'Interesting times' ahead?

And the whole lot is topped off by the sheer pettiness of parliamentary secretary for disabilities Cory Bernardi’s (alleged) stoush with Christopher Pyne over very old ground indeed.

The list is starting to add up for Turnbull, indeed it is beginning to look like carelessness for a leader who must now be waiting for something akin to the sky falling in. He may just get it in the shape of an invigorated former Treasurer, one Peter Costello.

Having drifted phantom-like over the back benches, content to play the doppelganger to Turnbull’s Caesar, Costello is now supremely well positioned to ride into the breached walls of the Parliamentary Liberal Party. There is a limit to the patience of those among Turnbull’s senior party colleagues on the right who are not pleased with his leadership style. This view was strengthened this week by his moves to replace party president Alan Stockdale. It was reinforced by the powerful right winger, Nick Minchin’s enthusiastic support for the qualities of the sacked Bernadi.

But these are symptoms of a wider malaise - the entrenched and destructive interior struggles for personal ascendancy amid the political wastelands of Opposition. For the Parliamentary Liberal Party, its despatch to Coventry after 11 years of government was a pill just too bitter to swallow.

The question which now needs urgent resolution, however, is “where to from here” for Malcolm Turnbull and his fighting forces. The nature of political life in Australia is, in its essence, the getting and (equally important) the keeping of power. The reasons for doing so are, for individual politicians, less important and therefore of less interest to voters in this democracy.

Nevertheless, the time has arrived for Peter Costello to cast off his enigmatic smile when pressed, yet again, to commit to a run for LPA leadership. Should he finally say “Yes” or emphatically “No, not ever, under no circumstances whatsoever” the die would be cast, and the political chess pieces would continue to cross the board. At least then, Costello could with conviction state, as John Howard did in Melbourne, that - love him or loathe him - at least Australians knew where he stood.

Is it reasonable to expect, nearly two years out from the next federal election, that Costello’s current neutral smile could soon be transformed into his trademark smirk?