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a deal with the turd would be better than a deal with abbott...

abbott and turd...

Malcolm Turnbull is set to resign from Parliament this week, as the Liberal federal executive prepares to call nominations for his Sydney seat of Wentworth.

The former prime minister on Monday night told his federal electorate conference, at a meeting scheduled a month or more ago, that he would resign on Friday. He has written to his community and will send that letter on Tuesday.

Turnbull repeated the point he has made about a “week of madness”, that had disgraced the parliament and appalled the nation.

He had always said that the best place for former prime ministers was out of the parliament and “recent events amply demonstrate why”, he said.

With the Liberals bracing for a real-time test of their popularity at a byelection expected early October, Turnbull’s son Alex fingered those backing the coal industry for their role in his father’s fall.

In a hard-hitting interview with Fairfax Media, the younger Turnbull warned the Liberal party could be hijacked by financial interests that would make windfall profits if the government assisted coal projects. He said these interests “have their hooks into the Liberal Party … which has no money”.

Wentworth has a 17.7% margin but Turnbull’s personal vote is large and the campaign there could be difficult and certainly will be expensive.

Tony Abbott’s sister Christine Forster confirmed she will contest Liberal preselection. Dave Sharma, former ambassador to Israel, is regarded as a strong contender. Andrew Bragg, a former acting federal director of the Liberal party, is among those being mentioned as possible preselection candidates. 

Peter King, the former member for the seat who Turnbull knocked out at a 2004 preselection after a bout of mutual branch stacking, has expressed some interest.

Turnbull’s son-in-law James Brown has ruled himself out, saying on twitter he had “a young family to look after and mission to complete”.

Former minister Craig Laundy, who has been shattered by the leadership events and said he did not want to be considered for the frontbench, has flagged that he may not recontest his marginal Western Sydney seat of Reid.

“The significant challenges we faced last week took a massive toll, both emotionally and physically, hence my decision to take a step back [to the backbench], and consider what my future holds,” he said in a statement.

On Monday Tony Abbott was still considering Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s offer for him to become “envoy” on Indigenous affairs.

 

Read more:

https://theconversation.com/turnbull-resigning-seat-on-friday-giving-mor...

you cannot trust the belgian from eupen...

There was a moment last Thursday night when blood-curdling horror flashed across Mathias Cormann's face.

He had realised that his best mate Peter Dutton didn't have the numbers to become prime minister after all. 

One witness said the normally unflappable, inscrutable political professional had the look of someone who'd gladly commit murder.

Mathias Cormann doesn't like to lose.

This was a horrible realisation for the Belgian-born powerbroker who had put his honour in the guillotine by walking away from Malcolm Turnbull, just hours after publicly pledging loyalty to the besieged PM.

Senator Cormann had told Turnbull on Wednesday afternoon that he "no longer enjoyed the support of the majority of members in the Liberal Party partyroom". Now he was not so sure. 

A man who would normally rely on his own counsel and well-honed instinct, Senator Cormann had allowed himself to be convinced that the Dutton uprising was a dead certainty. 

He had been assured by Dutton himself that he had the numbers. Cormann's mistake was to believe him.

Liberals now point to the incompetence of Dutton's ragtag numbers men: Tony Pasin, Andrew Hastie, Zed Seselja and Michael Sukkar, all of whom are from the so-called "monkeypod" faction, named after the regular Tuesday lunchtime group that meets around a tropical timber table in the ministerial wing.

It was only on Thursday that Senator Cormann began seriously poring through the numbers himself that it hit: his mate Dutton had been relying on bad intel.

The Turnbull camp had been insistent all along that Dutton didn't have the numbers, even if the Prime Minister indicated his own doubts.

About 9:20pm on Thursday, 15 hours before the partyroom meeting, the ABC was told emphatically that Dutton did not have sufficient support.

And it was in this maelstrom of miscalculations by the challenger that Scott Morrison's candidacy emerged. He was the Turnbull candidate by virtue of not being Dutton, and having the best chance of cruelling the coup.

They tried to head it off

Anxiety about where Cormann stood in the leadership tumult had been high inside the Turnbull camp — before he, Michaelia Cash and Mitch Fifield announced publicly on Thursday morning they had abandoned the PM.

On Wednesday, efforts to bind Cormann to team Turnbull had been frantic.

A Turnbull consigliere had sought to conscript Cormann to the team. 

And his WA colleague Linda Reynolds was seen having a robust conversation with him, arms rich with gesticulation, outside the Senate shortly before 11am. Her message? Unity.

But Cormann remained aloof. 

"If only Mathias had called, we'd have shown him Dutton didn't have the numbers," one Turnbull backer said. 

But at 4:30pm on Wednesday, just a few hours after declaring, "I support Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister", alongside the Prime Minister and the Treasurer at a media conference, Cormann advised Turnbull he had lost majority support of Liberals. 

And it is unclear whether he had forensically checked this assessment before ventilating it to Turnbull.

He offered to resign as Finance Minister, but not before privately acknowledging Turnbull's assessment that his prime ministership was being attacked by "insurgents".

One Turnbull backer says if Cormann had stuck with the PM, Turnbull would've survived the week.

Cormann and followers proved crucial in Friday's spill

Once Cormann absconded to the Dutton camp, Michaelia Cash followed, locking in two others from WA: Ian Goodenough and Slade Brockman.

These were four votes that proved critical in the spill motion on Friday, which was carried narrowly 45-40.

The pressure was so great that at least two Liberals who did not want change had reluctantly signed the petition to ensure it would get the 43 signatures demanded by Turnbull. 

Warren Entsch and Karen Andrews signed, but then voted against the leadership spill motion on Friday — that is, they provided the necessary support for the partyroom to have an emergency meeting but then voted to stick with Turnbull.

One senior Turnbull backer, echoing a widespread view inside the party room, says Turnbull's leadership was cooked as soon as 35 Liberals voted for Peter Dutton in the surprise ballot brought on by the PM last Tuesday. 

According to colleagues, Cormann is either the man who was instrumental in Turnbull's destruction or courageous enough to end the damage early.

He is obviously hurting, having played such a key role in bringing down a PM. Some say he is a diminished figure.

Others are adamant he acted appropriately give the awful circumstance.

"In time, people will realise that Mathias did the right thing," one Cabinet minister says.

"The party needed a circuit-breaker and no-one else was prepared to do it. 

"He did what he thought was in the best interests of the partyroom. If it hadn't ended for Malcolm on Friday, it would have ended in a fortnight's time."

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-27/turnbull-dutton-challenge-could-ha...

 

Remember him?

himself

You cannot trust a viper, nor a scorpion nor a crocodile... Why would you trust Cormarnn, the double dealer from Eupen in eastern Belgium and graduate with a Bachelor of Law degree from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Catholic University of Leuven)?...

 

the miffed belgian toilet brush in a suit...

After the failed coup, in which he had already backed Peter Dutton while pledging support to Malcolm Turnbull, Mathias Cormann’s reputation is now in tatters, writes Michael Galvin.

BARELY AN HOUR after the Liberal Party high noon showdown on Friday, the first “player” to give an extended interview on ABC News was Senator Mathias Cormann.

Cormann seemed desperate to explain himself and did so at length. As the dust settled in the following hours, it became clear why he was so desperate to get ahead of the story.

Anyone who watched the 15-minute interview would have been struck by a couple of things.

Firstly, Cormann still seemed obsessed with what had happened three days earlier, when Turnbull called a snap leadership poll and declared all positions vacant. At the time, there were reports that Cormann was miffed because he was not forewarned of Turnbull’s plan. Apparently, only Deputy Liberal Leader Julie Bishop knew what Turnbull was going to do.

From what Cormann said on Friday, “miffed” is too mild a word. He seemed obsessed with being taken by surprise by Turnbull on Tuesday. He repeated the word “surprise” no less than four times in the Friday interview — a telling sign Turnbull had hurt him mightily and personally.

This sense of personal affront was reinforced throughout the rest of the Friday interview, in which the honourable Senator went on at great length about how difficult these decisions had been for him, personally.

Cormann has been working on his image for a while now. Patient with the assorted nutters on the Senate crossbench, a shared affinity and mutual respect for Labor Senator Penny Wong and so on. Gradually, he had moved on from his early caricaturish image as a dull, conservative zealot and had reinvented himself as something of an “honest broker”.

When he walked into the ABC interview barely an hour after the Friday vote, he must have known that this particular game of his was up. Why? Because if he and the other two show ponies (Senator Michaelia Cash and Senator Mitch Fifield) had not switched in a public display of disunity the day before, the spill motion would have been defeated and Turnbull would still be Prime Minister.

Hence his desperate rush to get to the media first and pour out how much pain he had suffered personally in all of this. A valiant effort, but a failed one. Cormann’s reputation is back to where it started — a dull conservative zealot incapable of original thought.

 

Read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/mathias-corma...

 

Read from top.

 

Mathias Cormann has supported THREE different "leaders" in three days... A RECORD?

the libs got talent...

 

We go straight to the studio for the exciting "Liberals' Got Talent Grand Final" program, compèred by the incomparable, John Winston Howard.

HOWARD: Good evening and welcome to this night of nights for the Australian Liberal Party: our Grand Final! And don’t we have three magnificent contenders for this year’s top award?!

Let’s get started. Julie Bishop; Peter Dutton and ScoMo Morrison are waiting in the wings, ready to go.

Our judges for tonight: the irrepressible Tony Abbott and the quintessential Mr Urbane, Malcolm Turnbull. But remember, you, the public, determine our winner by phoning or texting in your choice.

Without further ado, let’s get our first contestant out here, the wonderful and ever-stylish Julie Bishop. Err, sor... Christ! I nearly said that horrible little "s" word, I just can’t say. I mean, um, ahh ... I apologise for getting the order wrong.

We kick off tonight’s show with Peter Dutton!

Dutton enters the stage to restrained applause.

.......

 

read more and watch the video by Dan Ili´c at: https://independentaustralia.net