Santo Santoro’s right hand man, State Liberal MP Tim Nicholls, is probably unlucky Queensland Premier Peter Beattie has been in Africa all week.

His failed challenge to State Liberal leader Bruce Flegg might otherwise have at least got to first base. Peter Beattie would surely have been tempted to “lend” him a government backbencher for a day so he could get a seconder.

On Monday and Tuesday, Nicholls hit the phones contacting his colleagues about a possible challenge to Flegg. That wasn’t a hard task. If he didn’t ring Flegg, he only had to make six calls.

On Tuesday night, he went on television to say that he was consulting his colleagues and would make an announcement after he had done so.

By yesterday morning, he was on a plane to Canberra – allegedly on “parliamentary committee business”, but also handily meaning he could attend Santoro’s farewell (or wake) at the Santa Lucia Trattoria in Kingston last night.

As he flew out it became apparent that he didn’t have the numbers to roll Flegg. He didn’t even have a seconder. Beattie must be regretting his absence in distant Kenya. Had he been around he would have surely been tempted to offer up some hapless (or hopeless) government backbencher as a seconder just to cause even more turmoil among his very troubled opponents!

Fellow first term MP, Ray Stevens, summarised the Nicholls “challenge” this way:

I believe, and this is my personal belief only, that he (Nicholls) was the pawn used by some other people involved in the party that were intent on squaring up with Bruce Flegg over other matters, and I think its disappointing they sort of used Tim Nicholls to push their point.

The “they”, sources say, are obviously the very soon to be former Senator Santoro and Queensland Liberal state director Geoff Greene, who has been industriously backgrounding the local media on Flegg for weeks in a most unbecoming way.

The Nicholls challenge has been an unmitigated PR disaster. It does not mean Flegg is safe in the long term – it just means that Nicholls won’t be the one who will roll him.

So it was not only Santo Santoro who was drowning his sorrows at Santa Lucia last night.