Back off, Turnbull warned, as the arguments begin

PETER COSTELLO has warned he has no intention of leaving Parliament any time soon and will fight any push by Malcolm Turnbull to replace Brendan Nelson as Opposition Leader.

As the former treasurer began a round of radio interviews to spruik his memoirs - extracted in today's Herald - the backlash against the book began.

The Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce hit back at Mr Costello's attacks on him, calling the long-term leadership aspirant a disloyal hypocrite who had undermined Dr Nelson with his self-promotion.

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Gus:

Friends, traitors, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Peter, not to praise him.
The things that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their boxes;
So let it be with Peter. The noble Nelsonus
Hath told you Peter was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a feable fault,
And obviously hath Peter not answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Turnbullus and the rest -
For Nelsonus is a shallow man;
So are they all, all mini-bollockus men -
Come I to speak at Peter's bookhanal.
He was not my buddy, a man minus to me:
But Howardus says he was ambitious;
And Howardus may be a devious man.
He hath brought many captives home to Kirribilli
Whose ransoms did the economy's coffers fill:
Did this in Peter seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Peter hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner bluff:
Yet Heffernamus says he was ambitious;
And Heffernamus is a flurry man.
You all did see that once defeated,
Howardus presented Pete a kingly crown,
Which he did refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Minchinus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is a numbers man.
I speak not to disprove what Abbottus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to piss on him?
O judgment! thou art fled to poorish feasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
Your knifes are in the coffin there with Peter,
And you must hope he does not come back...

see toon at top...

I read his memoir on a train and in a hotel room and an office with mounting unease in one long night and a dreary day and was none the wiser at the end of it. He was a smirking, evasive enigma still; a buffoon or a great lost leader according to your taste, a mocker, a drone, a Hamlet, a Coriolanus, a Billy Bigelow, Mark Antony, Pal Joey, Bart Simpson, Bugs Bunny, the Fonz.

It was hard to tell.

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read more of Bob Ellis at unleashed, see toon at top...