Turnbull isn't finished

The smartest guy in the class has been brought down a peg, though.

The fact that Rudd is trying a little too hard in going after him, allowing his nerd act to slip and reveal the snarling beast beneath (does anyone still wonder why that hostie burst into tears?) was and is an error.

If this had happened last week, Costello would have smirked and sneered, and still wouldn't have stepped up. He has never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity, and this would have been no different.

Wayne Swan has gotten away with murder, and it would be really interesting to catch the Member for Hunter in his cups right about now.

It could have been so different: the smartest political operator to come out of Queensland since Red Ted, eviscreated after two budgets because of a bit of parish-pump politics. If Rudd had been Malcolm Fraser, Swan would be out on his ear and Lindsay Tanner would be Treasurer now - imagine how different the narrative would be then, Turnbull having seen off two Cabinet ministers and Costello in the space of a month ...

... but it didn't happen like that, did it. Turnbull overreached himself in going after Rudd ...

... and yet when the story first broke, and Godwin Grech became something other than a Maltese badminton champion, Rudd was rattled. This is not a man who bluffs well. John Hewson always said that Keating had a glass jaw, but he never managed to hit it; Rudd clearly has a glass jaw, but it is intact and set hard against Turnbull now, while Turnbull is left pondering what is nobler in the mind. This is a storm in a teacup, and no real issue will wait long upon this nonsense.

Its only significance is that it is a real setback for Turnbull, and thus a real test. When he took on Costello over tax in 2005, when he lost to Nelson in '07, the sense of inevitability surrounding him was not diminished as it is now: that a force of nature might just be piss and wind, that a little red tape might have brought down a giant.

What Turnbull is learning now are the sorts of lessons that other politicians learn at lower levels, for much lower stakes, usually far from the public eye. Had Turnbull come to politics direct from the law (and had Julie Bishop stood up worthy of a deputy), they could have orchestrated a week's worth of teasing questions to Rudd and Swan - particularly Swan - all build-up and no denoument, until they were both nervous wrecks and no AFP investigation could dispel the perception of some sort of underhandedness.

Swan's slipped the noose this time, and no amount of coursing and baying will bring him back within range. Swan is a smart bloke, but a) he's a political fixer from way back and b) hubris has brought down better men than he. I doubt that he'll want to repeat this treatment any time soon, but it's now established that Swan is vulnerable and can be got - at a time when the Chris Bowens of this world are not yet ready to step into his shoes.

Will Turnbull learn from this? If so, what will he learn - other than that others are less than he? Will he be a bit more strategic and bring out snarly Rudd more often? Turnbull and Rudd are both centrists, closer in policy terms and personality than any leaders since Hawke and Peacock: things got nasty between those two, such that Howard provided clear air (i.e. he took the Liberals backwards in the polls, and far enough to the right that he could be monstered by Joh) for policy debate. So it will prove with Rudd and Turnbull - but first Turnbull must get off the mat and show a bit of contrition, that way when Rudd goes him it is Rudd who'll look the bastard.

Right now, Liberal conservatives undermining Turnbull are courting a perception of niceness in calling for "clear air" (i.e. give Labor a 20-point lead and they'll be patronising toward the Liberals rather than snarly). The air is always clearest in the places where nobody wants to go with you: when you're all at sea, when you're stumbling around the desert, when you're in the middle of nowhere, just take a moment to breathe in all that clear air, mm hmm.

Rudd has no long-standing popular base, not even in Queensland, so the way to bring him down is to make him look rattled at a time of crisis and puncture the image of nerdy competence - and take out a cabinet minister now and then. Such a scenario may seem a million miles from the abyss that the MSM would have you believe Turnbull has stumbled into - but is it really?

If Turnbull gets over himself it will be a mighty achievement, no less than Hawke's in the early '80s. If he can do that, what can't he do with the Murray-Darling, tax reform, and all those other issues that Rudd hasn't yet addressed and may never? If, if, if.

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Double-fault at Kooyong

The Victorian Liberals apparently held "the largest preselection vote in the party's history ... under a new, more democratic system", and they botched the result.

They elected notorious flim-flam man Josh Frydenberg, sucked in!

... Liberal Party sources said Mr Frydenberg wanted to re-establish Kooyong as a fund-raising powerhouse.

Whose funds, Melissa? To what ends, Melissa? Keep a close eye on the flim-flam man and make sure he doesn't leak any state secrets to loony News Ltd columnists, or something.

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I resemble that accusation

Christian Kerr took time out this week to criticise blogs, or rather to put words to his unease, and that of his employer more broadly, toward this medium. His piece is here. Breaking the traditions of blogs, such as they are, I have left it a few days to consider the whole issue of blogs and the MSM as presented by Christian and bounced off a few others.

And we have no political bloggers who break stories.

The biggest story in Australian politics last week was broken on this website. Christian himself, and many of his colleagues, have spent years applying all the journalistic arts to get this story, as I pointed out. Christian's employer has incurred thousands upon thousands of dollars in expenses claims in the pursuit of a story that foundered upon a webpage.

The "breaking" of a story is old-school journalism and pretty much irrelevant in an age where all news outlets can publish the same story within a few minutes, rather than have to wait a whole day while the wounds to circulation, influence, revenue and yes ego that came from having been "scooped".

The process by which governments will "leak" details of a budget for weeks in advance of it being delivered is hardly an exercise in fearless investigative journalism, more a stale and courtly ritual with knowing winks and God-knows-what compromises required of journalists to "earn" first dibs on the story. By contrast, neither Bob Woodward nor Carl Bernstein was the first journalist to report on the Watergate break-in in 1972: don't bother digging for the one who was first, it doesn't matter.

What we have on our political blogs is analysis. And talk. Endless talk.

Pretty much all you get from Christian, really. Christian is not a fearless scoop-hound; he is a theatre reviewer for Australia's best-subsidised and most boring theatre.

Some of the analysis [from blogs] is excellent ... blogger William Bowe passes on a poll or throws out a fact to a baying pack of readers.

Some of their responses can be good. At times, though -- Newspolls can bring this mob out -- much of their reactions consists of conspiracy theorising that that would bring a blush to the cheeks of the authors of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

If you want to see baying, accompany Christian to a press conference; and the reference to the dreaded Protocols puts his perilously close to an offence under Godwin's Law.

Let's go with it though: if Christian was a sketchwriter for the nineteenth -century Russian Duma and the Tsarist secret police slipped him proof copies of that tome, do you really think Christian would have turned it down? Would Milney? Would Annabel Crabb or Michelle Grattan ("Tsar must take hard line with Zionists")?

Some are sharp. Sometimes. Others are the online equivalent of soapbox speakers.

Just like News Ltd or any other mainstream media outlet really, except that the web and the rise of blogs shows you don't need a multi-billion-dollar apparatus or "exclusive access" to be entertaining and informative.

Then there is the group that provides the cyberworld's answer to the sad sacks you see on the street holding intense conversations with no one in particular.

How dare you talk about David Pemberthy in that dismissive manner? Seriously though, I thought I was doing that at first and perhaps I was - but with about a thousand or so different readers coming back at different frequencies, I'm at least as widely read as any of those fearless scoop-hounds of yore.

But Australian blogs instead obsess about the mainstream media and their reporting.

Their tone is disconcerting.

Aww, is it blossom?

This is the first time in Australian media history that the sheer inadequacy of Australian political reporting has been exposed; in the olden days it was sustained by boozy newsroom assertions about "the punters" and what they wanted/needed/was good for them. The sort of people who can express dissatisfaction with MSM are those who consume it avidly, and who have the analytical skills that suggest a demographic to which MSM advertisers yearn. Sloppy MSM analysis turns off the very readers and consumers who are vital for their future.

We always hear about "community" ... insular little communities ... Lord of the Flies islands online.

You don't "always hear" that or anything like it here, and don't have to work too hard to escape nastiness or groupthink online. However, in the journosphere it is endemic. There is no escaping either of these inhibitors to effective journalism at News Ltd, the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery, or both.

Disagree with the group-think of the tribe and they will chase you over a cliff. In this environment there is not only no room for news, but no tolerance of new ideas.

Pot, kettle: the press gallery is designed to create a "journosphere" that ensures that all ideas are received, that stupid policy can become clever politics with an alchemy called spin, in an environment where information is controlled and deadlines fixed to ensure that all stories follow the same "line". News Ltd would be broke within a week if AP cut its feed off.

And don't whinge about a "24-hour news cycle" when you refuse to run a story that is spoon-fed to you "after deadline" (whose deadline? Certainly not mine pal), or just before a long weekend, or at a time when there is another story that you and your so-called competitors are fixated on. Fair shake of the sauce-bottle and see you at the Holy Grail!

If someone wants to claim the first scalp of the Australian political blogosphere, perhaps they should dig deeper.

Too late - hundreds of such "scalps" can be found in skips behind Fairfax offices in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne. David Penberthy has clearly taken the attitude that if you can't beat bloggers, join 'em, with his fancy-lah-di-dah site (well, more fancy than this) - and now that you mention it, he does appear to have less hair than he did as a mainstream journalist.

Another example of such "scalps" can be found in the UK, where thousands of pages of documents on MPs' expenses has been put online and "citizen journalists" can peruse them at will. Readers take different opinions and and apply experiences and expertise that is simply unavailable among the ranks of journalists. This is real news, real analysis, valuable information: compare this with the high point of "news news", the 1970s: "scoops" such as Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, or the various "funny money" scandals of the Whitlam government were sat on, ignored, or doled out by non-analysing drones of journos placed under "deadline pressure", at the whim of the politics of their "proprietors", in their own sweet time.

It may be of satisfaction to some that Christian has scored an own goal, or been smacked in the face with his own boomerang. What such logic betrays is projection through insecurity; by going from Crikey to News Ltd, to walk in a dead man's shoes and be compared unfavourably to Annabel bloody Crabb. Christian Kerr has more smarts under his toenails than Crabb has or can muster; it's tragic that he won't rise to the challenge but is, like Penberthy, sinking into flatulent Mark Day-isms. Christian may have actually joined a sinking ship. Time for Hillary to bray again, Christian; better a bray than a drone, right?

Update: Perhaps this explains the Kerr/News barrage - a pre-emptive strike against any news blogger who might pose a threat. The Times is, after all, a sister paper of the Oz, so any budding NightJack out there can expect to be outed and gutted by those heirs to the Surry Hills razor gangs. News Ltd faces the same fate that Cobb & Co faced with the rise of motorised transport, but it seems they won't go quietly.

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The bubble and the babble

Over the past 36 hours two memes have died - Peter Costello and Des Moran. Two feared operators who have mellowed in recent years but whose enemies have increased, both in number and intensity as the very mellowness and predictability of these old warhorses made them easier marks.

This is not to compare Costello with a petty criminal, but to explore the half-witted way that that the media covers both the worlds of organised crime and organised politics, where information and methods are hidden and revealed for the tactical and strategic benefit of various players.

For a decade and a half, journalistic careers have been built on speculation that Costello might challenge John Hewson, Alexander Downer, John Howard, Brendan Nelson, Malcolm Turnbull; nothing whatsoever came of it. All of it was sheer wind, all of it. Every single journalist and "senior source" who participated in this, every reader/viewer who took it in, all of them were wasting their time and effort. All of the effort that Glenn Milne and Annabel Crabb spent in brown-nosing Costello in the hope of some "insider knowledge" has been utterly, utterly wasted. Any claim they might have to be "Canberra insiders" is now bogus - if they didn't know Costello was going, what do they know about anything? Why bother reading their output, or anything else sold by the organisations that employ them? How stupid does this guy, and everyone he's quoted look - not merely mistaken, but flat-out too-dumb-to-run-anything, too-dumb-to-trust stupid.

Yeah, Costello achieved less than he might have - but that can be said of anyone really, after it's all said and done there's usually more said than done. The issue here is that so, so much was said, to the exclusion of so, so much else.

Pick an issue, any issue you like: the fate of refugees, individually or severally; climate change; corporate regulation; infrastructure; any issue at all arising out of the period 1996-2007. Consider that the issue you've picked has been starved of attention, of analysis, of other options simply because some journalists and their employers decided that chasing wisps of Canberra fog was more important than your issue.

The standard counter is that the news that's covered is that news that sells, with the clear implication that news editors have an uncanny and unerring knack both for what's important and what's lucrative. Plummeting circulation data shows this to be wrong on both counts. Anyone claiming (and implying) that sales/viewing/other indicators of popularity rose on the basis of a Costello Challenge piece is lying.

Costello said that he was looking for a post-political career, and so it has proven. Costello hated it when Malcolm Turnbull put a rocket up him over tax in 2005, so four years later he returned the favour over the leadership, until the Victorian Division of the Liberal Party complained that it was incurring collateral damage and somehow forced an end to this latest piece of self-indulgence. He was never that interesting and everyone who thought he was has finally been proven wrong. Now that Fairfax is reorganising their Canberra bureaux, those who have most column inches on this matter should, in any well-run organisation concerned for its future, have the most to fear from outplacement (farewell, Annabel).

This piece, and pieces by Shaun Carney and Peter Hartcher, show that the best political reporting is done far from Canberra.

In recent days those who parsed and slavered over every non-announcement from Costello have distinguished themselves by missing the point with Kevin Rudd's fake ockerisms. Silliness and poor reporting actively discourages people taking an interest in public policy, and when that policy so intrudes in their lives that they take an interest they don't know where to start. The fact that political reporting isn't entertaining, well-written or constructive is important, but it pales beside the sheer awful damage that this counterproductive profession does, ironically, in the name of informing the citizenry.

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Who is my neighbour?

Just as Richard Nixon was the only American politician who could visit Communist China without being red-baited by Richard Nixon, so too Binyamin Netanyahu is the only Israeli politician who could even mention Palestine without being accused of caving in, treason or worse by Netanyahu.

(Yes, the above link connects to a News Ltd report. Here at the Politically Homeless Institute, we have no truck with Fairfax and their desperately silly Middle East reporter, who couldn't handle the fact that Peter Costello never became Prime Minister and is so far out of his depth on this issue it is pathetic.)

Netanyahu left his words until after the election in Iran, the main sponsors of Hamas and Hezbollah; had he done so beforehand he might have skewed the result (or made the currently stated result more legitimate than it is). He spoke at a time when Iran is paralysed politically, but also when the shit-sandwich fed to him by Obama is still stuck to his teeth. Having tried to define Palestine out of existence, by making war against what used to be the PLO and then corralling Palestinians, his next step has been to define what sort of Palestine might be an acceptable neighbour.

BENJAMIN Netanyahu threw down the gauntlet to the US last night

Rubbish. What he did was cave, with a few lines to mollify the far right of his coalition.

The hawkish Prime Minister insisted that Israel would never give up a united Jerusalem as its capital ...

That depends what you mean by Jerusalem, really. Colonisation by urban sprawl won't impress anyone - not those impressed by modern-day realpolitik nor scholars of ancient texts.

... established Jewish settlements in the West Bank would continue to expand - despite explicit objections from Washington.

Like hell they will.

Settlements outside Israel are subject to the laws of those countries. If sovereign countries decide to limit or abolish settlements, they do so. It is only possible in theory that Israel would invade a neighbouring country in order to facilitate building work, then stay to protect it; in practice it would not be on and Israel would be a clear belligerent. This is a sop to his rightwing buddies, what sounds like sabre-rattling from an empty scabbard. You can see that in the weaselly failure to define what a Palestinian "entity" might be - mind you, no more "weaselly" than the attitude of Zionist groups toward the British mandate in yes, Palestine, between last century's two world wars.

Mr Netanyahu tried to advance elements of his economic peace plan - whereby the Palestinians would receive investment in return for limited sovereignty - while still conceding to US insistence on the creation of an independent Palestinian country.

The right-wing Israeli leader said the moderate Palestinian leadership in the West Bank must agree to recognise Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, as well as fight the Islamic hardliners Hamas, who now control Gaza, in return for the resumption of peace talks.

"The key condition is that the Palestinians recognise in a clear and public manner that Israel is the state of the Jewish people," he told dignitaries in an auditorium at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv.

See, he's trying to define its economy (vassal state) while offering the truly miserable enticement of Bantustan status and "peace talks". That won't be good enough for anyone except the auditorium-stuffing at Bar Ilan. This is a position begging to be bargained away.

"If we have the guarantees on demilitarisation, and if the Palestinians recognise Israel as a state of the Jewish people, then we arrive at a solution based on a demilitarised Palestinian state alongside Israel," Mr Netanyahu said.

"Each will have its flag, each will have its anthem. The Palestinian territory will be without arms, will not control airspace, will not be able to have arms enter."

He said that "effective security safeguards" would have to be in place, without specifying what they might be.

Palestine is demilitarised already. Hamas terrorists* who fire rockets into Israel aren't militarised in the sense that the armed forces of a recognised state are, and there is no incentive for a Palestinian government to formally institute a military structure. In the same way, there is no incentive for Netanyahu to define how much "effective security safeguards" might be enough.

"Many a worthy person has told us that withdrawal is the key to peace between us and the Palestinians. But the fact is that every withdrawal has been accompanied by rockets and suicide attacks". He said that the Palestinians had to drop the right of return for hundreds of thousands of refugees to their homes inside Israel.

The fact is that every withdrawal to date has not left the Palestinians any better off, and has perpetuated a kind of cat-and-mouse game on Israel's part that disgraces that nation and sullies its credibility on commitments going forward. The fact is also that the "right of return" requires the dispossessed to recognise the state of Israel, which a two-state solution will facilitate. Any refugee who returns to their home and refuses to obey the laws of Israel deserves the punishment under that law.

He said last night that he would not agree to US demands for a total freeze on the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

"I do not wish to build new settlements or to confiscate lands to that end, but we have to allow the residents of the settlements to live normal lives," he said.

You don't do the allowing, and you don't define what "normal lives" are either. A combination of Israelis displaced by refugees combined with West Bank settlers deciding they don't want to live in Palestine creates a social dislocation issue for Israel that no government can survive without very skillful management and an economic boom, neither of which are evident in Netanyahu's government.

That will have to change, though. Netanyahu has to stand up for an Israel that deserves recognition as a proper state, rather than a front for a bunch of gamblers. Palestine has its work cut out too, and now that Iran is in a tizz politically this is the perfect time for both states to live independently of its toxic reach. For each state to respect the boundaries of the other would be a huge start to an initiative that could be enormously productive - but is it realistic?

Never mind what's fair, or even what's in everybody's best interests - could it work? Do we dare hope for better in Israel-Palestine? I hope for better in Iran too, but not just yet if it means more than just a two-state solution but respectful neighbours with countries/economies that work far beyond the trappings of flags and anthems.

* Yeah, should've put out a Loaded Terms Alert there, oh well.

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Shuffle in an echo chamber

I assumed that Fitzgibbon would be big enough to a) hire a smart and experienced person to advise him on big-picture defence issues, and b) would overcome the smalltown mentality that affects many politicians, who see Canberra as just a bigger stage on which to play petty parish-pump politics. We at PoHo Institute were wrong on both counts. Now that he's been kicked in the teeth - and his brother can't be far behind given NIB's performance - the political vacuum that is Labor Newcastle will only suck even harder.

The joint that gave public life such giants as Milton Orkopoulos and Matt Charlton is ripe for an independent politician; someone like Tony Windsor, who can take a one-party town and not so much drag them to the "other side" as get people to look at politics differently. Chances are it will be a disaffected Labor person, who'll use their party to make a name and then step forward when Sussex Street try and do them.

Yeah, I think Faulkner will probably be the best Defence Minister since George Pearce too, but this blog isn't meant to be an echo chamber like the Press Gallery. Here's what I wanted to see explored by those supposedly in the know:

• First McKew and now Ellis - why is childcare policy shunted to childless women?You'd know Rudd was taking this area seriously if he'd put Mark Arbib in there, rather than the relatively nebulous Government Service Delivery (isn't that what the Finance Minister is for, rather than the sort of abstruse economic commentator role Tanner is playing?)


• What is Rudd trying to say about infrastructure by putting Maxine McKew in as Parliamentary Secretary to the shambolic and snarling Anthony Albanese? Isn't her job duplicating that of Mark Arbib (isn't everyone's)?


• Aren't Arbib and Albanese from different factions in NSW Labor, and can the boasting of post-factionalism be believed? It reminded me of Murdoch editors proclaiming their independence.


• Why did Bob Debus go to all that bother in switching Parliaments just to give it away in the first term? Would Labor really not have won that seat in '07 with someone else?


• Merit? Muppets like Jason Clare and Richard Marles, merit? Really? Not Julie Owens or Janelle Saffin or Annette Hurley or Kate Lundy or Steve Georganas, or the scarily impressive Melissa Parke?


• Mark Dreyfus: use him or lose him?


• Should Bob McMullin, Laurie Ferguson, Jennie George and Kelvin Thomson just give it away? What about the non-jobs for Gary Gray and Warren Snowdon?


• Robert McClelland: why?


• Penny Wong: punt her now and get someone effective in time for Copenhagen? An opportunity missed.


• Chris Bowen: neatly skewered, if too briefly, by Kerry O'Brien tonight as a lightweight. Get over yourself you smug git and do some work. Who do you think you are, Peter Costello?


• Greg Combet: stretched too far to achieve anything? Can't Mike Kelly or Dreyfus step up into one of these roles?

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Piss off Alby

Alby Schultz was a NSW MP who made himself look good and did bugger-all for anyone else, undermining a NSW Premier of his own party without having the necessary guts, brains and character to step forward and show how it's done. Now he's a Federal MP, and no better. The old bludger has been siphoning the public purse for 21 years now and it's high time he left.

I meant what I said earlier about getting rid of duds, and included Schultz then - every Prime Minister has had to shirtfront their party in order to win and Turnbull should target him. Politicians love a morals crusade, and keeping Alby Schultz hanging around makes it that much harder. Seriously, think of the problems that beset our nation - economically, environmentally, whatever - if we all went around grabbing people who taunted us, we'd be stuffed. Alby Schultz is not a leader of our community and should not be a representative. He just can't help us, he can't help himself.

Piss off, Alby.

As a State MP he'd pooh-pooh every one of the many reform ideas that the Greiner and Fahey governments put up. The cosseted fug of protections and demarcations and penalties that Labor put in place in NSW, which enabled mediocrities like Schultz to thrive and which has caused the massive infrastructure problems that the state now faces, was the status quo that he sought to preserve. He was against the Olympics because a dollar spent in Homebush was a dollar not spent on road culverts, footy grounds and subsidies in his electorate. He thought that anyone with more than the rudimentary education he had was overeducated. He sniped and backgrounded and whinged, and would start screaming when ministers were reluctant to hand over large slabs of public largesse to his electorate. When it came time to ask him to contribute ideas or do some work, all he could offer was: bugger the rest of you, I'm looking out for myself.

Piss off, Alby.

Having helped the NSW Liberals out of office he shuffled off to Canberra, hoping to repeat his triumph there, but John Howard could see him coming and kept him in his box. In a fit of pique at one point he went to the press and told Howard to step down, saying he was too old (ya srsly) and encouraging Costello to challenge him. It was probably the most important thing Alby Schultz ever said, did or achieved, and it had precisely no effect whatsoever.

Piss off Alby.

He began shrieking when a State seat within his Federal one was being contested by a woman, a spring chicken in her fifties, one with achievements and energy and an intellect that he found enormously threatening (why? Did he want to reserve the State seat for himself so that he could make sure the Libs never got back into office ever again?). He allows the far right to stack his branches so that anyone in that area who wants to make a contribution is so repulsed that they have to build their own political platform to take him on, and to use the office that he occupies to benefit people other than Alby Schultz. The reason why he hates the Nationals is because they are bigger bludgers than he is: he once used to boast that he was a financial member of both Coalition parties, and it reflects poorly on the Liberal Party that their standards were so low as to preselect him.

Piss off, Alby.

He always had a temper on him and he's now degenerated to the point where he can't even control that. You know it's a sad situation when you're a foil for an unctuous outburst from Wilson Tuckey. Even sadder was the sheer waste of public resources and time after he went the sook on Andrew Stoner, who like most public servants has done more for the community than Alby Schultz has, will or can. It's hard to have any sympathy for Chris Pearce, who is no less of a limpet than Schultz, but I think I can manage it just this once.

Piss off, Alby.

He is on the old-school parliamentary pension, which maxes out after 18 years. The area he represents is hardly flush with pelf from the Treasury as you'd find from active and engaged local members. He's never been one for the hard work of public policy, and nor is he much of a campaigner or a fundraiser for any contest where his own damn name isn't on the ballot. Any journalist who quotes him is perpetrating a fraud, the very idea that this man might say something the nation might need to hear is sheer rubbish. The Alby Schultz story: from obscurity to decline without any intervening period of achievement. It's time to ...

Piss off, Alby.

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