To the virtual smoke-filled club rooms of the Spectator Australia, where Peter Coleman is doing laps in the merlot-filled jacuzzi:

“The sacked editor of The Monthly, Sally Warhaft, said that the reason Robert Manne and Morry Schwartz gave her the heave-ho was that she had wanted to publish Peter Costello’s reply to Kevin Rudd’s polemic against those economic conservatives who wear their badge with pride (to coin a phrase).”

The gouty, sorry doughty old cold-warrior writes, “But despair not. Costello and I have now included the prohibited arguments in a new chapter for the paperback edition of The Costello Memoirs, to be published shortly.”

In other words, as with the entire book, Coleman wrote something for future political use, while Costello, his gormless golem of a son-in-law, sat meekly in the corner. Which proves the point of his original exclusion from The Monthy — that the Cheshire smirk is incapable of writing a postcard, much less an essay on his own. Ointment boy! Are, there you are Christian! Mr Peter senior’s bunions need seeing to