Peter Costello, Arthur Sinodinos, Peter van Onselen and rich days in the Liberal party

(Above: Joe Hockey's image being polished by the News Corp team back in 2007. You can catch that story, and another image here).

It being a rich week in the Liberal party's ongoing Ziegfeld Follies, it was hard not to romp through various strange geological extrusions.

Let's start with Peter van Onselen, who generally has his ear to the ground in the Liberal camp. It seems these days that he's turned into a lover of fairy tales.

Here's the fairy tale on view in Costello exit clears way for Hockey.

Read his lips: everything is well in the world of the Liberals, as soon as the latest little hiccup is sorted, and jolly genial Joe Hockey is installed as leader.

The gift of Costello's departure for Hockey is that he no longer looms as an alternative leader.

The by-election in Higgins will usher into the parliament a talented female, Kelly O'Dwyer, who is capable of going straight on to the Coalition front bench along with Paul Fletcher, who is the candidate for Brendan Nelson's old Sydney seat of Bradfield.

Hockey could do a frontbench reshuffle if he becomes leader, and genuinely claim the Liberals have renewed in the wake of the Howard years.

Yep, that'd be the renewal they had to have, but somehow failed to attain with Brendan Nelson or Malcolm Turnbull, even as Peter Costello kept hovering in the wings like a ghostly shadow.

But wait, it gets better. You also get a set of steak knives, and even perhaps the mad monk Tony Abbott as the new deputy:

The poor performing deputy leader, Julie Bishop, would be replaced with either Tony Smith, creating a NSW-Victorian leadership team, or Tony Abbott, if his experience from the Howard years was deemed more valuable.

Either leadership duo would be a dramatic improvement on the present pair.

But um, how would all this help Malcolm Turnbull?

So why would all of this suit Turnbull? It gives him a chance to extricate himself from looming electoral annihilation, which he would be blamed for. He would be stepping down as leader over a principle - the emissions trading scheme - that he believes in. He could go to the back bench or take a frontbench role, and continue to learn about politics to build experience for a possible comeback.

Where he could learn to behave like Peter Costello, a looming, glowering sulking presence? No heaven forefend, fairy tales don't end like that:

The more likely scenario is that Turnbull would leave politics and go back into the business world. Given the problems he is having, even that would feel like a gift.

See? That's much better. All's well with the world, and Malcolm has been gifted a happy future as they trample over him and bury his bones.

There's just one small problem with this. Joe Hockey's then the Liberal party leader, appointed at the behest - according to van Onselen - of conservative hardheads. Yet Hockey's instincts are moderate, with the kind of bonhomie of a used car salesman just desperate to sell you a good car with a really good Trucoat job, sure to prevent the rust.

What happens when Hockey's confronted with a policy issue of some importance? Does he just smile, blather and roll over to the conservative hardheads? Or does he make a stand, Malcolm Turnbull style? After all, he's being presented as the last desperate least worst option:

A smart political operator with years of experience inside the Liberal Party organisation, Hockey knows that doing so could damage his nice-guy image, built up over many years, including when appearing on the Seven Network's Sunrise alongside Kevin Rudd.

Conservatives have never warmed to the moderate Hockey as a leadership option - instead they have always held on to the hope that Costello might emerge late in the electoral cycle and do a Colin Barnett-style leadership comeback.

And the dickheads, led by mad uncle Wilson Tuckey, spurred on by a blood flecked foaming Murdoch press will have won. So that we can have a Sunrise election with those two Kokoda loving track hikers going head to head.

Well good luck with all that Joe, and whatever you do, don't read Arthur Sinodinos in The Australian, with his Pardon the intrusion column.

Sinodinos spends his entire time, casting the runes to deduce that Chairman Rudd is the Ben Chifley of the day, and urging the opposition to learn from Robert Menzies.

Jolly Joe Hockey as Robert Menzies? The Mandarin speaking ex-bureaucrat Chairman Rudd as the honest, rough hewn, roughly spoken steam engine driver of the new world?

Well I guess it passes the time, and lessons can be drawn from history, but how long a bow is anticipating jolly Joe will be able to seize on petrol rationing as a way of arousing dissent against Chairman Rudd? Or other examples of overt attempts to impose a socialist planning system?

Could it be that people determined to re-live the ideological wars of the past - Gerard Henderson is our favorite example - will be left to write columns for The Australian, while the real world of politics moves onward?

But there's one moment of sheer joy for political watchers this troubled Liberal day. There is no earthly reason to read Peter Costello's Parting thoughts of a political party's proud and fortunate son.

Having said farewell more times than Dame Nellie Melba, and done infinite damage to the Liberal party in the piqued process, Banquo's ghost turns up yet again to strut the stage, with a finely judged balance of self-pity and self-glorification.

The opener sets the tone, of a lonely man facing up to a tough job:

I have been fortunate to be elected to represent my local community in the national Parliament. I have done the hard yards and the lonely nights in Opposition. As a minister I had the opportunity to make decisions that affected our nation's future. And my proudest moments came when I represented our country to the world.

Political life can be exhilarating. It can also be long hours of drudgery, and - worse - petty attacks from people who have little understanding of the complexities and difficult choices that you have to make.

Oh poor lonely hard yards man, suffering petty attacks from pygmies, a tortured, troubled hard working soul with the sensitivity of Byron or perhaps Shelley. And now perhaps a cricketing metaphor?

There is never a good time to exit. There is always the hope of one more term, one more budget, one more change to put things right and to entrench them for the benefit of the constituents that you represent. It used to be said it is harder to be dropped from the Australian Cricket team than it is to break into it. Politics is like that. Once you are there, there is always the hope of a big score in another innings on a flat wicket against a tiring bowler.

Dear lord, where's John Howard when you need him to flail the bumpkin around the head and send him down to deep third man for a short spell.

Now for the self-pity and the self-glory:

Critics say I didn't make it to the top office. I would have liked to. And I tried. But I think it is fair to be judged on how you discharged the office you did hold, not on how you didn't discharge the office you didn't hold. I can be judged against previous treasurers in Australia, and the performance of contemporaries overseas. I am proud of the record. I do not need to recount it. It will speak for itself.

On and on Costello rambles, ending with the resounding notion that he'd rather children have a good teacher than a new assembly hall, which presumably means he's not averse to them all assembling under the willow tree on the front lawn for a pep talk from the head teacher. The idea that children might have both a good teacher and a new assembly hall rather seems to escape him.

Well to return to van Onselen's fairy story, perhaps he should have said that the gift of Peter Costello's departure will be that we won't have to endure this kind of self-indulgent tosh being published in the SMH anymore.

But I rather fear that, just like Melba's endless trills and Banquo's upsetting of the banquet, Costello is going to hang around, rabbiting on about his economic record while neglecting to mention how lucky he was to surf the Chinese communist resources boom ...

One poor soul couldn't resist a farewell shot while noting that Costello had the GST boondoggle to comfort him in his days as Treasurer:

As for your little snipe about education standards - the reason that investment in the built environment is so badly needed now is that for 12 years it was dribbled out to schools - unless they were big fee private schools.

And I'll tell you why Gordon Brown and Barak Obama didn't spend their way out of recession. Barak Obama couldn't because, by the time he got the House to pass a stimulus bill, the recesssion would be over - and anyway your mate George Bush had blown it all on a stupid war.

Gordon Brown couldn't spend his way out of the recession because the UK is part of the EU and the effect of UK specific stimulus would be dissipated throughout the EU.

In addition, your government got pork barrelling down to a fine art. I don't reckon that's the sign of a responsible government at all.

The worst thing is, I actually voted for your party all those years ago. Wasn't I an idiot?

Well that's terribly unfair, and the real reason he's an idiot isn't that he voted Liberal, it's because he read Costello's latest in a long line of farewells, a bit like those who fronted John Farnham's farewell tour expecting it to be his actual last tour, having learned nothing from Robert Menzies or Dame Nellie Melba.

Yep, he took the bait like a mug punter, and read the whole damn thing and got enraged. What an idiot.

Hang on, I read the column, and got enraged too. In fact Costello's been enraging me all year. But it won't be half the rage I'll feel if Costello turns up in a government job working for Chairman Rudd. Which some punters still speculate is an odds on event. That bloody cheshire cat and his damned cheshire cat grin will just never ever go away.

Chalk me up as a total idiot, and let's move quietly on ...

Come on down Joe Hockey, the idiots await you ...

(Below: please explain. Who is this long haired hippie and why does he stare at the camera in such an ominous way? Well you've been warned, but Costello addicts yearning for yet another farewell fix can go here).