Collide-o-sphere

"The wrong words on his lips and the wrong desires in his heart, and his arms full of air."
EM Forster

Took the day off sick. We're all down with a dose of the flu; vitamin C and orange juice and cough medicine, which is keeping me awake, anything keeps me awake. Don't know where I got the fantasy notion that human resources were there to help the workers, or to act as their advocates; I got incredibly worked up over nothing and made a fool of myself; but it shuts down other options and opens my eyes. This city, this country, this government, they get more disgusting by the hour.

THE STORY CONTINUES:

"Sometimes he sat in the pub and heard stories of the different people he used to know. Matthew, a wild boy round the place, loved a joint, loved a drink, hated work, had said, twisting his thumb and forefinger together, a bitchy little fucker when he wanted to be, you know what this is mate, the smallest joint in the world, and it's rolled just for you. They always got plastered. Sometimes they grew close, in conversation, in alcohol. He bounced from pillar to post. Lived the life. Then he was skeletal, very sick. Inexorably, it came time to go. He gathered his three remaining friends at his flat, said his goodbyes. It was the cruellest of things. Drunk, he shot $400 worth of smack. In the end they had to smother him with a cushion.

"In the crowd the kids clung close. Unlike the old days, he didn't know many people to talk to. It grew crowded and claustrophobic. He caught glimpses. It had seemed like love at the time. Now all he felt was anger at the wasted years. And relief it was over. Who'd want that life anyway? Leaving was th best thing he'd ever done, and he could never imagine being so demeaned ever again.

"He talked to someone he'd once known quite well, now a writer of reputation with a new book out, The Comfort of Men. The carnival of bodies, the tribal eroticism, all seemed such a long time ago.
'What have you been doing?' Dennis Altman asked.
'Breeding,' Michael said, gesturing, both arms full with children.
'I was trying not to act surprised,' Dennis said.

THE BIGGER STORY:
THE Treasurer, Peter Costello, has exposed the bitterness at the core of the Federal Government by describing his leader, John Howard, as a failed economic manager.

"The Howard treasurership was not a success in terms of interest rates and inflation," Mr Costello told the authors of a forthcoming book, adding: "He had not been a great reformer."

With the Prime Minister about to appeal for a fifth term in power based largely on the economic credentials of his Government, these criticisms threaten to harm its credibility and unity.

The Treasurer also accuses Mr Howard of malicious leaking against his deputy and heir presumptive, suggesting the Prime Minister had deliberately leaked an infamous memo to damage him.

"I read it as an attempt to finger me for the Government's maladies at that point," Mr Costello said of the 2001 publication of a memo to Mr Howard from the then federal president of the Liberal Party, Shane Stone. "Allegedly, only one copy was ever written by Shane and it was given to John Howard," Mr Costello said of the memo, which contained criticisms of him.

Two of the Prime Minister's senior staff were deputised to investigate the leak and "as far as I know they're still doing it", Mr Costello told the authors. "It's a long investigation this one."

And the book reports that, after 11 years in Government, John and Janette Howard have dined privately with various ministers and their wives but never as a foursome with Peter and Tanya Costello: "It might be a Sydney thing," the Treasurer archly suggests.

The remarks were made to the authors of John Winston Howard: The Biography, to be published next week by Melbourne University Press.

One of the authors, Peter van Onselen, associate professor of politics at Edith Cowan University in Perth, said he had interviewed Mr Costello twice last year, in August and October. The second author is Wayne Errington, a lecturer in politics at the Australian National University.

Mr Costello, whose leadership ambitions have been frustrated by Mr Howard's tenure, portrays his forbearance as one of the Government's great strengths.

He contrasts his patience with Mr Howard's history: "The rival ambitions of Howard and Peacock plunged the party into defeat in Opposition," he tells the authors. "They were prepared to do that.

"Keating was prepared to do it to Hawke. Whatever my own ambitions were, the party was always greater than them. I think that's been a big part of our success over the last 10 years."