I’m not sure if the anniversary has been celebrated, but it’s just over six months since Malcolm Turnbull became Leader of the Opposition. At the time, I suggested that he needed to junk the obsession with the Howard legacy, and lead from the centre. I also said that there was a real chance that he’d end up as Brendan Nelson but without the stunts and the Emo Man persona. It was interesting to see this open letter from Alister Drysdale, a former Fraser advisor, published in Business Spectator on Friday:
You came into politics as a rare beast – successful in business, charismatic, intelligent, representing a vibrant small “l” electorate in Sydney, a man not frightened to take on a case or a cause, a serious contributor to the climate change debate and a tough nut. Not a bad resume for an aspiring Prime Minister.
Yet, within just a few months you are in danger of throwing that reputation to the dogs and joining the queue of failed opposition leaders.
At the G20 this week Obama said he gave only one piece of political advice to Gordon Brown, facing an election – “Gordon, good policy is good politics”. He said results may not be immediate, but would prevail.
Not bad advice, Malcolm. Why don’t you forget that Peter Costello sits behind you – and just do what your instinct and brain tells you?
I think it’s too late now for Turnbull to take that advice. The irony of the Liberals’ leader as saviour fetish is that it prevents a leader from actually leading from opposition, because there’s always another waiting in the wings. Turnbull’s just taking his turn as the sacrificial lamb, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t last the term. Perhaps that’s why he and Hockey are talking about blocking supply. An early election might be his only hope of survival.
What Turnbull needed to do was to do a Tony Blair or a David Cameron – take on the recidivists in his own party, strike out in a new direction, and dare the dissidents to do their worst. His failure to do this will most likely see him become a footnote in Liberal history.
Its an empty threat, if it is one, and in any case the randomly generated FF senator from VIC hasn’t got the bottle to block supply.
Otherwise I quite agree – Turnbull has terminally muffed this. Its over for him – before it even started. He should have spent the first term doing a Rudd – only play where he can win – and staring down the right wing dead wood of the now passe Howard era. They got nothing! Who are they gonna run – Costello’s too spineless, Abbots too mad, and Hockey’s too Workchoices.
He HAS become Nelson – a ludicrous puppet trying to dancing to both moderate and conservative tendencies in the party – and going nowhere as a result.
Plus there’s his own special political idiocy – in treating every issue as a lawyers brief and objecting on principle, just cos he can. Its like he’s the court-appointed solicitor to every passing vagrant at a magistrates. He only just met the bastard, and already the crown prosecution’s case in FLAWED YOUR HONOUR! He’s Rumpole of the daily news. He doesn’t seem to be able to shut up. He’s still being a lawyer – this is what they do. cant let an oposing case be put without objection- that is practically negligent for a lawyer. Whereas for a politician, its just common sense..
We are confronted with a similar political reality in Canada. It would appear that changing the direction of a political party in our respective parliamentary systems is no easy feat. Although progress may not be as fast as some of us would like, change is underway. As mentioned by Gordon Brown, there appears to be a new world order emerging. By regulating financial markets and allocating aid, world leaders at the G20 summit in London layed the foundation for recovery and a new political and economic system. Despite the suffering that it augers, the global economic crisis is driving this greater international cooperation and this is crucial to the development of a sustainable global economy. I invite you to share your thoughts
http://thegreenmarket.blogspot.com/2009/04/g20-lays-foundation-for-better-world.html
That threat to block the stimulus package is meaningless, there’s no way the Greens and the other minors would support it, especially if it’s framed as ‘blocking supply’ (though I don’t think an attempt to stop one handout is quite the same as holding up all money bills in the senate, I could be wrong).
Poor Turnbull is half-a-dozen years too early in that job.
Yes, ‘Poor Turnbull is half-a-dozen years too early in that job’, but he put himself there by his own ambition and vanity – so maybe he isn’t that smart after all. Or maybe he’s planning to do a Howard?
Without wanting to fall into the trap of conflating the political policy of one’s own preference and the political policy one thinks an Opposition leader “must” take on (against their own Party, naturally) in order to succeed—Turnbull must embrace a radically pro-union industrial relations policy and a command-economy carbon tax so high it makes the noses of Rio Tinto shareholders, in order to stick it to Labor from the Left.
It’s the only way.
The noses of Rio Tinto shareholders bleed, that is. I encourage Turnbull, if he wants to succeed, to read his policy more carefully than I do my own comments.
It’s the only way.
Don’t the conservatives ever learn from history?
First-term governments are almost never thrown out; if they win narrowly but then demonstrate themselves competent, they’ll often increase their majority (see various Labor state governments through the 1990s and 2000s). Rudd is not the messiah, but he leads a generally competent government. Therefore, they are doomed to lose the next election, and may well lose additional seats, no matter what their leader does.
Generally, changes of governments happen when, above all other factors, voters get tired of the incumbents, often through over-reach, something largely out of the Opposition’s control.
So, it seems to me that the opposition needs to figure out what things from the Howard era they’re going to have to discard – WorkChoices and their opposition to carbon emission restriction are the obvious ones – and then figure out what about the Rudd government is going to annoy people over time and start working on those issues. They’ve made essentially zero progress on both so far.
Paul Keating compared Turdball to a firecracker – a “bit of fizz but then nothing”.
Prescient, as ever, was Keating.
Turnbull might have been destined for greater things had he joined the Labor party, as apparently was possible at one stage. Instead, this moderate centrist found himself trying to turn around the most conservative mainstream party in living memory. I doubt he ever had a hope of dragging them to the centre. They’re destined to fall over the edge of right-wing irrelevance in a new world order where right-wing economics is in heavy disrepute.
A shame for him, but a just destiny for the ILliberal Party.
Don’t the conservatives ever learn from history?
Isn’t that the definition of “conservative”?
I would have agreed with all of you until late last week. However the outing of Rudd as a petty angry man who will verbally assualt a young woman until she cries (not only a young woman but a digger at that) whether or not it happened that way or at all has pretty much killed Rudd dead in the water.
Now to diable any political debate all you need to say is “why are you supporting a man like that. Don’t you respect women?”
Half of Australian voters Are women. And someone in the Coalition might have just found a way to get each and every female vote.
Blocking supply? I don’t know if Fielding has the bottle to do this, but he might be stupid enough. Perhaps the possibility of going out in a blaze of glory?
On a more serious level, I don’t think the electorate, whatever their politics, wants to go through anything resembling a 1975 constitutional crisis, especially when they’re in the throes of the worst world economic crisis since the Great Depression.Leaving aside Rudd’s immense popularity and his political savvy (which I suspect exceeds even that of Howard’s) which would undoubtedly guarantee a Labor win with a more workable Senate, this threat by Turnbull and Hockey is just sheer political idiocy. If it needs proving, and I don’t think it does, all it would do is convince the punters the Libs are stupid, irresponsible and utterly unfit to govern. They’ll end up even more behind the eight ball than they already are. Already Swannie is starting to paint them as a bunch of lunatics (on this morning’s ever boring ABC2 Morning Breakfast Programme, which is so bad I’m tempted to go back to Koshie), And I’d bet London to a brick the majority of Australians would agree with Swan.
Besides, who have the Libs got to take over, seriously, once Malcolm’s gone? Recent performances by Hockey have convinced me he’s not the man. And Costello wouldn’t want to before the next election. Not that I think he’d be any improvement.
I suppose all one can say about Turnbull is that he’s become a sad waste of a great talent.
We are confronted with a similar political reality in Canada.
No, you’re not. You were when the Conservatives got slaughtered in 1993. It took them 13 years to recover, and then only via a merger with the Reform party. But the Conservatives are now in power as a minority government.
To be confronted with a “similar political reality”, either you have an utterly hopeless opposition leader (which doesn’t sound like Michael Ignatieff), or Harper crashes and burns and takes his party with him. Guess which I prefer.
@10 – I’ve always been of the view that Rudd’s a nasty piece of work personally, but you should check out the Media Monitors review of talkback comments on this. Most people identified with Rudd and wrote the story into a narrative of “reaction to bad service”. It seems at the moment he can do no wrong in the mind of most of the public.
I prefer to think of them as “behind the magic 8 ball”… we’d probably do better if their answers were random. At least that way they’d be right occasionally.
I am inclined to agree with Robert – barring a major stuff-up by Rudd the ALP will be our next government too.
Seriously, being rude to staff is not that issue – the idea that any party would get a supermajority of women voters is just absurd, let alone for one petty incident. Literally petty. If even politicians like Steve “the man is the head of the household” Fielding can get votes from women Rudd would have to swing a long way to the extremes to lose the vote of every woman.
@ 10, so he made a woman cry. Workchoices meant many women lost their ability to negotiate their work lives. Guess which one affected more women. So he’s not a gentle teddybear, so what. If you think that’s all it takes to get women to vote for the opposition, then you are seriously underestimating women.
Actually I think that the attempts to smear Fitzgibbon and Rudd last week reflect poorly on Turnbull. There was our hero, K Rudd, doing really important work in New York and London and a spoil campaign was mounted by the ADF, Liberals and News Corp. Officers of the Defence Department deserve to lose their jobs for breaching the Official Secrets Act etc etc.
I suspect that I would find Turnbull more personable than Rudd who has a shadowy past as administrative head of Qld’s Labor govt. I suspect Qld views Rudd in the same light as Vic views Kennett
The government will change when unemployment brings hardship to many Australians.
Yes he was not a likable person, but he was someone you could respect. Work ethic and all that. As for:
Rudd learnt from Beattie (as opposed to Goss) that you apologise early regardless of what you honestly believe. No high horses.
Yes Rudd let the mask slip a little to reveal his ugly face for a moment, but I don’t think it’ll cost him too much – Bob Hawke got away with worse.
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I do think, though, there has to be a chance of this government being a one-term one. The recession hasn’t hit Oz in full yet, and bad times make people very ready to find fault with incumbents. And I think Labor have got away with quite a few unforced errors to date only because the opposition is so busy fighting the culture wars that they’ve taken their eye off the ball. The Howardistas are the one big thing really going for Labor at the moment and you can’t count on that to last.
Swan was painting the brouhaha about Rudd and his workplace bullying as yet another piece of Liberal Party exaggeration on ABC2 this morning. I abhor Rudd’s behaviour to this young worker (who apparently wasn’t the one responsible for the mistake) but with that theme of the Libs being just plain crazy and full of non-constructive criticism being pushed by the ALP, the bullying incident will hardly be a blip on the radar.And it will be pushed, you can bet on it.
And for that Turnbull and Hockey bear the main responsibility in public, at any rate.
Besides, the GFC has revealed capitalism in all its brutality and any government that isn’t seen to undertake the impossible task of attempting to civilise it will suffer at the polls and get one hell of reaction on the street. And we all know Malcolm and his gaggle of RWDBs aren’t even going to try to rein in capitalism.
DD: Look at the historical record. Even really bad governments tend to last a term longer than they probably should in Australia.
Good point about John Howard and his workchoices and what it would have done to Australian women.
But it wasn’t done personally too their face.
It’s like the difference between common crime and white collar crime. I’d argue that some of those cowboy bankers have damaged irrepairibly more lives than one mugger with a gun. Guess which one would get a higher jail sentence?
This will be pushed and pushed and pushed. And it will work. Rudd’s approval might drop to as low as 65% approval over this allowing the Australian to write a new narrative about shifts in the polls.
If Costello has been coaching Hockey in his role, it wouldn’t surprise me that Costello has put Hockey up to blocking the budget. If Hockey and Turnbull are so foolish as to attempt to do so, then this could bring both of them down, and guess who steps in to save the day. Brilliant plan!
I don’t know Silkworm. I can see an early election with the Libs running a campaign of “Violence Against Women:Australia Says No” quite effectivly.
Yeah great idea tssk. Please suggest it to your Liberal mates.
However, I don’t think that even they would be stupid enough to go for that, although you never know.
If I could pick a leader for the Liberals, or at least a shadow Treasurer, it would be Lindsay Tanner. He’s been doing more to stick up for small-government liberalism and economic rationalism than anyone lately.
Tssk don’t you think you are going a bit overboard? He yelled, she cried. Then he apologised on national television. Lots of women have been yelled at, and cried about it. We get over it. How about you get over it now. It’s not going to be a deal breaker. Women get yelled at everyday. It’s not the worst thing that could happen.
Not wanting to be picky, but blocking Budget measures is not really the same as blocking supply. There is no way in the world the Libs would try to block supply at the moment and even less chance they get any cross-bench support. But there is certainly a real shance of some or all of the Libs and cross-bench Senators opposing some Budget measures, or refusing to support it without amendments.
The two are very different things. Blocking supply (a la 1975) would stop the government being able to function. Opposing Budget measures would only do just that – stop a particular Budget measure going through. No one would ever think about blocking an entire Budget, which is technically made up of a range of different Bills which tend to brough on for debate and consideration at different times.
For a term that’s used so often, “Supply” is not very well defined. There used to actually be Bills put forward called Supply Bills, but that rarely happens these days. However, general (and logical) usage would apply the term to all Appropriation Bills (which are always part of a Budget, but far from the biggest part and very rarely the contentious part).
In effect, “Supply” is the Bills which are required for the ordinary annual services of government to function – that is, appropriate the money to pay public servants. They are not the Bills which are usually the contentious ones in a Budget – the ones which may cut or increase or make changes to various welfare payments, or cut, increase or modify taxes.
If yu really want to stretch things, you could also apply the term to Bills which seek to generate more tax revenue, but I think even that is overdoing it. (e.g. whatever one may have thought about the GST Bills, they were not really supply Bills, in the sense that the government didn’t need the revenue to keep functioning).
This may all sound pointlessly pedantic, but when people talk about blocking supply, it immediately suggests some 1975 style Constitutional stand-off. There is simply zero chance of that happening at the moment, and it is not what the Libs are talking about when they speculate about opposing or seeking to block Budget measures or any further stimulus package which may be contained within it.
For anyone interested, see Chapter 13, page 276 of Odger’s Australian Senate Practice for more on this definitional stuff.
Down and Out
Michael Ignatieff? He’s written well-regarded books and articles!! Good work, Canadian Liberals.
I dont think anyone outside the Libs gives a crap about the plane incident 3 months ago – in fact, the sheer fact that Turnbull is resorting to it shows how desperate he is. If there’s was footage it might be different. The stripper incident played much the same. There’s an element of exasperation in Turnbulls performances of late. He knows he hasnt made a dint, and he’s not used to failure.
On the upside the incident did lead to the most flustered Pier’s article ever seen. As to the Liberal mates jibe…my real life played out like a recent Boston Legal episode. Most of my Liberal mates admitted voting Rudd this time around. Not that they’d ever admit it in polite company
Apropos Rudd’s hostie incident, I’m reminded of a similar event in my own life.
About 20 years ago, the Army was moving me from Adelaide to Canberra (rather against my will, but that’s what you sign up for, after all), The appointed day for our removal was rapidly approaching, and I had no idea when it would actually occur and which moving company would be doing it. I rang the Removals section, and was slightly abrasive with the young (female) Private who answered the phone. (Basically, I was getting pretty tense about the lack of information I’d been given so far.) Anyway, after I hung up, she burst into tears (WTF?) and complained to her boss, who rang me and heavied me a bit. I apologised (and I did feel slightly guilty about making the girl cry). But. People need to get a grip. Rudd needn’t necessarily have made an arsehole of himself to have got that response.
I think the problem may actually have its roots in the way the Armed Forces treat people in general. In the past at least (and I’m sure it still happens) when someone fucks up, they get their face ripped off (metaphorically). This can be a pretty shattering experience, and any criticism (however mild) may be perceived as a prelude to another face-rip, hence the tears.
wpd @ 17 – spot on on both counts.
DD upthread a ways:
“Bob Hawke got away with worse [than yelling at a stewardess]”
Well yeah, but this was Hawkie! You could catch him shagging your mum and still count him in when it’s your round. Dunno how much Rudd can really take away from the comparison.
“Turnbull must embrace a radically pro-union industrial relations policy and a command-economy carbon tax so high it makes the noses of Rio Tinto shareholders, in order to stick it to Labor from the Left.”
This tack is what Cameron’s done in the UK – as well as linking in climate change and energy with national security.
Rudd is getting high approval ratings because people perceive him as doing everything he can to save their bacon in these days of GFC. They don’t need to like him or approve of him yelling at people.
Rudd isn’t so much saving our bacon but accepting it has gone and giving us his bacon, hence the lack of red meat in his diet. Incidentally, related to this clip from way back, if Costello doesn’t take the leadership when Malcolm falls over it would make it the 5th clear opportunity he would have had to take the leadership of the opposition. Love him or hate him, Keating had Costello nailed from day one.
’tis a pity. I once had high hopes for Turnbull.
As for the hostie thing, yes it’s poor form to lose it with incompetent staff, but then, well, heck, if the RAAF can’t get the PM’s meal order right, what hope is there for us when North Korea decides to nuke Darwin??
As someone who has had the misfortune to travel with family that had medically-necessary dietary restrictions which travel staff blithely ignored, I can tell you that it is a very trying situation.
Walk a mile in these sandals: imagine if you will, that you are a devout Hindu, trapped on board a trans-Pacific flight, and all they have to offer you is a juicy steak sandwich. How much bad karma would you be willing to incur for a nice dahl bhat under those circumstances?
Rudd’s a nasty piece of work personally,
From 17 – “Yes he was not a likable person, but he was someone you could respect. Work ethic and all that. As for:
Most people identified with Rudd
Rudd learnt from Beattie (as opposed to Goss) that you apologise early regardless of what you honestly believe. No high horses.”
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Or “@10 – I’ve always been of the view that Rudd’s a nasty piece of work personally, …”
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Strange twist for a Turnbull thread to take but OK…..is this a new horizon for the long, lost quality of ‘character’ to start making a comeback ?
Apparently Talcum’s got a famously shitty temper on him – so I cant see this angle traveling far.
As for ‘only telling the truth when he’s found out’ – well that’s a considerable improvement on the Howard era. They couldn’t even fess up when completely busted.
Rolled gold zero impact issue – see next poll for proof. More likely to have negative blowback effects on the ineffectual Talcum.
kim says:
I agree with Kim that Turnbull’s national-historic fuction is to bring the L/NP around the common sense of the mainstream electorate on major substantive issues. Although it wont do his Turnbull’s own political career much good. I have predicted that Turnbull will lose the 2010 election and Costello will probably take over as leader in 2011.
But the last thing Turnbull should be doing at the moment is taking political advice from clapped-out Fraserites. MF’s legacy was toxic for the LP, both politically and in policy. That boat sailed long ago, and sank with the DEMs.
And puh-leese, spare us the schtick about “vibrant, small “l” liberal electorates”. As if Vaucluse was a leading indicator of mainstream community sentiment. (Incidentally, does Kim think Vauclusians have had a change of heart on the Work Choices Class Struggle?)
My theory of Major Party Great Convergence predicts that the ideologically-based policy differences bw the two parties will continue to shrink under “conservative” post-modern conditions. Grandiosely summarised (07OCT04:
Over the past couple of years, based on this general theory, I have predicted that the L/NP will be under irresistible pressure to shift back to the mainstream electorates Centre on two key issues: Work Choices (-06DEC07) and Climate Change (05JUL08).
Turnbull has made a some progress in both directions. The L/NP has more or less dropped its overt support for Work Choices. And it is glacially shifting towards some sort of grudging support for a watered down and delayed ETS. Although it is constantly in danger of back-sliding.
If the L/NP go into the 2010 election with a reconstructed Work Choices and without any kind of Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme then my Great Convergence theory will be badly damaged, if not mortally wounded [sob]. But I cant see this policy regression happending.
The L/NP face a major structural vote deficit due to the antipathy of Baby Boomer to Right-wing political formations. They are doomed if they drift away to the looney Right-wing fringe on these issues. (Boomers are happy to vote for Right-wing policies now and again, so long as they are dressed up in a Left-wing political masquerade.)
This unsatisfactory political compromise is probably what will pass for the Centre in AUS politics, for the time being. Until another Antarctic ice-shelf breaks off, float up to the Pacific and swamps Sydney Harbour waterfront properties.
Being Leader of the Opposition against a likely long haul Labour government doesn’t lend itself to furthering Malcolm’s career. Nit picking and opposing hardly builds a statesmanlike profile, which he had the glimmerings of as Environment Minister under Howard. He’s not really a political animal, is he? Timing was all wrong in taking up Nelson’s challenge and he looks so petty opposing Rudd at every opportunity.
Does anyone know exactly what happened on that plane? It can’t have been that bad or someone would have offered up the lurid details. If this were part of a pattern of behaviour then all the fracas might be justified, but it’s the Scores thing all over again. “Gotcha!” yells the Opposition when Rudd puts one public foot wrong. Then too the voters have a pretty good instinct for character. Rudd may not be exciting, but he certainly hasn’t shown himself to be “a nasty piece of work”. I presume that Murph the Surf means that “personally” to suggest that it’s only his opinion?
Anyway, isn’t it the job of cabin crew to make life less stressful for passengers in general, to say nothing for a PM who surely is entitled to worry about loftier things than the feelings of a hostie who’s brought the wrong order to a hungry and tired passenger, particularly one pre-occupied with affairs of state.
Making mountains out of molehills like this isn’t a good look for the once mighty Malcolm.
Lefty E predicted “Rolled gold zero impact issue – see next poll for proof. More likely to have negative blowback effects on the ineffectual Talcum.”
Well there you have it, Lefty E. Damn fine prediction. Political experience and good judgement trumps commentariat excitability [again].
So Viscount Turnbull wins a famous victory and achieves his acclaimed “Hot Wok Bounce” in the polls, and like a Dead Cat Bounce, it’s a negative bounce.
“She sighed as she anticipated the imposing figure of the new PM, striding up the steps in the warm, fragrant, humid Port Moresby evening. She looked forward to brushing his locks ever so lightly as she adjusted his head rest.
Then she would smile and suggest a soothing iced lemon juice. She would squeeze it herself, expertly, soothingly.
Then she would sweetly and winningly ask for his dinner order, … and
*KAPOW!!!* dreams shattered, bitter tears”
-’Morseby Moonbeams’ – A Tale of High Endeavours
tbgo = greenslime.
When we left the runway it was raining across the tarmac, in sheets of cold water as thick as Hansard, only without hope of interjection or adjournment. Alister Jordan wanted to come on the flight, but I’d let him down with an excuse and a promise, and he was still nipped. I was worried about that stimulus money—damn worried. It was just too much money to be split so many ways.
When she walked down from the back of the aircraft, it was like the sun coming out above the cloud cover. She was bright, dangerous, with silver hair like a wig, and the sight of the trolley of food she advanced made a warm hole in my stomach. Quickly, I finished the pre-dinner gimlet I’d enjoyed.
“Mister Prime Minister, I’m sorry, there’s no vegetarian option, but we have a choice of beef wellington or massaman curry”.
“God damn you to hell, you little minx”, I said, as I saw the tears start in the corners of her cruel eyes.
But all that I could worry about was my meeting with COAG.
“She brushed away the tears as the captain opened his enormous manilla folder, revealing a workmanlike clipboard. He took the elegant pen from the pocket on his manly chest and began to write in his handsome, firm writing.
“Sharelle, is it?” he enquired sympathetically as he glanced into her eyes. His voice was strong yet calm, gentle yet firm. She realised at once here was an ally. Here was a real man, not a blustering taskmaster puffed up by a well-planned election.
Here was a man who’d earned his wings, who routinely soared above the mundane world below, who’d ministered to Ministers. Now it was his turn to minister to her, Sharelle. She sighed. She glowed. Together they would pen A Report To Remember.
“Well, I said……” ”
– ‘Moresby Moonbeams’ A Tale of Thai Endearments
I had a hunger like a locomotive descending a long hill. The longer I left it, the more energy it had, and I knew that eventually I’d have to apply the brakes. A smoked salmon sandwich would have done, at this point, but then so would have a piece of salted foam. I could have eaten bitumen if it came with a XXXX.
The stewardess came back, then, with dry eyes. We looked at each other and reaching up, she produced from the overhead locker a neat little Walther. A woman’s gun, a barrel short as a kitten’s tail, it’d throw lead just hard enough to stick in a man’s guts without busting through fuselage.
With the business end of her little gat pointed at my navel I knew I didn’t have any choices. If it was money she wanted, I’d have to weather my way the financial shitstorm. She spoke.
“Hon, reach for the sky, or I’ll ease the squeeze”.
She was obviously sent by Fingers Latham, Green Valley’s hardest gangster, kingpin of the stay-at-home dad racket.
“Hon”
I see what you did there.
Doghouse – Your manners are pretty bad. You should grieve over them long winter evenings. Do you mind if I drink my lunch out of a bottle?
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You oughta wean me I’m old enough.
tssk @10 & 21, as a female voter, I’m deeply suspicious that it’s taken 3 months to trot out the Mystery of The Crying Aircraftwoman. Personally, I think there’s much less to this than meets the eye; could this be another Shreddergate?
This mcould be another shredderegate. What impresses me about Rudd one week on is that we haven’t seen the woman trotted out in front of the media to explain. Unlike say in the US where some guy embarresses a public figure by getting shot in the face by said figure and then coming out to apologise for being shot in the face.
There are some things Rudd does that go unnoticed sometimes. For instance, during the washup of the bushfires earlier this year when Centrelink were sticking to their old harsh ruleset Rudd had a prime opportunity to lay into the Coalition for creating such a harsh regieme. Instead he apologised saying it wasn’t good enough and acted quickly to fixing the problem rather than making political capital from it. In fact by doing so he opens the way for a future Coalition government the change to kick the boot in. However, for the people affected immediatly a solution was found rather than being treated like some sort of concern troll football.
Am I cyclical? Oh no sorry, wrong post. Im cynical probably. In another incarnation, having been exposed to some fed and state pollies over a period of five years, it always appeared to me that they were quite capable of being arses towards underlings on regular occasions. Not all, but a lot. I always thought that this was due not only to the pressures of a political life, not only due to working hard and sitting into the early morning hours, but also because of the rarified air these pollies and their staffers breathe. And the sense of entitlement that generated. I quite liked it when the bogong moths invaded the House. It was great metaphor. It showed that the impregnable fortress that was Fed Parliament, with its sealed windows, and muted scapes at a remove from the world, was after all, at the mercy of the forces of nature that the lesser mortals outside the house endured. I saw quite a few pollies kamikazied by the moths and there was nothing to be done about it. You couldn’t, after all, shout at moths. Politicians in power are surrounded by people who are employed to do anything for them at whim. They have food delivered to their doors, they have comcars door to door, they have the library find anything they need when they need, it really goes on and on. It becomes quite easy to get a little bit Britney in such heady surrounds IMO. It encourages one to exempt oneself from the necessary courtesies required to negotiate with people through the day. This is because, in the hushed surrounds of Parliament, the nameless and faceless aides will generally absorb the anger of pollies when things go wrong. With great power comes great tantrums and a lessening of the rules we generally try to abide by.
The only difference with Rudd is his shiny happy persona held for so long in the public mind. Given he began his prime ministerial journey domestically with the word Sorry, the nochalance of his apology in this intance is a dissonant chord in his public utterances. It suggests he finds humility a little difficult on a personal level. None of this is to take away from other things he has done, it is just to say that when personality and political power meet, the results for those who serve those that we chose to serve, can be less than pleasant.
Gross Generalisation: Most politicians aren’t so nice. How can you endure the vissitudes a preselection and still be nice. Just not possible. The go in human and come out something else, from observation. By the time you get to parliament, nice is a biscuit you have with your tea.
I’ve just released Jack Strocchi’s priceless prose, which now appears @ 40.
It’s the links, Jack, the links
All I can say is that if being yelled at makes our military cry, god help us if we ever get invaded…
It was the Air Force, Rockstar, not the military. There’s a difference.
Robert@7, depends on what you mean by ‘history’.
Oppositions have a role in bringing down governments. Malcolm Fraser had another term in him and could have won in 1983 if Labor hadn’t stepped up and taken power off him. I disagree with the notion that the Conservatives can have government back only once Labor becomes exhausted (like Keating 1995) or a rabble (WA last year, NSW today) – real power must be taken, etc.
Turnbull has no close network of associates who could strengthen his strengths and modify his weaknesses. Howard had them – Graham Morris et al. Keating had the NSW Right. Hawke had them imposed upon him by the ALP, including a number of Nifty Wran’s cabal from NSW. Fraser had Alister Drysdale and Petro Georgiou.
Lefty E (no relation) – yes, Opposition Leaders have to drag their parties kicking and screaming toward the reality of what it means to govern this country. The Coalition today is where Kim Beazley was for his entire time as Opposition Leader – itching to get back behind the desk and do some governing, and regarding the verdict of the people as an inconvenience (if not an impertinence). You can screw your party, but there’s a limit to the extent that you can do that before that party turns on you, falls apart, or both. You’re asking Turnbull to do to the Liberal Party what Latham did to Labor, and saying to the Liberal leader “would you mind awfully self-destructing? There’s a good chap” is a big ask.
Later this year the Liberal Party will preselect candidates who are mystified by, and a little angry at, the fact that Howard lost to Rudd, but who bring few clear answers but their own sweet selves as to how to reverse that. The next Liberal Prime Minister will come to office over the dead body of Nick Minchin.
I still reckon that John Howard achieved more from Opposition, in backing the economic reforms of the ’80s, than Peter Costello did in government. Turnbull would do well to bear this in mind.