame. The conservatives keep wondering why Kevin Rudd’s polling increases and their own polling is going the other way. You don’t suppose the old hausfrau of Malvern Road has anything to do with it?
I do.