Drawing on Alexander Downer’s penchant for namedropping international figures of note, Mikey makes a bet.

…what’s the bet Downer starts name dropping himself?

And less than 24 hours later Mikey wins.

Late last week I spoke to 300 students in Adelaide about political leadership.

Alexander Downer recalls the morning after the night before.

“I remember the day after the election when Peter Costello made his announcement and my wife and some of my children, we were watching this announcement on television,” Mr Downer told the Nine Network.

“And somebody asked would I be interested in the job and the children all in unison howled out: ‘Don’t go anywhere near it Dad!’”

What he forgot to tell Channel Nine is that he also clearly heard the screams of 20 million Australians howling out in unison: “Noooooooo!”

Quite frankly, given Brendan Nelson’s atrocious performance in doorstop and radio interviews it surprises me that the Liberal party even put transcripts on their website. But if they’re going to put them up they should put them up intact. Here’s a snippet from Nelson’s doorstop in Gippsland today according to the Libs.

QUESTION: Are you confident you’ll be leading the Liberals at the next election?

DR NELSON: Yes, very confident.

But here’s the same snippet according to The Age.

Asked if he was confident he would be leading the opposition to the next election, he said: “As confident as I can… yes, very confident.”

See how they’ve cunningly left out the bit that makes the good doctor look like (more of a) dick?

If you need any more proof here’s some ABC footage (at 2min 06sec) of the doctored statement in question.

Oh, and here’s another interesting chunk of the transcript.

QUESTION: [inaudible]

DR NELSON: Instant a lot of the time.

What’s the bet that the question was “what kind of coffee do you drink?” in response to this statement of Nelson’s earlier in the doorstop?

The Labor Party has a track record of being captivated and high-jacked by left leaning, latte sippers in large suburban cities.

And what’s the bet that the question wasn’t actually inaudible?

Last week the Labor government delivered its first budget in thirteen years to mixed reviews, to which opposition leader Brendan Nelson responded in a not-totally-pathetic fashion when put in the context of his dismal leadership record. Today the coalition was handed a rare golden opportunity to stick one up Labor…

The exclusive Herald Sun/Galaxy poll taken at the weekend shows just 23 per cent of voters overall believe they will be better off as a result of the Budget.

A total of 33 per cent said they would be worse off, while a large pool of 44 per cent were uncommitted.

…and what do they do with it?

MALCOLM Turnbull has publicly confirmed a split within Liberal ranks over fuel excise but denied he is the source of a devastating leak that threatens to reignite the Liberal leadership question.

Them crazy Liberal attention seekers noticed that the negative spotlight looked set to shine elsewhere so they imploded just a little bit more to ensure that they stayed smack-bang in the centre of punters’ attention.

And what’s with Turnbull so actively undermining Nelson’s leadership in the public sphere? As if you’d put your concerns about a major party policy in an email to the leader’s chief of staff only minutes before that policy’s announcement unless you planned to use that email to boost yourself at a later date.

Sez Turnbull: “Naturally I support the policy measures announced in Dr Nelson’s Budget Reply.”

Bwah! Hah, ha, ha, haw!

The book is closed! There are over thirty tips for the date on which Nelson will be dumped (or stand down, although a dumping will be more satisfying) and we have been collecting beer bottle tops at GrodsThink recordings to send to the eventual winner.

Stay tuned…

GrodsCorp can today exclusively reveal that the Liberal Party has been acquired by Australian company Southern Star Endemol, producers of Australian Idol and Big Brother. Southern Star Endemol have been tasked with breathing life into a tired old format and have hit the ground running with two bold initiatives.

1) Party leader selected by popular vote
Under a proposal supported by you’ve-got-to-be-kidding leadership aspirant, Christopher Pyne, every Liberal Party member will get to vote for the leader of the Party. Members will need to SMS the first name of their preferred candidate (e.g. WILSON) to a 1900 phone number for 55 cents. It is believed that many strongly anti-Liberal voters are considering taking out a Liberal Party membership just so they can play their small part in electing to the leadership somebody completely unelectable (e.g. BRENDAN).

2) Audience participation during Question Time
Fresh from cheapening Parliament by using the Kardboard Kevin incident to accuse the ALP of cheapening Parliament by sitting on Fridays, the Liberal Party is further cheapening Parliament by opening it up to anyone who wants a crack. The Liberal Party website has a page where punters can submit questions that they’d like Brendan Nelson or another clown to ask of the government. Some commentators have noted that MPs are elected to think of these questions themselves and if they can’t even manage that then they deserve their sub-polar Newspoll ratings.

Lord Sedgwick has scooped the entire mainstream media with an explosive revelation about the Nationals leadership in Queensland.

Congratulations to the ONE person who chose Brendan Nelson, possibly as a joke. The rest of you are idiots and have shamed this blog with your inaccurate guessing and lack of Liberal party insider news. For shaaaaame.

Brendan Nelson has been elected to lead the Liberals further into the wilderness 45 votes to 42.

If A < B then your forehead is too big

And by the way, isn’t Brendan an ex-union boss? Ahhh, the delicious irony.

Don’t forget to vote on who you think will lead the demoralised and broken Liberal party. Entries close tomorrow morning!

Update: Disappointing news from the Vatican. Surely Malcolm Turnbull has no serious competitors?

Update 2: Wise philosopher Habib comments on Tim Blair:

Slightly O/T, but Turnbull has backed saying sorry (and thus exposing taxpayers to extensive and expensive litigation), and given the nod to nobbling workplace reform, accompanied by fellow northshore (sic) fatboy knobend (sic) Joe Hockey- a display of pathetic invertabrate (sic) snivelling (sic) that’d ashame a bluebottle.

I don’t think whoever gets the leadership of the liberal party’s going to make any difference- they already were a mild centrist social democrat party, they’ll now veer further to the left, and idssapear (sic) into irrelevance as they have on a state level.

Time for a new party methinks, one that actually holds conservative/libertarian values and sticks to them.

If the option is a pack of spineless panderers and spendthrifts over the incumbent apologise-addicted drunken sailors, the ALP’s going to be in office until the place goes bankrupt and finally turns to the inevitible (sic) Mad Max 2 dystopia that the electorate richly deserves.

You heard the man. The Rudd government is going to lead to this:

But Habib don’t stop there:

Turnbull (and his idiot wife) are North Shore luvvies straight out of central casting- he’s acceptable to the left, because he agrees with a lot of their fruity ideas; I think the Liberal party’s had the dick, all the wet retards and embarrassing cretins like Petro Georgiou, Bruce Baird and Dana Vaile got back in while more conservative (and effective) types like Mal Brough got the arse.

BTW, I don’t think any party has the right to apologise (and thus expose to litigation) to anyone on behalf of taxpayers without getting their approval (via referendum) to do so- I’ll be fucked if I say sorry for something that’s none of my responsibility, particularly when the actions being apologised for saved lives and educated the alleged “victims”.

Get ready for a return to Keatingesque black armband bollocks big time.

There, there. It’ll be okay. No one’s expecting you to take any responsibility, we know it’s beyond you.

In line with GrodsCorp’s official policy of endorsing the most hopeless candidates for leadership positions within the coalition in order to further weaken it, I got a sudden rush of adrenaline when I saw the following headline on the ABC News Online front page tonight.

If only it were true.

And in other Liberal Wake Party news, does anyone else think that Christopher Pyne is the conservative version of Simon Crean? Let’s hope he gets up too.

GrodsCorp hereby formally endorses the election of the coalition leadership dream team of Tony “Mad Monk” Abbott and Barnaby “Maverick” Joyce. May they screw their parties beyond repair.

La Tigre

Blue Steel

It happened. Rudd is PM. Life is already changing - this morning I was beaten up by union thugs three times before breakfast, and The Editor was dismayed to find that supermarket prices were already spiraling out of control. The resources boom is over and the drought is even worse. To cap it off, Peter Costello has just announced that he is not contesting the leadership of the Liberal Party.

Today’s poll - who would you like to see lead the Liberal party?

My vote is for Tony Abbott - how hilarious would that? Abbott would be far more damaging than Latham ever was. For one he’d make Cardinal Pell deputy leader and force all non-Catholics to sea.

Amanda Vanstone called Kim Beazley racist today and after the Bomber’s comments this week I wasn’t falling over myself to disagree with her. However, I do think that both sides of politics are a bit too keen to throw accusations and smears such as racism back and forth at each other. All day today Labor MPs were screeching “pot, kettle, black” at Mandy while John Howard refused to specifically distance himself from her comments, saying only that “this country is not a racist country.” However, the purpose of this post is not to wade into the murky waters of what constitutes racism and who are its practitioners.

My point is where the hell was Kim today? He’d been branded a racist person with racist policies and he couldn’t haul his arse out the front of Parly House for a quick retaliatory doorstop. At least, I don’t think he did. There was no sign of an interview on either SBS or ABC news tonight so I think my assumption is safe. He found the time yesterday to speak out in support of his stupid immigration values test policy but couldn’t be bothered defending his character today.

Kim Beazley’s gotta go.