Leadership

Stuart Hastings from Robina, Qld puts the leadership furore into perspective with his letter to the Australian

If Ian McLachlan can keep a scrap of paper, legible and uncreased in his wallet for 12 years, you would not want to be in his group when it was his turn to buy the next round of drinks.

I’m reasonably confident that in all my days I have never heard of such a weak trigger to a leadership debate. Costello’s PR agent, Glen Milne, has been nibbling away at the edge of the PM’s power for a long time now and must feel rather smug at the moment – he has ignited a maelstrom of debate based on comments made over a decade ago as if they were written in bloood. It’s as if time has stood still over all those years and nothing has changed. It is long past the time when Howard has had to have conciliatory conversations with the likes of Costello and Downer and it will be a while yet before he has to again. Nevertheless some are aghast at Howard, accusing him of being a liar. I guess it’s true to some extent but it is at the level of my promising to take the kids to Sizzler’s and then renegging. I heard some chap talking to John Laws who come across as a reasonable and experienced type but he was beside himself with grief at ‘all the lying” There is just too much and although he has voted Liberal in the past he can’t see himself doing it again. A bit precious really because if he applied that across the board he’d have to stay home on polling day. A wave of apprehension washes over me every time I think of Costello as leader. He has been a great Treasurer and I don’t mind his debating style but competancy and style are but two aspects of sucessful leadership and I have yet to see little evidence of other characteristics. His political judgement and loyalty to the party may well have been brought to question with his current campaign. I don’t feel, hear or read any call for a leadership change other than in the Howard hating forums and it is not as if the machine is broken and ‘I’m the man to fix it‘…the machine is humming along quiet nicely, thank you. Howard say he wont be stampeded into any premature decision and I’m with him there. The only lightning bolts around are those being thrown by the media and are striking too far away to cause any stampede. It’s when the voters start thowing the lightning bolts that it will be time to act and the skies look all azure blue to me at the moment.