Live Blog – As It Is About To Happen!
Now for those of you who are wondering how I can tell you what will happen, I’d like to point out that I’ve done of a lot of theatre over the years, and – generally speaking – actors follow the script. Unless they stuff up completely. In which case, all bets are off. And given the current mob of clowns we call the Federal Government, that’s a real possibility, but even they should get the occasional line right.
Simply put, this means that if someone has a script of say Shakespeare’s “Julius Ceasar”, they can be pretty sure that Brutus isn’t going suddenly throw himself in front of Ceasar and take a bullet (or a dagger) for his mate Julius. Similarly, one should beware the Ides of March, and when the person beside you tells you that Marc Antony will ask you all to lend him your ears, you’re probably right if you argue that it’s not really worth doing unless interest rates go a lot higher…
And while I’m not sure that the script I was handed last May, which assured me that Turnbull’s future was assured. (Yeah, I know I keep linking it, but that’s only for people who haven’t actually read it, so you don’t have to go back if you’ve already read it!)
And I know that Steve Bracks hasn’t entered federal politics, nor has Peter Costello managed to announce that he misses politics and would nominate for Doncaster which was supposed to happen when Kevin Andrews stood down, sparking a pre-selection contest with another Peta, but Kevin Andrews announced that he wasn’t standing down. So I was wrong, but stick with this anyway because it’s Friday and we all need a good laugh and by next week, nobody will be laughing.
How things will unfold:
- Abbott will call a press conference to announce that there are more important things than who’s PM and that we need to start concentrating on what’s important such as keeping Australians safe. If a Murdoch journalist gets the first question, they will ask him if that’s the case, will he step down for the good of the country; if it’s one from the ABC/Fairfax collective, they will ask him then why is he trying to make the central issue in the Gillian Triggs/Human Rights Commission Report whether Gillain Triggs is the head of the Human Rights Commission. If an independent journalist was ever allowed to ask him a question, they’d probably ask if he’d stayed in the priesthood and become a bishop (irony there, eh?), would he have attacked the person bringing the sexual abuse of children to his attention as he did to Gillian Triggs. The IPA, on the other hand, would ask him, why hasn’t he replaced Gillian Triggs with Tim Wilson like he promised them.
- The media will quote various unnamed Liberal “insiders” and “sources” high up, and quote various other journalists who tell them that they wouldn’t be sharing this if they weren’t so high and what was in that last cocktail, but apparently Loughnane and Credlin are married and this is something that’s caused a lot of ill feeling, not just between the two of them, but others as well, and shall we have another one of the cocktails before I write the story about Abbott’s numbers being dayed?
- Malcolm Turnbull will call a press conference to announce that he has no leadership plans and that he’s behind Tony 110%, even when he’s wrong and that you couldn’t get a more loyal minister than he is, so all these suggestions that he’s about to challenge are just being made up by journalists searching for a story, and, by the way, any suggestion that he was criticising the PM when he gave my stellar performance on Q&A are made by people with an axe to grind.
- Not to appear disloyal, Julie Bishop will announce that she, too, is behind the PM 110%.
- Joe Hockey, in a vain attempt to keep his job as Treasurer and show that he has an understanding of numbers, will insist that one can’t have actually have more than 100% of anything. When someone asks him if you can have eleventy percent, he will attempt to blame the Labor Party for the fact that he was made Treasurer when most observers expected him to be Leader.
- Tony Abbott will demand that Turnbull pledge his loyalty.
- Malcolm will say that he’s never been anything but loyal.
- Scott Morrison will realise that the reason he was removed as Minister for Immigration was so that he couldn’t use his recently granted powers to deport Tony Abbott and hold the other potential rivals in a detention centre while he assessed their claims to be leader.
- The day before the next projected spill, Abbott will visit the Governor-General and call an early election.
- The Murdoch Press will argue that this is the best way forward, as it clears the air, and will allow the Liberals to govern without all the negativity from Labor, The Greens, the Independents,doctors, patients, etc, before criticising Labor for having no policies, followed by a critique of any policies they have released. Their editorials will urge us all to vote for Tony and give him the numbers to make us all better off by lowering our wages.
Ok, mightn’t happen quite like that.
But I may be closer than many realise.
