(Above: is Peter Costello trying to shake the cheshire cat image by becoming the mock turtle? Questions, questions, so read on).
You have to cast your minds back a while to remember the "oh possum" affair, so long ago in fact that the quickest and easiest online reference happens to be in The New York Times, here.
Treasurer Peter Costello, one of the Government's most effective speakers, ridiculed him.
'Senator Sherry claims $300 to stay with mum at Opossum Bay while he is on parliamentary business,'' he said. ''Can you imagine the welcome? 'Oh, possum,' she says, 'Oh, possum, you're home.' ''
Within hours, the Senator was writing a long letter, which he left for the Australian Associated Press news agency. He wrote that he had always put his work ahead of his personal life, but conceded that he had ''behaved stupidly.'' He then slashed his wrists. Mr. Sherry is recovering and is now on medical leave until December.
But nonetheless I wouldn't want to ever be in a situation where I contributed to someone's misfortune in the way. (here)
Staffers do not practise walking through shopping centres, cameras in tow, shaking hands with all and sundry and smiling at friend and enemy alike during an election campaign. These are skills they must learn as an MP.
But those who start young have more time to learn them.
I'm not trying to cause a b-big s-s-sensation (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I'm just talkin' 'bout my g-g-generation (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
This is my generation
This is my generation, baby
They had not gone far before they saw the Mock Turtle in the distance, sitting sad and lonely on a little ledge of rock, and, as they came nearer, Alice could hear him sighing as if his heart would break. She pitied him deeply. `What is his sorrow?' she asked the Gryphon, and the Gryphon answered, very nearly in the same words as before, `It's all his fancy, that: he hasn't got no sorrow, you know. Come on!'
So they went up to the Mock Turtle, who looked at them with large eyes full of tears, but said nothing.
`This here young lady,' said the Gryphon, `she wants for to know your history, she do.'
`I'll tell it her,' said the Mock Turtle in a deep, hollow tone: `sit down, both of you, and don't speak a word till I've finished.'
So they sat down, and nobody spoke for some minutes. Alice thought to herself, `I don't see how he can EVEN finish, if he doesn't begin.' But she waited patiently.
`Once,' said the Mock Turtle at last, with a deep sigh, `I was a real Turtle.'
These words were followed by a very long silence, broken only by an occasional exclamation of `Hjckrrh!' from the Gryphon, and the constant heavy sobbing of the Mock Turtle. Alice was very nearly getting up and saying, `Thank you, sir, for your interesting story,' but she could not help thinking there MUST be more to come, so she sat still and said nothing.
`When we were little,' the Mock Turtle went on at last, more calmly, though still sobbing a little now and then, `we went to school in the sea. The master was an old Turtle--we used to call him Tortoise--'
`Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn't one?' Alice asked.
`We called him Tortoise because he taught us,' said the Mock Turtle angrily: `really you are very dull!'
`You ought to be ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple question,' added the Gryphon; and then they both sat silent and looked at poor Alice, who felt ready to sink into the earth. At last the Gryphon said to the Mock Turtle, `Drive on, old fellow! Don't be all day about it!' and he went on in these words:
`Yes, we went to school in the sea, though you mayn't believe it--'
`I never said I didn't!' interrupted Alice.
`You did,' said the Mock Turtle.
`Hold your tongue!' added the Gryphon, before Alice could speak again. The Mock Turtle went on.
`We had the best of educations--in fact, we went to school every day--'
`I'VE been to a day-school, too,' said Alice; `you needn't be so proud as all that.'
`With extras?' asked the Mock Turtle a little anxiously.
`Yes,' said Alice, `we learned French and music.'
`And washing?' said the Mock Turtle.
`Certainly not!' said Alice indignantly.
`Ah! then yours wasn't a really good school,' said the Mock Turtle in a tone of great relief. `Now at OURS they had at the end of the bill, "French, music, AND WASHING--extra."'
`You couldn't have wanted it much,' said Alice; `living at the bottom of the sea.'
`I couldn't afford to learn it.' said the Mock Turtle with a sigh. `I only took the regular course.'
`What was that?' inquired Alice.
`Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,' the Mock Turtle replied; `and then the different branches of Arithmetic-- Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.'
`I never heard of "Uglification," Alice ventured to say. `What is it?'
The Gryphon lifted up both its paws in surprise. `What! Never heard of uglifying!' it exclaimed. `You know what to beautify is, I suppose?'
`Yes,' said Alice doubtfully: `it means--to--make--anything-- prettier.'
`Well, then,' the Gryphon went on, `if you don't know what to uglify is, you ARE a simpleton.'
Alice did not feel encouraged to ask any more questions about it, so she turned to the Mock Turtle, and said `What else had you to learn?'
`Well, there was Mystery,' the Mock Turtle replied, counting off the subjects on his flappers, `--Mystery, ancient and modern, with Seaography: then Drawling--the Drawling-master was an old conger-eel, that used to come once a week: HE taught us Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils.'
`What was THAT like?' said Alice.
`Well, I can't show it you myself,' the Mock Turtle said: `I'm too stiff. And the Gryphon never learnt it.'
`Hadn't time,' said the Gryphon: `I went to the Classics master, though. He was an old crab, HE was.'
`I never went to him,' the Mock Turtle said with a sigh: `he taught Laughing and Grief, they used to say.'
`So he did, so he did,' said the Gryphon, sighing in his turn; and both creatures hid their faces in their paws.
`And how many hours a day did you do lessons?' said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject.
`Ten hours the first day,' said the Mock Turtle: `nine the next, and so on.'
`What a curious plan!' exclaimed Alice.
`That's the reason they're called lessons,' the Gryphon remarked: `because they lessen from day to day.'
You have to think that Peter Costello excelled in derision and uglification, but not quite there in terms of ambition, even if A plus at distraction. Yep, if he keeps going this way, he could well turn into the mock turtle, with tears in abundance as he sighs on about the tough life of a politician (as opposed to the tough life say of a garbage collector). And hopefully little girls will listen and wonder at the wisdom of the conger eel and the mystery of fainting in coils.
You have to cast your minds back a while to remember the "oh possum" affair, so long ago in fact that the quickest and easiest online reference happens to be in The New York Times, here.
It involved a simple game of tit for tat, with Labor taking out Transport Minister John Sharp for allegedly trying to repay $7,000 in false travel allowance claims and John Howard then deciding to take out Senator Nick Sherry for his errant travel claims.
For that exercise, he needed an attack dog. Who better than Mr. Smarm?
With revelations about the expense accounts of Senator Nick Sherry, the deputy Labor leader (in the Senate 1996-97), the Howard Government sought to turn the tables. On Oct. 2, Mr. Sherry was forced to admit that he had pocketed $33,000 in travel expenses while staying with his mother in a place called Opossum Bay near Hobart, Tasmania.
Treasurer Peter Costello, one of the Government's most effective speakers, ridiculed him.
'Senator Sherry claims $300 to stay with mum at Opossum Bay while he is on parliamentary business,'' he said. ''Can you imagine the welcome? 'Oh, possum,' she says, 'Oh, possum, you're home.' ''
Within hours, the Senator was writing a long letter, which he left for the Australian Associated Press news agency. He wrote that he had always put his work ahead of his personal life, but conceded that he had ''behaved stupidly.'' He then slashed his wrists. Mr. Sherry is recovering and is now on medical leave until December.
Costello wasn't to know that Sherry was depressed, and not up to the standard rough and tumble of political debate, where nailing someone's hide to a barn to dry overnight, then leaving it there for years as a fine trophy, was just part of the game, the hunt. Sherry is now Minister for Superannuation and Corporate Law, while Costello will shortly be out of the game. So it goes.
Much later Costello said:
I don't know whether it was the attack I made in the Parliament or not but if the attack I made in the Parliament contributed to that I would feel very bad about that and I rang up Beazley, Beazley - who had actually been with him very shortly before that attempt said that he himself, Beazley had detected nothing untoward and is gracious enough to say I shouldn't feel any responsibility.
But nonetheless I wouldn't want to ever be in a situation where I contributed to someone's misfortune in the way. (here)
Meanwhile, Costello's still hanging around, blathering new routines, the latest being about how sensitive he is and how cruel politics is, and how you'd better get into the game when young, and with more time to learn the skills of being an MP:
The most important adjustment a person must make to public life is the loss of privacy. Those who come to elected office late in life will find the media intrusion a form of torture, particularly if they are used to respect in their former occupations.
Nothing prepares you for the first occasion when your photograph is plastered across the front page of the newspaper distributed to neighbours, children, friends, relatives and the whole country with accompanying stories about how incompetent or morally deficient you have proven to be. It hurt me for the first 20 or 30 times. After that, you start to get used to it.
Nothing prepares you for the first occasion when your photograph is plastered across the front page of the newspaper distributed to neighbours, children, friends, relatives and the whole country with accompanying stories about how incompetent or morally deficient you have proven to be. It hurt me for the first 20 or 30 times. After that, you start to get used to it.
Well I guess nothing prepares you for the first time somebody mocks you by shouting "oh possum" across the aisle either, but thank heaven we have some tough guys still hanging around like Wilson "Iron Bar" Tuckey and Steve "Spell Checker" Fielding.
Perhaps instead of shedding tears like a mock turtle, what Costello should have said is that if you go into politics and make a single false step, expect older, more experienced, more savage, more bestial politicians to degut you and wear your guts for garters.
But you have to smile, as the dissembling, smug and smirking old fox keeps on playing the game. He can't help himself.
Take this back hander, which pays out John Howard for losing his seat, Howard's former chief adviser Arthur Sinodinos for not standing in the vacant north shore seat of Bradfield, and Sinodinos for offering Costello gratuitous advice on some career options, which included becoming premier of Victoria before returning victorious to the federal sphere as PM.
It may be that Sinodinos is not ready for an election right now. But there is another opportunity that will come up next year - the seat of Bennelong. Stanley Bruce is the only prime minister apart from John Howard to lose his own seat at an election. Bruce won it back the next time round.
Obviously, Howard will not seek to do the same. The seat is on a margin of 1.4 per cent. The Coalition cannot win the election unless it wins in Bennelong. It would be a fitting tribute to his old boss if Sinodinos could nominate and win Bennelong back for the Liberal Party.
In a newspaper column last week, Sinodinos made some generous suggestions about career options I should consider. So I feel relaxed about giving him some advice in return: don't leave your political run too late.
Obviously, Howard will not seek to do the same. The seat is on a margin of 1.4 per cent. The Coalition cannot win the election unless it wins in Bennelong. It would be a fitting tribute to his old boss if Sinodinos could nominate and win Bennelong back for the Liberal Party.
In a newspaper column last week, Sinodinos made some generous suggestions about career options I should consider. So I feel relaxed about giving him some advice in return: don't leave your political run too late.
It's as good a triple play as any you'd find in baseball. Howard's a loser, who this time can't do a Lazarus-like comeback; if Sinodinos had Costello's guts he'd stop pussyfooting around; and how's that for some career advice Arthur, with the old fox still happy to frolic amongst the chickens?
Yep, start young if you're going to end up with the wily dissembling skills of the smirking Peter Costello, still happy to boast (in a modest, implicit way) about his skills as a politician:
I am not saying every political staffer will be a success in parliament. No amount of backroom experience can prepare a person to excel in spontaneous speeches in the House of Representatives. Political advisers can be experts on how to answer a question after the event. But the skill is to do it instantaneously on the television set with the studio lights blazing and the interviewer breathing down your collar.
Staffers do not practise walking through shopping centres, cameras in tow, shaking hands with all and sundry and smiling at friend and enemy alike during an election campaign. These are skills they must learn as an MP.
But those who start young have more time to learn them.
How about the skill to imitate a Cheshire cat? Unfortunately on that skill Costello is remarkably silent. If only we could get him to learn the lyrics to a few songs and fade away:
Why don't you all f-fade away (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
And don't try to d-dig what we all s-s-say (Talkin' 'bout my generation)I'm not trying to cause a b-big s-s-sensation (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I'm just talkin' 'bout my g-g-generation (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
This is my generation
This is my generation, baby
Still if he keeps going long enough with his commentariat scribblings, we could work our way through the entire Alice in Wonderland.
Despite his penchant for photographing young girls in the nude, Lewis Carroll seems to cover the logic of most political situations.
If you can't be bothered reading Peter Costello's advice to the young and the hardships of a political career (excluding the parliamentary pension and superannuation scheme), with its platitudinous self-indulgence, you might like to read the tear sodden story of the mock turtle in Alice in Wonderland. (here's a rip of the Project Gutenberg version).
It's long, but it's a heck of a lot more sage and funny than Costello, so then I thought what the heck, sometimes you need a break from the commentariat:
They had not gone far before they saw the Mock Turtle in the distance, sitting sad and lonely on a little ledge of rock, and, as they came nearer, Alice could hear him sighing as if his heart would break. She pitied him deeply. `What is his sorrow?' she asked the Gryphon, and the Gryphon answered, very nearly in the same words as before, `It's all his fancy, that: he hasn't got no sorrow, you know. Come on!'
So they went up to the Mock Turtle, who looked at them with large eyes full of tears, but said nothing.
`This here young lady,' said the Gryphon, `she wants for to know your history, she do.'
`I'll tell it her,' said the Mock Turtle in a deep, hollow tone: `sit down, both of you, and don't speak a word till I've finished.'
So they sat down, and nobody spoke for some minutes. Alice thought to herself, `I don't see how he can EVEN finish, if he doesn't begin.' But she waited patiently.
`Once,' said the Mock Turtle at last, with a deep sigh, `I was a real Turtle.'
These words were followed by a very long silence, broken only by an occasional exclamation of `Hjckrrh!' from the Gryphon, and the constant heavy sobbing of the Mock Turtle. Alice was very nearly getting up and saying, `Thank you, sir, for your interesting story,' but she could not help thinking there MUST be more to come, so she sat still and said nothing.
`When we were little,' the Mock Turtle went on at last, more calmly, though still sobbing a little now and then, `we went to school in the sea. The master was an old Turtle--we used to call him Tortoise--'
`Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn't one?' Alice asked.
`We called him Tortoise because he taught us,' said the Mock Turtle angrily: `really you are very dull!'
`You ought to be ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple question,' added the Gryphon; and then they both sat silent and looked at poor Alice, who felt ready to sink into the earth. At last the Gryphon said to the Mock Turtle, `Drive on, old fellow! Don't be all day about it!' and he went on in these words:
`Yes, we went to school in the sea, though you mayn't believe it--'
`I never said I didn't!' interrupted Alice.
`You did,' said the Mock Turtle.
`Hold your tongue!' added the Gryphon, before Alice could speak again. The Mock Turtle went on.
`We had the best of educations--in fact, we went to school every day--'
`I'VE been to a day-school, too,' said Alice; `you needn't be so proud as all that.'
`With extras?' asked the Mock Turtle a little anxiously.
`Yes,' said Alice, `we learned French and music.'
`And washing?' said the Mock Turtle.
`Certainly not!' said Alice indignantly.
`Ah! then yours wasn't a really good school,' said the Mock Turtle in a tone of great relief. `Now at OURS they had at the end of the bill, "French, music, AND WASHING--extra."'
`You couldn't have wanted it much,' said Alice; `living at the bottom of the sea.'
`I couldn't afford to learn it.' said the Mock Turtle with a sigh. `I only took the regular course.'
`What was that?' inquired Alice.
`Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,' the Mock Turtle replied; `and then the different branches of Arithmetic-- Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.'
`I never heard of "Uglification," Alice ventured to say. `What is it?'
The Gryphon lifted up both its paws in surprise. `What! Never heard of uglifying!' it exclaimed. `You know what to beautify is, I suppose?'
`Yes,' said Alice doubtfully: `it means--to--make--anything-- prettier.'
`Well, then,' the Gryphon went on, `if you don't know what to uglify is, you ARE a simpleton.'
Alice did not feel encouraged to ask any more questions about it, so she turned to the Mock Turtle, and said `What else had you to learn?'
`Well, there was Mystery,' the Mock Turtle replied, counting off the subjects on his flappers, `--Mystery, ancient and modern, with Seaography: then Drawling--the Drawling-master was an old conger-eel, that used to come once a week: HE taught us Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils.'
`What was THAT like?' said Alice.
`Well, I can't show it you myself,' the Mock Turtle said: `I'm too stiff. And the Gryphon never learnt it.'
`Hadn't time,' said the Gryphon: `I went to the Classics master, though. He was an old crab, HE was.'
`I never went to him,' the Mock Turtle said with a sigh: `he taught Laughing and Grief, they used to say.'
`So he did, so he did,' said the Gryphon, sighing in his turn; and both creatures hid their faces in their paws.
`And how many hours a day did you do lessons?' said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject.
`Ten hours the first day,' said the Mock Turtle: `nine the next, and so on.'
`What a curious plan!' exclaimed Alice.
`That's the reason they're called lessons,' the Gryphon remarked: `because they lessen from day to day.'
Now what next? From Cheshire cat to mock turtle to ... can the Mad Hatter's tea party be far away as he busily scribbles his next column?
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