Will the real Brendan Nelson please stand up? Is it the man Annabel Crabb saw on Tuesday, the mild-mannered doctor with “substantial empathy for those suffering from misfortune” whose “attention is drawn disproportionately to the Gothic end of the human suffering spectrum”? Or is the rabid Bon Jovi fan?
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Annabel Crabb has written a superb profile of Senator Penny Wong, Australia’s new Minister for Climate Change and Water. Alas, this was not the best way for me to discover that the death of her younger brother, my very good mate Toby Wong, was a suicide. I miss you, you crazy man.
Most of my Saturday mornings start with a quiet, reflective time. ’Pong has gone to work, the cats are fed and have finally shut the fuck up and gone back to sleep. It’s not yet time to join the Snarky Platypus for our regular gym, lunch, shiraz and sarcasm session. I’ve got a couple of hours to sit, still unshaven and often in my underwear, sort through the newspapers and my notebook, turn them over in my mind, and see what emerges.
What emerges this morning is laughter. About John Howard.
Not a belly-laugh, though, nor that loud, pointing, “Haw haw haw! Hey Charlene, will ya just look at that!”
No, it’s a quiet chuckle. A roll of the eyes and a slow shake of the head which says, “Oh, you bloody idiot.” And this moment of amusement is certainly helping to make up for the anger of the last fortnight.
One of the choices in this week’s poll is “slimy toad”. Of course that should have been “miserable toad”, as this commentary on Kim Beazley’s farewell speech to parliament indicates.
You might have thought the Prime Minister could have made the effort to be there for his adversary of 27 years standing, but he did not. John Howard remains a miserable toad. The rest of the Howard ministry took their cue and also absented themselves — Robb and Nelson the exceptions. And know also that when Beazley finished speaking and sat down, and those in the public gallery got to their feet to join the applause of Beazley’s Labor colleagues and most of us in the press gallery, Andrew Robb and three of the Liberal backbenchers applauded, too.
Brendan Nelson did not.
I always liked Kim Beazley — which, you should note, is not the same thing as saying he’d make a good Prime Minister. He was a strategic thinker and a good orator, both skills lacking in modern politics.
I meant to say it at the time: the articles by Alan Ramsey (which I just quoted) and Annabel Crabb are well worth reading — if for nothing else than the historical snippets Beazley dropped.
When I returned to focus on politics after a busy morning yesterday, I discovered that not only was John Howard still PM, but also that there was never a leadership challenge. Really. How can this be?
I happened to read Crikey first, where Christian Kerr wrote:
Nothing happened in Canberra this morning. Nothing in a Samuel Beckett sort of way. A nothing that means plenty. A nothing that is quite profound.
You’ve right there, Christian! Every newsroom and every politics junkie in the country including myself arced up — prepared, as I said, for the biggest political story in a decade. And then come the time, Howard et al strolled out of the party room meeting as if nothing had happened.
Finally, at 12:45, Tony Abbott appeared. There had been “full and frank discussions”, he said, but there was “absolutely rock solid support for the Prime Minister”.
It’s a good thing John Howard’s very bestest of best friends George W Bush left APEC a day early. Howard could avoid talking about yet another fall in the opinion polls.
On the cover of the recent Howard biography (left), the Man of Steel looks stern and concerned. Apt. If those poll figures are repeated on election day, even with the usual minor swing back to stability, it won’t just be a Labor victory. It’ll be a complete rout of the Liberal/National Coalition.
APEC won’t be the poll boost Howard was looking for. John’s Bestest Best Friend stumbled through his speech like a village idiot — you choose good friends, John! Kevin Rudd looked like a 21st century statesman, cracking jokes in Mandarin with the Chinese president.
Pretty much everybody is saying it’s time for Howard to go — as Annabel Crabb’s witty poem makes clear. But the Man of Steel is in his bunker, fighting to the end.
I do intend to contest [the election], I intend to contest it as leader. That question was settled last year.
In the SMH today, Peter Hartcher says the Coalition would be mad to switch leaders now. I disagree.
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