Category Archives: Politics – Australian

I would never vote for a Coalition led by Malcolm Turnbull

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Andrew Bolt says that Malcolm Turnbull is about to have his final go at taking over the leadership of the Liberal Party by Tuesday, so that it is now or never to make our views known (see here and here).

When I used to work in Canberra, our offices backed onto the Liberal Party headquarters, and I was asked one time, even before Malcolm entered Parliament, what I thought about him. My answer was that if I was in the constituency that would decide the fate of the next election, and my vote was the one that would put him in or out, that I would hesitate about which way to go. That was then. Today I would have no doubt. The reasons.

Peter Wright For me, national security is the ultimate issue in any election. There are always international issues that matter, and they weigh heavy with me. All but forgotten today, The Spycatcher Trial was one of those moments I do not forget. Wright was an MI5 agent who set out to write a tell-all/reveal-all of the English intelligence service. Margaret Thatcher sought to prevent the publication of his book, and the final determination was in a court in Tasmania, in which Malcolm Turnbull sought to defend Wright and ultimately was successful in allowing the book to be published worldwide because it could be published in Australia. I was told then that everyone deserves the best defence and etc etc, but if Malcolm has ever said that he defended Wright even though he was treasonous scum, I haven’t heard it. I would never trust Turnbull on any national security issue, and there is nothing more important at the present time.

He’s a Warmist Anyone soft-headed enough to take in the Global Warming scam without at least some doubts is not a possessor of the shrewd, sensible, incisive mind I am looking for in a leader. He lost the leadership on this one issue at the time because there are people like me who would never line up behind anyone who believes this stuff needs trillion dollar government solutions to what is looking every day less of a problem.

He’s a Keynesian I once had a conversation with Malcolm over economic issues and mentioned something that I think of instinctively as an issue, the kind of thing Peter Costello put at the centre of his own management of the economy. His response was to walk off. Having watched and listened to him over the years, he has no sense of how an economy works. Given that when he led the Libs he was all set to follow Labor’s lead on the stimulus, and declared that the Coalition would have done much the same, in many ways he owns the problems we have right now.

Useless as a Minister He may be popular with the ABC and others like it, but this is only because he has never done anything of any use that would upset them. If he doesn’t upset the ABC, what could he possibly stand for? What issue has he carried forward as part of the government that has done an ounce of good? If the NBN is his crowning achievement, he has done nothing other than implement Kevin Rudd’s back-of-the-envelope idiocy that will cost us billions and return millions.

He Cannot be Trusted To draw a distinction between himself and the Prime Minister over the Human Rights Commission Report on children in detention not only shows the worst imaginable political judgement, but has him line up with the Government’s enemies. I am a million miles from Canberra right now, but since all and sundry report Turnbull’s treachery, who am I to doubt it. This is a government that needs to survive and win that next election. Abbott is learning how to be a PM on the job, and is actually getting the hang of it. Shame about the wasted first year, but that is now the past.

There is clearly a succession plan in place at the top of the Liberal Party. What may have begun as the second eleven is now starting to function as a very good government. And the PM does not like to lose, and I don’t think he will.

It’s Abbott or the abyss

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There is exactly one person in the whole of the Parliament at the present time who has the potential to steer Australia through these treacherous times and that is the current Prime Minister. The two identikit soft left alternatives – with Shorten strangely preferable to Turnbull – would transform Australia in ways similar to the damage Obama has done to the United States. They are both people with a vastly misplaced confidence in their own abilities. It is Abbott or the abyss.

I read the biography at the end of the article, and when it said that the writer was an academic, my assumption was that he was set to sell out the country in a way not much different than three-quarters of our media. Instead, it is an article to read: It’s time to take serious steps in the fight against terror. Oh so right he is, and who would you trust more than the PM with our national defence at a time like this.

It’s time to take serious steps to counter the radical ideology that is driving much of this carnage. This will take decades and there will be setbacks but it is the only truly strategic approach we have. Everything else is ­reactive.

In Australia it’s time to get serious about local counter radicalisation and de-radicalisation programs. Our young are being ­assailed on a daily basis by home- based terrorist proponents and foreign propaganda that is flooding uncontrolled into the country. It has to be stopped.

We censor movies and video games, why not this rubbish. Young Australians are now more likely to be recruited to the terrorist cause. The internet has brought them into the orbit of the radicals.

Countering the ideology of hatred has to be led by Muslims. Well done to the Muslim community leaders in Australia who are showing real leadership. They need our support.

The Prime Minister is right in involving the public in national security matters at home. It has an impact on all of us and if some of our individual rights and liberties are to be restrained then we need to know why. This is likely to be a long and constantly changing fight so let’s hope we see a serious strategic ­assessment on national security presented to parliament at least every six months.

Seriously, would you put Shorten or Turnbull or anyone else at the top at a time like this? The Prime Minister would be the first to acknowledge he is not a perfect man. But he is serious about recognising these dangers and dealing with them head-on. Who else talks like this, and means every word?

WE have seen the beheadings, the mass executions, the crucifixions and the sexual slavery in the name of religion. There is no grievance here that can be addressed. There’s no cause here that can be satisfied. It’s the ­demand to submit or die.

Anyone who doesn’t know that should not sit in the Parliament, never mind aspire to the highest office in the land.

And just what were those lessons, Tim?

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Let start with a later part of the story which is headed, Tim Wilson opens up over Gillian Triggs report:

Tony Abbott launched a broadside, saying the report was a “stitch up” and a “blatantly partisan politicised exercise” and the HRC “ought to be ashamed of itself” because it did not hold an inquiry when Labor was in power and thousands of people were drowning at sea and there were almost 2000 children in detention.

Of course, the inquiry has the most certain look of a partizan attack on the government, which the HRC would almost certainly never have conducted had Labor still been in government. Here, however, is the way the story began:

HUMAN Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson has thrown his support behind his embattled president Gillian Triggs, refusing to give oxygen to the political attacks clouding the findings of her children in detention report.

Speaking today at the National Press Club in Canberra, Mr Wilson said he supported all his commission colleagues but also backed the Coalition’s border protection policies saying “stopping the boats matters”.

“Let me make this clear, I support all my commission colleagues. I don’t want this to be a distraction,” Mr Wilson said.

He added he was not going to get involved in “engaging or fuelling the political debate around this report”.

“Focus on what it says, focus on the research that’s gone into it and the human stories that have gone into it. That is what needs to happen because if we don’t then The Forgotten Children report will simply be forgotten and so will the lessons from it.”

What, exactly, are those lessons? That it is bad for children to be in detention. Well, it’s also bad for children to be without their parents. It is no doubt also bad for adults to be in detention, but they are there for a reason. The HRC is actively pro-Labor, whose crocodile tears for children in detention are obvious to anyone who can spot hypocrisy at 1000 yards. The real worry for me, however, is why is The Australian giving such lift to this kind of story at this time?

Hey Qld Liberal, Andrew Laming, I’m talking to you

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This is the story on the front page of today’s Australian: Shock as Tony Abbott dumps Philip Ruddock as whip. And in this story, right there on the front page, we find this:

Queensland Liberal Andrew Laming described the decision as a “scapegoating of Goliath proportions’’. “This is just another example of the poor judgment of the Prime Minister,’’ he said.

Here, I’ll give you another, even worse example of poor judgment: to be found quoted on the front page of a major national newspaper criticising the Prime Minister and leader of your own party as he tries to find a way back to being re-elected, which if it can be done, might even include you.

As for the story itself, I’m not sure in any sense at all that it’s such a shock, since these sort of things happen all the time. Ruddock has been a brilliant Parliamentarian, he held off the boats and was an important member of the Howard Cabinet. He has been the Chief whip, and as it says in the story, part of this job is to be “the conduit between the leader and the backbench”. Maybe that’s been part of the problem, that he has not been doing his job well enough to keep the PM out of trouble from the likes of you.

But I do know this. The role of backbenchers is to support the government, not to find their way into the press to become one more problem the Prime Minister didn’t need. The problem here is not the PM. The problem here is you, and anyone else in the party who, like you, thinks such undisciplined comment does anyone other than the Labor Party any good. I would have written STFU but I’d rather be more polite. So I will only say, the next time you are worried about some decision by the PM, keep it to yourself or mention it to the new whip or in the party room perhaps. And the same goes for anyone else in the Parliamentary party who has the notion that the best way to reform the government is to spend more time in opposition.

Truth or consequences

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I read one time that difference between the first Shah of Iran and his son – the one who was thrown out by the Ayatollah Khomeini – was that to the father no one dared tell him a lie, while to the son, no one dared tell him the truth. Which leads me to this story from Nikki Savva picked up at Andrew Bolt:

The most surprising thing about Abbott’s reaction to the fact 39 of his MPs wanted him gone was that it came as such a shock to him. What it showed, among other things, was that for too long he had believed his own spin, as well as the spin spoonfed to him by those closest to him.

It’s not as if people haven’t tried to tell him what the problems are. They have, for a very long time, in very many ways. They have been dismissed as liars, or stupid, or of running vendettas…

On Sunday, May 25, last year Queensland backbencher Wyatt Roy was part of a group of about 30 marginal seat-holders invited to dine privately with the Prime Minister in the cabinet anteroom. Abbott’s practice at these dinners is to go around the room, asking each member to say their piece.

Roy, trying to be helpful, stood at the table to tell the Prime Minister that broken promises were the fundamental cause of the government’s problems. It might be a good idea, Roy suggested, to apologise to people a la Peter Beattie and move on.

Abbott was furious. He rounded on Roy, yelled at him, then directed his remarks to all of them that there were no effing broken promises and no one should concede there had been.

To the extent that this story is true, it is to that extent that Abbott has made a rod for his own back. If we are into Captain Queeg at the helm, we are in very dark waters. But the final twist in the Caine Mutiny story was that it had been the fault of the crew after all for not giving their captain more support when he needed it in the midst of the storm. You guys will either hang together, or hang separately and take the rest of us down with the ship.

The two sides of politics

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Look Tony, you just gotta stop trying to convince the other side that you’re not all the bad things they say you are. There are two sides in politics everywhere. There are the normal people of common sense who understand we do not live in a perfect world.

And then there’s the other side. These are the people who look for the outrage-du-jour, who are always dissatisfied, who are always complaining about how bad things are and it’s someone else’s fault. They are filled with discontent and envy. This is the coalition of the miserable that Labor tries to bring together. You are never going to win them over. All you can do is run the country as well as you can. But for heaven’s sake, you have nothing to prove to such people. They are a danger to you and to us. Their misery is personal. Nothing that can be done at the political level will satisfy them.

Let me take you back to a post of mine from December 2012: Gillard’s misogyny speech was written by a man. It was written by John McTernan, her chief of staff. This is what I wrote:

I had actually thought at the time that as much as I found her speech vile and divisive, that it had been her own true self finally exposed to the light of day. Not a bit of it. She was merely repeating the words and sentiments put there by some male, a male who saw political advantage in her saying what she said. If he did not think there was political advantage, she would not have said what she said. It’s the reverse of the politics of conviction. It is the politics of the con.

You will hand this country back to them if you do not start making your case, which I can see that you are. This is what I said about them then.

Pointing out the phoney outrage of the Labor Party has to be at the top of Coalition policy in the election to come along with an emphasis on how worthless their promises are. Their specialty is outrage and discontent. They do not have a platform so much as a plan of revenge on behalf of the bitter and envious combined with a series of plans to spend vast amounts of money they do not have.

They are the singularly incompetent. On no issue has this government been a success. Nothing they promise to do ever gets done.

They cannot stop the boats. They cannot balance the budget. They cannot maintain economic growth. They cannot build the NBN. They cannot improve our education system. They cannot maintain national defence. They cannot reduce carbon emissions. They cannot keep living costs down. They can’t even devise a tax on the mining industry that actually raises revenue.

We have started the long trek back to stability, even though the same people who caused the problem in the first place are refusing to cooperate in fixing what they acknowledged were problems when they were in government themselves. They are people who would apparently cause major and lasting damage to this country for political advantage. You are better than them morally, but in politics you also have to be better than them by getting more votes.

So where you been?

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If Malcolm Turnbull’s so fantastic at arguing the toss, where’s he been for the past year? He has not carried his weight in any showdown with either Labor or the Senate that I can see.

The NBN is the most disgusting waste of money amongst all of the various forms of waste the ALP brought with them. Yet I have not heard a word from him about any of it. The billions that are being wasted to produce what will never return revenues above their costs is known to anyone who has even glanced at it, but if Malcolm has said anything about it, I have missed it.

What exactly does he bring to this debate? To any debate? But I do see from today’s paper that he lives in a very nice house.

The best story about Tony Abbott I have come across yet

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This is a story from Laurie Oakes picked up through Andrew Bolt. It is the best story about the Prime Minister I have come across. It shows that he is someone who knows how to swing a club to get what he wants, the one aspect of Abbott’s character I was less sure he had. And when you get to it, the bit about her being a clergyman’s daughter is absolutely pathetic in its hilarity, but typical of the kinds of anti-Abbott, pro-Labor tear-jerking hypocrisy I am all too used to from the media. If you fall for it, you are as dopey as Oakes thinks you are. Here’s the story.

Rudd alienated many colleagues through incidents of angry, foul-mouthed treatment of others. Abbott, it turns out, can be prone to similar behaviour.

There was an example on Budget night last year involving Danielle Blain, a West Australian Liberal and federal vice-president who intended to run for the party presidency.

Abbott, backing former Howard Government Minister Richard Alston for the job, called Blain to his office in Parliament House and demanded that she withdraw from the contest. Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, a friend of Blain’s, also attended the meeting.

When Blain expressed reluctance to pull out, Abbott became furious, shouting that it was his right to make the decision. Expletives, including the “F” bomb, were undeleted. The Prime Minister then stormed out of his own office.

Yet another “Captain’s pick” that caused problems.

Blain eventually did give way, but — the daughter of an Anglican clergyman — she was understandably stunned at such treatment. Bishop is said to have been decidedly unimpressed.

If hearing F-words in a political environment gives you palpitations, it’s time you found another line of work. I only wish people on my side of the fence concentrated on policy and how things can be achieved. They won’t be achieved, that’s for sure, if Turnbull becomes PM, no more than if we bring Labor back and make Bill Shorten PM. The only reason Prince Phillip is still an issue is because the media is in the hands of our enemies. This is a bizarre turn of events, given we have already stopped the boats, gotten rid of the carbon and mining taxes and attempts are being made, in the face of a very hostile Senate, to fix the economy.

Tony Abbott for PM

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Being from the Tony Abbott wing of the Liberal Party’s deep background cover, a sobered up TA is better by far than any of the alternatives. Prince Phillip is more of a sad joke than a policy issue. Unlike pink batts, the NBN, carbon taxes, mining taxes or the rest, it didn’t cost us a thing. Nevertheless, symbolism is important, and it was a major error. Yet for all that, amongst the possibilities of the moment, I would rather try to win the next election with Abbott as the PM than anyone else.

As an absolute certainty, if the Libs are led by someone who finds global warming anything other than the biggest con in the history of science, a very large part of the Coalition’s natural constituency will, at best, become indifferent to the result of the next election. Abbott was allowed to take over principally because he seemed to have a reasonably clear picture both of the significance of atmospheric carbon to the future of the planet, along with an understanding that his party is probably riddled with people who really do believe something needs to be done.

I can also see that Abbott was distracted by the clamour over 18C which must be, within the scheme of things, pretty small beer as any issue of the moment could be. The Two Dannys ended up with their conviction overturned. There is no issue of significance that cannot be debated at the moment, and there is not a chance in a thousand anyone will be taken to the HRC based on their views of radical Islam. It is symbolism again, perhaps, but there are an awful lot of ethnic minorities who would like to see the law come down on the side of tolerance and against racial abuse.

Where the Government needed to go right from the start was to fix up the two greatest economic messes we have, the level of public spending and the rigidities built into the Fair Work Act. How Martin Parkinson survived past the first month of the government remains beyond me. Whoever it was who allowed such a dyed-in-the-wool Keynesian to continue to oversee Treasury – and a warmist to boot – made the largest imaginable error. The response, presented via our current Treasurer, was the standard Keynesian junk. It was static and based on finding revenue, rather than dynamic and predicated on generating private sector growth.

And then there was the missing IR inquiry that needed to have been introduced from the first day. The PC report should already have been delivered, not just starting out.

But because of a lull in the polls, which happens to every government in the middle of its term, the Libs are apparently about to switch from someone who at present looks in the vicinity of 50-50 to win the next election to someone who is certain to lose. I don’t see the logic, but short-term thinking seems to be the nature of politics in a democracy.

What this sets up is the possibility that Bill Shorten and Labor will aim to be elected with the promise to fix the economy, balance the budget, restore industrial relations stability and create jobs. Sounds like a great idea to me. I only wish someone had actually tried it before now.