This is a sample of The Echidna newsletter sent out each weekday morning. To sign up for FREE, go to theechidna.com.au

Login or signup to continue reading

"Stubborn stains on your shirtfront? Gravy on your favourite blue tie? Spots that shouldn't be there on your leopard print? You want to look fresh and new but everything comes out of the wash the same old grey?

"Try Polliegone, our new wonder product. Its active ingredients, Reality and Self-Awareness, work to clean up and brighten the dirtiest laundry. It removes the grime you never thought you'd shift. Add a cup and a half to your next load and we promise you won't believe the difference!"

If only it were that simple.

As the Liberal Party learns once again, some stains persist no matter what you throw at them. Tony Abbott is one of them, along with his sidekick Peta Credlin. No amount of scrubbing seems to get rid of them. Not being turfed out of the prime ministership by his own party after only two years in the top job. Not losing his own seat. And for both of them, not a decade of being largely ignored as a pair of fringe right-wing commentators.

Since the May 3 election loss, Abbott and Credlin have been back in the trenches, waging war. Not against Labor, as you'd expect, but against their own party and its new leader Sussan Ley and the moderate faction that prevailed in narrowly electing her to the top job.

Abbott is demanding Ley proceed with her predecessor Peter Dutton's federal takeover of the NSW division of the party, prompted by the latter's egregious failure to nominate candidates for last year's local government elections. The takeover has always been opposed by the moderate faction, seen as a naked power grab by their rivals on the right.

The last thing Ley needs as she firms up her leadership is Abbott shouting from the sidelines about a factional brawl irrelevant to most Australians. And the last thing the Liberal Party on the whole needs is a failed former leader exerting influence over its inner workings.

There's nothing new about former PMs making unwanted intrusions into their parties' affairs. Howard and Keating you can understand; love or loathe them, they made names for themselves in office and earned their place as historical artefacts.

But Abbott? As PM, he was such a disaster, even his own faction helped turf him out. There was his calamitous first budget, which broke a slew of election promises. His captain's calls, including reinstating knighthoods and bestowing one on Prince Philip. His climate denial. He wasn't helped by his gaffes, from eating unpeeled onions to winking while talking to a sex worker on radio or the 30 opinion polls which showed he and his government were on the nose. In two........

© Canberra Times