Brekkie Crumbs (Notes from the NewsRadio Breakfast team) for Wednesday December 9th
Mark - Breakfast E.P.: …
Tony Abbott gives good copy.
What’s more, the former journo and press secretary knows it, too.
He was clearly enjoying himself on Lateline last night:
TONY JONES: You’ve got four or five former Howard Ministers in that Cabinet?
TONY ABBOTT: And why not make the most of the experience and the energy that those people have? What I wanted was a frontbench …
TONY JONES: Well, before you answer that, let me just throw something back at you. Paul Keating once called you a “young fogey”. I mean, you’ve done your reshuffle now, but are you at all worried that you’re gonna be regarded as a young fogey leading a bunch of old fogeys?
TONY ABBOTT: Well, if we win the election, I’ll be regarded as a genius. If we don’t win, I’ll probably be political roadkill at some point in time.
Indeed.
In a wide-ranging and often amusing interview, the two Tonys ranged over a number of topics - leadership, climate change and the Copenhagen Conference and why Kevin Rudd allegedly won’t appear on Lateline.
And there was this:
TONY JONES: Let’s go back a couple of steps. How much of an inspiration was John Howard in your decision to challenge for the Liberal leadership?
Tony Abbott was adamant it was his decision alone to go for the top job.
But the Opposition leader got more curiously more circumspect as the Tony Jones warmed to the topic:
TONY JONES: Did you tell him (John Howard) of your plan to dump the Emissions Trading Policy that he took to the last election?
TONY ABBOTT: Look, I think, Tony, that there are all sorts of conversations with all sorts of people. The important thing is …
TONY JONES: But that would be the most intriguing one, wouldn’t it, because you’ve relied on him to some degree as a political mentor?
TONY ABBOTT: Yes.
TONY JONES: You talked about being a weathervane, seeing the changes in politics; wouldn’t you go to your old mentor to sort of seek his advice on something as fundamental as this?
TONY ABBOTT: Well, I continue to have discussions with the former Prime Minister, and I think that anyone on our side of politics who wants to grow in wisdom does well to have discussions with him. But I didn’t want anyone else’s fingerprints, knowing that you would ask these sorts of questions and others like you would ask these sorts of questions, Tony, I didn’t want anyone to say that John Howard was still running the Liberal Party. And I didn’t want anyone to say that notwithstanding the very close relationship that I’ve had with John over the years that I am not my own man.
TONY JONES: Did he give you any advice at all on whether it was a good idea to drop the Emissions Trading Scheme that he took to the last election?
TONY ABBOTT: Well, you should ask him what he thinks about these things.
TONY JONES: But you’ve been quite happy to say no about other things and be vague about this one?
TONY ABBOTT: But his general view, Tony, and I don’t think I’m putting words into his mouth, is that he did what he thought was best in his time and it’s now up to us to do what we think best in our time.
TONY JONES: So he might, for example, believe the Emissions Trading Scheme is not a good thing politically for this time and have advised you such?
TONY ABBOTT: Well, I’m just not gonna go into what he might think about how the contemporary Liberal Party is handling things because he’s made it very clear that he isn’t gonna be a commentator on these events.
Well, a commentator in public, at least.
I just repeat what I said last week in this blog:
“Nothing of any consequence in the Liberal Party will happen without someone placing a call to John Howard…whether they be a “wet”, a “dry”, a “moderate” or a “conservative”.
He’s no “observer”.”
___
Debbie - Sport …
The Bayern Munich goalkeeper, Hans-Jorg Butt, will get plenty of headlines in sports sections around the world over the next day or two for doing something very unusual this morning.
He took, and converted, a penalty for his team in their 4-1 European Champions League win over Juventus in Turin.
It’s rare, although not unheard of for goalkeepers to score. Sometimes very late in a game when a team desperately needs to score the keeper will come up and get into the mix when his team is taking a corner. And sometimes it happens, as it did this morning, when the keeper is given the chance to take a penalty.
Recently, when we had Mark Bosnich as a guest on “Weekend Half Time”, I noticed that on his CV is a goal for the Socceroos. I checked it out and found it was a penalty that came in one of those goal-avalanche Oceania qualifiers against the Solomon Islands. His was one of 13 goals for the Australian team.
My local coffee shop in Sydney is frequented by a gaggle of soccer fans and I thought I’d test them out on that bit of Socceroo trivia. In return, my barista, Tony, told me about the former Colombian keeper, Rene Higuita, who was a regular spot-kick taker in internationals. Higuita, he said, was not only excellent with a penalty, but was also wont, on occasion, to dribble the ball upfield, taking on the defence.
But neither of those party tricks are what Higuita is most famous for. Tony directed me to go home and search on the internet for “Higuita scorpion kick”.
Maybe you’ve seen it before - but I hadn’t and, with due respect to Mr Butt’s efforts this morning, this is truly is the most freakish act by a goalkeeper I’ve ever seen!
