Influencing the Influencers

Australia’s loyal Opposition has had most of the nation riveted for the past week as we watch, car crash like, the political brawling and treachery that even long-standing observers and players have called ‘unprecedented’.

Part of the lack of precedence has come from the use of new technology.  On air television commentators have been reading text messages and twitter posts from those Party members who leaked in ‘real time’ during internal, and supposedly, confidential meetings.  We were able to get rolling commentary from within, as though we were sitting amongst it all and watching the brawling and name calling in close up.  This has made it all the more compelling in a period when we have moaned that not much separates Australia’s two leading political parties who at times appear to have echoed each other in love calls to the conservative heartlands of this wide brown land.  Our PM, Kevin Rudd has even given some of Labor’s so-called enemy – Liberal Party stalwarts – very swish jobs including a diplomatic posting to a former Liberal leader.  So while we might think not much separates Labor and Liberal, this week has shown us that a lot separates the Liberal Party.  Within its own ranks, that is.

The final vote for the Liberal Party leadership was right down the middle with conservative Tony Abbott winning by one vote; presumably his own.  It is hardly convincing, but it is a win and he’s running with it.  It means of course further unrest as the losing side questions the legitimacy of the win and the Party’s future policy shift to the right. 

My moment of excitement in the victory press conference was not from Tony Abbott (though he is very exciting),  but from his loyal deputy, Julie Bishop (who is usually not so).  Ms Bishop, as one journalist observed, has now been deputy to three leaders.  So, how does she do it? he asked.  Tony put his arms around her shoulders and said something borderline patronising about her being a good girl.  Julie pursed her lips, and in her best Adelaide accent (I am from Adelaide and have been working on losing mine for the past decade) that unlike previous deputies, she saw her role as being loyal and supportive to whoever lead the party.  It was not to pursue personal ambition as others have, she added.  We presume she meant Peter Costello, who was deputy to former Liberal Prime Minister, John Howard.  Mr Costello spent years trying to convince his party to abandon Mr Howard and bestow the leadership on himself.  When they didn’t, he took his bat and ball and went back to Melbourne, leaving the Party leaderless. Or so they thought.  They’ve had three in two years, so perhaps he didn’t.