OK, so that was a pretty lame excuse to run a picture of Tony Danza.
But as the small puff of dust settles over Sunday’s vaguely comical yarn suggesting that a “Two Tonys” ticket - comprising Sydney’s Tony Abbott as leader and Melbourne’s Tony Smith as deputy - is steeling itself to seize control of the Liberal Party, a broader and scarier question remains for Malcolm Turnbull.
Namely that his leadership may now be regarded as so tenuous that, especially over the coming fallow winter months when the jaded MPs among his number have more time on their hands, he may find himself drifting into that vortex of incessant, once-every-three-days leadership speculation, which eventually makes his own job totally impossible.
There’s a few people around the traps who have suffered a similar fate.
There’s Brendan Nelson for one, who sustained so many repeated leadership pin-pricks from his own side that he eventually just ran out of puff like a flaccid balloon, and signed his own death warrant by calling a spill he probably knew he was destined to lose.
There was Kim Beazley, who every time he opened his mouth, looking clumsily for the right word, or accidentally using 100 of them, which no-one other than Barry Jones had ever heard before, was the subject of immediate backgrounding of journalists by what’s euphemistically known as the Rudd “camp”.
Then there’s Simon Crean, who ended up with his own horrible acronym - ABC, Anyone But Crean - as he oversaw a shocking period of Labor introspection where he busied himself holding press conferences about something called the 60:40 rule, which goes to the split between union and rank-and-file votes at Labor’s conferences, a subject which even John Faulkner probably finds too uninteresting for discussion, be it publicly or in private.
The Crean parallel is the most alarming one for Turnbull as the gimmickry of something like a “Two Tonys” suggests desperation has started to infect sections of the party, in the same way the A-B-C white-anting did when Crean was Labor Leader.
It’s not that the contenders - both of whom are on the record as saying the entire plot is a nonsense _ are of themselves laughable as leadership contenders.
But the prospect of Tony Abbott having or being able to secure the numbers for the top job is beyond remote - too many Liberals regard him as an iconoclast and, on occasions, a bovver boy who at best would only ever make deputy, despite his intellect and his robust ideological style.
Tony Smith, a former senior advisor to Peter Costello, is a young up-and-comer who is very much in the mix for a leadership position down the track, perhaps ultimately the top job. But not now - Smith is too astute an operator to be party to any such push.
What matters for Turnbull isn’t a non-existent plot involving these two men, but the fact that some people in the party are obviously talking about it.
Given the pummelling he took in the polls last week, the last thing he can afford as he tries to get back “on message”, as they say, is the outbreak of loose talks about dream teams, generational change, wacky unity tickets which involve the Two Tonys, the Three Amigos or the Fantastic Four, as it will set him irrevocably on the path of haplessness, destined to join the club of leaders such as Crean and Nelson who had such a shocking time of it that their party wouldn’t even let them face the people.
Facebook Recommendations
Read all about it
Punch live
Up to the minute Twitter chatter
In my sports column on The Punch tomorrow: why Eurovision was easily the best game on the weekend. Mummy bloggers, you'll like this one!
Recent posts
The latest and greatest
Abbott’s crass logic: trash the Parliament in order save it
An email was sent to almost every politician in Australia this week saying that someone should cut off…
Our special forces don’t always need special treatment
We admire them, but we’re not entirely sure why. We allow them to operate in the shadows; we rarely…
A good holiday is about unrest, not rest
Like a fat full-stop, it lay in my hand. A small orange – not exactly fresh, but purchased anyway…
Nosebleed Section
choice ringside rantings
From: They must pay for one’s bitter disappointments
Michael S says:
"A teacher at Geelong Grammar had criticised her for using words that were too long, which had left her confused and had made her doubt her ability to write essays. She became ''quite distressed'' when her English marks began to fall." I can sympathise. My scholastic mentors conveyed to me a causal relationship… [read more]From: Welfare for breeders is a bonus for everyone
Change Up! says:
I have no problem paying my taxes. As a single, childless person on a very decent income, I can afford it and not have my life severely altered. Plus I understand that my taxes paying for things like schools, childcare and infrastructure is ultimately a good thing. A better community is better for me… [read more]Gentle jabs to the ribs
They must pay for one’s bitter disappointments
A private school girl’s family is sueing her elite, extremely expensive private school for not… Read more
Most commented