A Tasmanian AFL player has been suspended for indecently exposing himself on live television.

Footballer suspended for flashing on TV – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Let me see if I’ve got this right. Some car dealer pressures his contacts in the Government concerning his application for funding from a GFC-inspired Car Dealership credit bailout. The application was subject to due process and was unsuccessful as far as I can tell with all the flak flying around.

In parliament today the Opposition taunted the Government with cries of “Patronage!” There’s a word you don’t hear very much these days. If I had to define the Liberals in one word it would be ‘patronage’ – at the level of art form.

$300 million in payments to Saddam Hussein to get him to buy National Party constituency grown wheat while planning to declare war on him – now that’s patronage! And we won’t even mention the Howard’s brother bailout.

Bad call on the email there, Malcolm. Casts a pall over your judgement under pressure, and it ain’t the first time. Not a good look in an aspiring national leader.

And I have this much credibility.

Peter Costello is both confused and confusing.

Al Gore will be visiting Melbourne next month to address Safe Climate Australia on his plan to switch the US economy to clean energy in 10 years. Expect a flurry of outraged indignation from the usual suspects claiming that there is no such thing as human-produced-CO2-induced climate change because Al Gore is fat and a hypocrite for flying here in a jumbo jet to speak to rent-seeking totalitarian greens who want to destroy civilisation and eat your babies. What to speak of the fact that Safe Climate Australia will be charging exorbitant admission prices so only elitists can attend.

You heard it here first.

Germaine Greer will speak at the Sydney Writers Festival tonight. Here’s a handy tip for those reactionary commentators, bloggers and letter-writers: anything she has to say about Australia is automatically dismissible and lacking in all credibility because she doesn’t actually live here. QED.

Oh, and she also likes younger men! Take that Germaine!

Leader of the Opposition Malcolm Turnbull had an opportunity to score some political points on the Rudd Government’s 2009 Budget but decided to do a Nelson instead by announcing a tobaco tax policy stunt without consulting the Party room. Consequently, the media attention has been shifted from the Government to the Opposition, but not in a good way.

Bronwyn Bishop immediately declares that the tobacco tax is not a good idea. And it wasn’t a good idea, for it raised the contradiction in Turnbull’s stance of blocking the alcopop tax – a revenue-raising strategy that also discourages teenage binge drinking while reducing the cost on public health in the long term. Turnbull is offering a tax on the poor (the majority of tobacco users) to subsidise private health insurance for the wealthy. He then spent the day after his Budget Reply defending his tobacco tax, fending off questions about increasing tax on all alcohol products and his commitment to maintaining Medicare after suggesting that every Australian should have private health insurance! Way to put pressure on the Government Budget Big Spending!

On the other hand, maybe the whole thing was an elaborate strategy to enable Turnbull to back-flip on the alcopops tax and thus reduce the risk of a double dissolution, which no doubt has many back benchers gravely concerned for their parliamentary future. Brilliant! But it leaves the Opposition looking weak, divided, hypocritical and the electorate still confused about what they actually stand for.

Enter the cavalry! The only Liberal giving any idea what the Opposition stands for is former PM John Howard – Work Choices, a payroll tax holiday, more money to the States and less to individuals (well at least the non-wealthy ones). Well that’s cleared that up, then.

This is what happens when a party is internally divided and can’t come up with a policy platform – and ‘we would be tougher’ is not a policy – it’s an attitude that many interpret as screwing the less well off.

Well done Malcolm on a great week, and good luck with winning government in 2010!

The Force may not be with you.

Fresh from her nomination to the list of Howardian Dead Wood, Bronwyn Bishop, has lashed out at her leader, Malcolm Turnbull. “Malcolm seems to have been strong at the beginning but now he has gone soft.”

Exposing the division within the Coalition over how confrontational the Opposition should be, she said that “quite clearly, people aren’t seeing us as sufficiently strong”.

Um… just saying ‘NO!’ all the time is not a sign of strength.

“I would normally not respond at all to anonymous nonsense but a lot of people have been saying that they are not sure what the Liberals stand for – that we have backed off on policies we believed in before,” Mrs Bishop said.

I think she’s on to something here. Other than a persistent belief that they were born-to-rule, what do the Liberals believe in? Where are the alternative policies? Could it be that they are so hopelessly internally divided that they don’t actually know what to believe in – being too busy maneuvering against each other to have time for policy development?

Once touted as a future Australian Margaret Thatcher, Bronwyn wants to bring back the old policies. Small problem with that – they got them soundly thrown out of office.

Now where’s that chainsaw?

The pressure on Malcolm Turnbuill to come to the table on the carbon emissions trading scheme begins in earnest.

The head of gas and petrol producer Shell Australia has called on the Opposition to support the Government’s revised emissions trading scheme.

Shell urges Turnbull to pass climate scheme – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

OK, we all understand that Malcolm is not happy with it, so maybe it’s about time he told us exactly what he is not happy with and what his alternative is. The trouble is, I don’t think the Liberals actually know what their policy is. They’ve milked it for all the politics they can get, but the ball is back in their court. If The Liberals don’t come up with something soon, they’ll continue to look like a pathetically disorganised and opportunistic rabble. I doubt Turnbull has the balls for a double dissolution, so he needs to do something, and fast.

So how about it Malcolm?

The trouble Turnbull is having over asylum seekers is further evidence that the Libs are still in denial about losing power and still unable to cut away the shackles of the Howardian ideology. Trying to preserve Howard’s legacy, out of some deluded belief that the electorate will realise they made a mistake and return them to office, is NOT a winning strategy. Costello will face the same challenge, and he’s part of the problem, not the solution.

Ten years, I tells ya.

No, we’re not going to politicise this tragic event. What…? Apparently we are. It’s clearly resulted from Rudd being soft on illegal immigrants. He lured those poor souls to their tragic deaths by making them think Australia is a soft touch.

So what would you instead?

Well… we’d be tougher. Bring back Temporary Protection Visas! What…? Or maybe not. We should look at it rationally and look carefully to see what works and what doesn’t. But it’s definitely Rudd’s fault.