Rudd Is Still Messing With Their Minds

Most Australians don't care about the nation falling into deficit. Why would they? Why should they? Even $20 or $30 billion in the hole won't affect their lives negatively, it will work to their favour, as long as the money is used to repair and upgrade the schools their children attend and get some real infrastructure rebuilding and modernisation underway.

PM Rudd is actually on fire, just a little, during Question Time right now (2.08pm), as he hammers opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull for "being against fixing the primary schools". It's devastating. The Liberals have allowed themselves to be painted as being anti-public school renovation. Even if it's not true, this is likely the impression most will take away from the evening news reports.

Turnbull's opposition to what Rudd is now calling a $42 billion package to "rebuild the nation" is a masterstroke in self-destruction, as Bernard Keane at Crikey points out (excerpts) :

At about 10.30 this morning in the House of Representatives the Opposition walked into a baseball bat. It caught them flush across the head. BANG. Then they got up and invited the wielder to swing it again.

The wielder -- Kevin Rudd -- won't need to be asked twice.

Refusing to back the Government's stimulus package, which Malcolm Turnbull announced in the chamber this morning, is a truly colossal -- indeed, almost suicidal -- error by the Opposition.

The Coalition and much of the media haven’t worked out that politics has for the moment changed completely. A crisis mindset has taken hold and voters are in no mood for anyone getting in the way of it being addressed with urgency.

Rudd will be delighted with the Opposition's stupidity. But he won't be celebrating. Instead, he'll be flexing his muscles and practising his swing. That mild-mannered, bespectacled bloke will be swinging the baseball bat, hard and without pity. And he's going to hit the Liberals again, and again, and again, and again, and he's not going to stop until they're a bloodied mess.

Who put Turnbull up to coming out against the StimuPak #2? Was it Costello's boys?

By Q2 of Question Time, Turnbull looks shocked, totally rattled, perhaps with the reality dawning across his usually sharp mind that he just got fucked, royally fucked, by some in his own party, who are, presumably, trying to knock Turnbull aside for The Return Of "The World's Greatest Treasurer."

Malcolm Turnbull, in fact nobody in the Liberals, should forget that Rudd promised, in February 2007, that he was going to mess with then PM John Howard's mind, and in turn, the collective mind of the Liberal Party.

Why would they assume that Rudd, particularly with his massively publicised attack on "neo-liberals' and "extreme capitalism" in The Monthly magazine, is not still messing with their minds?

Of course he's still doing it. It worked so well on Howard, why wouldn't Rudd keep messing with the Liberal Mind every moment he gets the chance to do so?

Who will come out of this StimuPak #2 fight looking the best? The Greens, of course. Watch the Liberals poll numbers plunge even further in this wake of this catastrofuck and The Greens favourability numbers rise, perhaps even soar. It gets harder and harder for The Greens to be painted as extremists when both Labor and Liberals are fighting to put their ideas and policies into action.

UPDATE : I don't know how long this re-interest in national politics at The Orstrahyun will last. I can feel myself fading out as I watch a second interview with Turnbull in less than 48 hours, added to what felt like two hours of Costello defying God's laws about Vanity, on Lateline.

The Good Doctor (Nelson) would have been far more apopaleptic and thereby hysterically funny, if he was upfront. But those days are gone....sadly.

Australia's Bermuda Triangle? Or Is It Australia's Area 51?


A Google Earth image of the Exmouth military base discussed in the below story.


By Darryl Mason

I've been mulling over ideas for a long-short fiction story about UFOs in Australia, particularly about a UFO visit to a dying country town. Googling UFOs and Australia turns up some interesting stuff, some of it mundane, some of it apparently unexplainable, and some of it downright loco.

Whatever they are, there sure are a shitload of reports about UFOs zipping, zapping, whipping and zooming across Australian skies.

Naturally, the government knows all about it.

According to this site the UnOpposition leader Malcolm Turnbull is "keeping mysteriously quiet on the topic" of UFOs. I think that means he was momentarily stunned into silence when quizzed by a stranger in the street about The Great Australian UFO (You Know Something! Tell Me!) Cover Up :

Michael Cohen, of All News Web, happened to chance upon Mr Turnbull and ask him a few questions regarding UFO related topics, probably the first time he was asked anything on the topic by any media outlet.

Some of his answers were startling.

On whether he would disclose what the Government knew about UFO and Alien visitation and contact with humans he was rather evasive, claiming he wasn't sure they knew anything and if they did they weren't telling him or anyone he knows.

Then he made the surprise revelation: "That information would be above top secret, highest classification of secrecy". This was a truly remarkable comment. He also mentioned that 'Australia hasn't had its Roswell yet' to which our reporter replied 'That's not exactly true.'

When asked if he believed earth is being visited by Aliens and whether he believed in UFO's he simply reversed the question and asked our reporter if he did. Yet the impression gained was that he knew more than he was prepared to give away.

Typical Turnbull. Full of secrets. Fun secrets. I want to see Kerry O'Brien on the 7.30 Report hammering Turnbull about his top secret UFO knowledge and their secret bases in Australia.

And maybe Turnbull can be quizzed more thoroughly on what he knows about the recent mid-air incidents with Qantas jets and how they are not what they appear to be. If you really fire up the imagination, you can clearly see that UFOs had to involved :

Both incidents occurred in almost the exact same spot over the mysterious town of Exmouth in Western Australia. The town happens to contain two highly restricted military bases as a well as the Learmonth Solar Observatory which is also used for planetary defense including ionosphere monitoring and meteor detection and tracking: A great cover for actual UFO related activity.

The Naval Communications Station Harold E Holt is notoriously secretive regarding its activities and reportedly denied any connection to the events. Even Less is known about the RAAF base Learmonth or the very secretive Learmonth Solar Observatory: tellingly managed by the US Air Force. Almost nothing is known of the NASA established Learmonth Magnetic Observatory, now also under US Air Force control.

The question must be asked: Is Exmouth Australia’s Area-51 and are UFO’s either being monitored from here or even using a landing base in the region as a stepping stone for exploring earth?

Yeah, it is a question that must be asked. Someone has to go after Turnbull again, he sounds punchy when people start demanding UFO discolsure from him. He must be made to detail the truth about Australia's Secret UFO Earth Exploration Terminal & Lounge Bar at Exmouth, with all those alien spacecraft landing strips cleverly disguised as dirt access roads for radar tower engineers.

-------------------------------

At Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains, there used to be this amazing little museum (under the revolving restuarant, near the Three Sister lookout at Echo Point) that featured wall displays of newspaper reports, illustrations and sometimes even photos of supposed local sightings of UFOs, big cats and Yowies.

To a six year old, learning that wild, ravenous panthers and tall, hairy monster men roamed the mountains was fairly mundane stuff. I already knew from watching Leonard Nimoy hosting Great Mysteries Of The World on Saturday afternoons that monsters stalking urban-fringing forests was no big deal, in the United States, England or Australia.

But that little Echo Point museum also went into great detail about (naturally) top secret UFO bases operating freely in the isolation of the Blue Mountains. They were hidden inside some of the mountains, if I remember rightly, and huge slabs of cliff face would open so massive alien aircraft could zoom into the clouds, all but undetected by earth-based lifeforms.

Even at six years old, the bullshit alarm beeped a little as I wandered that pokey little museum, but what fantastic imaginative fuel it was to feast on before going to the lookout to search the trees and cliffs for just the faintest sign of those UFO base entrances, and exits, that I truly hoped were actually there.

That little museum, and its fantastical local tales of alien spacecraft and forest monsters, long gone now, always made those family trips to the mountains just that little bit more exciting.

I lived in the Blue Mountains twenty years after those family visits, and I saw a lot of weird, unexplainable shit late at night, up there, but most of it involved locals stumbling home from the Gearins Hotel. And I never accidentally came across any entrances to secret UFO bases either, on any of the many long walks through the bush. Not that I was really looking...

Well, maybe....sometimes.

Joyce Refuses To Goose Step Around Liberal Party Offices

Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce is not a disciple of Al Gore. Climate change is, according to Joyce, basically bullshit, and the emission trading system is a scam to introduce a crippling new tax, on everyone (he's not far wrong there). But don't go thinking that these beliefs put Joyce at odds with Liberals leader Malcolm Turnbull in any way at all, or that a clash of their beliefs will cause yet more chaos for the coalition.

Hell, no :

Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull has played down suggestions of a rift in the Coalition over climate change.

Joyce voiced strong opposition to the Government's proposed emissions trading scheme, labelling it as nothing more than a "new tax" and adding: "I think that is a load of rubbish to think that Australia is going to change the climate."

Cue Malcolm Turnbull with plenty of buckets of cold water for all the other Nationals and Liberals who think Joyce is spot on :

"The Coalition's position on this issue is very well known - it's the same that we had in government," he said.

"We're very committed to action on climate change that is economically responsible and environmentally effective."

Joyce :

"[Does] one has to sort of fall into a lock step, goose step, and parade around the office ranting and raving that we're all as one?"

Yes, according to Turnbull, one does :

Mr Turnbull says the Coalition will be responding with "one voice" when the Government releases its legislation for the scheme in the coming months.

Joyce is convinced that there are plenty of votes out there for politicians who will stand up to The Green Terror (of Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair fantasies), and that the overwhelming number of Australians who backed Rudd on climate change policies are now dwindling away as the economic sleeper hold begins to take effect.

Joyce may be right about climate change true believers peeling away, but there's not a lot of poll proof to back it up. Yet. Regardless, a very public and extended clash between Turnbull (poncy inner city Lefty-friendly, Green religionist, disguised as a Liberal Party leader) and Joyce (Bloody Rational Nationals, mate!) certainly seems to be on the cards.

Rudd will let them brawl out their climate change differences in public, while intricately analysing the public response, and will presumably change his climate change policy accordingly. That is, enough to ensure a second term in office if Joyce's A Great Climate Change Swindle manages to become a bigger issue of concern for most than, say, not having a house, or a job, or reliable sources of food.

If there is a great, unrecognised mass of Australian voters who believe carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and thinks trying to stop climate change is more of a risk than letting it happen, Joyce will no doubt find them.

But if they're there, Rudd will no doubt find a way to reach them, and win them over, once Joyce has pulled them from the shadows.

But for Rudd, 2008 was a warm-up. In 2009, the RuddBot will joined by Ruddzilla. Well, hopefully, if covering politics in even a distracted and half-hearted way is going to be any kind of intriguing entertainment. I've seen circling flies fall asleep, mid-flight, when Rudd speeches are were droning out of the television last year.

Barnaby Joyce already believes he would make a damn fine prime minister, and that most Australians harbour an affection for him and his straight-talking ways (probably true enough), and perhaps Joyce smells the blood in the water over Turnbull's abysmal polling in the past few months. Turnbull didn't exactly have Rudd, or Julia Gillard, on the ropes in the second half of 2008, did he?

Let's face it, the Liberals-National coalition isn't exactly brimming over with credible leadership choices right now. They've got Turnbull, Joe Hockey and Barnaby Joyce, and that's about it.

Unless, of course, they all come to their sense and bring back Brendan "We've Lost Your Son's Body" Nelson.

How Turnbull Bulleted Brendan

Brendan Nelson may have been an idiot, but as opposition leader he was a mostly harmless idiot. And he was our idiot. The peoples' idiot. He put on his show, and we enjoyed it, most of the time. Brendan Nelson was fun as opposition leader.

Malcolm Turnbull is no fun.

No fun at all.

And he killed Brendan. The bastard. Paul Sheehan follows the blood stains :

...a picture of political bastardry, animosity and aggression. I now understand why Dr Brendan Nelson took what at the time appeared to be a dangerous and illogical decision to open up his leadership position to a vote less than 10 months after becoming his party's leader. He couldn't take the pressure any more. And the pressure was unrelenting.

Turnbull carved a big X on Brendan's forehead, the very first day of Brendan's reign :

Turnbull walked up to Nelson and gave him a negative review of his first performance as leader. Soon after, unable to contain himself, Turnbull walked into Nelson's office and dressed him down in front of his wife and staff. Nelson was stunned. So were his staff.

Now that's downright nasty, and no accident. Turnbull wanted to shatter Brendan, he wanted to fuck with his mind.

The denigration soon spread. Turnbull told a member of Nelson's staff that his boss was "hopeless". He told journalists the same thing. It became common knowledge in the press gallery that Turnbull's attitude toward Nelson was dismissive and corrosive, a corrosion which built up the pressure and ate into Nelson's credibility in the press gallery as his opinion polling numbers floundered.

Turnbull holds very good, very grand parties to which he invites his friendly media. And they love him for it.

The state of chaos that was the Liberal Party for most of this year has subsided, somewhat, with the completion of Turnbull's all but unprecedented four year rise to the top of conservative politics in Australia. Well, liberal-Green-Conservative politics. Turnbull's invention.

What the fuck do they stand for now, anyway? Turnbull wants to bail out the banks, and the front bench wears its newfound greenism unconvincingly, uncomfortably. They champion The Greens years long demands for increases to the pension, and more investment in new, alternative energy. Nobody in the Liberal Party wails about how awesome the Iraq War has turned out for everyone involved, including all those dead Iraqis, like Alexander Downer did. Now the free market is viciously mauling the poor yet again, with far more bloodshed to come, everyone wants to be a socialist.

Sheehan :

As of now the Liberal Party is not a political movement or a political philosophy but, apart from a band of idealists, a collective of opportunists masquerading as a cause. The deeper you go, the less you find.

The reason why the media, particularly the ABC, keep boring us with stories about Peter Costello still eyeballing the leadership of the Liberal Party is because he actually is, and a very anti-Brendan-like campaign of undermining Turnbull has begun. Costello expects Turnbull to crash and burn. He will piss on the flames and take over.

Forever the optimist.

Turnbull : Buckets Or Spliffs?

Malcolm Turnbull has joined a long list of once blaze-crazed state and federal politicians who have openly admitted to guffing the gungun.

"Yes, I have smoked have pot," he said...

"I think most well not most, many people have, it was a mistake to do so."

He says it was a long time ago and he would not have done it if he knew the risks at the time.

He didn't explain what the risks were. His experiences with the Assassin Of Youth certainly didn't seem to have harmed his career. It's a shame that we still live in a hypocritical tabloid media land where Turnbull would be unable to explain what he believes some of the benefits of using cannabis were, along with the risks.

So we know Turnbull once danced with rainy day women. But for a deeper insight into his personality, we need to know whether he was a purist or a hashnflash man. Did he bang down buckets or suck on fatties? Did he punch billy, or spark up a few Phillies Blunts? Was his usage confined to single schlooks or did he go chronic for weekend wastelands?

(above slang definitions here, if needed)

It'd be interesting to know Turnbull's opinion on medical marijuana, an issue of growing popularity in his Sydney electorate, in particular. Baby Boomers with arthritis, and there will be hundreds of thousands of them, will want their weed, without the risks of prosecution.

They're Both Birds, With Footballs

I was wrong. Maybe the new opposition leader, Malcolm "John Howard Broke This Nation's Heart" Turnbull, will be as hilariously gaffey as the already missed Brendan Nelson was.

He's already showing lots of potential :

On Radio National on Tuesday morning, Malcolm Turnbull was asked the simple question of who he supported in the AFL: “I have to confess I vote for, I support, in Australian Rules the Roosters, who of course aren’t in the grand final - sorry the Swans.”

Could Turnbull be any more thrown off guard by an unexpected question? Labor has just found a gaping chink in his armour.

Battling to recover his composure, Turnbull hastily added, “And the Roosters in Sydney in rugby league which are, of course, the Eastern Suburbs Rugby League Club which is right next door to my (Bondi Junction electorate) office in fact.’’

As Jack The Insider calmly reminds the oppo leader, the Swans are based in his electorate.

If Labor are smart, they will never let Turnbull forget this.

If they're smart, they will find a way to bring this up in Question Time answers, and in Lateline anecdotes, every few months, for years to come. It's pure dynamite, and reminds all politicians, particularly leaders, that if you don't follow a sport, or any sport, never pretend that you do. The real fans will instantly that you are full of shit.

Nelson's Liberals Are The Spinal Tap Of Australian Politics

Shock : Real Questions On Real Issues From The Opposition

While opposition leader Brendan Nelson was trying to rally the weight of the Rudd government to save a rural post office yesterday, opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull set about finally dismantling some of the whirling flurry of Rudd rhetoric :

...what we got from the shadow treasurer was something quite novel: a cogent and intelligent critique of the Rudd Government's first budget, coupled with a vigorous defence of the Liberal tradition.

The Rudd Government's first budget isn't bulletproof, by any means - the only reason it might have seemed a bit that way over the past 10 days is that the Opposition has been firing dum-dums directly into its own feet.

But Mr Turnbull yesterday managed to articulate some of the uneasy questions raised by last week's budget, with none of the mawkish sentiment of a Nelson oration.

Questions like: How can a government on one hand claim that climate change is our greatest challenge, then on the other hand remain silent about the budgetary impact of an emissions trading scheme, while simultaneously penalising the solar energy industry?

How can a government carry on about our crumbling public hospital system, while simultaneously making money by tipping hundreds of thousands of new patients into it?

There must be dozens of other simple and powerful questions like these the Turnbull-led opposition (or Nelson led opposition if you insist on dwelling in fantasy) can trumpet to finally get some momentum back on their side. There's a fair bit of confusion for many people on what the first Rudd government budget means for them, and now the Liberals have an opportunity to ramp up the pressure.

Well, maybe. If they can stop stabbing each other in the back. When federal Parliament staff take an inventory of the dining rooms' cutlery, they will only have to take a look at Nelson's spine to find most of the missing sharper implements.

Nelson is probably more unpopular now in his own party than he is with larger Australia. And while Nelson may now be 70% cutlery steel, Turnbull is the focus of bizarre suspicion from within his own ranks. Incredibly, a conspiracy is gaining ground among die-hard Liberals (well, some Andrew Bolt readers anyway, which makes up a fair bit of the Liberals support base, those who aren't Liberal staffers anyway) that Turnbull is a Labor double agent, bent on destroying the big Ls from within. Brilliantly amusing.

Up until Turnbull's sweat-heavy but effective speech yesterday, which should mark a turnaround in political fortune, the Liberals had been far too busy showing why they are the Spinal Tap of federal politics. They were once big, but they've fallen on hard times, the reviews of their new product is mostly terrible (two words : Shit Sandwich) and constant touring (by Nelson) is making them only look more pathetic and out of vogue, regardless of the size of their Stonehenge monument or the number of dwarves they have dancing around it.

And no, I have no idea what that last reference means...at least, not yet.

Liberals Defy The Australian, Nelson Pays The Price

Curse Of The Newspoll To Badmouth Libs Until Turnbull Takes Over

More Coalition Supporters Prefer Rudd As PM Than Nelson And Abbott Combined

By Darryl Mason

The Australian newspaper's editor-at-large, Paul Kelly, told the election defeat-shocked Liberals that Malcolm Turnbull was their man, and the only person who could lead the party out of the swamp of Howard-era policy failures, "we don't say sorry" stupidity and climate change ignorance.

But the Liberals dared to ignore Kelly, and the Murdoch media's cheerleading for Turnbull, and chose Brendan "I've Never Voted Liberal In My Life!" Nelson to lead the party instead.

So now it's time for the New Liberals to pay the price for such insolence :

The Liberal Party may have chosen the wrong man as its new leader, with Brendan Nelson only half as popular as beaten rival Malcolm Turnbull among voters.

Brendan Nelson had only given his first interview as the New Liberals leader mere hours before the poll was taken. He hadn't even been leader for 48 hours!

A Newspoll conducted exclusively for The Australian at the weekend also found 61 per cent of voters named Kevin Rudd as their preferred prime minister, with Dr Nelson rating only 14 per cent.

The poll showed almost as many Coalition voters believed Mr Rudd would make a better prime minister as Dr Nelson.

...the Newspoll - the first since polling day - found Mr Turnbull was the most favoured Liberal Party figure.

But of course!

Thirty-four per cent of the 1125 respondents named the millionaire former banker and environment minister as the best person to lead the Liberals. Dr Nelson scored 18 per cent. West Australian Julie Bishop, who was elected as Dr Nelson's deputy last Thursday, scored 14 per cent.

Former health minister and Howard loyalist Tony Abbott won the support of 9 per cent of respondents...

Tony "Reasonable People Skills" Abbott only scored the tick of 1 in 10 people?

How can that be? The poll must be rigged. Even on pure entertainment value alone, Tony "Too Honest" Abbott would have to score higher than Nelson.

The Newspoll found that Mr Rudd, now Prime Minister, held a commanding lead over Dr Nelson in the preferred leader stakes.

You can say that again. 61% to 14%

But with Nelson in charge, the Newspoll humour continues regardless :

...in further bad news for the Liberals, Mr Rudd was also the preferred prime minister among 27 per cent of Coalition voters.

More Coalition voters think that Ruddley Do Right makes a more preferable PM than Nelson and Abbott combined. And Rudd hadn't even been sworn in as PM when the poll was taken!

Fantastic!

The rest of the 'Nelson Really Sucks' story from The Australian guts the Liberal leader like a pig and throws his entrails around the room, churning through the embarrassment of Nelson getting teary in his 'victory speech' to shellshocked Liberals and copping a "verbal bollocking" from Turnbull for giving a speech that was as exciting and inspiring as any you might hear at a funeral.

Not surprisingly, Brendan Nelson is not so happy at the continuing 'Let's Make Front Page Stories Out Of Our Polls' paradigm in force at The Australian, which scatters it's 'Liberals Are Really Shit Now' headlines and data across the entire sprawl of Australia's Murdoch newspapers, which grabs a market share of more than 70% of all the newspapers published in Australia, and in turn creates news stories for the wire services, all the network and cable channel news programs and virtually all the ABC News broadcasts.

Oh yes, Turnbull will be leader of the Liberals. Sooner than Nelson thinks.

Here's Nelson going nuts about the Newspoll assassination attempt. Sorry, did we say going nuts? Of course we meant "laughing off" :

"It's day five, I mean, gimme a break," Dr Nelson said.

"I think the average Australian out there is saying `I might see if I can get to know this guy'.

"I think again the average Australian will say `look, fair go, let's just find out what the bloke's on about first and then make your own judgment'."

This is Nelson going nuts :




UPDATE : The Australian knife job story on Nelson appears to have been hastily rewritten, with this introduction now disappeared into the void :

The Liberal Party may have chosen the wrong man as its new leader, with Brendan Nelson only half as popular as beaten rival Malcolm Turnbull among voters.

The intro still shows up in Google Search for a Courier Mail listing, but a click only leads you to the story where Nelson "laughs off" the Newspoll results.

Fortunately, we saved an image of the knifing from news.com.au. The photo of Nelson was not chosen in his favour :



I particularly like the readers poll. Forget who the Liberals chose to lead the party. Who do you think should be leader? Vote now, and we'll turn the results into yet another story tomorrow saying news.com.au readers "overwhelmingly" prefer Turnbull to Nelson.

Your free media and democracy in action.

Liberals Go For Brendan "We Went To Iraq For The Oil" Nelson

Nelson's First Betrayal Of The Wing Nuts : "We Love Kyoto, Too!"

Uh oh. Paul Kelly will not be happy, but the wing nuts will be. The Liberals have voted in former Labor Party member and one time union leader, Brendan Nelson, as their new messiah, with Julie Bishop as deputy.

Nelson has managed to fight off the Malcolm Turnbull Leadership Coup, but only just, winning his spot at "the worst job in Australian politics" by only a handful of votes.

This means the Liberal Party will rumble with chaos and "Did Turnbull do it?" leaks undermining the new leader for months, or even years, to come.

Brendan "We Went To Iraq For The Oil" Nelson can be counted on to make life a little bit difficult for the Rudd government, but will remain a figure of public mockery, and will continue to provide plenty of gaffes and jaw droppers to keep the Liberal Party In Chaos entertainment coming.

So much for the Liberals taking a message from the election and creating a new, more appealing front line team and set of themes. They will isolate themselves even further from the Australian mainstream, with Nelson now free to air his wacko views on education, religion and the 'War on Terror' whenever he likes.

It's now time for all of those who confidently predicted Turnbull would win the leadership to quickly distance themselves from their previous comments.

UPDATE : Maybe the wing nuts won't be so happy with Nelson, after all.

Brendan Nelson is podiuming and announcing...Kyoto Is Good!

"I have heard the message from Australians that was delivered on Saturday and whatever some critics of the Kyoto Protocol might actually think, it's symbolically important to Australians," he said.

Now symbolism is important to the Liberals?

Here's Brendan Nelson hating Kyoto in 2005, and cheerleading nuclear energy :

"Australia has rightly refused to sign the Kyoto protocol."

"...is it not time to consider in the longer term the most obvious power source, nuclear power? It is not only in electricity production that nuclear energy offers potential for Australia. It could also be used to fuel water desalination on a large scale."

The Labor Party will have lots of fun with those quotes.

Let's see how Nelson's We Love Kyoto, Too declaration today compares to those that The Australian's Paul Kelly instructed the next Liberal leader to utter :

"The Liberal Party believes in Kyoto ratification and a post-2012 system that binds developing nations into the compact."

Kind of close.

It looks like Nelson will be uttering plenty of "Me Toos!" in the coming months, on WorkChoices (goodbye), on withdrawing combat forces from Iraq (good luck) and on embracing the fight against climate change (our members own waterfront properties).

The more the wing nuts rip into Nelson for not being as demented, bigoted and extreme as they are, the more isolated they will become in Australian politics, and Australian society.

"Listen Up, Turnbull, This Is How It's Going To Be"

Esteemed Journo Offers Broken, Desperate Liberal Party A Helping Hand


The announcement will come within hours that Malcolm Turnbull has 'won' the leadership 'battle' to apply the jumper cables to the barely flailing corpse that is the Australian Liberals.

The Liberals are in big trouble, as every columnist in the country is telling you. These are desperate times for Australian conservatives. Not only will they have to publicly acknowledge that Al Gore was right on global warming, they will have to shut the hell up about "Evil Lefties", lest the Australian public think they are the party of John "That Stubborn Old Bastard!" Howard.

If Malcolm Turnbull hadn't launched his leadership coup, Brendan Nelson would be in charge tonight. Now while that would make for some spectacularly hilarious entertainment, it's not good for Australian democracy.

There has to be the illusion, at least, that the Labor Party will not rule the land for one or two generations to come and that we have, at the minimum, a viable two-party democracy.

Turnbull will be the new Liberal Party leader, as so many in the Australian media have already made clear. The Liberals don't have a say in this. The media decided it. It's Turnbull, or it's pitiless mockery from the front pages, opinion pages and probably the sports pages as well until the London Olympics.

But even choosing the new leader for the Liberals is not enough for the media. So thoroughly shipwrecked is the party of Australian conservatives that the big players in Australia's media are even writing talking points for the very first speech of the new leader who is, on early Thursday morning, still yet to be elected.

This from Paul Kelly, esteemed Editor At Large for The Australian, funneling new policy directly into the brain of Malcolm Turnbull, who is no doubt listening carefully :

Now is the time for the Liberals to be politically and intellectually ruthless. The new leader must burn the dead wood so furiously and symbolically that a new Liberal era is signalled. Nothing else will suffice.

"The Liberal Party accepts the new industrial relations settlement as voted by the people at this election." This should be Turnbull's pledge at his first press conference.

It will be a difficult retreat, but this is democracy.

A democracy where journalists write speeches in a national newspaper for political party leaders not yet elected? Yes.

"The Liberal Party believes in Kyoto ratification and a post-2012 system that binds developing nations into the compact." This needs to be Turnbull's second pledge at his media conference.

Whatever you say, boss!

Can anybody have a go at this? My turn :

"The Liberal Party believes in free video games and cannabis for old people who won't eat and are bored mindless, and will better the Labor Party in their planned national 'Sorry' to the Aboriginal people by saying 'We're Really, Really, Really, Really Sorry'."

We'll come back later today to see if Turnbull has delivered what his political masters in the media have demanded of him.

NO! Abbott Cuts And Runs On Liberal Leadership

Dammit, former health minister Tony "Too Raw" Abbott has withdrawn from the Malcolm Turnbull Liberal Party leadership coup...sorry, the very competitive Liberal Party leadership race :

Mr Abbott says after talking to his colleagues it is clear he does not have enough support to be a credible candidate.

"It's pretty obvious to me that Malcolm and Brendan have more support and so I am announcing today that I will be withdrawing my candidature and I won't be running tomorrow," he said.

His colleagues, eh?

Surely Abbott's decision to cut and run had nothing to do with this massive headline plastered across The Australian newspaper this morning :

The Liberal Party's Future Lies With Turnbull


Former defence minister Brendan "We Went To Iraq For The Oil" Nelson is now taking on Malcolm Turnbull for the leadership. He thinks he has a solid chance.

Or, to put it another way, Brendan Nelson is pretending he has a chance against the Turnbull-Julie Bishop juggernaut so as to give the appearance that the only person left in the Liberal Party with the money to pay for the 2010 campaign, Malcolm "Australia's richest politician" Turnbull, is not being handed the Liberal Party leadership on an eco-friendly hemp-fibre platter.

Do you think all those news stories about the terrible death of Bernie Banton that featured Tony Abbott saying Banton did not "necessarily have a good heart" might have affected Abbott's chances?

The Murdoch media didn't give the shell-shocked Liberal Party back roomers the slightest chance of a fair fight against the Turnbull coup. Turnbull was the Murdoch media's man from the moment Peter Costello quit on Sunday morning. Or perhaps even before then.

It will be interesting to learn in the post-election books if Costello was encouraged to quit because Turnbull was already chosen by the higher powers to lead the Liberals into defeat in 2010 and 2013.

It will also be very interesting to watch as the far right inside the Liberals try to shatter Turnbull by spreading the stories that it was Turnbull's people who leaked some of the most damaging anti-Howard stories over the past year.

The chaos inside the Liberal Party will continue for years under Turnbull.

It's going to be fascinating watching the Libs and Labor battle each over in Parliament over who can claim the mantle as the most anti-global warming party in Australia. Outside of The Greens, of course.

It's going to be even more fun to see how Andrew Bolt, Dennis Shanahan and Piers Akerman sing the praises of Turnbull in the coming months.

Tony "Reasonable People Skills" Abbott will quit Parliament and "go home to his wife" by July 2008, if not sooner.

Rupert Murdoch Threatens Caroline Overington With "Disciplinary Action" For Her "Just Joking" Election Interference

Malcolm Turnbull : Murdoch Journalist "Not Part Of My Campaign Team"

The story of journalist Caroline Overington asking an independent candidate to preference her friend, Malcolm Turnbull, probably would probably not have been more than a one or two day wonder had News Corp. boss Rupert Murdoch not weighed in on the controversy.

During a shareholder's meeting in Adelaide, Murdoch was asked about the Overington Vs Ecuyer story :

News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch says disciplinary action would be taken against any reporter who tried privately to influence political candidates in the name one of the company's publications.

He says the company cannot restrict the private actions of individuals.

"If they're doing it in the name of the paper ... we would more than discourage it, we would take disciplinary action," Mr Murdoch said.

"It's a free world and a reporter is entitled to his opinions as much as anybody else. I'm sorry about that."

Caroline Overington asked Wentworth independent candidate Danielle Ecuyer to "please preference Malcolm (Turnbull)" as an employee of The Australian newspaper. She told Ecuyer it would possibly become a front page story.

Murdoch's threats to take "disciplinary action" against Overington will ensure the story reaches the international media (probably only in a minor way), where the tale of independent candidate Daniellle Ecuyer running against her ex-boyfriend for the seat of "Bondi Beach" is already scoring headlines.

Malcolm Turnbull, Overington's preferred politician for the seat of Wentworth, dives into the controversy, choosing to back his friend, and supporter :

Malcolm Turnbull has defended a journalist accused of trying to pressure an independent candidate to direct her preferences to him. Mr Turnbull says Caroline Overington, a journalist at The Australian, is entitled to her opinion.

Ms Overington says the email was a joke.

Mr Turnbull says the journalist is entitled to her opinion on the direction of preferences in Wentworth.

"Assuming Caroline Overington's comments were serious and not tongue-in-cheek - and the email exchanges seem to be fairly humorous - she was expressing her personal opinion to which she's entitled," Mr Turnbull told reporters on the Gold Coast today.

"She's not part of my campaign team obviously."

Obviously.


Murdoch Senior Journalist Claims Her Interference In Election "Just A Joke"