Blogging politics, culture, sociology and life from Brisvegas
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.
Continue reading ‘“Malcolm Turnbull is the Coalition’s Mark Latham”’
From today’s Crikey: Bernard Keane:
Politics has to be, perhaps along with long-distance road transport, one of the least family-friendly occupations in the country.
Even your average backbench Federal MP works long hours. They’re away in Canberra 19-20 weeks of the year, and with a long schedule of electorate events and duties when they’re back home. Ministers, shadow ministers and swing vote senators, who have to get their heads around every piece of legislation and work out whether to back it or amend it, work even harder.
This time of year, the last sittings before the winter recess, are particularly intense.
Sarah Hanson-Young is to be commended for having her child with her in the chamber yesterday. It was for a division, not a debate, and her daughter was about to leave to return to Adelaide.
Instead there has been some remarkable vitriol, particularly on radio, and from at least one of her colleagues, Barnaby Joyce, who accused her of pulling a stunt. That was one of the lowest jibes I’ve seen in this place for a while. The distraught look on Hanson-Young’s face as a staffer took her daughter outside didn’t look much like a stunt.
Apparently, the end of the world is at hand. Kevin Rudd borrowed a ute off a bloke. Or something. It’s a scandal! Apparently. Although, why the *fair slice of the Pineapple* PM isn’t receiving high praise for driving such a *dinkum* Aussie vehicle from those who were loudly denouncing him only last week, over their lattes, for his Quinceland vernacular, I don’t know.
But… at Libertarian Central, Christian Kerr’s second favourite blog (after Club Troppo), they’re all in high dudgeon:
These are extraordinarily serious allegations and, on the news I have seen, it doesn’t look good at all.
Orly?
It gets worse. Poor KRudd. Will he withstand these incomprehensible *though terribly serious* allegations? OMG!
Kevin Rudd will not survive if it is firmly established that he—or even his office—made special pleadings for car-dealer mate John Grant. It is undoubtedly his greatest crisis in politics.
New York Scores Club much?
The kiss of death though – “The Punch [has] more.”
Srsly?
Right, that’s it. Refuse supply! The GG should sack him! Hang on she’s some sort of vaguely liberal vaguely feminist upper class Queensland Barrister… Quick, appeal to Her Maj!
Don’t blame me for this nonsense. I’m just the piano player.
Well we haven’t condemned since, well, forevah, so it must be long past time again to condemn. Here’s a 37th open condemnation thread. What’s getting up your goat? Which evil political, cultural, social, musical, religious, and other phenomena need condemnation? (Or loud denunciation?)
You can condemn anything you like except The Michael Garrick Sextet. I do condemn myself for not blogging for ages!
I’d been meaning to blog on this for such a long time. I sort of put it off, because… well, for all sorts of reasons. But I’ve been reminded of Aimee Mullins’ talk by the recent (and well deserved … how good is it?) buzz about TED. On reflection, though, I think I’ll post the video without commentary. But I’d be fascinated by your comments.
Lots could be said about the politics of the CPRS backdown, and no doubt lots of people are saying lots. Good for The Greens? An issue for a double dissolution? Issue management a la KRudd? Greg Combet positioning himself as a fixer who can persuade the industry lobbyists Penny Wong couldn’t?
But what’s the real issue, here, politically?
Norman Abjorensen puts his finger on it:
The real losers, however, are the environment and the people. A less obvious, but equally important, loser in all of this is our increasingly enfeebled democracy – once again trashed by the corporate juggernaut. This just one more example of what the American political scientist, Carl Boggs, has called the corporate colonisation of society. A deal has been struck between self-interested business elites and a supposedly representative government that has effectively capitulated: the public – and the public interest – have simply been excluded from the equation.
…
We must start to ask the question: whose society is it? Theirs or ours? It was Aristotle who first promoted the idea that that people were designed by nature to live and be active in the polis. The polis, as society, existed only for the sake of “the good life.”
Where is it now?
Richard Pratt has passed away. As we saw with Kerry Packer, an enormous media effort has gone into memorialising him. Typically, billionnaires, tycoons and magnates are lauded for their contributions as philanthropists. There seems to be a slight reluctance to engage directly in the worship of wealth.
I find it quite remarkable that Pratt’s recent legal problems are described (and this is one of the more restrained descriptions) as a “blemish”. Pratt was charged with perjury. The issue will never be decided in court, but one does wonder about the contrast with the treatment of Marcus Einfeld, who was convicted of the same offence.
I am not defending Einfeld, or seeking to cast aspersions on Pratt, but I do think it’s quite remarkable that business tycoons are lionised even in the face of alleged misdeeds. With Packer, there was some sort of (failed) attempt to mobilise a sense that he was a popular hero. But with both gentlemen, I think that what we are seeing is the sort of personality type the pollies and the media idolise, not any sort of icon for the rest of us. The pilgrimages to Pratt’s deathbead at Raheen might also be contrasted with those to the obsequies of a previous owner of that house, Archbishop Daniel Mannix.
The personal attacks on Graeme Samuel also strike me as jarring. Obviously there’s an undertone of intra-Jewish community politics, but I think it’s very revealing that the political, business and media classes are so concerned to defend someone who piled up so much money and was accused of stuffing over consumers with his supposed competitors. I don’t think the so-called ideology of the free market has much purchase in Australia at all – lip service, at best, is paid to competition and consumer protection while the dirigiste classes engage in mutual celebration.
An open thread, where at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
So concludes Andrew Norton’s latest post, critiquing a study commissioned by Universities Australia from KPMG on the economics of investment in higher education funding.
Norton’s post includes the following passage:
This implicit assumption that students are homogenous pervades the report, but it is wrong. The efficient level of investment for a bright, hardworking young man (men being more likely to work full-time throughout their careers) is likely to be massively higher than for a middle-aged women of average intelligence filling in time after the kids have left home (helpful as these students are to tutors in actually doing the reading). Yet under the government investment scenario, each will have the same amount invested in their studies if they enrol in the same broad field of study.
[emphasis mine]
Recently Norton conducted his own survey on ‘Australian political identity’, and has been writing several posts on it despite this caveat:
The biggest obvious problem with the results, however, is the gender balance – or lack thereof. Only 14% of respondents overall are female.
I’ll leave my gentle readers to draw any conclusions about implicit assumptions in Norton’s work.
Update: Andrew Norton responds.
The common thread running through the political attacks the Liberals have been making lately on the Rudd government is projection. Just because the Howard government covered up what happened on a boat full of asylum seekers, the Rudd government must have. Just because the Howard government distorted and filtered official advice, Kevin Rudd must be doing so when he concedes that we will go into recession.
It’s as if they can only conceive of one style of government – theirs, and they think they have some great insight into the dirty tricks regimes play, and they can cunningly expose them if only they yell loud enough. Anyone else noticed Malcolm Turnbull literally appears to have ratcheted up the volume in his tv appearances?
It’s pure projection.
And there’s another factor at work here.
They’re obsessed by the ‘Insider’ narrative that Rudd really isn’t all that nice a fellow. Any time some evidence of that comes along – like the story about the flight attendant – they feel vindicated.
Liberals need to learn that not every government is completely self-serving and disdainful of process. Bob Debus demonstrated very carefully on Lateline last night that due process was being followed. They need to learn that just as John Howard’s public persona was different from his private one, so is Rudd’s, but that’s not the game they need to play. It’s as if they’ve completely assimilated themselves to the ‘gotcha’ style of press gallery reporting and commentary. But, most of all, they need to get out of a mindspace of denial and projection and engage with the Australian community not vent their rage at being out of office. And turn down the volume. Please!
Is his leadership terminal?
It seems the combination of raving about a cover up with regard to the tragedy of the asylum seekers (in a bizarre echo of the Howard ‘children overboard’ lies – perhaps the assumption is that governments always muddy the waters on these questions) and a return to Howardesque tub thumping position on ‘border protection’ (advocating a policy which was inhumane *and* ineffective) hasn’t done Malcolm Turnbull any favours, if Newspoll is to be believed.
I think we can reasonably infer that there are two contradictory positions about the Liberal leadership:
(a) The contemporary Liberal party can only be led from a Howardian ideological/political position;
(b) Howard era politics is done, finished, kaput.
Elsewhere: The Poll Bludger, Possum.
There almost seems to be a relationship between the economic bad news and Malcolm Turnbull’s poll numbers – he’s now down to 18% as PPM in Newspoll, as job numbers also tumble. Anyone might think that constant negativism on everything might have a negative effect on the negators!
Headline shamelessly borrowed from Tony Jones.
Update: More at The Poll Bludger.
Update: [by Mark] Possum:
The big news of the day comes not from Turnbull’s record poor result in the beauty contest of Preferred PM, but from his continuing slide into unelectability via his satisfaction differentials. Approximately 100, 000 people per week are changing from being satisfied to being dissatisfied with Malcolm Turnbull’s performance – normally the trend is your friend in polling, but trends like these are friends Malcolm could well do without.
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. Continue reading ‘Turnbull’s turn’
The telly news led with rhetoric suggesting the February retail figures showed that spending “dried up” after the December stimulus, and the opposition chimed in with their claim that “the money was saved” (which apparently is terrible, even though it frees up more money for spending…) But… Peter Martin links to analysis which contradicts the narrative of the day:
The ABS stopped calculating the trend (the dark line) in November because “it is not possible to determine the trend in retail turnover through the period affected by the Federal Government Economic Security Strategy Package and other influences associated with global economic conditions”.
But it is absolutely clear where retail was going. The December stimulus payments broke the trend and continue to do so.
Even with the 2 per cent fall in seasonally adjusted spending in February we are still spending far more in the shops than we would have without the payments.
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