Quoth Jim Turnour, Labor MP for Leichardt, in Federal Parliament yesterday.
As Utegate stumbles to a halt, it’s becoming apparent that the more important questions go to the suitability of Malcolm Turnbull for political leadership.
Guy Rundle’s article in Crikey today is an interesting and important contribution to this debate, and I’ve reproduced it (with permission) over the fold.
Guy Rundle writes:
You didn’t have to see much of Parliament yesterday to realise that there’s at least one person who believes it’s all over for Malcolm Turnbull, and that’s Malcolm Turnbull.
One of the cardinal rules of the despatch box is that you never look less than ebullient?—?jeer back when you’re being attacked, study documents furiously when you need to keep it together, swivel round and talk to the front bench (thus obscuring yourself from the camera) when you believe it’s just possible that you might cry.
Yesterday, Turnbull slumped for minutes on end. As Kevin Rudd did him slowly, the Opposition Leader couldn’t even marshal a naughty grin, a jaw jut, a stiff upper lip. He just lay there like one of those Mr Blowies in a used car yard forecourt suddenly getting the air cut off.
Which is kind of what he was.
Turnbull knows that it’s all over for him?—?unless Labor is hit with a greater scandal before the next election. He’s been revealed as worse than a liar. He’s been exposed as a fool, a man who not only lacked the prudence to think two steps ahead?—?and acknowledge the possibility that he or others might be being set up?—?but apparently couldn’t keep a poker face, taunting Andrew Charlton at the Midwinter Ball, about how we was about to (or so he thought) blow him out of the game.
It was the act of a man more eager to assuage some inner demons than to maximise the political effectiveness of a windfall scandal?—?a move coming from a sense of inferiority, not of command.
The deflation he displayed at the despatch box was less defeat than it was self-reproach?—?Turnbull looked like a man who not only realised he’d screwed up, but that he’d screwed up in a way he’d screwed up before. It was a look of recognition of someone caught in a pattern.
Some may say that Turnbull had no choice but to go for broke?—?given the fact that modern politics is now a one-shot go. Though the Federal Liberal party desperately needs a two-term process of reconstruction now, the public simply judge an opposition leader staying on after a defeat as a retread?—?principally because neither major party represents a core constituency and set of values in the way they once did.
And even if it were possible to leave an Opposition leader in place after a defeat, Turnbull is not the man. As this correspondent noted at the time of the 2007 election, the plain fact is that Turnbull is not a politician in the way that John Howard, or Tony Abbott, or Paul Keating or Bob Brown or Kevin Rudd are politicians?—?people for whom their movement is a vocation, demanding as Max Weber noted, “a slow drilling through hard timber”.
Turnbull proved this during the failed Republican referendum of 1998. Someone willing to do a bit of slow drilling would have noted that a majority voted for the Republic, and that only sleight-of-hand by the Rodent managed to delay it. That pyrrhic defeat would have been the staging point to really build the ARM as a social movement?—?develop branches, widen its remit and visibility, take Republicanism to the point where it appears inevitable.
Instead, denied the chance to be the first Australian President, and faced with the grey and monotonous task of building a movement, he couldn’t face it. Just as he hasn’t really been able to face the task of redefining the Liberal party after voters comprehensively rejected its mix of social conservatism and neoliberalism.
Had he had the patience for that, he would have let Brendan Nelson?—?a man who makes your average Mr Blowie look like Lord Salisbury?—?take the fall for the first defeat (or whoever else replaced him).
The dire straits for the Liberal Party are that of its two most recent leaders, one was a former member of the ALP, and the other wasn’t really a politician at all, simply someone who wants to do everything for about two years before moving onto the next thing.
Given that conspectus, it should be obvious that Turnbull, a man who has measured his life in court cases and deals, would always go for the quick score?—?and be particularly oblivious to the fact that it all seemed too good to be true.
Cheap psychoanalysis is a plague on political writing, and I wouldn’t descend to it. ( pause ). If I were to, however, I’d point out that Turnbull’s character cannot be separated from the strange fact of his childhood?—?that he was left, as a nine-year-old, not by his father, but by his mother.
The departure of a father is dead common and can be got over?—?Kevin Rudd and Barack Obama are goodish examples of that?—?but let’s face it, few children left by their mum develop the sort of core solidity that politics and supreme leadership demand*. Turnbull, I would say if I were indulging in this sort of schlock, has spent his life tap-dancing in ever greater feats of short-term public success in the deep hope that an extraordinary enough achievement will get her to come back.
Each success shows that it doesn’t so he moves onto the next thing. Each failure just shows that something else has to be tried. As the Jimmy Cagney character says in the film noir classic White Heat , before being annihilated by the cops machine guns “look at me ma?—?top of the world ma!”**
But who else does the Liberal Party have? Tony Abbott is the only prominent figure with a defined philosophy, an idea of what the Liberal Party could be as the representative of a distinct worldview?—?unfortunately it’s a worldview only shared by about 35% of the Oz population, and Abbott?—?who it has been medically established via MRI, has no soul?—?is seen as a dark and sinister individual, a Berowra Borgia, by a large section of the population.
Joe Hockey? Joe’s like the bloke who gets picked up by a buck’s party pub crawl and ends up at the lap dance club giving a speech about what a great bloke the groom is. Looking at the photos ten years later, everyone tries to remember who the hell he was.
Nick Minchin? Too old guard, too shadowy. Minchin looks like a black and white photo of himself. ***
Sophie Mirabella? She could probably lug herself up to stick the finger in the dyke of the party’s leaking opportunities. Indi? Go girl!
Bill Heffernan. If this occurs, I will vote and campaign for the Liberal Party full-time from now to the election.
Peter Costello: ha ha ha ha ha. Would the laughter ever cease? You can bet that even now, Peter Coleman is on the phone to him, expressing what he called, in the Oz Spectator , his “disappointment and irritation” in more forthright terms: “you useless lump of chicken meat! You’ll do whatever I frikkin’ tell you, just like you’ve done for the last twenty five years! I own your arse! Ohhhhhh me gout! Merlot boy, a jeroboam chop chop, or there’ll be one more Indian immigrant getting their ears boxed! Where was I! Ah yes Costello, listen you slime yourself back into Higgins and get that leadership, or else! I ran Quadrant for twenty years you think I can’t rustle up a CIA death squad!”
Y’see the problem. There’s no-one, no-one to lead the party. Yet Turnbull is the worst sort of person to leave in place across a likely election loss. And I have no real answer to this conundrum. It’s just something I enjoy thinking about at great length.
*Some might object that Obama was separated from his mother too. But that occurred in adolescence?—?Obama returned to Hawaii to live with his grandparents, a decision he appears to have made himself, while his mother continued anthropological fieldwork, after a particularly close childhood. Churchill is the rule-proving exception (neither of his parents had much time for him)?—?he was a lifelong alcoholic depressive, obsessed by violence and motivated in his active military service by an obvious death-wish, and in his command by a relish for killing brown people. By the 1930s his life looked like a chaotic failure. World War Two was the salvation of him, because it was the only moment in history when the outer world was more violent, deranged and insane than his inner one.
**A film incidentally written by Ivan Goff, possibly the most distinguished Australian to work in Hollywood, given that he wrote not only half a dozen classic films noirs, but also created Matlock and Charlie’s Angels. But did he get the Miles Franklin, even once?
***Minchin’s father, Denver, is the author of one of the great Australian verite thrillers The Money Movers, which deserves a re-issue?—?and a remake of the great film by Bruce Beresford. Which is really the only reason I mentioned Nick.
****Continuing the mummy theme, isn’t it interesting how Barnaby Joyce was leading the charge about someone bringing their toddler in for one senate division for two minutes? Remember when he was first elected? After one week he was making noises about the Senate voting electronically from their constituencies so they wouldn’t be separated from their families? In reality the littlest Senator was homesick and fwightened in the big city. So Senator Hansen-Young can’t have her child in the chamber ‘cos Barney can’t have his mummy with him.
WTF. Holy crap, that’s the cheapest shot I’ve ever seen written in Crikey, and that’s a lot of cheap shots.
Hmmm, a stack of a lot of stuff was written in the lead up to the 07 election about the purported influence of Rudd’s childhood on his character.
But leaving the motherhood stuff aside, I think Rundle makes some very good points about Turnbull’s modus operandi and how he’s basically destroyed his own leadership.
When intelligent people do self-destructive things, it’s usually not through stupidity but through some unconscious complex, and I think it’s fair to question what’s going on. After all, so much of this stuff is supposedly about “character” (and as Rundle observes, that becomes much more important as parties lose their ideological and social roots). Having said that, though, it’s always somewhat dangerous to speculate on another’s psychological makeup.
“Having said that, though, it’s always somewhat dangerous to speculate on another’s psychological makeup.”
Yep. Pretty much always somewhat. Unless you’re into Star Signs and stuff.
Watching Turnbuckle, I was reminded of the other Malcolm, Fraser in his heyday as an overprivileged Liberal PM and part-time Easter Islander before he grew a heart. The slightly up-tilted long, haughty Scottish face took me right back to the mid-70s. [Shiver]
Must say I thought the mummy business was atrocious and completely unnecessary
I liked it myself!
But seriously: I think its more of a lawyer’s affliction than Rundle allows (tongue in cheek as he is). Viz, the case is running against you, but there’s always the dream, the hope of lucky strike, like Jim Carey in Liar – “..and as such, she was under age, and therefore incapable of consenting to contract in Kentucky, which nullifies the pre-nup, and THATS the ball game!!”
Sadly for Talcum, politics aint like that. Slow boring through hard wood, as Rundle sez.
That article actually made me feel sorry for Turnbull!
I have my doubts about the cod-psychology, but I don’t have a problesm with someone speculating in this way. Turnbull seems to be a spectacular overreacher, who when he fails is always going to fail big.
But I think he’ll lead the Libs into the next election. Hockey? Abbott? Bishop? Robb? Pyne? Nah. I think the next Liberal PM probably isn’t in parliament yet.
Agreed Liam
cheap shot, Guy Rundle. But then a lot of his writing’s like that isn’t it? Something like Bob Ellis on a sober day….. nasty and vapid.
But before that “cheap” and valueless comment, I disagreed with the “some may say that Turnbull had no choice but to go for broke”.
No, no, no. K Rudd is a case in point: slow, plodding, thorough preparation; quiet determination as Oppo Leader; rarely sidetracked from his methodical task of undoing the Howard aura.
You don’t “need to go for broke” in all circumstances. How many months to the next Fed election? What’s wrong with policy development and a slow drip of probing questions in Parliament?
Going for broke is what Flash Harry would do, some fly-by-night spiv, some big-end-of-town hanger-on; urger; some impetuous, petulant gambler; oh, hang on….
Turnbull’s political judgement has always been… erm…. underdeveloped in the extreme.
Two things tell one all one needs to know about Malcolm Turnbull:
1/. Kerry Packer saw fit to sack him.
2/. Turnbull considered the Republic, about 1001 on the list of “1000 important things for Australia”, to be the most worthwhile priority for investment of some 2 years of his time. (He needs badly to get a life)
It’s a tad premature to be trotting out this kind of triumphalism. Next week all this will be forgotten, the unemployment will shoot up, or something (remember we are in the midst of a nasty recession) and the Liberals will be back in the game, damaged leader or not.
The info about Ivan Goff was interesting.
Nick Minchin’s father’s name is in fact Devon Minchin, not Denver Minchin.
Guy Rundle = Anothony Mundine in printed format.
Erm. Rundle was long on analysis, and short on substance.
Can we please have a moratorium on media commentators claiming to know what is going on inside a politician’s head, or expounding on the minutiae of their body language ferrr crissakes?
As for Jim Turnour’s central claim, Malcolm Turnbull will be the Coalition’s Mark Latham if and only if:
a) He is streets ahead of the government in the polls for months on end and,
b) Despite (a), leads the oppo backwards in a Federal election.
and
c) Breaks a taxi-driver’s arm.
Since none of these conditions are likely to be fulfilled in this version of reality, I think everybody needs to settle down.
The Money Movers (the movie). As one watches it, something seems strange, then you realise there is no music. Makes it sort of like watching a (very well made) high school drama project on VHS tape.
But it just wouldn’t be the same without Ed Devereaux in the lead role.
That stuff about Turnbull’s mother leaving is such a cheap shot one wonders if it isn’t there to drum up major sympathy and support for him. The comment about Minchin made me LOL though.
In the end? Turnbull, maybe Costello.
Or maybe, just maybe they could tempt Howard back.
SATP – Turnbull’s involvement with Republican politics went far longer than 2 years. He had meetings with Neville Wran, Keating and Howard about it, and tried organising, funding and promoting various incarnations of ARM throughout the 1990s. It’s puzzling and disappointing to see where his (and Costello’s) interest in the Republic fizzled out — especially as Turnbull invested a *lot* more than 2 years of his life in the cause.
What a load of rubbish. Why should Turnbull have to resign for calling on the PM to resign over an email that he at the time, didnt know was fake.
Nothing screams ‘Help! I can’t get a face-to-face interview with anybody!’ louder than a long article filled with psychological speculation and analysis of body language.
No outside compulsion, Jamo, Old Sport.
But picture the scene: The Liberal Party Caucus room, the hostility, the bitterness, the despair, the character assassination, the plotting, the backstairs deals.
All of the above directed toward the political extinction of Malcolm Turnbull.
Can a man with Malcolm’s huge but brittle ego endure all this for long?
Malcolm’s imminent demise will be driven by Malcolm’s own demons.
Or Katz it might temper his soul and make it more resilient. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and all that.
None of us know. However unless he’s rolled behind the scenes he’ll get another chance.
Wow, getting into Agincourt territory with the mother stuff.
I suspect that Turnbull is impatient and impetutous and I doubt he actually takes advice from anyone. Whatever doubts he may have had about the email (and they appear to have been slim given his performance with Charlton) he virtually admitted to Red Kerry that Grech’s behaviour under questioning by Erica convinced him and he must have believed he had to strike fast before Rudd used his formidable in-house skills to clean it up.
Still crazy, given as Tanner pointed out, the text of the email is dodgy by itself – an initial contact letter which asks for help for Grant without providing any contact details – but the best explanation I can think of.
Malcolm and his mummy, Barnaby Joyce and his mummy; why, if I was prone to ‘this schlock’ there’d be some mileage in that….
…but, no: taunts about “mummy” were the stock in trade of the overbearing schoolyard bully at Primary school.
Isn’t it time to leave childish things behind, Guy, for Fawkes sake.
Good point Leinad! Rundle’s piece gets a shiny LP-certified Agincourt Award* nomination for sure!
*For the longest bow in journalism.
The pattern of Turnbull’s life is meteoric success in one field followed by reverses and the abandonment of that field for a new field of endeavour.
Does Turnbull perceive another trapdoor in the floor through which he may escape to a fresh clamour of admiration?
If not, perhaps he will attempt to tough it out. Whatever, I don’t expect Turnbull to chuck a spaz like Mark Latham. Whatever his character flaws, he has more dignity than Latham.
If Turnbull does choose to tough it out, he’ll have to learn how to play the long game. Rudd is too deeply entrenched to be removed by the kind of sneak attack that so badly misfired over the last week or so.
Turnbull’s first task is to recast the Liberal Party more in his own image. At present it is still Howard’s party and as such is utterly out of touch with the aspirations of marginal voters and with the zeitgeist of the world.
I’m suprised we didn’t get commentary on the state of his marriage as well.
Just confirms why I don’t pay for a Crikey subscription.
Two questions – how was Turnbull or anyone else supposed to find out the email was a fake without investigating? So what if he called for the resignation – it was always based on the email existing. Now that it is confirmed a fake what is the big deal?
Swanny should still be shitting bricks.
“Nothing screams ‘Help! I can’t get a face-to-face interview with anybody!’ louder than a long article filled with psychological speculation and analysis of body language.”
Yes, and it’s lazy, vacuous, and as useless as a forged email. BTW, Merc, are you perhaps related to the well-known luxury automobile? Can you lend me a posh ute?
No? What if I reveal I have mummy issues? There’s a sooky journalist inside me hoping to burst out of this hum drum chrysalis of limited imgination and attachment to verifiable facts….
I’m worried Guy might have watched too much Fox News last year.
I’m a massive fan, tragic even, but Christ that’s a low blow.
Funny but.
Lindsay Tanner did a very astute content analysis. Perhaps Turnbull should have done the same thing.
In any case, even if we discount the possibility that either someone in the Liberal Party or even Turnbull himself was complicit in the confection of this forgery, it ill-behoves a man who aspires to be the leader of a nation to by tricked by a patent forgery.
Remember Neville Chamberlain waving that ridiculous piece of paper around? At least they were genuine lies.
I thought Malcolm did a terrific job on the Republic Referendum. Someone explain to me again what the positive cost/benefit is for becoming a republic and how much cheaper it will make running government?
Watching Turnbuckle, I was reminded of the other Malcolm, Fraser
Oh, Helen, me too! He actually looked like him, as you say. It was (also as you say) quite alarming.
Re Rundle/Turnbull, I’m with FDB at #28, pretty much; am intrigued by some of the outraged reaction here to the idea that the family dynamic might (gasp) actually play some part in the formation of personality, but know better by now than to argue the toss about it.
On the other hand, Hugh Jackman’s mum bailed when he was a little kid, and look how he turned out.
A good article, though wasn’t the referendum in 1999?
Razor @ 26 –
Are you fair dinkum Razor? how was Bush or anyone else supposed to find out that Saddam had no WMD without invading the country? So what if they bombed the hell out of a lot of innocent civilians – it was always based on the WMD existing. Now that we know there was no WMD what is the big deal?
Your questions are the wrong way round. Turnbull should’ve investigated ie. confirmed the veracity of the email, before basing his calls for the PM’s resignations on it. It’s called fact-checking, and not being tricked by false evidence. Wars have started over people taking false evidence as fact. It’s deadly serious, Razor.
If you can’t see the basic point — it is incumbent on people making accusations to confirm the soundness of their evidence beforehand (WMD, anyone?) — then I can’t really assist you any further. But I hope to God your day job doesn’t involve any situations where you are making decisions that affect other people’s lives.
As Lefty E said, it’s very firmly tongue in cheek.
Having said, that, having said that:
I will, I think!
I wonder if the same level of angst would be evident if comments were made about a pollie’s father dying young – that was what I was getting at with my Rudd comparison. It seems to me a lot of the outrage here probably has some overtones of “how could a big strong man possibly have a mother complex?”… Just sayin…
Rundle doesn’t always hit the mark. But props to him, imho, for pushing the envelope.
It is legitimate to ask why Turnbull’s constant modus operandi is supreme confidence and arrogance, followed by a quick step away from the wreckage he leaves in his trail. In this case, as accurately pointed out in Parlt by a number of Labor ministers, politics is a more unforgiving arena than business, and he’s going to have to wear it. Rundle’s comment about Turnbull as anything but a natural pollie is spot on to me. I don’t think Rudd was either, but he’s a clever lad and learned from observation and experience.
Perhaps some of the folk on this thread decrying Rundle’s reasoning might care to explain why exactly they see it as a “low blow”?
Bet she’s sorry now, Pav!
There have been some studies quoted in the media* in the last few years about how borderline sociopaths are rife in the upper echelons of business, so a badly managed childhood, for some, might be not too much of a disadvantage.
*I realise we’ve just been reminded on another thread to how questionable studies get pounced upon and cooked into slush by lazy MSM journos, hence all the “wimmins like pink because they hunted berries!” articles; but this is psych territory, not EvoPsych, so I think it’s one step higher on the respectability scale. Not that I give it total credence – but it does strike a chord when I think of some people.
Just on that, Helen. Indeed, some studies are distorted and even quite worthless given their own assumptions might be dodgy. But I don’t mind a bit of amateur psychoanalysis of Malvolio. Insofar as it’s a characterology, if you like, rather than a diagnosis, it’s a legitimate part of political writing in the best tradition, imho. Cf. any political biography worth reading. There’s also a respectable literature on the psychological traits of political leaders, and may I just point out – it is in fact true that in many instances we continue to be shaped by childhood experiences and attachments to parent/s – succeeding in individuating oneself and becoming an actual adult is a hard thing to do.
Again, I think I’d like to hear more from those who are outraged by Rundle’s article as to precisely why.
Guy Rundle! Good yarn. Mum left early, brought up by an earnest well-meaning dad = self-destruct impulse. Is Truffles Australia’s Lenny Bruce?
Yes I’m fair dinkum – Krudd was asked if he misled parliament, he said no, well explain this testimony and email, it’s been explained – next, Swanny.
As for comparing it to intelligence assesments – we don’t want to reopen that can of worms do we but can probably agree to disagree. I am of the view that even without the WMD argument there were plenty of good reasons to knock over Saddam. Unfortunately I didn’t get to particpate but I do have a number of very close mates who did and still are in both Iraq and Afghanistan. (If you watched the ABC progam on ADF PSTD casualties – I know a couple of them – in particular Garth camac)
Oh, and I have been making decisions that directly and indrectly affect peoples lives for the past twenty years in the Army and my own business.
It seems this entire ‘scandal’ is just an attempt to get Emissions Trading delayed long enough to avoid the possibility of a Double Dissolution
Adding to the list: James I of England. Mum executed. Rather a good King, actually.
…
Helen, whether it’s psych or evo-psych isn’t the point—Turnbull’s not Rundle’s patient or an authorised biographer. Tongue in cheek or anywhere else, it was pretty low. I thought I was reading Andrew Landeryou’s little sheet, personally.
Remember years ago when Nic White started flinging that rumour around about a very prominent politician having cancer?* I regard this as… one step higher on the respectability scale.
*Now, I note, a staff writer for the Australian. Draw your own conclusions.
Why, Liam? Discussion of a politician’s upbringing and family circumstances in childhood is offensive – why?
Oi!
.
C’arn I like Mark Latham. Better than Kevvie. He screams his abuse at people with power. Which is probably why he’s house husband in the Western Suburbs.
Yes Kim and PC, whatever one thinks of psychoanalysis’s usefulness as an explanation of national politics, I can’t see why exactly it amounts to a ‘cheap shot’. And it definitely doesn’t amount to an attempt to ‘get inside’ Malcolm’s head.
Anyhow, Judy Brett has won prizes for analysing Menzies in terms of the oedipal triangle. If I were her, I’d be having it out with Rundle for writing off her scholarly career as nothing but “schlock”
Gee that description of Nick Minchin as a black and white photograph of himself was worth the price of admission alone.
“Perhaps some of the folk on this thread decrying Rundle’s reasoning might care to explain why exactly they see it as a “low blow”?”
As Liam implies, it was more about delivery than reasoning. I reckon sometimes Rundle’s unable to restrain the full force of his style. Or unwilling. But in cases of self-consciously going into fraught territory, with tongue already in cheek, he might “do well” to tone down the imagery.
As far as losing Mum versus Dad goes, my personal view is that the outcome depends more on what you’re left with than what you lose.
Lefty E:
Yes, just like that documentary about Jim Carey when he was a divorce lawyer with a magic sprog. Perhaps one of Malcolm’s children can get him out of trouble wiff a birfday wish.
Or rather: Balls. One of the first things I remember realising during discovery is: It’s Never The Smoking Gun. I was surprised Turnbull has made such a goose of himself for that very reason.
I also thought the remote psycho analysis in the story was revolting, together with the cheap trick whereby the author tried to pretend he was above it whilst simulatneoulsy doing it. We don’t need to engage in any such undignified tackiness to realise that a surfeit of arrogance has done for Malcolm in this affair, in that he has very seriously underestimated his opponents. As if Rudd or his chief economic brain would put instructions to act corruptly in writing. In an email. On the Commonwealth’s system. To a public servant.
I’m not making any assumptions about the outcome either, except that no elected reps will resign. We’ll see what effect this has on the polls, if any.
Amateur requires a love of, Kim, and I don’t think Rundle qualifies.
This kind of inside-ball gossipy shit, tongue in cheek or no, is why so much political journalism in Australia is nowt more than a pathetic circle jerk, with all participants eagerly munching on the sao’s afterwards whilst the rest of the school finishes homework.
Who cares wtf Mal’s inner demons are? I don’t care if he’s doing it cause he’s hung over from a drug-addled gang bang the previous night (and I have the email to prove it, natch). Mercifully we tend to judge politicians by their actions more than their words, may this ever be the case!
*Thought I will acknowledge from my old Pol Sci days that an unbelievably high percentage of American Presidents have had emotionally distant fathers; either checked out entirely, or alcoholic, or abusive etc. Can’t remember now but it’s an amazingly high figure, in the 90 percents… Draw your own conclusions…
I put Turnbull’s personality down to the influence of a frozen beef pie…
I also meant to say that I couldn’t decipher the presumed irony concerning Mad Bill Heffernan.
I don’t have any problem with using that kind of psych in political science, or history, or biography, or even journalism. There are even some writers who’re able to turn political figures’ childhoods into decent punchlines, it’s just that they run the constant risk of tastelessness.
See Mark Ames, Matt Taibbi and the Exile lot, who draw from the same well of humour. At their best, hilarious, at their worst, utterly indescribably offensive, and a very fine line between.
It’s a low blow. Did the Coalition and some journo’s play the same game with Rudd?
Yep. But by then let’s face it most of us were used to that sort of thing from ‘teh right’.
This is annoying on two counts. One, it’s conjecture. It probably has nothing to do with the events of the past week. Two, we know this is going to become part of ‘teh culture wars’ and be used as evidence of ‘leftist hatemongering groupthink’. Which means having to apologise in arguements about off topic crpa most of us thinks is off topic.
I mean honestly, when has family been fair game? Is it too much to ask people to ‘keep it classy?’
I’ve never found psycho-history convincing – and I suppose that’s what Rundle is doing. Annoying, yes, convincing, no. But then again I ain’t Freud or Erickson.
Rundle is on a loser here though. He’s likely to be criticised from both the left and right over the mother thing. He did seem to pause before launching into that bit. If I was him I would have taken the cut in pay (if he’s getting paid via word count) and edited it out.
Sean @ #49, I took that to mean that if the Heff got up as leader then the Coalition wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of ever getting back into power again, and that Guy was happy to help that narrative along.
Onya Kim for taking this on. I see that a number of commentators have replicated Guy’s own strangely bi-located ‘I despise this, but I also sort of believe it’ riff.
Just reinforcin’ an important distinction that some people have already partly made: whether (a) Guy’s specific approach to, specifically, the case of Turnbull (and, importantly, the tone thereof) constitutes a low blow is a separate question from (b) the general issue of whether the psychoanalytic approach to understanding personality and behaviour is a legitimate one. They probably need to be talked about separately.
I thought Lucy was doing a pretty good job of replacing Mama, who was after all a very strong and successful woman in her own right. Which Lucy is too and as well she hasn’t left – yet.
If we’re going to psycho-analyse this perhaps we should look at it from the perspective of Australians at large and their disappointment with Turnbull. Those with a deeper and more detailed understanding of his character and form to date may not be surprised by his performance as Opposition Leader……but people like me are.
As a Republican, and a rusted on ALP true believer, I thought Malcolm’s minimimalist model for converting our existing constitutional monarchy into a Republic made very good sense and one that would work. I agreed with him that John Howard had broken Australia’s heart when the Republic vote went down.
I was surprised but heartened for the Republican cause by Howard’s rapid elevation of Turnbull on his election to Wentworth. It suggested more grace than I had thought Howard capable of and not as I should have realised that the two have much common.
The dynamics of Coalition inner turmoil since Howard’s end has interested me only to the extent that I thought Nelson was a wimp and that a healthy democracy needed a strong and authentic Opposition. I applauded Turnbull’s election to leadership because his earlier stand on climate and the Republic were encouraging for the country as a whole and his seemingly engaging sociable persona promised well for healing within the Coalition. How wrong can one be?
His conduct since becoming Leader of the Opposition has been disgraceful. The Republic was deferred for a decade. Government and business efforts to cope with the GFC were trashed to the point of treason. Hopes for consensus on action on climate change have been entirely crushed.
His latest attempt to bring down the PM and Treasurer was unsavory and unfounded from the start and I had lost all respect for Turnbull well before the AFP accused Godwin Grech of fraud. But Turnbull’s failure to show grace and admit his own responsibilty is for me his worst offence. Now I am disgusted by his very voice with its unctuous courtroom casuistry as he blames others to save himself.
This man has destroyed my trust in our democracy. So if you want psycho-babble and Howard is the disappointing Dad who broke the nation’s heart then Malcolm Turnbull is the one-time family friend who betrayed trust and affection by abusive and predatory behaviour. As well he’s still blaming the victims of his abuse.
PC, to make it clearer, a) I do think it was, and b) I do think it is.
Brett’s work on Menzies is a good example of doing it really well.
What I think is tasteless is the substitution of cracks about people’s parents in articles with the tone of a), as if it could take the place of the actual work required to do b).
Mark and Malcolm share an ability to come up with interesting ideas at times while stuffing up spectacularly on the political side.
I think the public reaction is that this case is all a serious waste of time and that they won’t be impressed when their local pollie refuses to help their constituents because this case has spooked them. I want my local member to fight those bastards in the public service when they won’t give me what I think I should have!
What Malcolm needs is a good attack dog to run the political games while he concentrrates on convincing us that the libs have the good ideas that will help the country run better. Trying to be the chief attack dog when you aint got what it takes is just being stupid.
“efforts to cope with the GFC were trashed to the point of treason.”
I would argue that the governemnts overly generous and poorly directed spending is intergenerational treason, miring future generations in debt and below par growth.
For the Libs sake I hope the lyrics of Paul Kelly in “Bradman” are true for them.
Yes but Razor Howard has been voted out. The window of accountability has moved on and all that middle class welfare spent on plasmas.
We need to move forward.
There’s a classic in the field of political science attempt at psychological explanation for leadership characteristics: Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House.
Reading that is enough to satisfy you that any such attempt is doomed to having a few useful insights trampled by herds of rampaging bollocks.
Nonetheless, Rundle’s piece is a larf! Nyuk Nyuk. Take the serious pants off folks! I might add, its not like Talcum doesnt deserve a royal roasting this week, is it?
Pompous git overreaches with hi-risk strategy, meets petard, lands heavily on arse in public. Whats not to like about that heartwarming tale?
PatWA (55) ” before the AFP accused Godwin Grech of fraud.”… and when pray tell was that?
Yes, they searched “a 42 year old Calwell man’s” place, they found a smoking email, “consistent with preliminary forensic advice”, but unless you know something google news or twitsard hasn’t picked up, maybe your publicising that the man has been actually accused by the police of an actual crime is a bit beyond the pale?
‘ang im! No one with a name so Dickensian could be innocent!
Agree, Dr Cat.
Commenting on Malcolm’s psyche might have come easy to Rundle after the very bizarre letter to his ex-girlfriend’s cat which was scanned and reproduced in Thursday’s Crikey. That really was quite weird.
“I’ve never found psycho-history convincing – and I suppose that’s what Rundle is doing.”
Nope. Pretty much, his Crikey gig is about about penning entertainingly sardonic social and political commentary…..which is why the wanky, psychoanalysis stuff is so jarring.
I don’t think it’s in any way ‘outrageous’ – just wide of his normally uncannily accurate mark. Maybe his Mum could explain…..?
You’re right Danny – somewhat loose language there, I should have said before “G.G. was found to have the fake email in his possession” My main pre-occupation there was not G.G. but my disgust with Turnbull. BTW I see Godwin Grech as a victim here too, of the system at the very least.
Kim, not that that letter would be any clue to his psyche or anything silly like that.
Mr Pumblechook, my first thought was that Godwin Grech sounded like someone out of Harry Potter. Possibly some sort of political staffer in the Ministry for Magic.
Liam, you are always the clearest of thinkers. I was however a bit bemused by some of the other comments.
Re Guy Rundle:
Pop psychoanalysis? Check.
Funny? Check.
Low blows? Oh, yes. They even made my eyes water.
Unfair? Bwahahahaha.
Devoid of worth? That’s a tough one. For the first time in his life, Malcolm Turnbull has joined the ranks of folks (and very thin ranks they are) whose actions might have huge effects on the lives of lots of people. The decisions he may be required to make may be dramatic and irrevocable, like declaring war. The electorate has every interest in gathering information that helps them to decide whether their leader will behave rationally when under severe stress.
Rundle has hardly presented his readers with a definitive psycho-portrait of Malcolm Turnbull. But he has gestured toward a potential wellspring of Turnbull’s behaviour.
These observations may be as useful for Turnbull himself as they are for the rest of us. Turnbull may recognise certain patterns in his historic behaviour even though he rejects explanations for their cause. He may then come to understand himself better and to improve his performance as a leader.
Malcolm now has the opportunity to prove to the world that a bent twig can straighten itself out, thereby conquering the inevitablism that is built into so much psycho-history.
Perish the thought, Dr Cat!
Actually, I suspect the way we act when dealing with a relationship breakdown is quite revealing…
Katz @ 68 – well said.
I don’t pretend that Rundle has definitively pinged Malvolio’s psyche or anything. But the repetition of patterns of behaviour is such a huge thing in people’s lives and there is always an underlying cause or causes which go beyond the proximate one/s for each instance. Understanding why we do negative and/or destructive things again and again is a huge step towards personal growth and the achievement of psychic wholeness – to the degree that we can ever do that this side of the grave. It’s also right to underline the tensions between a highly driven ambitious personality and the necessity to understand that positions of power require great responsibility and care for others. So, if Turnbull were reading, Rundle may indeed have done him a back handed favour.
I doubt he’s big on self-reflection or learning from criticism, though.
On the responsibility thing, whatever part Godwin Grech had in all this, there’s probably no question that he will be or already has been torn to personal and professional shreds by the insane political scandal machine. If there was any justice, it would be the careers of the wankers who used him and who published blatant nonsense in a major newspaper which would be in grave danger of ending. But, sadly, that’s not how these things work.
There are all sorts of serious questions about personal and political ethics raised by this “affair”, and they’re not ones about utes and car dealers and favours for mates.
Rundle twice in one day. What a pleasure.
Mr Rundle – mate – I did wince a bit here and there in reading your article. I smiled a lot too. But whether any of us agree with you, your take is far more interesting, perceptive and worthwhile – and provocative in a benign and useful way – in almost every way than the pap we get shovelled up at us from the traditional media. Good riddance to them and the likes of the Malcolm Turnbull’s of this world – that they (the traditional media) have given (foisted? on) us.
Here’s to a better, more erudite and perceptive future!
Patricia WA #66: You may wish to re-think your sympathy for Godwin Grech. If the ABC news tonight is to be believed, he is far from a victim. It seems he may have been up to quite a bit of sneaky stuff.
ABC TV news: Chris Uhlman reports “Exclusively” that Godwin has been a long-term leaker of minor material to the Liberal Party, including when they were in Govt. Some examples were given of tidbits (“Fuel Watch”?).
Uhlman claimed several Liberal MPs confirmed this.
“On the other hand, Hugh Jackman’s mum bailed when he was a little kid, and look how he turned out.”
There’s the rub, Pavlov’s. You can’t say what effect the leaving will have. There would be persons D, E and F for whom you might say it seemed to have had no effect. Therefore to attribute to Malcolm’s mum’s leaving certain claimed effects on his personality, as an outside observer, is quite futile.
Not saying it cannot have had an effect; saying we (and Guy of Grub Street) cannot know.
If Turn balls are like Latham’s, many may change their vote next election.
“If Turn balls are like Latham’s, many may change their vote next election.”
Talculm will be gone long before the next election.
Correct Gary. He will be lucky to last a week.
Fark. And people think talking about Malcolm’s Mum was icky!
I’m looking forward to Guy’s article tomorrow. So much juicier!
I’m luvin it!
Joe 2 who next for leader? Joe Hockey far too rude, Bishop couldn’t run a fish and chip shop, the Mad Monk Umm ???
AS SATP notes, the story moves on. Its starting to look like Grech may be an LNP mole – and that Treasury has even been under surveillance for a while, owing to suspicions there was one.
Which puts Turnbull right on the hotseat. How long has he known of this unlawful activity by a senior public servant? Has he procured information, knowing that its provision was a commonwealth offence?
There are serious issues here, and if I was Talcum, I’d be crapping my pants right about now.
I for one feel Rundle has been taken rather too seriously by some here. His [pause] practically announces beau jeste with a trumpet.
YEP # 77/78 see you got my point.
Hockey wants it but he’s not up to the challenge. He’s already out of his depth as Shadow Treasurer. I think Abbott’s the only one “tough” enough. The Canberra monkish isolation is a kind of priesthood, si?
YEP # 77/78 see you got my point.
Indeed we did Sandy indeed we did.
They are desperate,they are trying anything to stop the Rudd machine.
If Rudd boxes clever and wants the job, yes folks he will make Howard’s tenure look temporary.
I’m intrigued to find out why Howard’s mob, after years in power, felt the need to have a mole in Treasury, aka Peter Costello’s department. Was he perhaps not the Libs’ mole but Howard’s mole, to tell him what Tip was up to?
BTW I absolutely LOVED Turnbull’s non-answer to the question about information he’d got from Grech. He compared himself to a journo and said he never reveals his sources. The absence of a self-righteous “I never had information from that man” said it all really.
I don’t see how the Libs can sack another leader so they’re going to have to soldier on with a bloke who’s demonstrated about as much political acumen as Jim Cairns.
It’s really turning into the most entertaining episode in politics for years.
Utegate, the gift that just keeps giving. To think I was once disparaging and thought it was just a silly beat up. How wrong. Can politics get any better than this? Is utegate better than sex?
Godwin Grech — Our Man in Treasury.
The Rundle article is funny (I laughed at the Mr Blowie image) but overlooks the bleeding obvious. It is unsurprising that the Libs might consider the ALP collectively to be capable of any infamy, and simultaneously incompetent. The problem is when they believe this is true of each Labor individual, which is patently what’s happened. No doubt Kev has many personality flaws, but this type of corruption of the Public Service would be out of character. And if he did behave in this way, it wouldn’t be so blatant, nor would anything appear in writing. Rudd isn’t stupid, and he attends to details.
I think Rudd’s verbose indignation is a fault, actually. He should just have said, “Turnbull, you’re a goose,” and let the media feeding frenzy do the work for him.
Gary, with such a dismal lot to choose from maybe the Liberals could parachute a new celebrity leader into Higgins. That is, if $weetie can’t be called back to active national service.
” I think Abbott’s the only one “tough” enough. The Canberra monkish isolation is a kind of priesthood, si?”
I agree- the rest will self destruct.But that would also be game over for a long time.
Otherwise I have to agree with Liam about the shabby writing.
It is fine with most writers and the examination should be normal – to find out all the details of a pollies previous business and social involvements.
Uninformed and ignorant speculations aren’t helpful or educating the voters and while being able to present your opinions as cutting edge may lead to slips the difference from informed knowledgeable communication is pretty obvious.
And the cat stuff is truly weird.
Chookie: excellent points both.
I think this tendency you’ve identified, while part of Liberal sense of identity is also a symptom of their general failure to get their heads around being out of power. They’re still acting like they should be dominating the news cycle and still thinking of Rudd in the terms they did back in 2007 when Sunrisegate, Bourkegate etc, did such a comprehensive job of shattering his squeaky-clean image.
I certainly think its legitimate to discuss a politician’s psyche to see whether their past mistakes are likely to be repeated. And its reasonable to look for the causes of this. I think Guy’s explanation of Obama’s character in terms of the need to create his own identity, rather than having one ready-made was one of the most insightful things I read in the Presidential campaign (and I read a lot).
The issue here is that he puts all the weight on a single factor. Even something as big as one’s mother leaving is just one of the many experiences Turnbull would have gone through. It’s hardly likely to explain everything on its own.
Some of Guy’s language is over the top though, and one bit is just disgraceful.
I dunno, this has me really flummoxed- I remember how Rudd looked sick at that first press conference after Grech’s testimony, and uncharacteristically stumbled over his words. He did look guilty. There is something there for sure. My guess is that Grech concocted the email because he knew what was going on, but had no proof. Having said that, this has turned into pure gold- Turnbull has over-reached, been caught out and he wont last 48 hours after tonight’s revelations. And for the first time in years, no one has a clue who the next liberal leader will be.
For the next leader, we can rule out anybody who might have been a beneficiary of the leaks, that is, anyone who has been in a shadow economic portfolio or leadership position. Who does this leave?
Costello’s 18 month exile on the backbench means he is clean. There is no one else.
Actually, I thought Rudd looked FURIOUS (with rightful wrath !) – not particularly “guilty” as you assert , Angela – wonder if he had “cause” eh ?
Since we are psycho-analysing our leaders:
Rudd’s largely fatherless childhood has left him with an absent-authority-figure psychosis which causes him to gravitate towards and worship ever more powerful authority figures and institutions. As he encounters each one he finds it shallow and ‘outgrows’ it. This leaves his inner child unsatiated and so Rudd moves on to the next biggest Authority figure in view.
This authority worship is why he spontaneously saluted George Bush Jr. at a public party, surely one of the most nauseating and humiliating actions of any Head Of State ever.
Now PM of Australia he is already eyeing off the biggest authority on the planet, The United Nations, where he plans to fulfill his authority deficit by becoming Secretary-General. Ruler of the planet, Rudd will have thus become a god, the highest authority possible.
“Gary, with such a dismal lot to choose from maybe the Liberals could parachute a new celebrity leader into Higgins. That is, if $weetie can’t be called back to active national service.”
Yea I know what ya mean.What about a makeover for John Howard? Maybe a chiropractor can stretch him another foot, and a bit of plastic surgery.The trouble is finding him a seat, all the blue ribbon ones are all occupied.
Could try bringing back Vandstone?
… but sadly he would find that unappealing as he strolled from obscure committee to wonkfest to summit to news conference to crisis talks; and the General Assembly doesn’t sit for long each year….
No, we’re stuck with Kevvie for a bit yet.
The UN Secretary-General is “Ruler of the planet”, and a god? Really?
Did Kofi Annan know about this?
I’m intrigued to find out why Howard’s mob, after years in power, felt the need to have a mole in Treasury, aka Peter Costello’s department.
Apparently he was in PM&C during the Howard years, moving to Treasury when Labor came to government, after a period of sick leave.
“More front than Myers” my Nan used to say. Couldn’t help but remember that as I listened to Turnbull this AM ranting about how he ‘could not be held responsible for fraudulent e-mails from treasury’. Well no Malcolm, but you can be responsible for the rabid behaviour you displayed in your anxiety to accuse Rudd of corruption.And you can be responsible for your reprehensible behaviour toward a member of the PM’s staff at a private event.And it would appear that this behaviour all hinged upon the existence of this e-mail. The one that not you nor your staff actually made any attempt to verify.Not a good recomendation for the bloke that aspires to be PM.And it now appears that you and your party are at the very least in contact with the PS involved with the fraudulent e-mail.Even Heffernan looks good after this debarcle.
Try to behave with the very miniscule amount of dignity that remains and resign.
Mars @99
Yes – Psychologically speaking. I’ll stake my Guy Rundle’s medical credentials on it.
So… back to my original question…
“Did Kofi Annan know about this?”
I just watched Turnbull and Krudd on the 7.30 report. Hmmm. The nasty pursed lips of Kruddy, after he’s made his nah nee nah statements, really bother me and apologies for recourse to noticing body language.
However I think without recourse to psychological analysis (or an interpretation of body language however flimsy) we’re not left with much to discuss in most spheres where people and how they interact with one another are concerned.
I don’t think Turnbull’s career is over, mainly because there isn’t anyone to replace him–yet. He didn’t look too much like a dead blowie on the 7.30 Report. Indeed I thought, he looked less frazzled than KRudd who along with the angry pursed mouth, feigned indignity at the Prime Minister’s resignation being demanded by the Alternative PM. Jeez. What a pair of tossers. What a waste of time, energy and of course, money.
Caroline: perhaps you saw Mr Rudd feigning indignation?
Most politicians don’t need to “feign” indignity. It comes naturally. They picked it up before Kindergarten and never forgot.
Malcolm Turnbull’s political career is finished. Now he’s going after the treasurer after Kevin Rudd made a fool of him.
“Discussion of a politician’s upbringing and family circumstances in childhood is offensive – why?”
It’s hardly a discussion. It’s a joke with stage directions for timing (the hardest part of comedy). Not that there’s anything wrong with jokes and that one is set up and delivered nicely. What follows is dumb, in the way Who magazine articles about how Jennifer feels about Brangelina are dumb. (ha. Guy could have written that bit like a Who article: ‘He’s never got over his mother’s cruel abandonment,’ says a close friend…”)
As it is, I found it a bit distasteful (and I would have felt the same way of they were talking about his dad). *I* think it’s projection from Guy’s unhappy home life (pause) which is the reason he can’t go more than a couple of minutes in a video interview without swigging from a bottle of spirits. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgAPCNRRo_A&feature=player_embedded
d
G*dallf*ckingmighty Daryl, that was a low blow: to show us a video of Guy and the guys p*ss-f*rting around. He’s worse in his natural habitat than on Q&A
I expect we’ll see plenty Govt probing for links between the LNP front bench and the Treasury mole.
Should be a laugh!
Talcum’s a big boy, and if the forensic examination of Rudd’s childhood (goaded by Abbott, among others) in ’07 is any guide, he’ll be expecting – and getting – plenty more of this sort of probing come 2010.
He’d better get used to it. Not all of it will be as funny as Rundle’s.
Helen
Jun 23rd, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Brilliant, Helen! Fraser’s face has haunted me for years. There’s always been something about it I couldn’t put my finger on and now thanks to you, the veil has been dropped. Thank you, thank you!!
Razor @26, did you read your comment before you hit the submit button? This may be how they operate in Burma and Stalinist show trials, but FFS if you’re making allegations of the nature Trunchbull did, then you’d better have credible, tangible evidence or you’ll be sued all the way to the poorhouse!! You are just making a little jokule, aren’t you?
Lol, Ken @86. This is better than Absolute Power. Just when you think you’ve plumbed the depths of the Rodent’s Machiavellianess, you find another sub-basement.
First, we get corralled into the idea that the ute thing is somehow important, and second, that Turnbull is finished. Fuck the MSM and their silly obsessions!
Get used to the idea that Tony Abbott talks tougher than he is, and that the perverse longing on this site for him to become leader of the Liberal Party is the very reason why he won’t and can’t make it. That stuff about Heffernan can only be a sign that Rundle is toying with his audience, the old lefty thing about bring on the reactionaries to hasten the revolution and the workers’ paradise just around, just around the corner.
Rundle has made the category error that Turnbull has failed because he has failed Rundle’s standards rather than those of himself, or his party, or any other broader interest. This is as silly as all those people who took umbrage at Howard’s comments in the ’80s on Asian immigration, and who promptly wrote him off without realising that Howard had lost no votes from anyone who had ever voted Liberal or was seriously going to.
More here.
Looks to me like Jim Turnour is Labor’s Alby Schultz.
Jeez, there’s some pretty thin skins around here on Turnbull’s behalf. Y’all are making me feel bad at the repeated chuckles I had reading Rundle’s piece this morning in Crikey…
The reference to “Mr Blowies” got me thinking about some die-hard {try hard?} Coalition fans….
You know those inflatable Bozo clown Bop Bags? The ones which are mostly air, with sand in the base? The ones that squeak when you whack them, but always bounce back for more?
http://www.entertainmentearth.com/prodinfo.asp?number=RC452
They stop being amusing after a while.
Oh yes please, the Monkster for Supreme Leader. The fun then will never cease. He said yesterday (gosh was it only yesterday or was it friday?) that calling in the feds was a taste of Rudd’s police state. Except the plastics took all of 5 minutes to discover Grechie writing emails to himself. Now here’s a suitablce case for analysis. This guy has been high up in Treasury? Sheeeeit…
Truffles and Julie Bishop accused Swanny of bewing responsible for his Treasury soldiers. It was absurd in the first instance on the face of it, but now it turns out to be full-on Alice in Wonderland if Godwin was deepthroating the Libs all this time.
You are right Lovell, this has been a jolly good show so far and like the Sopranos, it is one great episode after another.
The big question now is, who had the Maltese Falcon in his pocket?
Someone call Dashiell Hammett’s alter ego, Sam Spade, he will get to the bottom of it.
This could be “The Big Knockoff”.
“This is as silly as all those people who took umbrage at Howard’s comments in the ’80s on Asian immigration, and who promptly wrote him off without realising that Howard had lost no votes from anyone who had ever voted Liberal or was seriously going to.”
I think you’vre misunderstood what happened in the Federal Liberal Party between 1987 & 1995. The mere fact one has reached the bottom of the barrel doesn’t mean that what is recovered from there will be ineffective.
Hee. For a moment there I was thinking John Howard was the Federal Parliament’s equivalent of 90′s Brisbane pop sensation ‘Custard’, but that’s really unfair and unkind.
d
Hey, I should say that I *do* like Guy Rundle’s piece in the original post which I think is wonderfully done. I didn’t like a couple of sentences out of the many clever jokes, but even they were an excellent set-up for the James Cagney bit and all that followed.
Finishing my exams sees to have made me even more of a grump than normal. So watch out. Grr.
d
wtf
The media should be blamed for giving life to events of such liquidated droll
And XXOS on Lateline did not disappoint. Those naughty gaffers in the Canberra studio turned up the lights…; gosh, and Jonesy was in top form. Marvellous spectacle. We’re getting our money’s worth, folks.
i think there’s a couple of points to make:
- the flippant intro to the thumbnail psychoanalysis of turnbull was a way of saying that it’s not much more than a parlour game, which might offer one among many explanations for character traits – turnbull’s 2-3 year interest span for activities across his life, impetuous tactical errors, one-upmanship (ie at midwinter ball) – that is relevant to his desire to be PM. Some of his behaviour is in the ‘couldn’t help himself’ category and in such cases a deeper explanation suggests itself.
- i think that’s particularly so with the rare case when a mother leaves a family, since it is pretty totally within our culture felt – by child and others – as a much deeper rejection than a father’s departure. One can’t help but speculate about what sort of wound, productive or otherwise, it has left. any reflection on personality that didn’t include that would seem so atomised as to be more suitable to houseplants.
- turnbull’s a public figure. gimcrack headshrinking is perfectly legitimite
- anyone who assumes that phrenologising turnbull implies a claim of greater continence, selfpossession or self-knowledge on the part of this author is sssooooo barking up the wrong tree
Jane @ 110
Have you heard of Parliamentary priviledge?
Let the questions over Talcum’s links to the Grech commence!: http://www.theage.com.au/national/turnbull-linked-to-ute-leaker-20090623-cve0.html?page=-1
Steve at the Pub @73 – I saw that item, but I still think G.G. is deserving of compassion. If he has been feeding classified info to the Opposition he would have been in an abusive and exploitative relationship with those bully boy Libs. I mentioned earlier my suspicions of Eric Abetz gentling information out of him in the Senate enquiry with his sinister and triumphant “Good work, Godwin!” as the poor wretch struggled like a worm on a hook. There was something patronising too about Turnbull’s admission today that of course he had spoken to Mr. Grech recently as probably had others in his party. Everyone knows Mr. Grech! He is a well known and respected public servant!
I was beginning to regret my rant earlier on this thread about Turnbull’s abusive betrayal of trust, but when I heard about Godwin Grech having frequent and presumably clandestine contact with Malcolm I realised my first instinct of disgust was correct. I could just imagine too the concern expressed by Joe Hockey on that mobile call over the weekend. I bet he is concerned, but not for the wretched Mr. Grech.
I share Paul’s anxiety about this man and his obvious distress.
While everyone is analysing Turnbull’s childhood, potential mother issues etc. I just felt the need to add what I ‘know’.
A previously close friend of my mother’s is a cousin of Turnbull’s. Her mother and Turnbull’s mother are sisters. This friend went to visit Turnbull in Sydney a good few years ago and he wanted absolutely nothing to do with her whatsoever. Supposedly wouldn’t even let her in to his house. Finally he agreed to meet her but only at his office and for a few short minutes and almost immediately said to her “what are you after, money?” when she just wanted to catch up with a cousin she hadn’t seen in awhile.
Clearly not much interest in his mother’s side of the family. Mental health issues appear to run in that side of the family at least & the lead actress from Murder She Wrote is a relative on the mother’s side.
I didn’t post this to rubbish Turnbull (I don’t rate the guy but so what not many do) but thought it might give a bit more weight to some thoughts. I’m genuinely not sure if this is out of bounds or whatever but there’s never been a previous thread on Turnbull I thought it relevant to put it in.
Interesting! Because Angela Lansbury’s grandfather was George Lansbury, leader of the (British) Labour Party between 1932 and 1935. Scouring the internets it would seem that Turnbull is George Lansbury’s great-grandson.
Lansbury never managed to make the leap from leader of the opposition to prime minister either…
Oh, forgot to add the obligatory Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lansbury
Lansbury, eh?
Not much chop during those years of financial turmoil, high unemployment, social anxiety; with Germany in poor shape and Adolf glowering across the Channel…
Do our times suit a Lansbury?
[I claim exemption from Godwin's Law: this comment is rooted in the 1930s, around Adolf's time; and everyone's running away from Godwin, ja?]
I think we may be misunderestimating Mr Abbott, and/or projecting our own prejudices onto the electorate at large. He is far less personally obnoxious than Howard, for eg. Indeed he can be quite charming – I know ALP voters who used to be his neighbours and quite liked him. Even I liked the way he handled himself for that brief period when he thought he had an illegimate son. If he became leader it wouldn’t be time to assume the next election was in the bag.
Thanks Rachel @ 100 but now I’m even curiouser to know why Howard’s mob needed a mole in the PM’s own department. It suggests a rather fraught relationship between pollies and public servants.
Perhaps I’m naive but does it imply a network of informants in the public service who give information directly to politicians other than their own ministers? I know there are some who do this for the opposition of course but I had never thought about the possibility that it happens on a widespread scale within the government ranks.
Now I do think about it, it makes perfect sense I guess for individual ministers to have their own sources in other people’s departments. However the claim about Grech is that he provided information to the Liberal Party, not to particular ministers. This still seems peculiar to me and in need of explanation. Was the whole party convinced the public service was disloyal and therefore needed spying on? Or maybe they adhere to the common belief that information you get from unofficial sources is always more reliable than the stuff that comes up the chain of command. Whatever the truth, it suggests that there was a very low trust relationship between Howard’s mob and the public service, which presumably still exists.
I’d have thought it made perfect sense to have other sources within the departments. That way you could get an “official’ deniable version and also a “unofficial” truthful version.
Very handy if you have to provide the official veersion sometime.
Are you the man himself? None of the nine commenters since your post have acknowledged your presence. Well, I suppose that’s just one of the dangers of the Internet.
Assuming you are GR, I’ve got a question for you—Guy, had you prepared a similarly rough political obit for Rudd in the lead-up to Monday’s wrestlemania special in the Reps?
(As to the Lansburys and genetic traits—AL allegedly let her teenage daughter stay with the Manson family out at their psycho ranch in the year before the Tate-LaBianca murders. No, Guy Rundle, leave that factoid alone.)
Abtone remember a Yes Minister episode when Hacker went walk about, much to Sir H’s dismay it was about ratcatchers etc close to the mark?? multiple sources
Ken Lovell,
My dealings with Canberra over the years lead me to believe that the whole place is one large pit of intrigue, betrayal and gossip. I am sure that there are unofficial networks of all kinds. Both parties have moles. The media has moles.
It’s a mole hill made out of a mountain.
Huggy
oops abtone= anyone
I’d like to offer a belated response to Kim’s enquiry about the basis of my “outrage” on this type of psychological writing about public figures in the ‘news’ media.
(Oh, and thanks Guy Rundle for dropping in. Hi! As you’ll see, my objection to your piece is not based in any quelle horreur faux-concern about amateur psychoanalysis, or misplaced anxiety about trawling through the private lives of public figures.)
My “outrage” is not based on any high-minded ethical or moral principles, but actually on a plainly venal and consumerist interest: I’d prefer it if the news media simply delivered facts – the what, when, where, who and how, and simply abandoned any pretense to supplying the “why”, which is always a matter of conjecture.
What’s the basis for my preference? Simple: perhaps the last remaining domain of advantage to news writers is their ability to report facts. We are not desperately short of opinion in this or any other forum, and my consumer dollar isn’t interesting in paying for somebody else’s opinion when I’m perfectly capable of forming my own. What I would be prepared to pay for is timely access to facts: faster, more accurate, and more wide-ranging than I can provide for myself.
But, for reasons unknown to me, the news media corporate structure has in recent decades decided to largely abandon the reporting of facts and to substitute instead the production of opinion & commentary; and, as we’ve been so rudely reminded this week, to be more or less willing/witting accomplices in any number of hoaxes on the public.
People once scoffed at the idea of a 24-hour news channel, because they claimed there wasn’t enough “news”. That’s true if you exclude, say, Uganda and Bolivia from your news reporting, but there’s well and truly enough news around the world that you can report facts all day long. Instead, the news media have chosen to focus on producing a thin gruel of comment from the starvation-diet of facts we produce domestically.
Given that opinions are free, and everybody has one, the only real value-add, or indeed value, is in organisations that can provide facts to an information-hungry market (faster, cheaper and better). I wouldn’t want to be a shareholder in a corporate entity that has made the production of opinion central to its business model, and has derogated or abandoned the provision of fact. The complete debasement has shown itself in the last week, when the news media concerned itself entirely with reporting a fraudulent email (and fake Hanson photos, and fake WMD photos, and children not thrown overboard, and, and, and), while the citizens of Iran provided the facts to the world over Twitter and mobile camera phones.
In that context, what Guy Rundle thinks of Turnbull’s childhood circumstances, however entertainingly he writes, is of no utility to me.
I’ve been saying for a while that Turnbull is a posh Mark Latham – the same impulsive bull-at-a-gate approach, the same way of making very consequential decisions on the spur of the moment.
What galls me is the deferential treatment he’s receieved from the media. He’s gotten away with chopping and changing on economic policy since ’07 in a way that Labor would be hounded mercilessly for. On Labor’s first budget, I think I counted 3 positions on spending in about a week. He voted for the first stimulus package, but not the second. It’s inconceivable that Labor would be able to get away with this. This week there’s been his alcopops tax debacle. The National Party is basically in permanent revolt and parts of his own party ignore the party whips.
But it seems the media – most of whom come from upper-middle class backgrounds -just melts for a merchant banker with a posh voice.
Poor old Malcolm in a Muddle – he was going to be the father of the Republic and then PM.
KL: “However the claim about Grech is that he provided information to the Liberal Party, not to particular ministers.”
Is that how you read it Ken? I thought the claim was that he may have been leaking to MPs all of whom happen to be in the Liberal Party.
i.e. not phoning the Lib Party headquarters and asking them to pass on tidbits… but contacting MPs, I dunno, maybe their staff? I could be wrong.
Huggy: I like your “molehill out of a mountain”
but it’s just a small hill surrounded by small hills, with the ski slopes a bit further afield, oui?
Huggy’s ‘mole hill out of a mountain’ gets the witticism award!
But to totally munge up the metaphors, let’s not forget all the white-anting that goes on in that rabbit-warren.
Joining the compliment pile-on.
If only it were more like meerkat manor.
I don’t see why Hockey should be ruled out of a leadership battle. He’s got the experience and the public profile, and for all his faults he comes across well in person. He seems to have made no large political errors, and his tepid defence of WorkChoices implies he’s more centrist than the party line.
Though his performance on Lateline last night had me and the wife in stitches. She commented that his perspiration was so prominent because it was “bullshit sweat”. Tony gave him a rough time, calm-but-determined-bulldog-interviewer style. It was great fun to watch.
Grech has been providing the Opposition with information for two years, but the latest email is not “information” – it is a forgery. This is apparently something new for Grech, and I would be surprised if Grech himself had forged the email. The question we should be asking is: who came up with the idea of forging the email, who did the actual forging, who gave it to Grech, and who (in the Liberal Party and the media) knew it was forged? Where does Turnbull stand in all this? Was he privy to the forgery, or was he duped by it?
Mercurius@136: as far as I know, Guy Rundle has never presented himself as a journalist, “just reportin’ the facts ma’am, so the “utility” of his irreverent and hilarious offerings is irrelevant. And as for his head-reading of Turnbull, take it or leave it, its just his riff for the day, relax. Rundle is quite simply funnier, and closer to the bone in political analysis generally, than an entire wriggling sackful of the dancing bears at News Ltd. Hands off, the Man in Black from Melbourne makes me laugh, and more often than not, agrees entirely with me!
It goes without saying that Canberra is a snake-pit of gossip and intrigue. Leaking has always been a way of life for bureaucrats who have achieved a certain level of responsibility in the Public Circus.
Folks appear to have forgotten the extraordinary features of Emolegate. (I’m claiming that neologism as my own).
EMOLEGATE involves the deliberate confection not of real documents, which are the meat and potatoes of your common or snake-pit leak, but of deliberate and damaging fakes.
There are only two conclusions that can be made from these facts.
1. EMOLEGATE is a conspiracy in which individuals or groups acting as agents for the Liberal Party were accomplices.
2. EMOLEGATE is the work of a single individual who has succeeded in duping agents of the Liberal Party, including Malcolm Turnbull.
In either case, the leadership of the Liberal Party has proven itself to be unsuitable for government.
Resignations are required.
There is of course the possibility that this was a setup by the ALP. A juicy trap too delicious to resist.
In any case it’s saved the Coalition. No judgement on Green matters this week thus no double dissolution.
Not necessarily, tssk. There’s a respectable body of opinion which suggests deferral of a vote in the Senate constitutes a failure to pass. Though it was interesting that they voted for the Alcopops tax. They’re obviously very keen to avoid an election…
Good summary, Katz.
tssk, are you really as thick as you pretend to be?
Civility, adrian, please!
Hockey wasn’t too ocnvincing last night, but one point holds true – that we want PSs who will dish the dirt out on the pollies. But that doesn’t extend to fabricating emails to help out your side.
Grech is a partisan-leaker rather than a whistle-blower acting in the public interest.
No, just thinking out aloud. Afterall the only other option is that the Coalition really has become that stupid and incompetant since they lost office.
I mean even with most of the media onside they haven’t scored a break.
On the other hand it has lead to something I’ve never seen before. Chris Uhlman reporting while sticking to the facts rather than playing with words. Good to see.
But just playing devil’s advocate for one moment. Let’s just say this happened two years ago. Howard is PM. Rudd has made the acusations. And it’s getting messy. Wouldn’t we be debating the victimisation of whistleblowers in the public service? Wouldn’t we be criticising the info coming from the AFP? (Surely any conjecture can wait for court cases if there are any.) Wouldn’t we be defending Rudd for trying to uncover corruption?
The one good thing to come out of this is that Rudd and the ALP know that they must tread the honest path otherwise they will be ripped apart by the left and the right. Not a bad thing for a government to remember.
Whistleblower ? forger.
We don’t know if he was a forger yet or set up. Or by whom he was set up.
BTW, I’ve been called far worse and I belive in free speech. I take the comment that adrian tpyed in good jest. It’s just a blog after all.
This is true, but the information divulged by the AFP that Grech had drafts and parallel documents on his computer point the finger quite firmly in his direction.
This AFP disclosure may also be disinformation, of course…
And the AFP disclosure unsettles me. It was wrong when it happened during the Haneef affair so it must be as wrong now.
We all want answers and want them know but why make it easy on lawyers argueing about tainted juries.
Much better the truth a couple of months away than a bagful of theories now.
Yes Mark@146, quite right. Turnbull tried to lead his party away from the looming double disillusion (thanks Steve Fielding) with the alcopops vote, but some of the real dickheads like Tuckey et al, are just too dumb to see that train at the end of the tunnel.
And News Ltd is running around like a mob of headless chooks too, as their pages of photos commentary and analysis on Grech and the fake email have obscured the larger strategic platform that the ALP is busy constructing towards a DD on the delayed carbon legislation.
The Government will bury Turnbull up to his neck on the fake email affair, so that when the DD is called he is just another head to kick, and the DD will be won by Rudd in a canter because the Opposition is delaying action on global warming. Goodbye Steve Fielding, you pathetic fool, and hello Julia and Lindsay.
Grech is fast losing his News Ltd aura as the poor fragile little victim, and looking more like the disgraceful and dishonest little prick he is. That packed bag he allegedly had standing beside his front door was more likely for his anticipated trip to the slammer, rather than the hospital.
Grech was squirming around during the committee hearings last Friday because he was lying through his teeth (pretending that Abetz was drawing blood from a stone), and his senior officers were not trying to block his testimony because they had secrets to conceal, but because they probably realised he was about to hang himself, given his obvious political connections.
Grech has breached just about every ethical principle contained in the Australian Public Service Code of Conduct. He is not a victim and he deserves no sympathy (assuming he does no damage to himself, which is always a possibility in these circumstances).
In my opinion, the people who have real questions to answer in this affair are: Grech and Eric Abetz (former member of the Howard Government’s Dirty Tricks Unit), and Steve Lewis and the rest of the rabble at News Ltd (for mocking up the fake email as real).
Apologies tssk, even if you weren’t offended! Heat of the moment and all that.
Michael Brissenden is still pushing the line on ABC radio that although this may be serious for Turnbull, there are still questions that Swan needs to answer, as if somehow they are of equal gravity. He was also still trying to evoke sympathy for Grech.
No apologies required adrian. Part of the to and fro of debate and all that. Thanks anyway
The actions at the senate estimates committee are fascinating, I remember watching it and thinking it looked like an obvious attempt to gag Grech rather than save him. If it proves to be the latter then a lot of people are going to learn about taking things on face value. It’s going to be ages though before we get to the bottom of this.
And Turnbull is learning that despite the press’s learned habit of kicking the ALP once there’s blood in the water there’s no stopping them. (Though Piers is sticking to his guns.)
The Liberal habit of pathological dishonesty begins in student politics. Take the University of Queensland Liberal Club for example. During the last union elections they photoshopped a picture of the labor students guy running for the union position to put a swastika on his sleeve, and then stuck this image up all over campus saying that the guy was a member of the “Extremist” Serbian nationalist group, and “Don’t Let Extremists into Our Union”. An obvious fake of course (not least since the Serbian nationalists are anti-Nazi, it’s the Croation nationalists that are pro-Nazi…), but I expect as these Young Liberal pukes finally outgrow puberty they will learn to make their forgeries more subtle.
Yes adrian, the ABC is being as “fair and balanced” as Fox News in this affair. The Swan allegations are substantively legless and certainly do not weigh proportionally with the scandalous conduct of Grech and the rest of the players in the fake email affair, or indeed the more interesting trajectory of the government’s legislative program. And the ABC News room is completely out to lunch today, leading with the Mad Monk and his outrageous moral posturing…
Mods re commment #158, while I hold no truck with cat-killers for obvs reasons, my understanding (sorry don’t have time to check) is that Turnbull already sued successfully for libel over the cat accusations, way back in the day. This may be wrong but it strikes me as unwise to let that name field sit there.
Off topic…Tony Abbott is one of those hardline Catholicss. If he ran for leader the Libs would immediately gain one half of the Catholic voters…and lose the other half.
Oh, really Pavlov? I’m sorry, I was under the impression that he didn’t sue (and being a top notch lawyer, that would be strange).
If somebody can correct me on this I will certainly desist from using this name!
He sued!
I think you’d better stop using that name!
I’m glad wise counsel has prevailed.
I agree with Pavlov. I saw a political forum disappear overnight due to someone insisting on posting a slur over and over about a Lib’ member.
@162 – I’ve removed the name you adopted from the comments field. Please don’t use it again!
LOL @ the one @ 164
Aw, now I want to know about the cat thing. Can someone post a link or explain?
Meanwhile, the Government is having a ball in question time. Worth watching.
Kymbos, scroll down.
tssk: “There is of course the possibility that this was a setup by the ALP. A juicy trap too delicious to resist”
It sure is shaping up like that. I’d have to say, they have every right to set up Turnbull.
Albanese has just said “I understand that the Minister for Wentworth knows a dead cat when he sees it, but this one has no bounce.”
What’s the cat thing, dammit!
He’s also just made the Latham connection himself.
@ Kymbos
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/06/20/kevin-rudd-ute-man-so-hes-done-for/#comments
comment 147
The underdog has landed!
‘There is of course the possibility that this was a setup by the ALP. A juicy trap too delicious to resist.’
is this a very late agincourt entry, or tongue-in-cheek rundle-style silliness ????
we deserve the truth
It’s possible that I will regret making this point, but here we go …
Turnbull’s mother Coral Lansbury appears to have been the source of his brains, his looks, his volatility and his flair for drama. His mother was an ABC scriptwriter and actor who went on to have a very distinguished academic career in the US, writing five novels as well as a number of books on 19thC culture and becoming Dean of Women at Rutgers before she died of cancer at 61.
Reading between the lines of this entry she seems to have been a profoundly gifted and lively woman who insisted on being treated as, and behaving as, a human being, and if she had been living in a time when women with husbands and children were not regarded as second-class citizens and were able to use their talents properly (and take their kids to work with them occasionally!) without massive constraint and disapproval, Turnbull’s childhood might have been very different.
Ambig @ 174. The answer is yes to both.
You never know.
Interesting Pav – that means Talcum is related to Angela Lansbury! INLIGAS, but I note that he was born erm, sort of… before (ish) the erm, that is to say, ye olde, erm wedding-type nuptials.
NTTAWWT!
The cat story is that, allegedly, Turnbull offed an ex-girlfriend’s cat, but it’s a canard. I don’t have a lot of time for Turnbull, but I don’t believe the cat story for a second.
According to Annable Crabbe in her recent Quarterly Essay, he was completely unscathed the day after the cat met its end which, as you’d know if you’ve ever even tried to give a cat some medicine it doesn’t particularly want, clears him.
What a crappy psychologist I must have been when I was working in the health field. Sometimes after 10-12 interviews I still could not get a handle on what makes people tick (or tip over) and certainly wouldn’t have got anything by wondering too much about long ago history. When it’s all said and done we all have aspects of our personalities that may draw momentary attention BUT they never constitute the whole person and the environment they are in currently. To use a Ruddism – “I’d bet London to a brick on” that none of the contributors to this thread has ever met Malcolm Turnbull. Look at his current actions not his past or his family to try to get a handle on what he is up to.
mediatracker – you gots ta know where you from to know where you at.
DI(NR) I’m gradually putting together a metal profile of your cats – named after serial killers, waiting for humans to die so they can eat them, refusing to take their meds etc. – which suggests they are somewhat formidable beasts.
I have a cat who will roll over onto his back all four legs in the air if someone says “Milk!”, another one whose idea of heaven is to go to sleep in a green Coles bag, and another who cries if he thinks somebody might be looking at him.
Mediatracker at #179, if you think “childhood” = “long ago history”, then I’m not surprised you got nothing out of ten or twelve interviews, and that’s before we even begin to consider the general worth of the past in our attempts to understand the present. Some of us think it’s quite valuable.
Of course not; who here has argued that they do?
*crickets*
Here’s my brick – now you owe me a city!
I went to school with Malcolm, and all of us knew even then that he wanted to be prime minister. Malcolm had no friends as such, as far as I could tell. The only person Malcolm cared for was Malcolm. He never displayed any emotion, other than ambition. There was one episode I remember from school that alerted me to his lack of ethics. He cheated on a science test, and when he got caught out, he made a joke about it. He was at the back of the science class, and he said something like, “If I cheated on this test, may God strike me down,” and then he fell backwards off his chair (obviously deliberately). We all had a good laugh then. I’m not saying Malcolm knew the Grech email was fake, but if it is found that he did, I wouldn’t at all be surprised.
I wonder what will happen to those rare eccentrics in the Liberal Party who are actually, um, liberals, when he finally gets the boot. Tony Abbott’s still there y’know. You think Howard was bad?
.
(Cue: someone to tell that Tony Abbott’s slightly less popular than advanced syphilis.)
Petrou Georgiou (a “rare eccentric”?) is still there and gave a fine speech today welcoming some softening of the We-Lock-You-Up-Then-Charge-You-Board-And-Lodging laws. He pointed out that we don’t send an invoice to the worst Aussie crims for incarceration services rendered. [there'd be an uproar I tell you: Roberta and Mick and Chopper would be ropeable!]
He pointed out that a Labor Govt introduced the first bill, then the Coalition Govt tightened the screws. He will cross the floor. Humane to the end, in a Party which firmly rejects his arguments.
Good guy Georgiou. gave it to Howard over the Lock People In Jail Cause They’re Running For Their Lives From The War We Started Fiasco. But he’s leaving isn’t he?
Yes he’s leaving, though he won his last pre-selection quite convincingly so his own electorate Libs rather favoured him. Apparently the former PM had no time for Petrou.
The way the newspapers tell it, there was a concerted purge of …. ummm liberals over sevearl electoral cycles. Some claim Mr Howard helped oust several liberal types (remember “wets” and “dries”?) It is hypothesised that this narrowed the Parliamentary Liberal “gene pool” – though they do not “mate” – and probably narrowed the appeal of the Party to the public in the long run.
Wets vs dries my fat arse. “Dude looks like a lady” is all you needs to know in lib circles.
sorry Ute Man
“hypothesized” was over the top. High poth (like bloody posh, but with a lisp) – ess (S-bend, cobber) – sized (ya know, big or bloody HUGE)
So “hypothesized” has got somethin’ to do with a big fat posh lisping arse on a dunny. More or less.
Gotta remember to stop usin’ long words I see in the paper. The fish ‘n chip shop wraps up me tucker in “The Australian” or some weekend throwaway about books ‘n stuff. Ya c’n get a bit carried away munching ya last crab stick, lookin’ at that garbage. Never try that stuff on ya missus. Like as not she’ll belt ya. Dozen tinnies is the way ta go.
Dude looks like a lady? A Member? Nah!!!!! Looks like a drongo more like.
Gut feel (gotta be careful here):
Grech might have happy to drip feed the Libs on his own terms, but Malcolm and Eric might have heavied him for ‘more more more’ saying if he didn’t provide that they would out him. So Grech perhaps decided to bring all of ‘em down by allegedly cooking up the forgery and allowing himself to get caught.
This would also have the effect of assuaging his guilt over allegedly betraying the alleged Public Service as he now justly pays for his alleged crimes, allegedly.
Kim, looks like someone else has picked up on the Mark Latham thing
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/06/24/2607450.htm
(Coincidence?!)
INLIGAS, but I note that he was born erm, sort of… before (ish) the erm, that is to say, ye olde, erm wedding-type nuptials.
Since when did you join Family First, Lefty E? (I know you put the INLIGAS there, but why even mention it otherwise?)
Helen, we need to wend or way back in time to the dim dark days of the 1950s.
The status of bastardy was considered important and reprehensible enough for the Commonwealth Statistician to do an annual calculation of the number of moppets born less than 9 months after the nuptials of their parents.
Appended to that annual calculation was an international league ladder of illegitimacy. Until the latish 1960s Australia was very much at the “virtuous” end of that ladder.
Malcolm Turnbull came of age in that vanished world of shame and official disapprobation of the timing if not the manner of his conception.
Has this experience helped form Turnbull’s character? I’m not Guy Rundle, so I don’t know.
And then the 1960s happened. And the rest is history. It is now possible to ask with sincerity whether these facts really matter at all.
But once they did matter. A lot.
OK, I see, you are wondering whether it had an impact on MT growing up. I had an ex who confided in me that he was a “little bastard” (given to grandparents to raise, in this case). It certainly upset him and that was someone who was younger than MT.
It is hypothesised that this narrowed the Parliamentary Liberal “gene pool” – though they do not “mate” -
PLEASE Ambi!!!
My poor brain!!
[Gets bleach, scrubbing brush]
I’m wondering not whether it had an impact on MT growing up so much as how it had an impact on MT growing up.
Necessarily, much of that impact would have been mediated through how MT’s father addressed the subject of MT’s mother.
I note that MT’s father’s middle name is “Bligh”. The historic Bligh was perhaps the most famous grudge-holder in history.
That coincidence doesn’t augur well for a calm, dispassionate and empathetic representation of the relationship between MT’s mother and MT’s father.
“The status of bastardy was considered important and reprehensible enough for the Commonwealth Statistician to do an annual calculation of the number of moppets born less than 9 months after the nuptials of their parents.”
Yep, we have advanced a lot since then. Not.
Now we are expected to throw our hands in the air weep/ moan at the latest, dreaded, teenage pregnancy figures. For the yanks it’s an even bigger deal….”society is falling apart, Randy “!
Sorry for that little bit of O.T. but it always strikes me as so weird and stuffy.
Oooh Katz, that’s even better than Rundle. My middle name is Leyburn, therefore I’m a small village in Yorkshire where they make cheese. Mary Queen of Scots was once imprisoned in a tower built on me noggin! It explains everything! My fear of corpses. My occasional overeating.
So pleased to read that you are finally achieving closure, Sean.
Your knowledge of the small village of Leyburn is very impressive indeed.
What other villages do you know a lot about? (They don’t have to be in Yorkshire if you don’t want them to be.)
I didn’t know the circumstances of his birth. I guess he was lucky that his father didn’t abandon him, too. But back then, being born “on the wrong side of the blanket” as it was so quaintly called was considered a crime worse than being an axe murderer.
Thank god for the sixties and the removal of the stigma of “illegitimacy, or its more popular label bastardry” from kids born outside wedlock and their mothers who were automatically dubbed sluts!
Fathers were congratulated on “sowing their wild oats” and went about their business secure in the knowledge that their extra-marital offspring were precluded from making any claim on their estate. That’s why Leonardo wasn’t allowed to hold public office or get a share of his father’s estate.
It always infuriated me that the children were made the villains of the piece, when they were the least responsible and most innocent of victims.
Feels blood pressure rising. Calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean.
Explains a lot about Turnbull’s obsession with being the best, having to always be right and his inability to accept responsibility for his mistakes. Who knows how many times he’s had his nose rubbed in that little lot. This would have gnawed away in his gut for years, I guess.
Just the one what gave rise to the middle name Katz, since half the male rellos & I share it. Curiosity ‘n all that. Oh and the one I live near I guess.
To answer a question posed elsewhere, this is another problem I have with remote psycho-analysis. It is just an excuse for ignorant gossips, who are educated & perhaps even well-raised enough to know that they shouldn’t be engaging in ignorant gossip, to put a pseudo-intellectual sheen on their ignorant gossip. Which by strange coincidence always confirms their gender or party political prejudices. Your attempted traductions of Turnbull snr are baseless and vicious. This is not to say that you are vicious generally Katz but you have behaved so there. What we know about Turnbull senior is that he raised his allegedly illegitimate son on his Pat Malone and apparently worked his rear end off at honest blue collar toil to put food on the table and pay the school fees etc. How did he react to the wife’s exit and failure to pay child support? DUNNO. Why did she go? DUNNO.
I thought it was notable, and a bit of a larf Helen! My own daughter is a proud bastard of 5 years standing, and unlike Talcum, wont ever be made honest.
But Family First? Sheesh, the soft-on-Talcum tone of this thread has been kinda weird and creepy. Whats going on here? Is this blog now being moderated by the ABC under threat of a Liberal Senate inquiry?
Let’s dump on him! Its a larf!!! And he’s fair game too. “I was a poor little flat-renting bastard from struggle st, Northshore” etc. Yawn. lets not b precious here. he’s a big boy.
I hope Rundle goes even further out in pursuit of top japes at turner’s expense. Rudd too for that matter.
Thank you for your comments, Sean.
I didn’t expect you to follow the line of my comments on this thread in regard to psycho-history, so I expect that you will be somewhat surprised to discover that my attitude to it is more or less your own. I noted that I was not Guy Rundle, meaning that I was not attempting to construct elaborate explanations for another’s behaviour from the flimsiest “evidence”.
I had hoped that in the context of these comments, my reference to “Bligh” would be seen as facetious, which is what it was intended by me to be.
But I can understand how in isolation my comment could be construed as in earnest.
It wasn’t.
From the Wikipedia entry on Turnbull:
Gawd I thought I had read the thread Katz, I’m sorry. Glad I inserted the qualifier about the V word.
And fair enough too Pavlov. Birmingham’s “Leviathan” contains a handy exposition of the high minded motives of the Rum Rebels if yer interested.
[Non-facetious] Bligh had much support among the poorer settlers in the Hawkesbury region who were thankful for land grants made by Bligh to them to them rather than to the officers of the Rum Corps.
“That’s why Leonardo wasn’t allowed to hold public office”
and probably a good thing too; he might have forged documents or passed off forgeries, the little b*stard!
Anyway, what became of him in later life? Did he make anything of his sorry circumstances? Spend his pathetic hours trying desperately to prove himself? Rushing from one project to another – no persistence? Just impetuously seeking the flashy and famous, no idea of quality? Never an original thought – just running errands for the rich?
Yup, I thought so
Just thought I would add that’s a wonderful piece of trivia about John Turnbull. I wonder how Anna feels about that?
Helen
sincerest apologies that you had to rush for the bleach. I had to disinfect the keyboard, if it’s any consolation.
[MA, PG, R warning] It was just that a biologist told me “the gene pool” is strictly relevant only if they m***.
Sorry.
*deep, sincere bow
doffing of hat*
The idea that Turnbull’s father worked hard to get his son through school is a half-truth/half-lie that Turnbull has been peddling. After the first year of high school, Turnbull won a scholarship, so Turnbull’s father had very few expenses for his son’s education at Sydney’s possibly wealthiest private school.
Funny, until I read the last coupla comments I always thought MacArthur was rhe villain in the Rum Rebellion. But then again, obviously Anna Bligh’s several greats grandfather wasn’t to know the Turnbulls was to produce Malcolm, was he? I mean, the bugger went and become a republican and all, then betrayed his working class ancestry by joining the Libs. The quirks of history; or fate.
“Sydney’s possibly wealthiest private school.”
I think that honour belongs to King’s.
You’re missing the point about the “status of bastardy”. It ain’t the ‘status’ that matters in societal-impact terms, it’s the structural and scale problems caused by the imbalanced family unit which so often results.
Just ask the ghost of Pat Moynihan, who knew all about it.
Actually, Laura, I had to have Geoffrey the Serial Cat put down a couple of days ago. (The only good thing about that is that I’m now one cat further from crazy cat lady status.)
The poor little thing was suffering from arthritis, and for a few weeks has been alternatively off her food for a couple of days, then ravenous. I was thinking, “argh – teeth – second mortgage”, especially after I noticed a trace of blood in some milk she’d been mumbling. Turns out she had mouth ulcers caused by failing kidneys.
She’s now buried in the front yard, in a spot where she liked to sun herself. I’ll plant a nice shrub there next spring.
Bruce and Mr Snuggles will stand on their heads for bacon fat, btw.
Very sorry to hear it, DI(NR). Rest in peace, Geoffrey.
And what a lovely looking lad Dr Andrew Charlton is (on the news tonight)! Talented too. Every mother’s dream son. No wonder he makes Malcolm’s blood boil.
Sorry, just a trifle more rundling…
Is this really the drovers dog rounding them up so neatly in a old ute, on loan from a mate.
Thanks, PC. I was a bit sad about it the day after (nearly dissolved into a teary mess at work once or twice – not a good look for a fat, bald, bearded bloke in his late fifties), but she actually had a pretty good, long life She was technically my oldest son’s cat, and I reckon she was about 16 or 17 years old.
RIP Geoffrey.
See if the big fella can lean on Mike for a song.
Sorry to hear about your lost DI(nr). I say bring on crazy cat lady status and get two kittens (or rescued cats) when you are ready.
DI(nr) Condolences re Geoffery. What a lucky cat he was – loved to the last days of a long and obviously eventful life, assuming a sub-text to the “Serial Cat” tag. May we all share a similar fate, though I suppose it’s too much to hope that we could be as simply euthanased without blame or guilt for our nearest and dearest.
Even before reading your news I was thinking about cats and how the story of Malcolm the reputed cat killer says a lot about Turnbull. Even if he was cleared of the crime, that he was believed capable of it says a lot about how he is seen by some people close to him. Not liking, or even hating, cats is one thing, but the vengeful killing of one, the beloved pet of an offending acquaintance, suggests a very nasty mindset.
DI (nr)
Sorry to hear about your cat Geoffrey. It really guts you when a much loved pet dies.
Payback time?
http://news.brisbanetimes.com.au/breaking-news-national/wong-quiet-on-inquiry-against-turnbull-20090626-cyw8.html
Just how many cats do you need to qualify for the crazy-cat-lady label? Am a bit concerned some of the local councils talking about bringing in a two-cat per household limit. I think we’d end up with illegal secret cats if our council did that.
Four is the magic number, Chris.
Until I had Geoffrey the Serial Cat euthanased, I was skirting the edges with three. OTOH, pre-Bruce, I did have four for a while, but I had some attrition due to old age.
Ah I guess that means we’ll get the crazy label late next year (if things work out as planned).
Very sorry to hear about Geoffrey. Greta name for a cat btw. A friend once had a cat called Normie Gallagher because he was found on a construction site.
David, sympathy. Hope the other two are doing okay. RIP Geoffrey; what a good cat to make it to 16.
My son actually called the cat Kira, but I took to calling her Geoffrey the Serial Cat because, when she was younger, she used to sleep surrounded by mouse heads.
She was an extremely odd, but engaging, cat.
A prescient addendum to this post in light of all our comments above.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25878035-12377,00.html
Grech admits he wrote the fake email, and fed info straight to Turnbull.
I’d say Talcum ain’t coming back from this one.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/04/2645022.htm
Even Shanhan nails one in: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25877628-24636,00.html
“Even Shanhan nails one in”
You think?
Something stinks to high heaven here.
Turnbull jumps into the quagmire. But why?
Too many top reputations tarnished in this episode…yet who profits?
And who prepares to take over the leadership? W/ the help of…?
N’
So Godwin Grech says that he met with both Turnbull and Erich Abetz to hand the forgery over.
I’ll never forgive Abetz for being Howard’s Special Minister for Head-Kicking. I can haz his hed, pliz?
From The Australian:
Does anyone believe this, in particular the incomprehensible final paragraph? It suggests a very severe mental illness. The ABC: “The bombshell admission made from a Canberra psychiatric ward comes as the auditor-general is due to release its findings on the scandal today.” Oh…
I have not seen the Australian Story footage; reports suggest that Turnbull et al were merely profoundly idiotic rather than deliberately deceptive. But it doesn’t matter at this stage. He is as proper f*cked as a politician can be. Talk about humiliating. He ought to end it sooner rather than later.
BBB
Ken Lovell@86 said:
Jim Cairns without the sense of mission …
Incidentally, Ken, how can a cat be a canard? Isn’t that a duck?
The part I found amusing in the excerpts I saw from Australian Story was the moment when Lucy Turnbull(?) and some toady middle-aged chap who looked like someone suited to being the before shot in a Jenny Craig commercial first read the media reports of the email being concocted.
Lucy(?) pursed her lips with cameras rolling and affected bemusement. “Concocted“, she intoned deliberately. “What does that mean?“.
“I’m looking that up” responded the toady chap nursing his spare tyre at the PC.
I resist believing that the word concoct is not in their lexicon but if so, it just goes to show that being upper middle class and a spin doctor is no guarantee of an above average vocabulary. What kind of people are they employing?
Its etymology of course relates to cooking — coquere and with the Latin con (with) it implies cooking a number of ingredients together to form something new. Metaphoric usage dates from the 18th Century …
Wait a minute. It doesn’t matter anymore. I just heard on the radio Costelli saying that the email was fake, nothing can change that and we should move on.
I wonder at the journalistic ethics of interviewing Mr Grech in a psychiatric ward. Was his doctor asked if this was OK?
Yes, OK, the journalist [in an Aussie first] didn’t attach Mr Grech to a lie detector, but still ………..
Actually Ambigulous that’s a really good point. I don’t think Rudd can be cleared or Turnbull damned just on Grech’s word.
Also talking of duty of care…how was access granted?
The good ol’OZ…2 in 1 edition. Breaking new, lower, standards daily.
First, an interview from a psychiatric ward.
And second, “as authorities foiled an alleged plan for a serious terrorist attack” they managed to report it, in their early morning edition, before it even happened.
Guess the terrorists were asleep.
After all, they caught ‘em.
More of a concern having the press interview Grech in a psychiatric ward. These lizards are bad enough when you’re not depressed.
In 2005, whilst driving to the Gold Coast with a colleague who is also a very well known political commentator in the Brisbane media, I suggested that Turnbull’s performance as leader of the Australian Republican Movement and the “Yes” campaign in the referendum revealed certain failings (exemplified by his stubbornness about getting “Our Model” through and his inability to engage with the reality of high and persistent popular support for direct election) which could prove fatal in a political party leader. My colleague’s response at the time was that Turnbull could be expected (a) to learn from the referendum defeat and (b) to be coached, counselled and steeped in the requisite political skills once in a position of responsibility within the parliamentary Liberal Party. It would appear that Turnbull hasn’t “learned on the job” as expected.
Andyc #235:
I’m sorry Andy but there’s a queue.
“Guess the terrorists were asleep. After all, they caught ‘em.”
Just so happens that some of the alleged terrorists are taxi drivers. If they do a night shift they might have had the opportunity to pick up a paper, on the way home, to find out that they were about to be busted.
A quick survey of Melbourne taxi drivers shows that:
i) only 3.87% of night shift drivers read “The Australian”
ii) most of those [56.2157%]who read it either purchase it in the afternoon, after their sleep and getting the family across town to the sweatshop, or a week later as a food wrapper [29.462%, down a massive 1.6% from the previous month].
We are not going to reveal the standard error on these figures, ‘cos it’s OUR poll. But mark my words, this is looking VERY bad for Kevin Rudd.
The timing of the alleged terrorist bust by Federal and Victorian police is certainly an advantage to Malcolm. The noise around that, might just draw enough attention away from the ozecar report which has cleared Rudd and Swan but was never designed to investigate whether Mal may have deceptively guided a witness in giving evidence before a Senate committee.
Turnbull is a risk taker, to be sure, but surely not even he would run with an email he knew was a fake.
Yes.
The truth is even worse than that for Turnbull.
He ran with this mistaking a transparent fake for the real thing.
Turnbull will be gone by the end of the month.
In politics there is one thing worse than a rogue — a fool.
Yep, thats my view also. Talcum aint coming back from here.
His only hope of hanging on is that the Libs realise 2010 is a dead loss anyway, and they might as well sacrifice a goat rather than a potential 2013 winner.
“Turnbull is a risk taker, to be sure, but surely not even he would run with an email he knew was a fake.”
We will not know for sure because Fielding and The Liberals closed down a proposed Senate investigation into what lead up to Gretch giving evidence.
Something still looks very smelly and it is not a good look to have wanted to close down that means of checking it when they so enthusiastically endorsed it in their own failed fishing expedition.
Fielding really is the enemy of accountability and good governance, isnt he.
Vic ALP – hang your sorry, bumbling heads in shame. And for pity’s sake, try to learn from your error.
Bring on the 3rd wave of democratic electoral reform – lets abolish Australian hackocracy. Give unelected hacks no say in our votes!
The full story will probably emerge from Mr Grech himself. I would imagine the deal will be that if he tells all about his leaking, he will be allowed to resign quietly from the public service, and not prosecuted.
As to interviewing Grech in a psych ward – it maybe that he had counsel that it was better for him to get in first before the Auditor- General’s report. It’s not necessarilty a case of a journo lurking around and exploiting him.
New post:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/08/04/utegate-open-thread/
Another quibble with Australian Story on Monday 3rd August. It quoted briefly a journalist who said, now that Malcolm has had his ute moment, the Govt will flay him with his past record (in business, law….).
They may well do so, but they actually launched a concerted attack of this type in Parlt. several days before Mr Grech’s Senate testimony. IIRC it began the day after Peter Co$tello said he’d not contest Higgins. It seemed the ammunition had been stored up for that very day, and the attack rehearsed.
It didn’t require Godwin.
Today Messrs Rudd & Swan said they had more pressing matters of national importance to deal with, than mentioning a floundering Mr Turnbull. They could scarcely control their mirth, as they played the unruffled statesman.
Comedy gold! Yes, it’s gold, gold, GOLD for Australia!!!
It’s certainly highly amusing, Ambigulous, but it’s still a pity that we have politics-as-tennis. I’d hoped for better from this mob.
You’re right David (I, n r).
I apologise for my superficiality. It would be preferable to have sound policies, serious reform, cogent reasoning,…. but I admit I’m always on the look out for guffaws. How shallow.
Politics-as-tennis is an excellent description. Australian-politics-as-usual. No panache, no subtlety, no strategic worldview??
*************
OT footnote: a friend told me that when the North Vietnamese forces were sweeping south in the final push that led to their victory, circa April 1975; with tens of thousands of terrified civilians fleeing; rout, despair and mayhem; he was struck by his colleagues’ attitudes. “They were barracking as if it was a footy match! People were losing their lives, their homes, but Aussies were cheering on the progress of the battles!” Something deeper and more universal going on? Group loyalties and satisfaction at seeing ignominy, whatever the (human) costs??
cheerio, cobber.
I don’t think you’re being superficial, Ambigulous, it’s the fuckers in Parliament and the clowns in the Press Gallery that annoy me.