Real political reporting in The Australian - a must read for all political groupies
Those followers of politics stupid enough to refuse to read a Murdoch paper are missing out on some of the best political reporting for years. And it is coming not from the ranks of those News team experts holed up in the Canberra press gallery but from a pair whose work appears on the finance pages of The Australian.
It is a ripping yarn of a political serial with starring roles for the clubland of Melbourne and the grandees of the establishment versus younger upstarts. At stake are the resources necessary for the Liberal Party to fund effective state and federal election campaigns.
The temptation for the Owl to knock-off the writings of Glasgow and Lacy and give a version on this blog is considerable but theirs is journalism that deserves to be paid for.
Perhaps they will forgive me for cheating a little for this picture accompanying a Glasgow contribution in today's Weekend Australian is just so touching when you read the explanation after it.
CATHRYN TREMAIN
Kroger and Costello in 1989
Their decades-old friendship ended after Kroger made some comments on breakfast radio in 2012*
They have known each other since the late 1970s, but Peter Costello can’t make sense of his former political soulmate Michael Kroger’s behaviour right now.*Memories as Kroger was reported in the Fairfax press back in 2012
“Peter is incredulous,” a source close to Costello tells The Weekend Australian. “He just sighs,” says another person familiar with Costello’s attitude to his former best friend’s current behaviour.
"Why do I not talk to Peter much these days? Because, as all of his ex-friends know, lunch with Peter is an agony, it's a nightmare," he told 774 ABC radio.
"You sit there and listen to him unload on Howard. He's not gracious about John.
"Alexander Downer was a great foreign minister. He's got to make up with Alexander. Downer is at ease with the world. He and Peter and John were the troika that led that government.
"Peter has got to stop criticising Tony Abbott. He is not an economic illiterate. He's a Rhodes scholar, for god's sake.
"He has got to move on and stop bagging everybody, including me."
Mr Kroger said Mr Costello's anger at Mr Howard for failing to make way as prime minister had become "ridiculous" and "absurd".
"After 35 of years of being Peter's best friend, ally and supporter, even I've had enough, even I'm at my wits' end with Peter and there comes a point where you know people have to move on," he said.
"Peter made a decision in 2007 - I think the wrong decision - to spit the dummy and leave the parliament. He should've stayed, he should have been opposition leader, he would've been prime minister."
Mr Kroger said Mr Costello had spoken to him about a return to politics in a safe Liberal seat during a "private club" lunch last October, a discussion Mr Costello strenuously denies took place.
According to Mr Kroger, the lunch ended badly after Mr Costello demanded Mr Kroger persuade rising star Josh Frydenberg to stand aside from the safe seat of Kooyong, but refused to ask his former staffer Kelly O'Dwyer to vacate his former seat of Higgins.
Mr Costello publicly accused Mr Kroger of going public with the story because his former wife, Liberal senator Helen Kroger, had been demoted to the tenuous third position on the Liberal Senate ticket.
"He puts a different interpretation on what he said," Mr Kroger told 774 ABC radio this morning. "I don't drink and I'm not suggesting he drank too much at that lunch, but I've got a very clear focus.
"I know what happened, I know the date, I know where it was, it was in Melbourne, it was in late October . . . at a private club. There was 100 people in the room for goodness' sake."
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