Susssan is counting the numbers ... perhaps in a numerological way ...

 

The pond is campaigning for the lettuce and so simply had to go with this offering this day, even if it meant breaking the rule of no late arvo posts.

The splash alone, with its hideous graphic, recommended the yarn to the pond:

The pond couldn't get enough of that weird graphic, which was almost an acid flashback to the time the pond stood on the corner of Haight and Ashbury...

The header: ‘What do you reckon’: How chairman Littleproud runs the Nationals and holds onto his job; Where David Littleproud’s partyroom accepts that his ‘chairman of the board’ approach meant that maybe he didn’t ‘lead’ as much as others, Sussan Ley’s camp increasingly saw it as a striking weakness.

The authors: Sarah Ison and Anthony Galloway

If little to be proud of had nothing to be proud of, then the same could be said for the hideous artwork credited to Frank: David Littleproud. Artwork: Frank Ling

It was just three minutes of celebrating little to be proud of and dumping on Susssan, giving the assault of the lettuce fresh hope:

Nationals leader David Littleproud lets “the will of the party­room” dictate almost everything he does, including now his second historic split with the Liberals.
Every time he opens a meeting of his MPs, he starts the same way: “So, what do we all think?”
It’s a simple way to start, but it’s emblematic of the strategy of a Nationals leader who has kept the loyalty of his MPs, despite his battles with everyone from Sussan Ley to Barnaby Joyce.
“He’s like the chair of a boardroom, not a CEO,” one Nationals MP said, while another noted “he’s the most collaborative leader I’ve ever worked under”.
The front-footedness of so many Nationals on Thursday, who publicly backed Mr Littleproud on every platform they could, suggested he was doing something right.

The reptiles interrupted with an AV distraction showing little to be proud of beside a gesticulating Susssan. 

His dark and brooding image said not so much Heathcliff, as a dark-clouded dumbo, a brooding, festering mess of glum gloom:

Nationals Leader David Littleproud claims some time apart for the Coalition is a “good thing”. “The Liberal Party is still working themselves out, and we’ll let them do that,” Mr Littleproud told Sky News Australia. “I believe in a Coalition, but not at any cost, not without respect, not without understanding. “That’s not how you operate, that’s not the Coalition I’ve been part of for nine years.”

The reptiles quickly moved on, desperate to get to a snap of Bid:

This is despite the obvious trade-off – a leader who won’t “lead” in the same way some have in the past.
“It’s the other side of the coin and you can criticise that, but it’s his style of leadership,” one MP said.
It’s a frustration among ­Liberals, who see the leadership style as a convenient way for Mr Littleproud to throw his hands up in the air when things aren’t going as smoothly as they could and declare “it’s just the will of my partyroom”. But it’s a tried and tested strategy that has worked for Mr Littleproud for some time now.
And yet, a strikingly similar strategy had resulted in an incredibly different outcome.

Cue that snap of Bid, Senator Bridget McKenzie holds a doorstop press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Then came notes on hapless Susssan's style, no doubt stimulated by a plethora of 's's", which, as everybody knows, guarantees an exciting life, even though Susssan has since tried to walk back that story that appeared in the lizard Oz way back in 2015 and luckily was saved to the archive:

...At the age of 10 she went to a boarding school in Sussex, south of London, hoping for a St Trinian’s romp. Her father had promised horse-riding lessons if she won a scholarship. “I thought it would be very jolly – in fact it was a bit grim,” she says. We’re talking at her Albury electorate office in between meeting and greeting doctors. She describes herself as a “skinny, plain, gawky girl” who found it difficult making friends. “Boarding school taught me a great ­lesson in resilience. I can remember thinking, ‘Well, I don’t have to like it but I have to be able to cope, to manage it’.”
When I ask whom she most takes after, she nominates her father. “He and I share a great love of horses,” she says. Her mother Angela suggests father and daughter also enjoy a keen intelligence. The family’s peripatetic existence is a constant pattern in their lives. After migrating to Australia in 1974 they settled briefly in Toowoomba, where Edgar farmed and Angela worked at the local hospital, then moved to Canberra when Edgar joined the Federal Police. They kept horses on a small hobby farm in nearby Murrumbateman.
“She was always ahead academically,” Angela says of her daughter. “She was clever but it was very difficult to say what she was going to do.” The punk-rock phase was fleeting. “I remember that, definitely,” her mother stiffens. When I ask why she chose the spelling Sussan for her ­daughter, she says: “I didn’t”.
After leaving school, Ley spent six months on the dole until she joined the public service. Bureaucracy scared the hell out of her. “I got this panicked feeling when I thought, ‘Is this it?’ ” She survived the boredom by planning an overland trail ride, possibly inspired by Robyn Davidson’s camel journey through Central Australia in 1977. Persuading a friend to come along, she trained a packhorse to carry their supplies and set out in the summer of 1980 to ride from Canberra to Adelaide via ­Victoria. The odyssey ended traumatically in Gippsland near Ninety Mile Beach when Ley’s dog was run over in an accident, his traumatised yelp scaring the pack horse who fell, crushing the saddle bags, billy cans and all.
Desk jockeys back at the Department of Capital Territories admired her spunk. “I hated her from the moment I heard of this legendary woman,” jokes her then co-worker, Sarah ­Engledow. “I wanted to be the star of the office.” The two shared a love of pranks and often amused each other by ringing departmental employees who had “funny” surnames.
Around this time Ley changed the spelling of her first name. “I read about this numerology theory that if you add the numbers that match the letters in your name you can change your personality. I worked out that if you added an “s” I would have an incredibly exciting, interesting life and nothing would ever be boring. It’s that simple,” she says, chuckling. “And once I’d added the “s” it was really hard to take it away.”

Sorry that was then, is is now.

No mutton Dutton she; she no mutton Dutton:

When Ms Ley took up the helm of the Liberal Party, she promised she was going to be different to Peter Dutton, who the Coalition had spent weeks panning in the aftermath of the election for his iron grip on the shadow cabinet and captain’s calls.
She was going to be different, she would be the chair not the CEO of the board, she would listen.
The difference in leadership style was distinct. In fact even among her greatest critics in the party, it had an impact.

The reptiles then returned to an old routine the pond hasn't seen in some time ...

Who knows what those features are, who knows if they're in this version, all the pond knows is that there was trouble at mill...

While conservatives who voted against her were sullen the day she was elected, within weeks their tune had markedly changed. And it was little wonder, Ms Ley had ­created backbench committees and other processes to bring everyone in, she’d held ministerial and partyroom meetings where she asked people to speak and just listened.
For many, it was the first time they felt heard in a while.
But, as seems to be the trend for Ms Ley of late, the brief win was quickly snatched away.
The thing about making ­captain’s calls and having an iron grip on the party is that people don’t feel as confident about brashly declaring their views to you and the public.
And the thing about being heard and told you’ll always be listened to, is that it gives people permission to talk. A lot.
Somewhere along the way, the sheen of this open, collaborative leadership style wore off. Where Mr Littleproud’s partyroom accepted that his approach meant that maybe he didn’t “lead” as much as others, those in Ms Ley’s camp increasingly saw it as a striking weakness.
It may be that being the chief executive rather than a chair of a boardroom is needed when the board is that big, or it might simply be harder when you’re the first woman to sit as a chair of that board.

Naturally there had to be a contrast between the striking weakness and the striking little to be proud of, Nationals leader David Littleproud and MP Kevin Hogan address the media at a press conference in Brisbane on Thursday. Picture: NewsWire / Sarah Marshall

So it was bad news for Sussssan, and good news for little to be proud of , and exciting times for the lettuce...

Either way, the difference in view among Nationals and Liberal MPs of their leader in the aftermath of the Coalition divorce couldn’t be more obvious.
Almost no National criticised Mr Littleproud on Thursday after the split. Or at least if they did, they said actions like not speaking up more in shadow cabinet or personally attacking Ms Ley after the ­Coalition split were “regrettable”.
And how did the Liberals respond to the chaos between the two parties? They called Ms Ley’s leadership almost “irreparable”, or for those seeking to be unkind, “unsalvageable”.
Compare this to Nationals ­admitting that just maybe “a conversation” would be needed if a new Liberal leader expressed his party’s lingering distrust of Mr Littleproud as a challenge to reforming the Coalition. But this was far from a foregone conclusion.
Some Nationals went so far as to suggest that, faced with this choice from the Liberals, backing Mr Littleproud over bending the knee to their senior Coalition partner would be on the cards.

Does this count as a near-death experience?

During the flight back to Albury the little Cessna lurches through pockets of turbulence. Traffic is heavier in the skies around the airport but Ley pulls off another graceful landing. On the ground Tony Abbott hurtled towards a near-death experience but his newest minister steers clear of hot air and static. The Government should follow her example.

Go lettuce ...