Some stories are too good to die, like the one about Tony Abbott's prime ministerial pension. Apparently he would have been able to get one if he had been in office for just three more days.

It is said that the pension is only available to prime ministers who have been in the job for two years. Abbott became prime minister on September 18, 2013. He was replaced just short of two years, earlier this month on September 15. If only he had held out another three days he could have retired on serious money, or so the story goes.

His treasurer is said to have done much better. Joe Hockey was sworn in on 18 September, 2013 and left office on September 21 - a period of just over two years.

It's so delicious it ought to be true, which might be why the ABC recycled it several times on the night of the spill and one of the News Corporation papers reported it as a fact the next day. And it could be why I am still getting emails berating me for overlooking it when I totaled Abbott's entitlements on the night of the spill.

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I didn't overlook it. I checked it out and found it wrong. But I was unwise not to say so, figuring that there was not much news in something that was wrong.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbotts-pension-the-myth-that-wont-die-20150925-gjv14d.html#ixzz3mnDUVdcS
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Yes yes we know... But so what?... The myth of Tony loosing some entitlements by three days is good and an entertaining delusion in our own mind... But now that Tony is about to leave parliament (hopefully) as he should, someone should investigate when Tony rescinded his UK citizenship to serve in this parliament. Then we can find out if fraud was committed and remove his pension... That would be fun. The end of entitlements would really be nigh...

 

I phoned Paul Keating's Sydney office this week and left a message asking him to call. I told his secretary, Susan, to tell him I wanted to go back over our phone conversation some years earlier on the life and times of Malcolm Turnbull.

"He'll know what I mean," I said.

Clearly he did, for I waited 24 hours and heard nothing.

So I phoned again.

"I gave him the message," Susan said instantly.

"I'm sure you did," I replied.

"But he said he didn't want to get into that stuff again," she added.

"I'll bet he did," I said. "However, would you tell him I'm going to write it anyhow."

She rang off and I've heard nothing since. So here's what I remember of my chat by phone with former Labor prime minister Keating sometime in April/May, 2010, not long before Gillard and Co, including Melbourne's sly Mr Shortly and his factional mates, did the dirty on Kevin Rudd and cut down Labor's 11th prime minister since Federation, just so the more pliant Mrs Stringbag could become Labor's 12th (and the first woman) in the 110 years since Australia formally became an independent nation.

Keep in mind, after the Howard government was killed off by voters in November 2007, that Turnbull actually needed four goes at getting (and keeping} the Liberal leadership in the battered and beaten John Howard's stead.    

On the first occasion, just a week or so after the 2007 election wipeout,  Sydney's Brendan Nelson, in a party room ballot, upset Turnbull 45 votes to 42.

Ten months later, on September 16, 2008, with Nelson drowning in the opinion polls, Turnbull forced a party room challenge and reversed the result 45 votes to 41. The prize was his.

But not for long.

...

So I rang Keating and asked if what I'd heard was true? Had he been on the phone to Turnbull at the time the story was running the previous December? Had he encouraged him to stay in political life, and if so why?

Well, sort of, he said. He'd not phoned Turnbull. Not at all. What Turnbull had done was walk across the road from the office of his wife, Lucy, and come to his, Keating's, heritage building, first-floor suite on the King's Cross corner opposite, walked up the stairs, had asked to see him, then stayed talking for "two hours or so" in Keating's very spacious, airy office, with its marvellous desk and its antique bits and pieces, including various chairs, clocks and Napoleon's coffee pot.

Of course they'd talked about politics and Turnbull's future, Keating agreed. How could they not? But he'd not been sooling​ Turnbull on for any narrow political reason.

He'd simply felt that for the Parliament to lose somebody like Turnbull so foolishly would be an absurd waste of talent in a party that didn't have a lot of it. Turnbull was not a dill. He was an advocate of good policy and decent governance, much more so than the bloke who'd snatched his party's leadership from him. Australia's national Parliament needed such people. Everyone benefited, including the Labor Party.

That, I think, is a reasonable and fair resume of what I recall of a conversation more than five years ago. It would have been a cracker of a political story at the time. But it wouldn't have lasted.

Recall three months later, in June 2010, and what followed in the ensuing three years!

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/keating-kept-turnbull-at-the-table-and-shorten-is-paying-the-bill-20150924-gjujs2.html#ixzz3mnHMaqoB
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When deposed as prime minister, Tony Abbott pledged: "There will be no wrecking, no undermining, and no sniping." We all knew what he meant: he would be no Kevin Rudd.

His pledge lasted all of a week before the wrecking, undermining and sniping began. It's continued this weekend. L'esprit de Rudd is back in the air.

In two interviews with News Corp since his demise – the first brief, the next long and considered – Abbott has shown an embarrassing determination to play the sore loser in spite of his promise that he would not.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/tony-abbott-should-stop-playing-the-sore-loser-and-retreat-gracefully-20150927-gjvs8m.html#ixzz3mvXB29pX
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A pissy little turd... Sorry, I promised I would not used this term anymore to describe Abbott but then he promised he would behave and there would be no wrecking, no undermining, and no sniping. I did not believe him for one minute and the proof is in the pudding...
Sociopaths make promises they cannot keep... I must be one of them...

 

 

"With calls for the formation of a new party and hundreds of resignations from the Liberal Party, I call on members to remain as members of our party," he said.

"The Liberal Party has always been bigger than the person who holds the position of federal leader of the Parliamentary party from time to time.

"It is disappointing to hear of a spate of resignations from the Liberal Party and of threats not to renew memberships over the recent federal leadership change in the Liberal Party."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/eric-abetz-says-he-understands-why-liberals-feel-disenfranchised-by-malcolm-turnbulls-election-20150930-gjy1wh.html#ixzz3nCTOYnBp
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With this sour grape call to pump the dirty bilges, Eric Abetz is trying to salvage some neo-furniture... What is actually surprising is that not more liberals (small l) have given their party a wide berth when driven recklessly by Tony Abbott. Actually I know a few who were prepared to jump but stopped with the leadership change — with hope of betterment... Dreamers...