Tony Abbott chose the word "barnacles" very deliberately. He told his party-room meeting this week that "there are one or two barnacles still on the ship but by Christmas they will have been dealt with".
It was a metaphor John Howard liked to use when it was fixing time for his government.
But the people who were central to Howard's success do not see the resemblance. "Howard used to talk about knocking off barnacles when 80 per cent of things were good and the 20 per cent needed fixing. This government has 80 per cent wrong," says one.
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