News That's Fit To Punt - 29/Jan/2015

Everybody Has Advice For The PM

If you screw things up as knottily as Tony Abbott has done in his short tenure as Prime Minister, it becomes something of a sport to offer up advice. The best one for laughs I have seen to date is from Rupert Murdoch tweeting that Abbott should sacrificially sack Peta Credlin as his chief of staff. In other words, in a partnership of a brain and the mouthpiece, the mouthpiece should sack the brain. I guess if Abbott just took calls directly from Rupert all the time, it would save having to talk through Credlin, presumably.

Oddly enough Bill Shorten defended Peta Credlin. Then again, I would too if the opponent is about to sack its worst tactical liability.

Andrew Bolt thought the 'Knightmare' was so bad, it was possibly fatal for Abbott's prime ministership. Of course, on a long enough timeline, all prime Minsters fail and leave office in one way or another, so something will remove Tony Abbott eventually. Perhaps ridicule is more powerful than the sycophantic support of rightwing nut job radio broadcasters. If so, hooray for ridicule!

Tony Abbott's standing is so low, he's been asked not to go up to Queensland for the state election,  by the incumbent LNP Premier himself; I might add it is a premier who is in danger of losing his own seat, and he still doesn't want any 'help' from the Federal branch of his own party. It's so bad NSW ALP strategists think Tony Abbott alone is worth 3-4 seats coming off Mike Baird's Liberal Party majority. The Liberal Party strategists think it's more like 6 seats.

And so, the latest scuttlebutt is that yes-maybe-probably the Liberals are considering alternatives and this is rounding on the usual suspects of Julie Bishop and Malcolm Turnbull. It's so transparent that bookies are taking bets. The problem with all this is of course the Right wing (of a largely right wing party, which is like saying the "glans of the dickhead") won't tolerate Malcolm Turnbull and well, Julie Bishop is - Margaret Thatcher's fine fascist career notwithstanding - a woman, and such a stunt as to installing a woman as a Liberal Party Prime Minister and one not by election at that, is just too Gillard-ian for their own tastes. Let's face it, Malcolm Turnbull probably still hasn't developed any judgment and is liable to run the party into the ground in his own way, the way he did with Ute-gate; and Julie Bishop's best attributes are still the death-stare-denial-of-reality and the moral nihilism that allowed her to defend James Hardie and Big Tobacco together with the strategically acquired Claire Underwood hairdo.

Be that as it may, the cat is surely out of the bag and working the phones, canvasing for votes. Do I bet on equities, bonds, derivatives, horses or do I bet on who will replace Tony Abbott? It's a tough choice. Here's my advice to the PM: If I were Tony Abbott, I would march in to the party room before any spill and announce a Double Dissolution and go to the polls.