Howard/Costello do a brilliant Hawke/Keating impersonation...
So if you are in Australia, or read Australian news, you should be fully aware of Treasurer Peter Costello's (TPC) leadership aspirations. Not surprisingly it has come out that Prime Minister John Howard(PMJH) made a promise to TPC essentially saying that after he'd served two terms with the prefix of PM, he would step aside so TPC could take the reigns and have his own little hootnanny in the great hall of Parliament.
What's that you say? Sounds familiar? That's because it is...
Former Labour PM Bob Hawke promised his treasurer the same deal back in 1988 (which eventually lead to Keating taking office). This time it's a little bit different. One of PMJH's most favoured ministers at the time Ian McLachlan witnessed the conversation, wrote it down, and kept these make shift minutes in his wallet for the last 10 years. (Well one presumes it was 11 or 12 years, the alledged meeting took place in the alledged year of 1994 and it is alledgedly 2006, now I alledgedly didn't do to well in maths A,B or C in high school, but I think I got this one right...)
So what's the issue?
Perhaps would be PM, Opposition leader Kim "bomber" Beazley summed it up best...
"What the Liberal party leadership is engaged in, is a major distraction and not in the national interest. The prime ministership of this country is not there to be traded between individuals. Every arrangement must be out there in the open and the Australian public understand that the prime minster of a nation is connected with them, holds office at their pleasure, holds office to advance their interests, not the interests of the individual who happens to be prime minister."
Oh and for the record, I'm not sure minstership is a word...
Hawkes deal with Keating was nicknamed the Kirribilli agreement... this one hasn't quite received a title yet, any suggestions out there?
Leave a comment or drop us a line misguidedtrio 'at' gmail 'dot' com , the best suggestion may score a 'Sedition... It's what's for dinner' t-shirt (no size guarantee)
posted by Mark @ 7:49 PM
1 Comments:
I know that my comment is slightly off subject, however, can anyone tell me when these two individuals changed the definition of unemployment to mean that anyone who has paid work for one (1) hour per week is not considered unemployed? No wonder we are living in times of record low unemployment!
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