I thought it appropriate to have a discussion on
the intention of our former Deputy PM and Foreign
Affairs Minister's intention to quit politics and
not run for re-election at the upcoming Federal
election.

Personally I found Julie Bishop to be a great Foreign
Affairs Minister, and I still believe that she would
have made a better PM than the one we currently
have. Her leaving politics is a loss not only to
the Liberal Party, but to us all.

Your thoughts please?

Bishop seemed like quite a dignified lady. She showed atrocious judgement in backing Turnbull when they knifed Abbott. They certainly managed to reduce a healthy majority and allow the self interested Turnbull to do a lot of damage. Bishop was obviously very popular in her own electorate turning a marginal seat into a safe seat for the libs. Hopefully she won't join the Turnbull termites like Banks in trashing the party that gave her the opportunity to serve.

Foxy truth is Bishop was an out standing politician
And equal to any Minister in the last twenty years
She, given a chance, could have been PM
And that never happened, she was in fact knifed
They say you can not find a member of this government who thinks they cam win
JB may she said go now with pride rather than serve [she clearly would have held her seat] in the rump of a once government

She will not be missed.

The reason I am disappointed with Julie Bishop's
resignation is that in my opinion she would have
been the obvious candidate for the Liberal
Leadership when Mr Scott Morrison inevitably
loses the election this year. Who else could it
be? Tony Abbott remains as unpopular as on the
day that he announced the knights and dames titles,
or bit into the raw onion. And Peter Dutton will
probably lose his seat when the government loses.
All of this would have made Julie Bishop the front-runner.

I'm also still baffled why Julie Bishop lost so greatly
at the leadership challenge when she received only 11
votes in the first ballot against Morrison and Dutton.
She was by far the most popular candidate with the
Australian people.

We've had a few explanations given by Kelly O'Dwyer and
Julia Banks who indicated that Julie Bishop would have
stood a greater chance if she'd been named Julian
instead of Julia. There are a few dinosaurs in the party
but there's got to be more than that to it. I read
somewhere that there are two factors that decide someone's
viability as a leader - their appeal to the public
(in her case - great), and their popularity among their
colleagues. And therein lies the problem. Julia Bishop
was popular with the public but philosophically she was
significantly more moderate than the party's centre of
gravity. They'd already knifed one moderate PM and leader
why would they support another one similar to him?

As a political commentator stated - Ïnternal party politics
are putrid, but they do matter!

How much will she cost us from here on & for what in return ?