There’s something of a paradox there, because, as I’ve been arguing, Malcolm Turnbull’s best chance at making an impact (beyond the born in a log cabin dingy flat narrative personal stuff) is to move towards the centre, and particularly given his obvious understanding of the issues, move the Coalition towards a responsible position on an ETS. John Hewson, interviewed in today’s Crikey, thinks he could do himself and us all a favour by putting some steel in Rudd’s very weak climate change spine:
What I would hope, I guess, is that Turnbull should take a harder line on climate change. The suggestion from Garnaut that we can start softly, softly, with 10 or 15 per cent for his target in 2020 is nonsense, against the sort of targets Australia has to meet by 2050. In those terms, I think Turnbull should be taking a harder line, pushing Rudd to do more, setting a high jump bar if you like, against which Rudd will be measured and they would have more significant consequences for business.
Business is great at sort of putting off adjustments, whether it was workplace safety or training or any of the other issues that have dominated the last 20 years. They’ve always shirked them. Business response to climate change has been “fine for everybody else, but not us” and really the adjustments have to be made, the big issues have to be addressed and you can’t play catch-up. The whole process is front-end loaded, so I think it will be an interesting debate, if Turnbull goes out there and argues a stronger case in that area and pushes Rudd to do more, but he may just sit back as Brendan Nelson was doing and say “we won’t lead the world” and so it will be an interesting debate.
John Quiggin doesn’t think Turnbull will depart from the current position, based on his ministerial performance and his failure to take any sort of consistent policy position as Shadow Treasurer.
A couple of years ago, I would have been confident of his willingness and ability to do this. Now I doubt it.
Incidentally, it was interesting to see the Fin Review report a number of finance sector businesses, including Westpac, arguing against the compensation/exemptions agenda of the polluters and for some rigour and meaning in the ETS. So it’s not as though Turnbull couldn’t construct a narrative of business legitimacy, which as a Liberal leader, he would presumably need to do. Nick Minchin et al will have to be damned.
So far, we haven’t seen very much at all in the way of leadership from Turnbull. Perhaps that’s an unfair test at this stage, but going along with some of Brendan’s whackier negativism and his “consultation” thing doesn’t sit well with Turnbull’s self-presentation at both his press conference and on the 7 30 Report.
That self-presentation has been all about drawing a contrast between his strength as a Leader and Rudd’s bureaucratic hesitancy. There’s potentially a very viable line of political attack there, but it relies on Turnbull himself actually taking some “hard decisions”, even if some in his party don’t like them. And therein lies his problem, as I’ve also suggested.
Ps: Expect Labor to ease off on the silvertail stuff now. What the press gallery and political junkies forget is that Turnbull won’t be all that well known at all to the majority of the voting public. A new leader – unless they’ve been around forever – has a very small window in which to define themselves, or be defined by the other side. Part of Nelson’s problem was the initial confusion in his messaging, and his story about himself. Another part was the instant disappointment of part of the meejah who didn’t get the candidate they wanted (the crazies at the OO were still in shock at that stage). Labor will have been trying to pin the “rich arrogant guy” label on Turnbull at maximum stealth volume when everyone was paying attention. They’ll probably tune it down now, hoping it will have stuck.
Surely Turnbull realises that populist climate change denialism foistered upon Nelson made that individual look so ridiculous in the brave new post-neocon, post- creationist world?
Turnbull has a choice. He can follow the likes of Obama, Rudd and others lucky to be furthest away from the disasters of the last decade, in scrambling aboard the reality life boat.
Or he can follow the environmental vandals, warmongers, casino capitalist neo lib ideologues, religious fundamentalists, Hansonists and other serial anal illiterates down the road to obscurity.
Turnbull showed some poor characteristics as shadow Treasurer. Attacking the RBA and Treasury (his own only months ago) when he didn’t like the message, a tendency to learn one or two facts then make an issue or question out of them without proper understanding of what he is talking about.
Rudd has given the example of a good opposition leader – work your guts out and background yourself thoroughly.
I think having been outperformed fairly easily by Swan in parliament (after a one week bad start for Swan) his confidence would have been dented a little and might make him a little self-conscious. I suspect he will suffer the same problem as Nelson in the end – trying to keep the right happy.
Will he unequivocally dump any type of workchoices IR with Minchin and Bishop breathing down his neck?
Just don’t Minchin the war …I think I did and it got ugly but I got away with it.
Up the republic – pr
Workchoices is to the Libs as the Republic is to the ALP. It is inbred.To the Libs there will always be some form of Workchoices.
On the silvertail thing, not a bad line from Wayne Swan:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24358566-601,00.html
“So far, we haven’t seen very much at all in the way of leadership from Turnbull.”
…. give the poor bastard a few more minutes at least! Oh, do you mean when he was Minister For Showing Concern Over Anthropogenic Global Warming?
Love the transcription error from last night’s 7.30 Report (as linked to above):
hey, thirsty work, being brave !!!
Good post, Kim. I hadn’t thought about a ‘window of opportunity’ for self definition.
I believe that 20% auctioning of permits would mean much less gross permit value available for trade (hence less commission will be available to arbiters) than 100% auctioning.
There’s no percentage for Turnball getting stuck into climate change right this minute. He won fairly narrowly. So his task now is to shore up support. He needs to do this by a. proving to the Libs that he’s ‘our man’ and b. creating an impressive splash in the public consciousness.
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His tax thing is definitely his thing (might be his only reason for wanting the PM’s job really) but it’s a Tory thing as well. Given that Turnball’s not a Howard man – ie not a social reactionary, his best bet is to bolster his classic liberal credentials by asserting tax reform. Of course he needs to make an Aussie Battler thing and there’s the rub – will he?
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After that he can turn his attention to the ‘latte’ issues like the republic or the environment.
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With the environment he’ll need to design something better than Kevvie’s efforts. This will take time. Time for the design and time for Kevvie’s plans to fray. However Senator Wong does seem like she’s on top of her brief so to speak so we’ll see.
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I’m not sure whether Turnball’s all that keen on the environment tho’. It might just be a trendy distraction. The republic is something he is keen on. And he’s real keen on being PM when it happens so sucks to being palsy with Kevvie on the issue.
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Who’s Kevvie anyway? He hasn’t even made his first $100 mil yet. Loser!
Mark @5, do you think Keating is writing Swan’s material, or has Swan started channelling him? Either way, that comment is vintage Keating. Yay! Swan’s found his mojo!
Actually, jane, believe it or not, Swannie is quite a funny guy…