Gee, Tony, I’m Not Going To Say I Told You So … Oh wait, I am!

Rossleigh

10 years ago

“If you are going to tell people the truth, you’d better make them laugh; otherwise they’ll kill you.”― George Bernard Shaw

Ok, just let me remind everyone of what I wrote immediately after last year’s horror Federal Budget.

“A very reliable source has just recently told me that Malcolm Turnbull will lead the Liberals to the next election. The first image of Turnbull I saw after this titbit was this”

Here’s the link if you want to go back and check it out. Makes interesting reading a year and a bit later.

Of course a few weeks ago, when I suggested that Abbott was likely to go to the Governor General and call a Double Dissolution rather than face a spill, I’m sure that most of you thought that I was joking. But yesterday, Fairfax quoted an unnamed Liberal source saying that Turnbull would need to act fast because Abbott was crazy enough to do just that.

So, while I hate to say I told you so…

Actually, no I don’t.

I told everyone that Malcolm Turnbull would lead the Liberals to next election. Was I just lucky? Or like Cassandra have a been granted the gift of prophecy only to have nobody believe me?

Well, whatever, here’s what the future holds.

The Liberals will get a bounce in the polls.
Hastie will win the seat of Canning, leading to Turnbull supporters claiming it was only because he’s now PM, while disgruntled conservatives will put down any swing against the Liberals as all Turnbull’s fault for causing the spill.
Speculation about Shorten’s leadership will be the next sport for most political writers.
Speculation about Shorten’s leadership will be interrupted by stories from disaffected conservatives telling us that Turnbull is facing a lot of internal division.
Turnbull will be torn between establishing his Prime Ministerial credentials and rushing to an election before the next Budget, as well as not giving Labor the chance to replace Shorten with Plibersek, Bourke, Bowen or Dreyfus.
The Liberals will decide to implement a Budget full of “goodies” with the idea that they can change everything after the election and still have three years to win the electorate back.
Tony Abbott will leave Parliament and shock everyone by announcing a split from his partner. He may also separate from his wife too.
Barnaby Joyce will publically distance himself from Turnbull by suggesting that he’s been disloyal and that one should always be loyal to the PM. When someone points out that he is, in fact, being disloyal to Turnbull, who is now PM, Joyce will turn a nasty shade of red and issue a verbal spray against everything from the ABC to climate change and finish by saying that Tony Windsor wasn’t game to stand in 2013, so why is he standing now…
Peter Dutton will be given the newly created position of Ambassador to Countries Where Time Means Nothing and will be sent to stand on a faraway beach somewhere until he can assure us that the waters aren’t rising.
Rupert Murdoch will tweet that Australia is now in a real mess and that only be allowing Donald Trump to send us as many Mexicans as he can, will we be able to boost productivity to a point where we can compete internationally.
Donald Trump will say this is a good idea because people in Australia speak “foreigner” just like those Mexicans. When told that it’s Australia, not Austria, and that Australians include Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman, Trump will use them as an example of migrants who learned to speak good American.
Peta Credlin will leave the country to work for Donald Trump.
Nauru and Manus island will be quietly closed after the asylum seekers are slowly moved to other locations. Transfield will continue to have guards there because there’ll be concern that we don’t want those sort of people back in the country.
When Turnbull wears a blue tie, he’ll be criticised for it being the wrong shade of blue by a unnamed source in the Liberal Party.
Christopher Pyne will call a press conference to announce that he has nothing to say.
A petition will be presented to Parliament requesting that United Patriots’ Front demand that “Aussies have the right to bare arms” (sic) be denied and that they be required to wear sleeves at all times.
The Melbourne Cup will be won by a horse with a vowel in its name. By a strange coincedence the winning Jockey will also have a vowel in his name.
Nobody will say “we stopped the boats” in the two weeks after the Canning byelection.
Christmas Day and New Year’s Day will both fall on the same day of the week.
Tony Abbott will not keep his portfolio as Minister For Women.
At least some of my predictions will be correct.