Thomo's Hole

I don’t often comment on political things⁽⁽¹⁾⁾, not really my forte and politics is something best left to late night television when there is no decent sport or movies on, however, this morning I saw perhaps the funniest thing I have for a while. The Australian Liberal Party decided to decide whether they needed a new leader or not.

Enter the three players:

• Malcolm Turnbull, the existing leader and a man who said he was a man of his word
• Joe Hockey, Mr Avuncular and perhaps the most likely of the three to have fun on his office desk in Canberra
• Tony Abbott, “yes, I think we should do this, unless today is really tomorrow in which case I think we shouldn’t!”

The electorate had feelings about these blokes as well. The electorate preferred Hockey (39%), Turnbull (36%) and Abbott (20%) with only 5% not having an opinion (unusual in itself).

So, the Liberal party met and decided that the last thing they needed was a leader that the electorate actually liked and perhaps had faith in, after all, personality doesn’t matter in Australian politics does it?

So they voted and eliminated Mr Hockey – too popular by half with the electorate – better to get rid of him now than run the risk of winning an election.

Now there were two. “Wait a minute” said the party. Now this Mr Turnbull is the most popular of the two left with the electorate. Can’t have that either, he might also win an election so we had better get rid of him.

So they voted and eliminated Mr Turnbull. Now the party had what they always wanted. A leader that was unpopular with the electorate, who would allow them to renege on agreements they had already made and who could proudly and strongly lead them forward to an even bigger electoral loss than they had the last time when Little What’s-his-name was Prime Minister.

And I almost missed it … but now the Liberal Party is lead by an Abbott and a Bishop.

Gotta love Aussie politics.

1. and it needs to be noted that I am a political agnostic with views a little to the left and right of commonsense [↩]