[LINK] Tony pulls it off!

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

<brd>
Annabel Crabb has just moved from the SMH. Writes great commentary. 
Famous for her occasional satire and use of the phrase Tony "People 
Skills" Abbott.

Below is her version of what happened yesterday.
</brd>

Unbowed, Turnbull saved best for last
By chief political writer Annabel Crabb - analysis
ABC
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/02/2759775.htm

Typical of Malcolm Turnbull, to be unorthodox until the very end.

Just after 9am yesterday, after the Member for Wentworth lost a vote on 
the matter of whether his job should be declared vacant, he administered 
one last little surprise to his colleagues.

When the call came for nominations for the position of leader, he rose 
in his chair, looked over at Joe Hockey and gave a cheeky smile.

The smile was because Mr Hockey was not expecting Mr Turnbull to run; Mr 
Turnbull had indicated to Mr Hockey at a meeting on Monday that if he 
lost the motion for a spill, he would not subsequently be a candidate.

But run Mr Turnbull did.

This bamboozled Mr Hockey's supporters, who had assumed that Mr Turnbull 
would be out of the running and who - seeing Mr Turnbull nominate - 
split more or less down the middle, with Mr Turnbull picking up three 
more votes than Mr Hockey, which had the effect of punting Mr Hockey 
from the contest.

Even Senator Nick Minchin, the convenor of the climate sceptics, 
professed disbelief. After the ballot, he approached Mr Hockey, saying 
if he had known it was going to be so close he would have flicked Mr 
Hockey a few votes.

And Mr Turnbull himself, having survived into the second round when few 
had thought he would make it so far, was eventually beaten by just one vote.

Like all the great battles of his life, this one turned into Turnbull 
Against The World, in the end.

He is no longer the leader of the Liberal Party, but he leaves the job 
strangely intact, having settled on a position, stuck to it, and 
martyred himself accordingly.

For all the intrigue, drama and hoopla that accompanied Mr Turnbull's 
arrival into federal politics, his invasion of Canberra, his storming of 
the front bench and his eventual ascension to the leadership, his 
departure has been anti-climactic.

Attention has moved almost immediately to the new leader, Tony Abbott, 
who is probably the only other person in the Liberal Party as 
eye-catching as Mr Turnbull.

As Mr Abbott establishes himself amidst a whirl of policy realignment, 
Mr Turnbull packs up his office in relative peace.

He has vowed not to trigger a by-election in Wentworth and will take the 
summer to consider whether he would renominate for another term after 
the next election.

His concession speech in the party room yesterday was widely credited as 
being gracious and generous.

The landmines he laid on Sunday - warnings that the party would become a 
"fringe party of the right wing" if it voted against the emissions 
trading scheme - have been forgotten temporarily, though not, you can 
bet, by Labor campaign HQ.

Mr Turnbull's stewardship of the Liberal Party was marked from beginning 
to end by the issue of climate change.

How odd that as environment minister under John Howard, he helped to 
craft an emissions trading scheme policy that was endorsed by the 
Coalition party room with barely a whisper of protest.

That was less than three years ago.

The fact that a similar scheme has now destroyed Mr Turnbull as leader 
and torn the Liberal Party to shreds should give the definitive lie to 
all the claims that you've heard in the last week about this leadership 
crisis being "about policy, not personality".

Good grief.

If it were about policy, then surely the Liberal party room would have 
stormed John Howard's office in 2007 and flung him on the rubbish heap.

Far from it, of course; in fact, the Liberal party room stolidly ignored 
not only a range of compelling reasons to dispense with the services of 
Mr Howard, but also a series of distinct opportunities to do so.

As did Howard's Cabinet, which - don't forget - was composed strongly of 
those who now pronounce themselves unable to live with the cap-and trade 
emissions trading scheme, like Senator Minchin, Kevin Andrews and Mr Abbott.

History makes itself every day in Canberra, of course, and much has 
occurred since the last days inside the Howard bunker, but the long view 
of climate change policy inside the Liberal Party is a persistently 
wonky one.

If you take a step even further back, the pattern continues.

Mr Howard, who held out so stubbornly until the end of his term against 
the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, is the very same man who - as a 
new PM in 1997 - trumpeted the Kyoto agreement as "a first-class outcome 
for Australia and one that is certainly pro-employment in Australia".

He also described it as a "stunning diplomatic success" for Australia; 
several years would pass, and a new US president would be elected before 
he cooled on the whole idea and decided not to ratify the thing.

So let's not pretend that the affairs of the past week have not been 
personal.

Where Mr Turnbull is concerned, they almost always are personal; he is a 
brilliant but abrasive man who has the capacity to bruise even his 
admirers from time to time.

He has struggled all year with the climate change issue, tacking this 
way and that in an attempt to stay afloat, delaying and obscuring the 
central 'Yes or No?' issue with a series of devices and tactics which 
were never going to last for ever.

And when the moment came to take a stand, he took it, knowing that it 
would probably finish him.

Mr Turnbull's preparedness to endure political humiliation inside the 
party has taken his opponents by surprise in recent weeks, but it should 
not have.

He has never felt tied to the Liberal Party in the same way as 
colleagues like Senator Minchin or Mr Abbott has.

For these men, the Liberal Party is an article of faith, an entity which 
is bigger than all of them, a nurturing tradition from which they draw 
strength.

For Mr Turnbull, it is a company of which he last year won the 
opportunity to be CEO.

When the time came to make a hard call about the company's viability 
under certain circumstances, he made it.

Has it destroyed him? Not at all.

If Mr Turnbull were to write an obituary for his term as Liberal leader, 
it would say something like "Here lies Malcolm Turnbull, who did 
everything within his power to save this party from itself, but found 
that the party would not be saved".

That is why he has looked so jaunty this week.

-- 
 
Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Canberra Australia
brd at iimetro.com.au