Birmingham clings to the beautiful dream

Trade Minister Simon Birmingham on the Today show yesterday:

Presenter: Liberal powerbroker Alex Hawke is now backing this idea of ­intelligent use of quotas of having more women overall. Is that something worth considering?

Birmingham: The Liberal Party cherishes the fact that we give local branch members, if you join the Liberal Party, you get a say in who your Liberal candidate will be and that’s a really important part of the way we select our candidates.

Is that so, Birmo? The Australian Financial Review on October 24, 2018:

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has intervened to spare NSW conservative Liberal MP Craig Kelly a certain preselection defeat in order to stop an outbreak of civil war inside the NSW Liberal Party and to improve his embattled government’s chances of holding the seat of Hughes.

The plot thickens. The Australian on December 4:

Prime Minister Scott Morrison had to personally call members of the NSW Liberal Party’s state executive to convince them not to block Craig Kelly’s preselection after former PM Malcolm Turnbull asked them to. One of the moderates on the Liberal Party state executive who were going to acquiesce to Malcolm Turnbull’s wish to knock off Craig Kelly’s preselection has delivered a late night withering email spray to Moderates faction boss Trent Zimmerman, saying that he should lose his job over the stoush — and revealing it was Mr Morrison who got her to abstain and save Mr Kelly.

The Australian, January 24, 2019:

A feud over Liberal preselection in the federal NSW seat of Gilmore erupted yesterday when Scott Morrison defended his captain’s call to install Warren Mundine and ­accused the previous candidate of attempting to “bully” his way into the seat. Dumped candidate Grant Schultz, the son of Liberal stalwart Alby Schultz, responded by calling the Prime Minister a “coward”, while rank-and-file Liberal members accused him of using the state executive to impose Mr Mundine on the electorate.

A bigger optimist than even Birmo. The ABC on October 10, 2015:

Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has been met with laughter and jeers from Liberal Party members at the NSW state council, after claiming the party is not ruled by factions.

The ABC yesterday:

A New Zealander serving with the Islamic State group has been captured in northern Syria and is being held in a Kurdish prison. Nicknamed the Kiwi Jihadi, Mark Taylor told the ABC he fled the Islamic State group in December and surrendered to Kurdish forces because life had become unbearable.

The unbearable lightness of being a jihadi. The ABC continues:

During his time with Islamic State, he said, he witnessed a number of beheadings and executions. … He says one of his regrets while living in the so-called Islamic State was being unable to afford a Yazidi slave. “I would have liked to have one, but I never got to,” he said.

But phew! Salvation at last in the ABC story:

For five years he lived with the extremist group but claims he wasn’t a fighter and was only deployed as a guard.

Gerard McCulloch on Twitter yesterday:

Weird how many guards, mechanics and couriers get out, but not the blokes who did the raping and the head-chopping. What are the odds?