BALDRICK: I’d love to be a flier. Up there where the air is clear.
BLACKADDER: The chances of the air being clear anywhere near you, Baldrick, are zero.
“Clear air” is the new black in politics. “Narrative” is so August 2008. I can’t help but think of Baldrick whenever someone suggests that Brendan Nelson can, now that Peter Costello has kinda sorta vacated the field, get some “clear air” in which to perform. Nelson certainly doesn’t — as far as I can tell from press conferences — have Baldrick’s foul odour, but he has the same chances of finding clear air. The only place the bloke is going to find clear air now is in a wind tunnel.
Not that he never had it. He had plenty of clear air earlier this year. It didn’t do him any good. It merely made sure that everyone was watching when he stuffed up, which he proceeded to do on a number of occasions.
I keep doing a reality check on all this. Surely it’s merely because, being in the Press Gallery, I just want to see a leadership challenge. Surely these are experienced political operators, and what would I know being on the sidelines. But I can’t work out how it can be possibly be politically smart to leave Nelson there, even if Malcolm Turnbull would prefer to wait until even party conservatives are calling him and telling him to finish it off.
Andrew Robb’s argument that the best thing for the party is for everyone to knuckle down and get on with their jobs is true enough, but it’s not going to happen. Not with Costello still on the backbench, not with everyone waiting for Nelson’s next gaffe, not with the clock ticking, every second and every opinion poll taking Nelson closer to the end.
And not with Tony Abbott and other, more anonymous, Liberals opening their yaps every day to offer their own self-interested take on events.
The only people knuckling down and getting on with the job will be Kevin Rudd and his ministers, confident they can operate without serious pressure from the other side. And Rudd only looks vulnerable when he’s under pressure.
Costello has denied that the incessant speculation of recent months has damaged his party – and that in any event, nothing he could have said would’ve ended it. If he means that, he is being staggeringly obtuse. More likely, this whole saga has been quite deliberate on his part.
This entire act, from the time he declared he was writing a book, appears to have been an extended act of revenge on his own party, on the people who refused to accept him, on those rejected him even when they knew they were stuffed under Howard’s leadership. And as revenge it is quite brilliant. The fact that he has barely had to lift a finger — that indeed it depended on his silence and inaction – made it all the better. The damage on the party was entirely self-inflicted; Costello merely declined to do anything to stop it. How perfect is that?
That’s why he continues to stay in Parliament, declining to declare his political career over – he knows that his merely presence will continue to drive his colleagues mad with frustration and speculation. And if it helps to stymie Malcolm Turnbull for even a second, that’s icing on the cake.
His party can end all this whenever it likes, by installing Turnbull and a decent deputy. Preferably the only person throughout this whole saga who has kept talking sense, Andrew Robb. Laurie Oakes on Saturday suggested Robb was the only frontbencher capable of restraining Turnbull’s ego, and should be his shadow Treasurer.
Robb was having none of that yesterday, but regardless of what happens to the Deputy position — Julie Bishop would probably hang onto it on gender grounds, however much she would reject that sort of tokenism – Robb should be in a significant domestic portfolio, where his skills would be applied to something more high-profile than (correctly) demanding that we sell uranium to India.
And, however much it will upset the state distribution, they should take the opportunity to remove some underperformers like Pat Farmer and Bronwyn Bishop and give up-and-comers like Simon Birmingham a crack at a shadow ministry. Greg Hunt should also be given more responsibility, even if the ETS will keep him busy in 2009. After nine months, performance has to start to mean something.
And, as Alan Ramsey might say, another thing. One suggestion in the weekend press is that, after he’s given the mythical “clear air” (think Tantalus’s fruit and water), Nelson might agree with everyone that he’s a dud and give way voluntarily to Turnbull. That is, a nice, orderly “leadership transition”. Nelson’s got guts and doggedness and has taken a lot of pain while he’s been in the job. He deserves to fall in battle, not withdraw from the contest to spare everyone’s feelings. There’s more honour in that. Turnbull should challenge him and the sooner the better for the country and the party.
Peter Costello’s behaviour is frightening. He’s not going to challenge for the Liberal leadership, he plans to quit politics but he won’t rule out ever becoming prime minister. Here’s The Riddler Mark II with an obsessive compulsion to rule or get revenge. It’s as though the guy lost the plot around APEC time when his deeply ingrained belief of assuming the leadership mantle without lifting a finger was shattered. He’s now on some sort of manic pay-back journey to get the b*stards who ignored him…..him!! Cossie loves Brendan making a dill of himself, Minchin begging for mercy but its agony to think the waves might part for Malcolm. Unless Tanya tugs the leash or someone in a white coat offers to do what the Liberal Party won’t he’ll be more lethal than Howard. PS He’ll give us another clue soon….or is there one in the book?
Is Bernard Keane on leave from Canberra?…….Not a word about beans, jam and moral outrage!
Nelson has thrown down the gauntlet and vacated the leadership which he will contest…….over to you Malcolm.
Still Rudd sails silently on….unquestioned……..achieving sfa.
I am reading the book right now. The first couple of chapters are “ full of sound and fury; signifying nothing.”
I noted his absence from QT today. Apparently he had leave from parliament to attend a funeral but I thought Brendan Nelson’s funeral was happening tomorrow.
Your editorial (Friday) said that “for the past two weeks three people [Michelle Grattan, Shaun Carney and Peter Hartcher] could have stopped the speculation on Liberal leadership in its tracks”. Actually, that would be four people if you take Brendan Nelson at his word that he knew from his recent conversations with Peter Costello what were Costello’s true intentions. Therefore, Brendan Nelson has directly contributed to the leadership turmoil because he failed to share his knowledge with his party colleagues, probably because he thought that not revealing Costello’s intentions would protect him from a challenge by Turnbull.
Bernard Keane debated the pros and cons of a quick kill versus a lingering death (Items 1 and 12, Friday) but failed to analyse the stalling tactics employed by Nick Minchin, who is now calling for “clear air” in which Nelson is “given a chance to turn around disastrous opinion polls”. Minchin’s infectious optimism makes him the Pollyanna of the Liberal Party but Peter Costello made it clear on Friday not to expect his departure from parliament any time soon. There will be no “clear air” for either Nelson or Turnbull while Costello lingers on the backbench and lobs verbal hand grenades at past incumbents and other rivals, so there is no advantage for Turnbull in postponing the challenge. Although Turnbull himself wants to delay his ascendancy until Nick Minchin falls in behind him, that is not in the best interests of the Liberal Party and as any pig hunter, such as Bill Heffernan, would tell you, a quick and clean kill is better than a slow, painful and messy death.
Brendan Nelson was foolish to rely on the presence of Peter Costello to shore up his own weak leadership. He created his own clear-air turbulence and is responsible for his own demise. The voters don’t want Nelson; they want to test drive Malcolm Turnbull, instead.
Tom McLoughlin here. My blog post title ‘Nelson … agricultural Nightwatchman man … wants to bat on past lunch on day 2’
Meaning a reference to a 5 day test match before the next election. We are at lunch on day 2. Nelson survived the fading light and the new ball. He doesn’t score many runs but doesn’t get out. He’s brave, tricky, cunning, likeable, loathesome and useless all in one complex Gollum like mix.
He can’t win the Test match but he can force everyone to watch even until a draw is declared. So is he a masochist in the hot noon sun of bad polling? I suspect he is … and the root of it all? Not so much congenital ambition, though there is that, as displacement to avoid the personal accounting of the hippocratic oath given no WMD/blood for oil in Iraq. That’s an instability that would have swallowed a lesser man before now and will surely swallow him eventually too …. like the fabled Gollum in lava of Mt Doom. God have mercy.