Our woman in Sydney: Love thy neighbour - and their vote

For an archetypal Sydney tale of money, power and politics, look no further than Malcolm Turnbull and his brazen attempt to bulldoze his way into the Australian parliament.

Turnbull is the flamboyant barrister who took on the Thatcher government in the Spycatcher case and went on to lead Australia's ill-fated republican movement. Fabulously wealthy and impeccably connected, he and his wife - who happens to be Sydney's Lord Mayor - are leading lights on the city's cocktail party circuit. At 48, he has already enjoyed high-profile success as a lawyer and merchant banker.

Now he wants to go into politics, and the blue-ribbon seat of Wentworth - a sweep of prime harbourside real estate in Sydney's eastern suburbs - is in his sights. If the ruling Liberal Party (Australia's Conservative party) anoint Turnbull as their candidate, he will sail into parliament at the next election. Once there, he would be practically assured of a front-bench post, and after that, who knows? Several ministers with aspirations of succeeding the Prime Minister, John Howard, are gnashing their teeth.

The problem is that Wentworth already has a perfectly good Liberal MP, Peter King, who has no desire to relinquish his seat. So Turnbull, who owns an opulent pile in Point Piper, an exclusive waterfront neighbourhood in the constituency, must secure the numbers to defeat King when Wentworth Liberals meet to name their candidate. To that end, he has embarked on a massive recruitment drive to sign up new members who will support him.

The campaign has been waged with the same ruthless single-mindedness with which Turnbull demolished Britain's case for banning Spycatcher, the memoirs of Peter Wright, a MI5 agent, in 1987.

He has not exactly been out door-knocking; that would anyway be impractical in an area where, as one local put it, "most people speak to each other through intercoms, over high fences or via their lawyers". But he has milked his extensive contacts book, set up a website and used e-mails, leaflet drops, faxstreams and radio advertisements to appeal for support. No stone has been left unturned in his attempt to flood the once sleepy Point Piper branch, his power base, with loyalists. Turnbull's son, Alex, who is studying economics at Harvard, has e-mailed 200 fellow Australians, urging them to join the Liberal Party.

One commentator joked that the only person to resist Turnbull's entreaties was his wife, Lucy, who is fiercely protective of her credentials as an independent mayor. But her father, Tom Hughes, a former Attorney-General, has signed up, and her uncle, Robert Hughes, the US-based art critic and author, may be presumed to be giving moral support from afar. Casting the wide net has had unintended consequences: bemused officials of one trade union received an invitation to "engage with like-minded people who share common interests". But Turnbull has managed to snare some glittering names, including Carla Zampatti, a fashion designer, and - the biggest fish of all - Jamie Packer, the executive chairman of Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd, media mogul and heir to Australia's largest fortune.

Quite how energetic these new recruits will prove is questionable. One can hardly see the likes of Packer pounding the streets come the next election, and there are suspicions that some people have joined up mainly to rub shoulders with the "A-list" types who inhabit Point Piper.

Turnbull's hardnosed tactics, which were honed during years in the corporate world, have upset some locals accustomed to a more polite style of campaigning. Critics accuse him of "branch stacking" - a practice more usually associated with the Labour Party. Funny that, because one Labour stalwart swears that in 1999 Turnbull raised the prospect of becoming a Labour candidate, saying he would make a better party leader than the incumbent, Kim Beazley.

Turnbull's past is coming back to haunt him in another way. King has been furiously recruiting too, and his new members include dyed-in-the-wool monarchists. King, a pro-royalist, denies that monarchist organisations have handed him lists of sympathisers who live in the area. He has condemned Turnbull for hatching a "millionaires' plot" to unseat him - although King is not too badly off himself and he deposed his own predecessor, Andrew Thomson. Some Australians wonder how Turnbull can contemplate working for the Prime Minister, who actively undermined the republican campaign and was described by a tearful Turnbull on the night of the referendum as "the prime minister who broke this nation's heart".

Others are secretly hoping that Turnbull - whose monumental ego matches his undoubted talents - is about to get his comeuppance. When the deadline for recruiting new members passed last weekend, King appeared to be ahead.

A former Liberal leader, John Hewson, recalled the example of "skyrockets that get launched pretty easily but fall to the ground as dead sticks pretty early".

If you canÿt stand Bush, then sit down...

Canberrans are agog about the impending visit of US President, George Bush, who will spend the entire 21 hours of his trip to Australia next week in the oft-neglected national capital.

But sensibilities have already been upset by a rash of uncomplimentary remarks. A White House briefing note to journalists described Canberra as "a place where not much is happening apart from government", while a New York Times columnist said it was "a bit like Ottawa but not quite as vibrant".

As Canberrans bristle, Labour MPs are in a lather about how to greet Mr Bush's address to parliament. Their leader, Simon Crean, has given them a stern lecture about being polite, noting that Bill Clinton received a standing ovation. That has prompted much soul-searching among Labourites, who are now debating a range of options. Should they clap Mr Bush while seated, or clap while standing? Or perhaps stand while remaining silent? It's an agonising decision.