Yesterday the Federal Director of the Federal Liberal Party addressed the National Press Club and laid out the reasons being put forward by his Party why the Coalition lost the election on 24 November last.
Crikey, today, comments and puts it bluntly:
"Three moments in Conservative politics yesterday.
1. Liberal Party Federal Director Brian Loughnane faces the National Press Club and maintains the head up the a-se of the dog in the sand line that things were great, we just got a bit inward looking and didn't sell our message.
2. Brendan Nelson, Federal Leader of the Liberal Party apparently, abandons the central tenet of ideological faith that has propelled his party through the preceding three years: WorkChoices. They used to call it the industrial relations reform that was the bedrock of the country's solid economic performance. Now it's dead meat. People didn't like it apparently, so best we don't believe in it anymore.
and the clincher:
3. A year and a change of government after Terence Cole's report, ASIC brings civil actions against six former executives of the AWB, the body you will recall that under the nose of at least the Foreign Minister bribed Saddam Hussein, just before the Howard Government decided that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and should therefore be invaded forthwith.
At which point, and for the edification of Brian Loughnane at least, we should mention children overboard, Tampa, the politicisation of the public service and the board of every available qango, the subtle incitement of queasy xenophobia and a general intolerance of the Other, the denial of climate change, the perversion of national pride to political ends, the introduction of WorkChoices out of opportunism rather than coherent necessity (never mind on a mandate), the replacement of ministerial responsibility with plausible denial, lickspittle foreign policy, rampant acquisitive federalism, profligate porkbarrelling and the abandonment of any principal that stood between the Howard Government and the merest whiff of a critical vote.
In the end they stood for nothing but themselves. Sorry Brian, but there it is. Analyse that."
Crikey, today, comments and puts it bluntly:
"Three moments in Conservative politics yesterday.
1. Liberal Party Federal Director Brian Loughnane faces the National Press Club and maintains the head up the a-se of the dog in the sand line that things were great, we just got a bit inward looking and didn't sell our message.
2. Brendan Nelson, Federal Leader of the Liberal Party apparently, abandons the central tenet of ideological faith that has propelled his party through the preceding three years: WorkChoices. They used to call it the industrial relations reform that was the bedrock of the country's solid economic performance. Now it's dead meat. People didn't like it apparently, so best we don't believe in it anymore.
and the clincher:
3. A year and a change of government after Terence Cole's report, ASIC brings civil actions against six former executives of the AWB, the body you will recall that under the nose of at least the Foreign Minister bribed Saddam Hussein, just before the Howard Government decided that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and should therefore be invaded forthwith.
At which point, and for the edification of Brian Loughnane at least, we should mention children overboard, Tampa, the politicisation of the public service and the board of every available qango, the subtle incitement of queasy xenophobia and a general intolerance of the Other, the denial of climate change, the perversion of national pride to political ends, the introduction of WorkChoices out of opportunism rather than coherent necessity (never mind on a mandate), the replacement of ministerial responsibility with plausible denial, lickspittle foreign policy, rampant acquisitive federalism, profligate porkbarrelling and the abandonment of any principal that stood between the Howard Government and the merest whiff of a critical vote.
In the end they stood for nothing but themselves. Sorry Brian, but there it is. Analyse that."
Comments