The dying days of the Fourth Reich: it's the 2007 AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL ELECTION

turnbull came up rough. i heard he used to live in a rented house

Wow, that's harsh. And he was forced to go to Sydney Grammar School. How he overcame those odds I don't know.

a triumph of the human spirit

I am enjoying Turnbull vs Costello (aka Two Liberal Spivs with Handbags at Dawn).

They might as well give up the next election already.

lol Hewson

still my favourite moderate spiv

Any specific link for all this, for interested readers?

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/you-missed-your-chance-peter-20090221-8e70.html?page=-1

Hewson was a great moderate but.. er.. a hopeless politician who gave off a scary right-wing loony vibe when nothing could have been further from the truth. I think we are far better off not having had him as Prime Minister, but far poorer for him not staying on in parliament. Ideas people tend to scare Australians.

Which is why Kevin Rudd is such a colourless, horrible drip. He's only slightly better than Howard!

Week's events in review: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/daggers-are-drawn-between-costello-and-turnbull-20090220-8dkp.html

Hewson lets rip on Costello: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/you-missed-your-chance-peter-20090221-8e70.html

As an aside, did anyone see highlights of that memorial service? Ruddy does the small-c conservative nationalist bullshit better than Howard does (I mean, he even flew in Princess Anne for it).

Still, between this and the GHEIGH MP SEX BLACKMAIL SCANDAL, politics is interesting again.

Unfortunately, I fear it'll just be some random Labor backbencher.

Rang a mate in the Young Libs. He's got NO idea, except he noted that the way the article was worded - i.e. didn't KNOW which state they were from, blackmailer lived in Sydney most of his life, meant it could well be outside NSW/Vic where he lived and was charged, and that he reckons it's likely someone that's been repeatedly smeared before.

Even googleproofing won't get me to reveal the name. It's gonna be revealed n a week anyway.

Two years later...the Liberal Party was considering today to make Kevin Andrews its leader!!

Why not just kick back, relax, and give the next decade to the K-Rudd Krew?

haw

(I still maintain they should have Tony Abbott as leader for the LOL factor alone.)

― Assault! Assault! (King Boy Pato), Tuesday, September 16, 2008 10:59 PM (1 year ago)

still otm

Better than Kevin Andrews, that would be like making a particularly racist plate of blancmange your leader.

possible leadership spill tonight!!!

:(

they should just split the party and be done with it

I really want Kevin Andrews to be leader, it's difficult to think of someone simultaneously so evil and so uncharismatic. It shouldn't be possible to describe someone as "like Ruddick but with a personality bypass."

Duelling Kevins. Feel the charisma.

Kevin Andrews so crappy on 7.30 Report last night. "Malcolm should embrace everyone in the party, whatever their view" over and over again. Difficult to see what this means practically apart from Malcolm folding and agreeing with the Minchin Crew.

So five lib frontbenchers have resigned, and I'm completely confused now. Which'll learn me for not bothering with political news. Its oer the emissions trading scheme - were the resginees aganist there being one at all, or did they want it more tough, or..? (Im assuming the former but god knows)

Basically the resignees/anti-Malcolm faction are a coalition of two only slightly different position - the hardliners who are all "no ETS no way no how", and then recalcitrants who want to wait until after Copenhagen before agreeing to an ETS (as if Copenhagen will make a difference one way or another). Either way they think agreeing to ETS now is a disaster.

At least some of it is a more generalised, inchoate protest vote against Malcolm Turnbull emphasising the Liberal Party's liberalism at the expense of its conservatism.

So what's happening now.

joe hockey going to push for leadership takeover tomorrow

You people have funny names down there.

Your names are funnier. You people have names like Preston Schifflebein, Faith Popcorn, and Rudi Dangler.

America is just wonderful that way! :-D

Yeah but we have Abbott and Costello! :D

Or er... we did, until this week.

wish i could find the offending paragraph on abbott & costello that got removed from bob ellis' book

about one changing political persuation after banging the other's then-girlfriend

ABBBOTTTTTT

looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool

Oh FUCK NO. WAAHHT. Stupid little head-bigeared bastard!

http://i45.tinypic.com/23rtmw3.jpg

As one of my friends just posted elsewhere "liberals elect blow up doll as new leader"

He'll be at least as effective as William Hague wa...wait a minute.

Anyway our Abbott would do a much better job than yours so let's send her over so she can tell the Liberals to go away and usher in better times.

Huzzah! I'd vote that.

Holy shit. This is madness. Ah well, why worry, it's not as though I want the Liberals to get back in. Crazy-arse fascist numbnuts that they are.

From http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/01/2757994.htm

Then there's Tony Abbott - the great 'People Skills' himself, whose defiance of political orthodoxy is beginning to rival Mr Turnbull's own.

What other leadership candidate would have had the magnificence, on Sunday, to ignore not just one, and not even two, but three central tenets of the political picture opportunity?

"Don't wear silly hats" has been defied before.

"Don't wear budgie smugglers" has also been defied, though with tragic results for the former NSW Liberal leader Peter Debnam, whose photoshoot in the briefest of swimming costumes heralded his imminent failure at the polls in 2007.

"If you have an extremely hairy back, for God's sake keep your shirt on" is not so much an accepted political maxim as an article of common sense, but it is sage advice nonetheless.

And yet: There was People Skills on Sunday, prancing about in the shallows wearing naught but a scrap of lycra, a lifesaver's cap and a fascinatingly goatish pelt.

Countdown to media revival of abortion debate with new liberal leader Abbott, in 3...2...

Oh god no, aaargh.

I am enjoying the fun ride that is Barnaby Joyce: Shadow Finance Minister with policy ripped straight from the LaR0uche krew.

^ congrats on not c+p'ing T. Martin's tweet about Joyce

As if I'd steal T. Martin's work and use it on ILX.

Meanwhile, I am perplexed by my cousin's choice of Facebook groups. First she signs up to the group "No Kevin By 2011" and five minutes later she has become a fan of Bob Hawke. I...don't get it.