Stoop to conquer

What the Liberals need to do federally is to ditch aspects of Howard's intellectual and moral inertia while preserving above all else his reputation for economic competence.

The question of leadership is, who can best do this?

The current leader, Brendan Nelson, is not the man to shake up anyone or anything. Once the patient is stabilised and able to sign out of hospital, the services of the doctor should be dispensed with. This is not to say that the guy should be treated like rubbish and that any opinion he may have in future must be ignored, as is the case with John Hewson or Mark Latham.

The Liberal Party has alternative leaders. They just need to do some work first, rather than just thrust themselves forward. Anyone who thrust themselves forward before doing the necessary work can expect - and will deserve - what awaits Nelson.

Costello has the experience and the credentials, as Matthew Franklin points out, it is fair to accuse him of a Beazley-like lack of ticker. The test for him will ultimately be, of all things, a trawl back through his own life.

SENIOR Liberals are bracing for a political storm after learning that former treasurer Peter Costello will publish his memoirs.

"I think he will regret it for the rest of his life," a former member of the Liberal's federal executive said today.

Here Christian Kerr is thinking like a Liberal government staffer, back from the days when there were Liberal governments. He wouldn't have had to hunt far to find an old fart who thinks that it is always better for the Liberal boat to be tied to a wharf and accumulating barnacles than for it to be rocked.

It will be a sign of ticker for Costello to come out with a memoir that, if not a barbaric yawp, doesn't hesistate to tell timid souls like this to get fucked. Coleman can lend intellectual depth to such an enterprise but it is Costello who must take charge of it, have the book reflect both his life and forward thinking in a way that Coleman cannot deliver alone. A good memoir could be a platform for Costello. A poor one will confirm him as gutless and snide, remainder-bin fodder like The Abnegation of a Young Dickhead.

The next Liberal Prime Minister will be someone who will put the party organisation in a position where it supports rather than hinders the political leadership. This is what John Howard was able to do in 1995-96, and it is why he and not Peacock, Hewson or Downer led the Liberals to victory.

If you can't reshape the Liberal Party into a lean, mean fighting machine, at least you can push its most cumbersome features out of the way. Who has the clout to do that?

Costello comes from Victoria and likes that state's dysfunctional division full of nobodies just the way it is. He is not going to rip through the Victorian division, nor any other. If the memoirs really do provide a wake-up call, he'll have to dump some courtiers. Because he can't offer government bounty, his only choice is to push people into the cold. Failing that, Costello could end up like John West toward the end of Power Without Glory, despairing that he's surrounded by numbskulls.

It is NSW where there is greatest potential for reform, and where there are more seats that the Liberals need to win than in Victoria. There are three potential leaders there, and the first one to throw themselves into reforming the state division of the Liberal Party will position themselves as the next Liberal Prime Minister.

Malcolm Turnbull is the lynchpin of the Liberals' economic credibility and must not be moved from the shadow treasury. Swan is weak and, if he puts in a poor performance in the Budget, it is Turnbull who should run him down and claim his scalp (Rudd can't and won't keep his old Nambour mate on if he lets the side down) - as Shadow Treasurer.

One of the good things about a quote within a Malcolm Colless article is that it reveals sharper judgement than Colless:

"Malcolm and his backers should realise that he doesn't have the numbers at present," one senior Liberal said in a not too subtle shot at indigenous affairs spokesman Tony Abbott. "The cold reality for them is that neither the party nor the electorate is ready for Malcolm yet," he added.

Quite.

Turnbull can't and won't get down with Liberals in branches outside his electorate. He'd be happy to sweep through in a cloud of quips and bombast, but connecting with banal people and their banal lives will be too much of a grind. He can't and won't deign to treat David Clarke as someone worthy of his time and effort, nor will he have the base within the party to do to him what he did to Peter King.

Tony Abbott is not ready to take over from Turnbull as Shadow Treasurer. He's struggling as Shadow Minister for Families, Families, Families, Centrelink, the Northern Territory Intervention and Families. The RU486 debacle signalled that Abbott was not a rival to Costello for the leadership, and that judgement increasingly looks vindicated.

Abbott is uncomfortable about being a wholly-owned subsidiary of David Clarke and the Taliban, but that's where he is. Abbott lacks the guts to beard that lion is his den. He could embrace the Selig reforms and present himself as an honest broker - but the Taliban hates apostasy and the moderates hate him even more. He'd be crushed, and there's no point in a broker who's broken - and sometimes, as Nelson shows, you can be so "broke" that you can't be fixed.

Joe Hockey has form with reviewing the Liberal Party's structure, having participated in one such in the early '90s chaired by John Valder. Hockey is a moderate factional warrior and the smarter minds on the right can see him coming. Nonetheless, he could develop clout and gravitas in this process. He knows the structure of the NSW division and where the bodies are buried.

Reforming the NSW branch would be hard and dirty work, the sort of job likely to make or break a politician. Yet, in its current state it is an obstacle to government at state, federal and possibly even local level. Like Hercules emerging from the Augean stables, it is the sort of thing that could establish a leader on the national stage - someone well placed to make the most of opportunities when the Rudd Government loses its sparkle, and when mighty mountains of the contemporary landscape become spent volcanoes.

In the Liberal Party, battle lines are clearly being drawn between the executive and parliamentary wings. In NSW, the hardline right-wing faction, which exercises enormous influence at a state and federal level, is determined to resist the reform model being pushed by the party's president, Geoff Selig, which it brands as undemocratic. And it will be interesting to see whether Selig is still the state president at the end of the year.

The Right rejects claims it is being driven by self-interest that is unrepresentative of the Liberal constituency and is therefore holding back the party's electoral prospects. It argues that instead of demonising the factions, the party should publicly acknowledge their existence and their role in its operating structure.

It's Colless' job to investigate claims like that, not take them on face value. Stackers can't complain about being "undemocratic". He can't just accept a threat to Selig's position (a sign of what'd happen to Abbott if he stood up to them). The Taliban are not a factor to be managed; they are a noxious force bent on killing the host organism. You don't manage that, you stand up to it and kill it off.

Labor, which has a bitter history of the destructive effects of internal factional warfare, has in recent times been able to portray the factions as a benign influence in the party.

This was nowhere more obvious than in the public announcement by Rudd that he, and not the factions - as had traditionally been the case - would determine his ministry, even if his choices effectively reflected factional preferences.

Once again, Colless has undermined the premise of his article. Rudd's ability to choose his own ministry was a defeat for factionalism, not a vindication of it.

David Clarke has to realise that he is landfill for the Liberal Party's road to victory. The sooner he realises it the better, and the better for the one able to confront him with that realisation.

As to Queensland, that's just too hard. There is a case for a unique solution there. It may include Mal Brough, unless the NT intervention is so completely reframed that he looks like a throwback. Please, though, spare the Queensland coalition crocodile tears like this. One can have too many Queenslanders, just as a generation ago there was an unnecessary number of Victorians running things, and an unhealthy (and unproductive) concentration of South Australians in the Howard cabinet.

The least likely of these potential leaders, Hockey, is best placed to take the indirect but surest path to the Lodge. It won't be quick and it won't be easy. Only dills like Minchin think there's some alternative to deep and broad reform (such that might tip his minions out of rotten boroughs in NSW, Tasmania and SA). They need to be isolated and either starved into submission, or else become ridiculous like those bedraggled Japanese soldiers who stayed in the Pacific after ignoring their Emperor's order to surrender.

In the end, a dose of old-fashioned, Labor-style federal intervention may be what is needed. But, alas for the Liberals, their constitution does not permit such roughhouse tactics.

Not while the Federal Liberals are full of clueless goobers like Loughnane and Minchin. The NSW Liberals have to reform themselves from within. So do the Vics, and the Queenslanders, and those from the other states too. The next Liberal Prime Minister will have to stoop to the rubber chicken circuit of Liberal branches before taking on and beating Rudd.

All very well for some

There is a case to be made for Peter Costello to write his memoirs in his own time on his own equipment, and he will have to answer to the voters of Higgins for how well he does that. His leader failed to make that case, and also made it harder to present a case for government:

"I mean, for goodness sake, Peter Costello has served Australia in public life for 18 years.

"His family has made enormous sacrifices.

"Has he earned his right to write his memoirs?

"You're damn right he has," Dr Nelson said.

None of the above represent any sort of justification. They are the sort of things you say to placate a party room which has slowly built a sense of entitlement which has been quickly ripped away. He is not the only long-serving public servant in the country, nor is his the only family which has made enormous sacrifices.

If he gets this, he might make it to Prime Minister - but he only seems able to truckle to a party room of wounded souls (I'm referring to Nelson, but this could also apply to Costello). A Liberal vision for government and those who work in it is sorely needed.

2020 Summit

Bit early to tell, eh? It was interesting that the creatives finally succumbed to the language of economics in talking about "creative output". Disappointing absence of preparation beforehand, top-of-the-head banalities have won out.

Bloody battle

Dennis Shanahan made himself a laughing stock last year when, in the face of consistent polling showing that the Howard government could not win, insisted that they could and would do so. Now, as the contrarian of the press gallery, the man who zigs while others zag, Shanahan has taken on Brendan Nelson as his pet project. This is all very well, until you see that this "political editor" has no actual idea about politics.

Colleagues and commentators refer to him as incompetent, contradictory, too emotional, failing to make any impact, lacking leadership and someone whose time is up. In the circumstances, he's all of those things and appears to have won only another stay of execution until July.

At this point, a real political journalist would round on those who put this 21st Century Snedden into the role, and ask them what the hell they were thinking.

... Nelson is not the Liberals' chief leadership problem. The biggest leadership problem the Coalition faces is Kevin Rudd ... Rudd's ascendancy is not going to be overturned overnight because the Liberals change leaders, no matter where they turn.

Well put. The Liberals can, however, choose a leader with credibility.

The Coalition's primary vote has also recovered to 35 per cent after it slumped to a record low 31 per cent following Rudd's parliamentary apology to the Stolen Generations.

In other words, a slight uptick (dead cat bounce?) only just outside the margin for error.

Rudd and Treasurer Wayne Swan rub their hands in warm anticipation of a Peter Costello leadership as they discuss the Liberals' future while nestled in the Lodge.

That's all very well, but it assumes that Rudd and Swan have more credibility than they actually do. They are not yet in a position to knock Costello out of the running, and they must surely know it. Swan should be able to eclipse Costello's economic record in a single term, but his shaky start raises doubts about this.

Labor MPs finger a file on Turnbull's involvement in HIH before it collapsed. Mark Latham went there once before and was threatened with legal action, but a political campaign aimed at an Opposition leader can be all smear and innuendo without actually proving anything or risking defamation.

Would that be similar to the Coalition file on Gillard before the last election? Turnbull can cut his way through a smear campaign.

It's also worth noting that despite the general dismissal of Nelson as a loser, the ALP has not assumed he won't be around and does not let an opportunity pass to slice and dice the Opposition Leader's position. The scrupulous attention to Nelson's homespun performance does not sound like a Government happy to keep him in the leader's chair.

It sounds like a government not willing to take any chances, not complacent - in other words, a government led by Kevin Rudd. For Labor, dispatching Nelson quickly is part of overall momentum and knocking the Liberals off their game.

The manner of the removal is also likely to send Liberal fortunes south once more (at least further south), because dreams of a bloodless coup are just dreams.

Alexander Downer was a lot more pugnacious and stubborn than Nelson, and he knew what it meant when Birnam Wood started moving.

Why should Nelson suddenly decide one night to turn up his toes and hand the leadership to someone else? Nelson has been given a thankless and almost impossible task ... He's copped heaps, a lot of it justified, but he's also been operating to an overall strategy so that the Liberals can shift policy direction towards the end of the year with some credibility when they say they have been listening.

If there is a massive Nelson constituency on the back bench, it isn't large and it will evaporate under the relentless barrage of poor polling. Rudd beat Beazley for the Labor leadership by a whisker in December 2006: try and find a Labor person today who still pines for Beazley. Beazley, like Howard, spent his whole life in the party he came to lead: Nelson is still a Johnny-come-lately who's had all his organisational problems fixed for him.

People like Minchin will stand by Nelson so long as he preserves the Howard agenda in aspic. Once Nelson starts to walk away from the shibboleths in search of new votes, he'll be taking risks and wandering into a political no-man's-land; once that happens, he's a goner.

It may not be the common wisdom but it's certainly possible Nelson will still be Liberal leader after July, because more Liberals may come to realise they have to stop fighting over an empty prize, just as they did for the last year of government, and face Rudd, the real problem, with new policies.

Whether it is or isn't common wisdom is beside the point. It isn't sensible that Nelson would continue in the Liberal leadership completely denuded of credibility. I reckon our Den wants to be the journalist of choice for the current Liberal leader, the only one who doesn't snigger when he rings Nelson's office.

The Liberals could develop all the policies they liked, and complain about the performance of Rudd every time he slips - but if they have no credibility they are tinkling bells and clattering cymbals. That's what they are, that's all they are, and they underestimate how long and how much it will take to change.

The worst job

The worst jobs involve saving people from themselves, an insistence that their interests differ from their thoughts, words and deeds. These are jobs where all the resources in the world would be too little, and too little resources understates both the nature of the problem and what's needed to fix it.

In Victoria, football Aussie Rules coaches and politicians complain that they have the hardest jobs, but this is a form of contempt for their fans/voters. It implies that their activities are more important than others', when in fact as entertainers/politicians their job is one of service to others.

In this article, Austin shows that David Kemp has failed to learn this central lesson after so many years in and around Australian politics.

'BRENDAN, you've got the worst job in Australia," Victorian Liberal president David Kemp unhelpfully remarked to Brendan Nelson after the Federal Opposition Leader addressed the party's state council meeting at the cavernous Melbourne Convention Centre at the weekend. Nelson was having none of it. "Tony Nutt's about to get that job," he replied, beaming.

So, Tony Nutt's going to work with abused children or other gruesomely injured innocents, is he? Running the Choir of Hard Knocks? Is he going to make [insert poorly-performing sporting team here] win the premiership? No? He's going to do what he's done all his life: put a pillow over the face of vigorous political activity with the aim not of victory, but of getting people to keep stumm.

Here was the besieged Nelson, who hails from the dysfunctional NSW division of the party, suggesting to his Victorian hosts that the bloke trying to run their show had the worst job going.

Given that the Victorian division of the Liberal Party has had less success since 1996 than their NSW counterparts in getting Liberal candidates elected to Parliament, this is a bit rich. Even more so is the knowledge that, having floated into Parliament after a few months as a member of the party, Nelson has been entitled to think that organisational problems solve themselves. Nelson does not even understand organisational politics, let alone have the authority to fix them.

Sheezel went first. "The Liberal Party in Victoria is at the crossroads.

Groan! This is a rightwing cliche. They always say the Liberal Party is at the bloody crossroads. Whenever they find themselves at that crossroads they insist on their right to lead the way despite their consistently poor choice of route.

The 2007 federal election defeat had prompted "honest and brutal" reflection, said the man who has run the Victorian division for five years. The poor Liberal vote could not be dismissed as an aberration, he warned. "It in fact continues the 30 years of poor performances of the Coalition in Victoria."

Sheezel, you tried all the cliches and it didn't work. You tried keeping the ship steady, and it stayed on the route to perdition. You were a waste of space, all the more so for failing to do anything but save your own skin. You'd be a disaster at anything else you turned your clammy hand to.

"It's up to us to set the community standard of quality debate and how people of different views can work together in a democracy," Kemp said. "We need to show that we give priority to this as Liberals, all committed to an Australia where people have the right to decide how they will organise and live their lives, to be properly rewarded for their efforts and to realise their talents and their dreams in life.

Kemp's entry to Federal Parliament in 1990 involved a factional putsch. He's happy to have people debate, so long as it doesn't make any difference. The fact that it makes no difference is the problem. You might be obliged to preside over a farce, but nobody else is obliged to participate in one. Given the choice between a debate which makes people back down, or no debate at all, people like Kemp and Sheezel will always prefer no debate at all.

"I want to remind you of a simple fact — opposition is not the goal," [State Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu] said. "We are here not to navel-gaze or sulk or play games; we are here to win." To make that happen, "business as usual is not going to be enough. To make this happen, above all we need a change of attitude. This party does not belong to a few, not to this or that individual or committee or the delegates in this room or the anonymous 'senior Liberal source'. It belongs to the people of Victoria, those who vote for us, who need us and who look to us to represent them. (It belongs) to the people who expect us to deliver ...

The swinging voter is greatly sought-after at election time, and fat toads squatting on polling data in back rooms claim they can read their minds (falsely, given Liberal election results in recent years). However, within party forums, nobody represents or cares about those people. All those committees exist to make unimportant people feel important, and grant or deny similar importance to others. By the time an election comes around, the committees and councils and whatever have disappeared so far up themselves they're of no use to anyone.

There is a compelling and fundamental rule of life: do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. It cuts both ways: those who attract respect are those who give respect."

That's right. It starts with respect for public servants, whom Kennett excoriated and never brought back around once the smoke cleared. It starts with respect for teachers and nurses and honest police, who tend to work harder than politicians do for even less reward than one finds in opposition. Demonstrating this, in word and deed, is the road back to government for the Liberals.

Baillieu knows he, not Tony Nutt or any other Liberal, has the worst job in Victoria.

So long as he believes that, he'll keep it. You can't save people from themselves.

Be quiet

John Howard can't help himself. He's been a political schemer all his life, and his faint-praise damnation of Brendan Nelson is symptomatic of his disloyalty to any Liberal leader other than himself. If Costello or Turnbull had become leader, Howard wouldn't have been any more gracious or encouraging.

Howard knows that quiet counsel is more likely to be acted on within the Liberal Party. Malcolm Fraser influenced nobody with his criticisms of Howard. No Liberals sought Fraser's advice as they'd get it publicly anyway. Besides, Howard, his office and lackeys like Minchin would - and do - crack a hissy fit if any Liberals even mention Fraser, let alone went near him.

None of those Liberal leaders who lost elections have been sought out. No Liberals sought McMahon's advice after 1972; only the far right of the NSW Liberals paid him any mind. Gorton listened to those exasperated with McMahon, but by Fraser's time the only Liberal seeking his advice would have been Don Chipp. Rarely was Menzies' advice sought during his twilight.

Howard couldn't have done more to discourage people from seeking his advice. He offered nothing that had not demonstrably failed in the 2007 election campaign, and did not talk about the past in a way that offered insights for the future. It was all bathwater, no baby. He only offered the Liberal Party the opportunity to shackle itself to proven failure, to look backward rather than forward, to hope that the Liberals might preserve an image of economic competence in aspic as the country changes to render their experience irrelevant.

It flatters Howard that Liberal MPs would call on him and wait upon the pearls that fall from his lips. And they will, unlike with previous leaders. You'll see it when a Liberal abruptly changes direction; an authentic proponent of higher immigration will abruptly become a snide dog-whistler - and after getting belted politically will admit that yes, he had sought advice from Mr Howard actually, how could you tell?

It's when Liberals stop calling on Howard that things will get interesting, clear proof that they've started thinking for themselves and addressing the issues of Australia in the twentyfirst century. They're a long way from where they need to be: Heffernan and Minchin are pillows over the face of an already prone party. Downer is an embarrassment, the first Howard government minister whose legacy has been utterly eclipsed if not erased. Abbott needs to go or be politically spayed. Howard has had his day and has no fresh ideas for the future, he told everyone so clearly and strongly last year and he's telling them again. The only ones who can't hear this don't want to listen.

Nasty, brutish and short

Federal Liberal MPs are seeking shelter from the storm in which they can only be blamed for the shortcomings of the Howard government, without receiving the credit that they feel is due them. Brendan Nelson can't offer them that shelter. Malcolm Turnbull offers a storm in himself. And some in the Aussie Rules states still pine for Peter Costello, apparently.

"The real answer is to have the natural leader of the party come back, and that is Peter Costello."

Ah yes, the king o'er the water. Technically, he can't "come back" to a post he never held, nor a parliament he hasn't departed. Won't go, won't muck in and fight.

It's said that one of the reasons why Labor stayed out of office for so long was their reluctance to embrace the Keating record of economic reform. Rudd didn't hide from Keating like Latham and Beazley, but nor did he embrace further far-reaching economic reform. WorkChoices seemed to be a high-water mark of hairy-chested reform for its own sake, and if the Rudd government does much in the way of economic policy it will be something that has come up since the election. Does this apply to the Liberals?

Peter Costello did leave a lot of economic reform undone. Labour market reform was not a high priority and died because it was too far ahead of employer (and employee) needs. He could have adjusted the tax system, and built more infrastructure, and invested in skills and education: it's these omissions that stand between Costello and greatness.

Costello could bring together the competing factions, and negate both Abbott and Turnbull. However, he won't. He would be Labor's dartboard for interest rate rises and bottlenecks in both skills and infrastructure.

The yearning for Costello is the same as Labor's comfort with Kim Beazley, and the fear of taking the risks necessary for victory. If Costello becomes leader of the Liberal Party it would not be able to shift the debate and leave Rudd looking flat-footed, like Rudd did to Howard.

One clear indication that Costello doesn't really want the Liberal leadership is that his erstwhile courtier doesn't rate him.

Abbott has been miffed at what he sees as his demotion to the families portfolio.

This is a man who bangs on about families, families, families in the absence of any real clue about how the country should be governed. As with everyone who's gotten in over their heads in the Sydney real estate market, Abbott should downshift or just cop it on the chin. It's interesting that his real estate woes have not resulted in him coming up with any sensible ideas about how to alleviate the situation facing those less secure financially than he: now that would be an audition for the Treasury (never mind the Shadow Treasury), and a challenge to Turnbull.

Abbott's reticence reflects his fundamental decency as a human being.

No, it reflects his intellectual laziness and gutlessness at not being able to admit a mistake. Deigning to speak to Milney and make him feel less irrelevant is nobody's idea of "fundamental decency".

... Minchin, Nelson's anchor in the present storm.

And the message, as of today, is that Minchin will continue to play that role. And as long as he does, Nelson will probably survive.

What should happen, given the rest of this article, is that Nelson should be the albatross around Minchin's neck and that both of them should piss off back to Adelaide.

Minchin's message is: hold your nerve in the same way Labor did after its 1996 defeat, when Kim Beazley arguably laid down the ultimate matrix for a Rudd victory, the maintenance of a veneer of a cohesive party that did not tear itself to pieces over core values.

In other words, just faff for a decade or so and arguably something will pop up. Hasn't exactly worked for the liberals, has it. Flip-flopper Beazley the exemplar of nerve? What a poor model for a party wanting to get out of opposition. What a poor piece of analysis by Milney, he should have laughed in Minchin's face. Minchin monstered Beazley and he fancies his chances of monstering anyone content to follow the lazy and complacent Beazley model.

The successes of the Rudd government have put the core values of the Liberal Party under strain. Neither Howard nor any other Liberal could have achieved the foreign policy success in China that Rudd did, another example of him shifting the debate beyond the tactical grasp and intellectual resources of the Liberals.

The fact that the Stolen Generations apology was not a damp squib and that economic hardship looms to early to fully blame Labor has put Liberal values under strain - all the more with lack of support from any Liberal government outside municipal Brisbane (and not much there, as Campbell Newman has hardly stepped up onto the national stage).

The next Liberal government will be as different from Howard's as Howard's was from Fraser's government. To get ready for the next Liberal government, the challenge is to start working out what policy approaches should be retained, what junked, and what replaces the elements that get junked.

The storm will get worse. Once sturdy edifices will be blown away. Delicate buds being nurtured to sturdy oaks will be drowned and uprooted. The Minchin vision of the Liberals just sitting there with an umbrella waiting for the bus to stop by and take them gently back to government is beyond ridiculous, it harms the Liberals' chances of winning government again.

There's also the issue of Joel Fitzgibbon getting off scot-free in Defence - if Minchin was the political lion he fancies himself as, Fitzgibbon should be in dire trouble rather than just busy. Same with the hapless Jenny Macklin: Tony Abbott has been monstered by two Labor women already in Gillard and Roxon, do we have to wait until Kate Ellis starts climbing all over him to realise he's a loser?

To realise this is to say to Minchin and Abbott what they did not, could not say to Howard: go, go now, the Liberal Party is better off without you. The fact that these turkeys are good for nothing else need not be the Liberal Party's problem.