Ungrateful Swine
“This is where the summer ends
In a flash of pure destruction, no one wins”
– Nuclear, Ryan Adams
John Howard was most gracious in his concession speech on Saturday night, paying tribute to the Liberal Party and Peter Costello and Kevin Rudd and Maxine McKew and the notion of democracy. This screed, conversely, will not be nearly as pleasant and will not be crammed with nearly as much grace. Your author, filled with fear and loathing, will wave wildly and with force. By the time the words below are published, the jack-booted black-shirts who Labor Party figures have hired for the inevitable retribution will probably have me arrested and half-way to some perennially hot prison camp somewhere in the Simpson Desert.
Last Saturday, approximately 53 out of every 100 Australian adults old enough to vote and intelligent enough to fill out a ballot paper formally showed not an ounce of appreciation for nearly twelve years of unprecedented prosperity or a smidge of respect for the man that engineered it and cast a vote that placed Labor ahead of the Coalition. The news was even more disgusting in the seat of Bennelong, an area in northern Sydney that should be disenfranchised en masse and see every Labor voter chain-whipped for their stupidity and gutless disrespect of Australia’s greatest ever leader. Bennelong residents humiliated not only John Howard but themselves and Australia by electing a self-indulgent princess who was nothing more than a Labor stooge throughout her entire television career.
In a flash of pure destruction, Australia was blown up by the righteous left and those in the middle stupid enough to get suckered in by the Great Labor Myth. The tale involves such fantastical notions of Labor economic responsibility, an education revolution and climate change as a terrifying and undisputed truth. Abandon all hope ye who enter the fiery gates of hell. The shit winds are blowing and there is nothing we can do about it now. There will be no Boxing Day sale and no return of gifts. Like the humiliating professions of fondness during a drunken three-in-the-morning phone call to a girl you love who doesn’t necessarily love you, you can’t take back what was done yesterday. What is done is done and thanks to the reckless idiocy of the majority, we all must pay the heavy price. And you can trust me on this: the price will be heavy. The sins of the father have now become the tragedy of the son. Our long summer of affluence is over and now the winter rolls on in.
Your weary wordsmith has many thoughts on the folly of democracy and the radical changes that seem entirely necessary. These thoughts, however, may be a result of a swollen brain caused by intense fury and it is probably best to wait until calm seas return before the die is cast on that table.
While the numbers and the commentary and the smug Labor speeches caused a great deal of internal angst and external vulgarity, it was the spiteful glee of Peter Costello that was the most gut-churning and rage-inducing moment of the evening. While John Howard conceded with solemn grace and the expected class of a modern day hero, Peter Costello stood up at his electorate headquarters and smirked like a goddamn Cheshire who had just found six dead birds. He mused about how well the Liberal Party had done in Higgins, calling the performance great. There were no displays of sadness for his Prime Minister, who had most likely lost his seat, and seemingly no disappointment in the loss of government. He mentioned nothing of his future, the anointed successor offering no solace to a grieving party or any hope for a seemingly gloomy future.
There was worse to come.
The anointed successor sold the Liberal Party and conservative politics in Australia down a very rough river when he announced, less than twenty-four hours after election defeat, that he would not accept the leadership of the parliamentary Liberal Party. Costello has positioned himself as the successor to John Howard for nearly a decade and has received the blessing of John Howard and the party faithful. Then, in the hour of need, he took a knife and planted it firmly between the shoulder blades of the Coalition. Worse, word has it that Costello had been planning such a move for over a year. He was prepared to accept the job of Prime Minister if John Howard handed it to him yet he wasn’t prepared to earn it.
It was an act of treachery unseen in Australian politics since Billy Hughes turned on the Labor Party in 1916. Willie Mason would have appreciated the callous betrayal. Gutlessness has been the hallmark of Peter Costello’s political career and none of us should be surprised by his failure to throw himself into the grind and the ease in which he threw his meal ticket under the bus. He expected everything to be handed to him on a silver platter. His aversion to dirty hands was and is amazing.
Peter Costello will now never be welcome in Liberal circles. The one time saviour of the left and centre will be savaged by all elements of the party. He will be considered in the same light as Malcolm Fraser and even that comparison may be too fair on Costello. Peter Costello is nothing more than a cheap and selfish fool who will forever be painted as the Great Traitor of the Right.
Costello, by design, has left a mess of apocalyptic proportions. The Liberal Party is in a state of carnage and will be for the better part of the next decade. We will witness a remake of the c-grade Howard-Peacock polarization of the eighties. The earth is scorched and the desolation is overwhelming and now it is every man for himself. Liberal parliamentarians now wander in loneliness, ravenous for blood and protective of their lot. Paranoia reins supreme and hope is only a word for the weak.
Whoever leads the Liberal Party to the next election will do so on a wave of mutilation. Brendan Nelson has been handed the poisoned chalice and you could take odds-on that he won’t be there come 2010 and even shorter that there will be a challenge. If he is to keep a firm grip on power, he will have plenty of trophy heads decorating his office. The party has been polarized and blood will soon cover the walls inches deep at Liberal Party headquarters. There will be a fight for philosophical dominance and a war for personal position. Malcolm Turnbull will constantly undermine until he gets the number one gig and Tony Abbott will be unrestrained in kicking heads.
It is all too horrifying to consider. There are dark days ahead and Australia has nobody to blame but themselves. And Peter Costello.
Welcome to the winter of our discontent. If only hibernation was an option.