Liberal Party

It is Tony Abbott’s 93rd day as Leader of the Liberal Party and he’s being cheered as a hero. He’s just arrived at the Mosman RSL, one of the few affordable venues in the richest suburb on Sydney’s ultra-conservative North Shore, and the member for Warringah is not among friends but fanatics.

If Abbott is trying to argue that it’s a marathon not a sprint, and that the party has a lot of work to do ahead of polling day, tonight is not the night for such dispassionate political cliché. It feels like a dress rehearsal for a victory party.

Every single person that I speak to on the night not only believes that the Libs can win, many are saying they will win.

Continue reading "The sweetest upset of all?" »

WHEN Abraham Lincoln famously said that a house divided against itself cannot stand, he didn’t have the Liberal Party in mind. But had he been born 250 years later, he may well have.

Although, in the case of the Libs it’s more of a church than a house. Tony Abbott and Barry O’Farrell may be breathing a sigh of relief after the party’s NSW upper house preselection vote on Friday which saw David Clarke, the so called head of the party’s “religious right” fend off a challenge from the less religious right.

But what will concern them is that Clarke won by only 14 votes, which means in real terms that 7 more people voted for him than David Elliot, the former Australian Hotels Association executive being backed by Clarke’s former staffer Alex Hawke.

Continue reading "Backroom politics crash the party" »

Local candidates are the political equivalent of sausages – we might accept they are part of the democratic process, but we don’t really want to know what goes into making them.

And like sausages, local candidates come in all shapes and forms, from the top-shelf gourmet that you would be happy to eat at a Hat restaurant to a sad sack of something that reeks of fat and sawdust.

But in an era of presidential politics, do local candidates really matter? To stretch the sausage metaphor to breaking point, it really depends on what they’re made of, how they’re cooked and what else they are served with.

Continue reading "With local candidates, there’s always a snag" »

Oh the things we do for money.

Sometimes in life we have to compromise. It’s all well and good to have lofty ideals but occasionally there comes a time when the need to feast on something other than a cheese toastie overrides intellectual snobbery.

Students believe in all kinds of things they’ll eventually throw away. So, I thought, why not start throwing early? After all, how many grungy radicals do you know who, on leaving uni, ditched Trotsky for Swarovski?

Continue reading "True confessions: My time with Young Liberals" »

It’s reporting season for political parties in the 2008-09 financial year. Well in as much as political parties are forced to report in Australia.

The Government’s recent decision to stall its much publicised reform of the process means that parties still don’t have to report donations of less than $10,900.

Liberals Senator Michael Ronaldson has been jumping up and down this afternoon about union donations to the Labor Party, totalling a hefty $5.14 million Australia-wide.

Continue reading "Help us have a look at who’s funding our political parties" »

I have a dark confession to make. I love Tony Abbott.

Now don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t vote for the loon while my bum pointed down but at least he’s interesting. Half Jesuit, half crazed Millwall supporter, with a religious philosophy of “share in the love of Jesus or I’ll smash your f***en face in”. He’s the hoot we had to have.

Politics in the grey cloud Rudd blathership is boring. A Rudd press conference is like an hour on the gym bike.

Continue reading "Half Jesuit, half hooligan, and a cure for Rudd’s tedium" »

It is often said the Labor Party glorifies its history, even its notable failures – and that is the only explanation that can be given for the glorification of the Whitlam Government, given it was tossed out in the biggest landslide in Australian history after only three years.

But one important anniversary in Australian politics has gone largely unnoticed. Last week was the 60th anniversary of the Robert Menzies-led Liberal Party defeating Ben Chifley’s Labor Government in 1949.

The victory of the newly formed Liberal Party over the Chifley Labor Government led to 21 years of Liberal Coalition government. And it is no overstatement to claim that this was the single most important election in Australia during the twentieth century.

Continue reading "Menzies: the most important election win in our history" »

Whether the recent federal Liberal party showdown over the now rejected Emissions Trading Scheme develops into a thoroughgoing schism only time will tell. Malcolm Turnbull’s robust description of new federal leader Tony Abbot’s climate change thinking is a crude reminder to those Liberals celebrating the weekend’s by-election results in Bradfield and Higgins: environmental politics is here to stay and cannot be swept under the carpet by short-term circuit-breakers.

As I argued in The Australian during August, the current schism between so-called ‘moderates’, small ‘l’ liberals gathered around Turnbull and Joe Hockey, and the conservatives of Abbot and Nick Minchin’s ilk has many of the hallmarks of the 1950s ALP split over communism which spawned the Democratic Labor Party and kept Labor from office for some two decades.

Most accounts of the farcical goings on in the federal Liberal’s party room over the past few weeks have highlighted this underlying ideological conflict. The conservative coup d’état against Turnbull resulted from a fundamental policy divide over climate change dovetailing with opposition to Turnbull’s divisive crash or crash through personality.

Continue reading "Liberals fighting a Labor Party which doesn’t exist" »

THE Labor Party is making a serious miscalculation if it tries to write off Tony Abbott as the Mad Monk, the Pope’s man in Canberra, a profanity-spouting bovver boy who is so socially conservative as to be unelectable.

It will also have to be careful not to attack him as the captive of lunatic elements over climate change. While there are undoubtedly plenty of nutty conspiracy theorists in the climate skeptic camp, there are also many thousands of well-adjusted but anxious Australians who simply do not believe that the Rudd Government has explained the need for such swift and dramatic action on climate change, especially when other bigger nations are doing nothing.

Tony Abbott’s victory in the Party Room is a microcosm of his potential electoral appeal at the national level. As Joe Hockey found out the hard way, you have to stand for something in politics.

Continue reading "Tony Abbott: I’ll slug it out" »

Joe Hockey is about to make the biggest decision of his life.

It’s a decision which goes to the core of his very being. His reputation for decency. His determination to be remembered not as a clever politician who knew how to get ahead, but a person who entered public life to make a contribution to the greater good.

It’s a decision which also involves one of his best friends – Malcolm Turnbull, who today cast the moral dimensions of the dilemma facing his mate of 20 years as he decides whether to run for the Liberal Party leadership. “Joe and I are very good friends as you know,” Turnbull said. “We talk a lot, we have very similar views on most issues, our families are very close, he is a good man.”

Continue reading "Hockey’s choice is between personal and party loyalty" »

We gave Malcolm a lend of the Party, but the members want it back.

This is the clear message I have received from Liberal Party members by way of 7,500 emails (and rising) and hundreds of phone calls – not to mention close encounters of the personal kind.

The claim that the Coalition Party Room agreed to support the Labor Party’s amended C.P.R.S. legislation imposing an E.T.S. Tax is not true. The Party Room rejected it.

Continue reading "Bronnie Bishop: Malcolm, we want our party back now" »

In order to help people better understand the last week, an anonymous Liberal front bencher has made available excerpts of their private diary to comedians Matt Kenneally Toby Halligan.

MONDAY 23/11/09 MORNING

Booked holiday flights to Hawaii for Friday evening.

ETS bill before senate tomorrow. Still don’t understand it.

Air conditioning was playing up. Stood in front of fridge for a while and felt better.

Continue reading "Secret diary extracts of a confused Liberal MP" »

After a week when the Liberals took decisive action to reduce their political footprint Joe Hockey is sitting snugly between ‘Someone Else’ and ‘Don’t Know’ as the preferred Liberal leader.

If politics really is Hollywood for ugly people, then this week’s Essential Report shows Joe is about to slip on the political swimsuit and start strutting his stuff by default.

The polling confirms what we all supected – the nation is over Malcolm Turnbull, it can’t abide Tony Abbott and it doesn’t really know who Julie Bishop or Andrew Robb are. As for Kevin Andrews, like his own party, we didn’t bother to ask. This leaves just three credible options for the Liberals: Don’t Know, Someone Else and Joe Hockey.

Continue reading "The only beauty contest that Joe Hockey will ever win" »

THERE is a hilarious moment in the Hitchhikers’s Guide to the Galaxy when it is explained to one of the last remaining humans, Arthur Dent, that things are not what they seemed.

Shattering his life-long assumptions following the Earth’s destruction - that’s intergalactic progress - a higher being explains to the hapless Dent, that all those white mice in labs that humans thought were part of various experiments, were in fact, conducting an experiment on us. Humans were not as wise as they thought and now, their planet had been obliterated to make way for a hyperspace bypass.

I thought of this on two counts in recent days. First, there is the parallel with what Malcolm Turnbull, has been telling his troops: do nothing about climate change and the Earth as we know, will be destroyed.

Continue reading "Libs adrift in a hostile galaxy" »

Bizarrely enough I just bumped into Malcolm Turnbull. And despite the chaos unfolding around him, he looked relaxed and happy. Asked if it was all over, he said: “No, far from it.”

The Opposition Leader was lunching at Tabou, a terrific French restaurant in Surry Hills, Sydney, honouring a long-standing date with a bunch of senior journalists from The Australian. I was grabbing a quick bite with a mate and bumped into the Opposition Leader at the top of the stairs. He was scathing in his assessment of the Right’s tactics over the CPRS.

“What they have done is like political terrorism. They have basically tried to blow up the party,” he said.

Continue reading "Relaxed and at lunch, Turnbull says he’ll survive" »

The battle for the leadership of the Liberal Party is now looking more like a contest for a high school SRC as Joe Hockey turns to social media to ask people what he should do over the ETS - and by default, whether he should shaft Malcolm Turnbull. He also wrote on Twitter today: “Hey team re The ETS. Give me your views please on the policy and political debate. I really want your feedback.”

Social media tragics will hail this as a ground-breaking moment in participatory democracy. Others - I’d call them “almost everybody”  - will just shake their heads in disbelief that the alternative government of Australia has been reduced to tweeting the punters for help as its most senior members become paralysed by panic, opportunism and expediency.

A quick stocktake of where things are at with the leadership:

Continue reading "Joe’s Facebook folly makes Libs look like bigger Twits" »

THE so-called “Turnbull experiment”, which many Liberals entered into only reluctantly when Brendan Nelson imploded, is over.

The party that briefly departed from the divisive politics of John Howard, now looks to be lurching back to the right. This is a classic sucker move induced by the success of the centrist Kevin Rudd phenomenon.

There, on the right, it will find ideological purity but little or no scope for electoral success. The federal Liberal Party has just adopted a recipe for failure so popular in numerous state-based Liberal oppositions who are similarly unelectable.

Continue reading "Turnbull experiment is over - are the Libs over too?" »

Malcolm Turnbull has retained his position as leader of the Liberal Party after winning a secret ballot on a motion to spill the leadership by 48-35. Punch editors will be posting the latest developments, commentary, pictures and video here as they come to hand. Times are AEDT. Refresh this page for updates.

4pm: Question Time over, the Libs limped their way through it the poor sods, they looked like a footy team that had just got thumped in the GF. Read our coverage of the day unfolded below. I will post a new piece later today wrapping up Turnbull’s two days of hell, and his future from here.

1.55pm: Time for Question Time. The Punch will be covering it live here - join in, should be fun.

1.50pm: Battered Libs limping their way towards chamber for QT. One MP just told me this is their equivalent of DLP split. Total and unabiding fury between the two camps. MPs also talking up hockey as best consensus candidate for leadership change in new year.

1.41pm: News round-ups of the events at the partyroom meeting now available at news.com.au and The Australian.

1.33pm: It’s certainly a better result than yesterday on the CPRS - but it won’t give Turnbull any security. Almost half the party still out to get him…

1.31pm: Joe Hockey speaking after the meeting. “Clearly this issue has done us incredible damage and I hope the Australian people forgive us…”. Emphasises the Liberal Party is a progressive party. Says given the mood of the party the 48-35 result was a good result for Turnbull.

1.29pm: It’s understood Joe Hockey was sounded out by the right for leadership on condition he opposed the CPRS. Said he’s not interested in starting his leadership career by selling his soul.

1.28pm: Kevin Andrews says he accepts the result of the ballot, but 35 is a significant number in the party room, which makes a strong point about the position on the CPRS. He says of Turnbull: “of course he has my support, he’s the leader of the party.”

1.23pm: No spill. Motion lost 48-35 in a secret ballot.

1.14pm: Cannot find a single Lib who is taking Kevin Andrews’ candidacy seriously or as a genuine threat. With Abbott not in the mix Turnbull shouldn’t get rolled.

1.13pm: Parliament security, at the request of the Opposition Leader’s office, are preventing journalists from congregating near the party room. Not sure why, as people inside the meeting will text developments to the press gallery anyway.

12.56pm: Samantha Maiden of The Australian writes on Twitter: turnbull has just walked into office with dep COS credlin. looks really upset

Continue reading "Live blog: Liberals in crisis" »

Update 10:55am: Shadow Cabinet signed off this morning on Malcolm Turnbull’s deal with the Government over the CPRS, and it is now being debated by the Coalition Party Room.

No. But he’s the Right Faction’s stalking horse should Malcolm Turnbull falter in his handling of the CPRS - which in the eyes of the more skeptical and conservative Libs he is already doing. And if there is a blow-up in the Party Room today, Kevin Andrews is expected to run for the leadership.

In what is looming as a chaotic and unpredictable day, the Right Faction is positioning itself to inflict a potentially mortal wound on Turnbull by moving a spill in protest at his excessive concessions over the carbon pollution reduction scheme.

Kevin Andrews is not the Right’s preferred candidate - but he is the one who has volunteered to go over the top on behalf of the party’s conservatives. He told SkyNews ominously yesterday that “At the moment we have a leader but I am a loyal servant of the party and I will do any job that I am asked to do,” Mr Andrews told Sky News.

Continue reading "Is this the next Leader of the Liberal Party?" »

The Punch has now closed a piece it published during the Utegate affair involving Paul Lindwall, a former senior member of Malcom Turnbull’s team.

I also want to apologise to Mr Lindwall for any embarrassment or distress the piece caused him. The background is as follows: on the Monday after Treasury official Godwin Grech gave what is now acknowledged as confected testimony to the Senate hearing on the Utegate affair, there was much speculation as to what the subsequent AFP investigation would unearth.

I was told by several sources that the AFP wanted to establish who in Mr Turnbull’s office had been talking to Godwin Grech, and Mr Lindwall was named as that person.

Continue reading "I was wrong" »

It’s a strange time of year in Canberra.

Millions of bogong moths descend upon Parliament House’s Capital Hill during their annual migration. Accompanying them are hundreds of big black birds against a grey sky: crows, magpies and currawongs flooding Parliament’s many courtyards to feast on the clueless prey lying in around the building.

Walking through this bleak scene I was thankful for the fact that I at least wasn’t a Coalition MP looking out my window at huge crows devouring dying and confused helpless moths – it would’ve all been a bit too close to home.

Continue reading "The Liberal Party is digging up enough dirt for everybody" »

Anyone wondering why Kevin Rudd continues to defy political gravity could do well to consider the latest Essential Report that drills down into the issues of importance to Australian voters.

Like a human pogo stick, Rudd just keeps bouncing back: it doesn’t seem to matter what he’s hit with – global financial meltdown, environmental destruction, even an influx of asylum seekers.

No matter the political issue – and we have tested 13 of them – Rudd has the Opposition covered – even the traditional Liberal strong points of economic management and interest rates can not deliver Turnbull a win.

Continue reading "Our beloved Kevin Rudd is a human pogo stick" »

South Australian Opposition Leader Isobel Redmond, who’s first action when she won the post was to ban swearing in the party room, has today said she’d be happy to be tasered.

So having 50,000 volts of electricity shot through your body might not be as embarrassing as say, sniffing a colleague’s chair, or being outed as having carried a teddy bear around in your uni days, but it’s pretty stupid.

And it makes you wonder what we’ve done to deserve politicians who think we’re so easily bought with cheap stunts.

Continue reading "It’s the lot of the Opposition Leader to humiliate oneself" »

Liberal MP Peter Dutton should have known better than to whinge about support from the good people of Dickson – he could’ve asked his predecessor Cheryl Kernot about that one.

On election night 1998 - when it looked like her attempt to go from Democrat leader in the Senate to a Labor MP was going to end in spectacular failure - Kernot had a famous dummy spit live on the ABC about the quality of seat she had been given by the Labor Party :

“Well, I’ll just say this—Mary Delahunty is in Parliament,” referring to the fact that the Victorian MP had been given a safe seat when entering politics earlier that year. Of course, Kernot did end up pulling ahead that night and serving one term as the member for Dickson but got rolled three years later by none other than current opposition health spokesman Peter Dutton.

Continue reading "Who’d want to be the member for Dickson?" »

It’s a somewhat over-worn cliche that in politics disunity is death. Malcolm Turnbull may have emerged from yesterday’s party room with a result, but there’s no denying at the moment the Federal Coalition is far from unified, and voters have started wondering if indeed it might be fatal for the political career of the Opposition Leader.

Two weeks ago The Punch set out to explain exactly why Kevin Rudd was so wildly popular according opinion polls. This weekend we wanted to find out what it was that has driven the Opposition Leader’s polling figures into the mud.

And we found Mr Turnbull’s biggest problem is the perception he’s lost authority over his troops.

Continue reading "Why is this man so unpopular?" »

Peter Costello has decided to leave his seat of Higgins in Melbourne before the next election meaning that the Liberals will face two by-elections in close succession or even on the same day.

The former Treasurer is yet to give a reason as to why he has left early but he has managed to turn Malcolm Turnbull’s current position from scary to downright horrific. This is like that scene from the latest Saw movie even the actors apparently had to walk out on.

One upside to the departure is that the distraction of Peter Costello will be over with once and for all for Malcolm Turnbull. The downside is this: two men who were the most senior remaining members of the Howard Government, Brendan Nelson and now Peter Costello, have decided to leave Parliament early causing by-elections in the middle of what is already a crisis for Malcolm Turnbull and his party over the ETS.

Continue reading "Things just went from bad to horror movie for Malcolm" »

UPDATED 6:20 PM Following valedictory speech:

A dignified and teary eyed Brendan Nelson bid farewell to Parliament today, but as it’s also the anniversary of the end of his leaderhsip his ghost will be determined to haunt Malcolm Turnbull for quite a while yet.

Like Jacob Marley to Ebenezer Scrooge, tonight the ghost of Brendan Nelson will wake Malcolm Turnbull rustling pages of a complex ETS policy that he has been tasked with finding appropriate amendments on for eternity.

At the end of the apparition Nelson tosses the bundles to petrified Turnbull and tells him in a spooky whisper “of course you could do better couldn’t you?” – cue a screaming Turnbull who wakes up with a pile of ETS legislation at the end of his bed.

Continue reading "The ghost of Brendan Nelson will haunt Turnbull" »

If you ever suspected that our major political parties got their leaders mixed up on the way to Question Time, this week’s Essential Report will come as no surprise.

In a sign of life catching up with the punch-line, half the nation now thinks that our political parties are becoming closer ­ and the majority of them think it’s no bad thing.

The convergence of our major parties has not happened overnight, the rise of centrist politics around the world has been a hallmark of the post-Cold War consensus. But in Australia it has reached its zenith, where the last two leaders of the Liberal Party both openly flirted with their political opponents.

Continue reading "Pepsi v Coke - How to tell Labor from Liberal" »

I WOULDN’T be surprised if Malcolm Turnbull feels like a contestant on Dancing with the Stars.

After revelations that his quickstep to the Utegate affair proved to be a step in the wrong direction, he is now trying to sidestep being voted off the Liberal Party dance floor and salvage his reputation.

As Parliament resumes this week, he will be hoping he can find a new routine to take attention off his previous faux pas and distance himself further from his now-disgraced former dance partner Godwin Grech.

Continue reading "Is this Turnbull’s last dance?" »

On the eve of the Auditor-General’s report into the Utegate affair, the senior Treasury official at the centre of the scandal has revealed why he fabricated the email. The exclusive interview with Treasury’s OzCar scheme director Godwin Grech in today’s Australian has the potential to inflict new damage on the fragile leadership of Malcolm Turnbull, as it shows Grech believes he was used by the Liberals for political gain.

With today’s A-G’s report set to clear Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan of any wrongdoing over their association with Ipswich car dealer John Grant, the Grech interview will compound Turnbull’s headaches because it goes to suggestions of pressure and manipulation, which Paul Colgan canvasses in the post below over the Opposition Leader’s Australian Story appearance last night.

Speaking from a hospital in Canberra where he is under psychiatric care, Grech tells The Australian he only co-operated with the Opposition over the email because he believed they were set to oppose the OzCar finance bill resulting in 2000 job losses. It’s a claim the Liberals deny, saying they were always going to support the bill, and that it was Grech who pestered them for meetings, not the other way around. But their denials will struggle to be heard above quotes from Grech such as these:

Continue reading "The Godwin Grech interview that could sink Turnbull" »

The Rudd Government, recognising that their Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is a lemon, has followed the same strategy as a car manufacturer and rebadged the product under the label of a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS). 

They have not, however, improved the product nor does their ETS comply with its new label.  The ETS remains a process whereby the Government sells or gifts the right to continue polluting the atmosphere to those industries most notorious for so doing.  Rudd further expects to gain $11bn of Tax Revenue from the process.

He sells this proposal under the delusion that there will be a market based response from those so taxed, which will cause them to reduce their emissions. 

Continue reading "Malcolm, most Libs think you’re wrong on climate" »

Remember public policy debates?  Where once were national conversations we now find a wall of sound comprised of debate deadening sound bites. 

There is nothing to discuss about the merits or otherwise of pork barrelling in 2009 because we’re actually ‘building an education revolution’.  Similarly, opposition to debt is choosing to ‘do nothing’ in the face of a ‘rolling global financial crisis’. 

Throwing other people’s taxes at the dead and incarcerated is actually ‘decisive action to stay ahead of the curve’.  Questioning the Emissions Trading Scheme is to be a ‘Neanderthal’, a ‘sceptic’ and ‘denialist’ – the modern day equivalent of refusing to accept that the earth is round.

Continue reading "Our brains have been shrunk by the spin cycle" »

Australians want their politicians to be “in touch”. They want us to listen.

Adapting to new technologies is critically important for politicians. In the 1960s, successful politicians had to embrace the new medium of television.

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In the US, John F Kennedy understood the immense power of communicating directly into people’s living rooms

Continue reading "Get busy Tweeting or get busy dying" »

Like a used nappy, is it time to toss out Blocker and Liberal Lite?

In another era, Malcolm Turnbull would have been Liberal premier of NSW. He would have been a good one, very possibly exceptional. He would have combined the reforming zeal of the last decent premier, Nick Greiner, with a studied expertise around complex urban issues which successive Labor premiers have so spectacularly failed to grasp.

Anyone who has heard Turnbull speak passionately and with vision about the future of Sydney will understand that Australia’s only global city and the country’s economic engine room demands knowledge and leadership of that quality.

Instead, Malcolm’s in the middle of the federal Liberal party muddle that has contrived to comprehensively stuff up what should have been an orderly transition to Peter Costello.  Turnbull has quickly been found wanting in Canberra, his flaws and foibles stripped bare by Utegate.

Continue reading "Australia needs Turnbull to be elected ... as Premier" »

There is a national consensus that Malcolm Turnbull had a shocker last week, but dig below the surface and the story is even grimmer.

While a string of opinion polls have chronicled the fall in support for the Opposition leader, Essential Research has conducted detailed character research into the two leaders to find his leadership entering the terminal phase.

In 14 out of 15 categories, we find Kevin Rudd enjoying advantages on the positives and disadvantages on the negatives. And the one category where Turnbull has a better rating - ‘demanding’ - may well be the one that bought him undone last week.

Continue reading "15 Reasons Why Malcolm Turnbull Will Never Be PM" »

Forget Malcolm Turnbull. The biggest casualty of the Utegate debacle might not be the individual but the organisation, with the federal Liberals now looking like the hapless state oppositions in NSW, SA, Victoria and Queensland which dutifully turn up every few years on polling day for some ritualised humiliation.

Turnbull has pulled off an unprecedented and unenviable hat-trick in the polls this morning. He’s copped it in the neck in Newspoll, his approval rating falling an unprecedented 19 per cent, the biggest single drop in Newspoll’s 25-year history, with the party vote dropping three points to give Labor a thumping 56 to 44 lead, two-party preferred. He’s been flogged by Nielsen, his disapproval rocketing up 13 points to a whopping 60 per cent. And he’s been caned by Galaxy, with more than half the voters saying he was at best deceitful over the Utegate affair.

Whether Turnbull is safe or not may no longer be the question. The bigger questions is whether the party itself can survive the horrors of the past seven days.

Continue reading "Liberals teetering on the brink of irrelevance" »

“You lying Labor bastard” read the mail from north-west Tasmania, “Piss off”. It was hate mail from heaven. Let me explain.

It was mid 2007 and I was Labor’s National Campaign Director. We had started a nation wide campaign about a less popular aspect of the Howard Government’s policy agenda. Part of that campaign was an informative pamphlet about the finer points of the policy. It was, of course, sprinkled with the odd bit of political rhetoric and carefully constructed messages.
The hate mail was return mail.  A loyal Coalition voter had decided to give me a bit of “what-for” with a thick black pen. It was heavenly because I knew the pamphlets were actually going out to voters (a constant anxiety for any campaign director). I became even happier as the weeks rolled on and the Coalition hate mail intensified from across the country.

Continue reading "Heavenly hate mail and the Lindsay pamphlet scandal" »

Basic Greek tendencies dating back to the ancient Athenians have never left politics - not for a second. We invented Democracy - δημοκρατια means “people” and “force” or “power” -  and although that was a major positive, it’s become apparent that a life-long commitment to a variety of Greek concepts continues to plague Australian politics.

The Greeks have many contradictions - I suppose that’s what makes us so unique. History has been both kind and cruel to us. We gave birth to brilliant minds that came up with ideas that have enabled us to be more civilized, to have rights and to have a voice.

The contradiction here lies in the fact that those same brilliant Athenians drifted into departments that were pioneering in a way that more prudish cultures might consider shameful. But let’s not open that can of feta. God, no. Back to the politics of today.

Continue reading "In your dreams: sex siren’s brush with very liberal Greek" »

Editor’s note: David Gazard was Peter Costello’s political advisor from 2003 to 2007 and is one of his closest confidantes.

As Australian politics has become more professional, it has become more brutal.

Gone are the days, by and large, of a certain cross-party respect for each other and certain boundaries that are never crossed. They have been replaced by machine men, spin doctors and campaign managers more focussed on one thing: winning at all costs.

It’s a harder, unforgiving and relentless environment, where people who openly describe themselves as haters abound, and are lionised for describing themselves as thus.

Continue reading "Costello’s faith and decency did not suit brutal times" »

As of this morning there was one other person in Australia who knew that Peter Costello was quitting politics today - his wife Tanya.

A few hours later he was on his feet in the nation’s Parliament, the subject of surprised, hastily-composed tributes from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull, on an amazing career spanning almost 20 years, 11 years of them as treasurer.

Those closest to him are today happy and relieved that this genuine family man can now spend some proper time out of the spotlight with those he loves most.

But there is also a sense of melancholy at what might have been.

Continue reading "Party’s over as Peter Costello bows out of politics" »

How about this? It’s from 1995:

A lesser-known Guns ‘N’ Roses song called 14 Years is a particularly apt theme for Costello’s day. Below is some video to listen to while browsing the post:

Lyrics excerpt:

I try and feel the sunshine
You bring the rain
You try and hold me down
With your complaints…

... You know, I’ve been the beggar…
I’ve played the thief
I was the dog…they all tried to beat

But it’s been 14 years of silence
It’s been 14 years of pain
It’s been 14 years that are gone forever
And I’ll never have again.

After Peter Costello resigned it’s worth re-living some of his highs and lows as featured on the front pages of newspapers. You can share your favourite memories of him here - and we’ll take requests on this post for any particular front pages you want reprinted.

This, from July 2006, also deserves a special place in the sun. The rest are below the fold.

Continue reading "It’s been 14 years of silence, 14 years of pain for Pete" »

UPDATE: this is a refiled version of The Punch’s lead from this morning’s edition, which came on the same day Peter Costello confirmed in the nation’s Parliament at 2pm that he would not renominate for Higgins. We will be posting more analysis this afternoon.

PETER Costello has become a permanently destabilising influence within the Liberal Party and should get out of politics unless he’s prepared to run for the leadership or rule out mounting a challenge, a growing number of Liberal MPs believe.

With June 30 looming as the date by which Mr Costello must decide whether to re-nominate for his seat of Higgins, fed-up Liberals believe he should only do so again if he can give a clear indication either way as to his leadership intentions.

Continue reading "Party’s over Pete you’re free to go, fed-up Libs tell Punch" »

What’s your verdict on Peter Costello? How should he be remembered?

Share your unabashed judgments, favourite quotes, tributes and gloating farewells here.

And we should remember this:

Peter Costello has become a permanently destabilising influence within the Liberal Party and should get out of politics unless he’s prepared to run for the leadership or rule out mounting a challenge, a growing number of Liberal MPs believe.

With June 30 looming as the date by which Mr Costello must decide whether to re-nominate for his seat of Higgins, fed-up Liberals believe he should only do so again if he can give a clear indication either way as to his leadership intentions.

In a special report on Mr Costello’s future, The Punch can reveal that the jockeying has begun in Melbourne for his blue-ribbon seat.

Continue reading "Smiles all round as Cozza quits" »

I have a friend in the Liberal Party. Not someone I agree with but a friend nonetheless. His name is Brian Loughnane and he is their Federal Director. Every so often I used to join him for coffee. In the beginning it was like a meeting in Panmunjeom (that hut in the Korean Demilitarised Zone) although the back verandah at the Kurrajong Hotel in Canberra was a bit less formal.

The discussion was not as intense. Most of the discussions were pre-negotiations about the leaders’ debate in the federal election. Nothing was ever given away, no information traded and loyalty to your leader was always a given (whatever the circumstances). After a few of these meetings we’d chat about politics (usually in the US and the UK) and I grew to like the bloke.

One of the reasons we got on was a mutual sense of how difficult our respective jobs could be. He had done tough stints as Downer’s Chief of Staff in Opposition and I was more than half way through a decade long stint at the ALP National Secretariat. Both of us had seen politics and politicians at their best and their worst.

Continue reading "Liberal Party’s 14-year weapon of mass distraction" »

If Peter Costello does decide not to contest the next election, the party will not have to look too hard for candidates to fill the blue-ribbon seat.

The executive director of the Institute of Public Affairs, John Roskam, is the first to confirm publicly that he will nominate should Mr Costello not meet the June 30 deadline.

At a meeting with The Punch at the IPA offices in Melbourne’s Collins Street - which Roskam describes only half-jokingly as “Australia’s neo-con headquarters” - Roskam makes it clear that he isn’t calling on Costello to chuck it in.

But the 41-year-old married father of twins says that, with the constant speculation surrounding Mr Costello’s leadership plans, there is a chance for the Liberals to opt instead for change and renewal. 

Continue reading "John Roskam: Is this the next member for Higgins?" »

While Peter Costello often cites his love of serving the people of Higgins as the reason for staying on in Parliament it’s unclear whether the feeling is wholly mutual.

The Punch spent last Thursday in the electorate of Higgins talking to the people caught in the middle of the Liberal Party’s domestic dispute and - frankly - there’s not a lot of concern about what Peter Costello does with his life.

Standing outside his sunglasses shop on Toorak Road I asked 42-year old Emidio what he thought of Costello’s indecision:

“I think he’s been a positive contribution to the country but that doesn’t mean he can’t be destructive to the party. But I think long term it can only be helpful to have someone like him; I don’t know whether that’s helpful to the Liberal Party though. But I don’t think he’s a bad bloke.”

Continue reading "On the mean streets of South Yarra, the lights are on…" »

Liberal MP Alby Schultz has just got into a physical fight with one his colleagues, frontbencher Chris Pearce, during a heated exchange in this morning’s Liberal Party Room meeting in Canberra.

Schultz, whose hatred of the National Party knows no bounds and once said that he’d “slaughtered better animals” than Barnaby Joyce, was at the centre of a fiery argument among MPs about three-cornered contests where Libs and National candidates run against each other. 

Schultz became so angry during this morning’s debate that he stormed out of the meeting and, as he left, fellow Liberal Chris Pearce quipped “have a nice day” - at which point Schultz turned and shirt-fronted him. Apparently three MPs had to restrain Mr Schultz.

Continue reading "Punchmania hits Canberra as Liberal MP shoves colleague" »