Filed under: Anna Coren, Australia, Election, John Howard, Media, Peter Costello, Politics
The living dead interviewed Australia’s Dead Men Walking last night, when television’s finest autocue reader Anna Coren, sat down and embarrassed herself by speaking to the soon to be former prime minister J-Ho, and his annointed successor, opposition leader designate, Peter Costello.
In what could only be described as an advertorial for the Liberal Party, Coren asked all the hard questions about their political marriage and about their good working relationship. Cretin’s soft questioning about their relationship elicited these responses;
PETER COSTELLO: He has the most amazing work ethic that I’ve ever seen. You know, he can work 16, 17 hours a day and then get up and go walking again at 6am in the morning.
JOHN HOWARD: I like Peter as a bloke. He’s a very bright; I mean he’s a seriously intelligent person. And he’s also very funny. I mean, Peter’s got a natural talent for wit and humour, which is much greater than mine, I’m lousy at telling jokes. You disagree on things and you get cranky about it and say, you know, blah blah blah, but that…
PETER COSTELLO: I like Holdens, he likes Fords.
JOHN HOWARD: Yeah, he barracks for the Essendon Bombers and (inaudible) St George Illawarra Dragons.
So much wanking, so little journalism.
Great work Anna. With incisive questioning like that you’ll be able to get a job doing the advertorials on 9am with David and Kim next year. You are certainly going to need a job because it will be a miracle if your contract on Today Tonight is renewed.
Filed under: Australia, Election, John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Peter Costello, Politics, Rumour
Melbourne radio station 3AW today aired a rumour which claimed that the Australian Prime Minister, John Winston Howard, will resign following the conclusion of the APEC summit in Sydney. The story suggests Howard knows he cannot win the next election and so to avoid a crushing and humiliating defeat, will resign his commission shortly after APEC concludes.
This would leave prime ministerial pretender, Peter Costello, just weeks to lead Australia and stake his claim on the top job. (Dreams come, dreams go, don’t they Pete)?
And while this should be a dream come true, for me, it isn’t. In fact it is possibly the worst thing Howard could do.
Why? Because I have been a Howard hater for such a long time, I have long dreamed of watching Bonsaii concede. Better still has been my imagining of this concession. Here I have seen the frosty paw of Janette calming the prime ministerial knee, while the electorally despised former leader weeps away his tears of pain and suffering.
I, on the other hand have planned tears of joy and lines of Coke from the coffee table.
And if Howard goes, then this won’t happen. It would be yet another of my dreams shattered. It pains me to write this, but I want Mr Howard to stay so that the Australian people can kick his arse all the way to retirement.
Filed under: Australia, Election, John Howard, Liberal, Peter Costello, Politics, Tony Abbott
Seriously, it couldn’t get much worse for Johnny Numbnut and the 50 year-old boy Treasurer. Could it?
With new revelations from three of Australia’s most highly respected journalists (who’d a thunk I’d ever say that), that the man with no iceberg underneath had planned to take out his little bee bee gun and topple the dear leader by carping and back-stabbing his way to the back bench, Costello has now been shown to be a coward and worse still; a plotter and a schemer.
Costello’s reply to the revelations splits already thinning hairs and relies heavily on semantics. After first saying he had been verballed, Costello then claimed that the date provided by the journalists was wrong and finally, that he didn’t say these things because these things didn’t happen.
But as Michelle Grattan wrote in The Age today, “the Prime Minister stared them down. Nothing happened because the Costelloites were forced to retreat from their threats, not because they didn’t make them in conversations with journalists.”
You can tell just how much bother the Liberals are in because the mad, medieval monk Tony Abbott had to spring to the defence of Costello by claiming most dis-ingeniously that the entire conversation was off-the-record and shouldn’t have been reported anyway. In a piece of spin not seen since Warnie pulled up stumps, the health monster, err minister bleated; “If something is off the record, it in effect doesn’t exist, and there’s nothing wrong with denying something that didn’t exist.”
Alistair Campbell would be proud.
Filed under: Australia, Election, John Howard, Liberal, Peter Costello, Politics
Australian prime manure John W. Howard, trailing terribly in published opinion polls has reportedly asked his cabinet colleagues whether or not his leadership is the problem. He did this because it seems that no amount of government meanness and trickery have managed to boost the numbers. Cabinet ministers reportedly sat mute throughout, indicaticating that the near-naked emperor is still a spunkrat to his assembled cretinage.
And the one who could have spoken up, who should have spoken up, didn’t. Proving he is all tip and no iceberg, treasurer Peter Costello ignored the increasingly obvious elephant in the room, and applauded the dear leader. Well in public at least, for it seems treasurer Pete has other opinions which he was none to afraid to dish up in an interview with Peter van Onselen and Wayne Errington for their new biography, John Winston Howard.
In the interview Costello claimed “the Howard treasurership was not a success in terms of interest rates and inflation” and that “he had not been a great reformer.” Ouch!
The treasurer also accused the prime minister of leaking a memo written by former Liberal Party president Shane Stone, prior to the 2001 election. You know the one, the one where Stone wrote that the Australian public thought the government “mean and tricky” and “out of touch”.
So with Costello’s criticisms of Mr Howard being made public, leadership speculation has once again graced the front pages of the newspapers. But Costello seems reluctant to challenge, which is a shame for him, as he is now destined to become the prime minister that wasn’t.
Why am I saying all this, when the last thing I want is another Liberal government elected? I am doing so because I want the election to be close. In a country that does not have proportional representation it is important that governments with overwhelming majorities are not elected because they soon lose touch with the people that elected them.
But on the other and I want Pete to have a crack, simply because I have always wanted to see deckchairs on the Titanic being rearranged.
