Kim Crow from Back Page Lead opines in Crikey:

What Abbott achieved on Sunday by finishing that ironman is phenomenal. He swam 3.8km, biked 180km and ran 42.2km. For me, that demonstrates incredible guts, courage, determination, persistence, resilience, strength of character, strength of mind and … fitness! These qualities are exactly the qualities you look for in a strong leader, and transferable to the political domain.

This is after Health Minister Nicola Roxon had the audacity to suggest that the full-time training regime needed to regularly compete in Iron Man competitions could impinge on considered policy making.

I think Kim Crow might be on to something. Clearly we need a leader for Australia that has “incredible guts, courage, determination, persistence, resilience, strength of character, strength of mind and … fitness”.

But why would we want a leader who takes a measly 14 hours to cross the finish line?

If Kim is right, and we need a fitness fanatic to take charge over our Commonwealth, then let’s get the real deal.

Presenting…

Shannon Ponton and Michelle Bridges. The new Tony Abbot and Julie Bishop.

Shannon and Michelle have shown that they can whip unhealthy Aussies into shape – exactly the skills of motivation, determination, persistence and strength of character that we need for potential leaders of the Liberal Party. All of the skills from The Biggest Loser are transferable to the political arena. And what’s more, they’d be more popular than either Tony or Julie (and they are definitely better media performers).

The fact that Julie Bishop can’t run a marathon quite frankly should disqualify her for deputy leadership – this is why Michelle Bridgets is such a good choice to replace Bishop.

The Liberal Party would be derelict in its duty to the Australian people (and to the media who are spoiling for an election contest) if they didn’t immediately coopt both Shannon and Michelle into Parliament and parachute them into the leadership.

I’m glad that Kim was able to make this point – Lord knows that it has needed saying in Australia’s political arena for a long time.