Costello: 'I don't want the leadership' (1 Viewer)

[katie tully]

The Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce hit back at Mr Costello's attacks on him, calling the long-term leadership aspirant a disloyal hypocrite who had undermined Dr Nelson with his self-promotion.

His name is Barnaby, lol. I don't like Barnaby much, he's a bit of a lollygagger.

 

[Lentern]

If I were Turnball I wouldn't challenge until times were better for the opposition. Wait until people are sick of the government and actually thinking about alternatives.

Spot on, the moment maketh the man not the other way round. No one term governments in post war history and irrespective of your ideologies Rudd has substantial political ability all adds up to a labor re-election. For Turnbull the dream time to take on the leadership is about eight months after rudd's first re-election. And not a moment sooner.

If you are leader straight after the election of a government or their first re-election you face these massive opinion poll leads to the government which gradually stabilise after a year or a little more to be more reflective of the status quo, but they undermine your leadership and do considerable damage. He is not as talented as Costello or Turnbull, but Nelson is not a hopeless politician, indeed his political abilities are probably that of Howard, poor old Nelson just didn't have 13 year old labor government, Mark Latham and 9/11+Tampa all going for him. Nelson could probably beat a 10 year old+ government, not a younger one though, providing a competent politician heads the government. If for example Julia was made prime minister and she made Laurrie Ferguson her deputy than Nelson could probably beat them if they were more than 3 years old.

In truth what the liberals need to do is just send in a sacrificial lamb, a suicide bomber even, someone whom will ultimately lose a landslide but do plenty to undermine Rudd's image in the post leadership years. Really the best person to do such a thing would be Bronwyn Bishop, but that's silly, I have doubts about Mr Abbotts ability to draw Rudd into a dogfight, suicidal as Abbott may be. Now Hockey, the site of a big, beefy bloke with the wit to dance with Keating and a powerful, booming voice(it can be useful) belligerently attacking Rudd I reckon would be enough to draw some nasty out of Rudd. Then if Hockey continued for about six months after an election loss before recieving a challenge from say Bishop or Abbott creating speculation that Hockey has lost the support of his party... Joe wins the challenges but it is clear his days are limmited, eventually he resigns his position as leader, Turnbull finally says "oh if you insist" and nominates himself, wins and goes into the election as the charming, polite moderate.

Nearly impossible to arrange, I was more keen on Costello because I thought he'd have more influence in the party and could actually be able to nominate Hockey as leader and so forth but despite my impression he was playing it cool so when he finally did stand he was widely accepted by the party instead of with reluctance he seems to be rapidly burning all his bridges and Lord Downers departure only added to his woes.

Bottom line is installing Turnbul as leader now and seeing Costello depart a few weeks later would mean the libs had effectively taited their three most electable in a space of about a year. With Lord Downer gone as well they could well have lost four of their top six. I wouldn't actually complain if they did though.