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Malcolm Turnbull is a closet Labor-ite preparing to sell out to the Greens. And it’s not only conservatives that believe that. Turnbull has always been a natural fit for the leadership of the ALP, as veteran Labor Party speechwriter and general apparatchik, Don Watson, laments in a current article in The Monthly, “Turnbull’s Rightful Place”.
Once the reader cuts through Watson’s florid, Keating-esque prose (full of references to Nietzsche, Captain Bligh, “the Revenant grim and rictus”,” baying reactionaries”, “withdrawn fangs” etc, etc.) a clear assessment emerges of Turnbull’s fundamental political position. He is, Watson declares, “the ideological bedfellow of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton”. As leader of the Liberal party, he is a “daffodil on a dunghill”. Consequently, his deepest allegiances have precious little to do with the policy positions upon which the Abbott government was elected or to which conservatives are deeply attached. According to Watson, Turnbull has always been committed to the Green-Labor position on every one of the crucial issues of contemporary politics.
For example, according to Watson “the barrister of Spycatcher days” would have opposed and “torn to pieces” current Coalition policy on the Border Force Act, the new ASIO laws, data retention laws, and the Australian Building and Construction Commission. He laments that Turnbull, as a “believer in science and an emissions trading scheme … is joined with the non-believers and the vested interests in denial” of apocalyptic climate change. He is a republican, a believer in same-sex marriage, and the “man who defended Gillian Triggs when Tony Abbott mugged her”. Overall, Turnbull is presently “obliged to deny his own beliefs and make the case for reactionary causes against which he has defined himself and devoted part of his life to overthrowing.”
Thoroughly worked up, Watson paints a vivid picture of Turnbull as a messianic leader of a newly reconstructed Labor Party:
Just think: Labor gets Neoliberal Man, a brilliant advocate, proven in modern business and technology, and the chap most likely to draw its way all those ‘knowledge workers’ the unions failed to charm … He has a party room [he can carry] on climate, on the republic, on education, indigenous recognition, same-sex marriage.
Indeed, “win an election and he could carry it on pretty well anything, and bright young things will be joining up to follow him into the future” — a “social democracy of Labor’s late 20th-century dream”.
A new social democratic party made up of the progressivists in the Liberal Party and the less-lunatic elements of the Greens and the ALP, with the conservatives left out in the cold forever – that seems to be Watson’s assessment of Turnbull’s desired endgame.
It is an assessment supported by Miranda Devine’s own analysis of Turnbull’s plans in “Side-tracked Right missing Mal’s plot”. Instead of ‘Lord Waffle of Wentworth’, Turnbull is “a far more Machiavellian character” than people can even imagine. With the assistance of Michael Kroger, Turnbull is constructing a new alliance with the Greens, absurdly perceived to be more pragmatic under the leadership of Richard Di Natale who, not coincidentally, is currently being promoted as a sensitive new age guy in a cover article in GQ magazine.
As Devine observes, “doing a deal with … Di Natale would be as natural as mother’s milk” for Turnbull, and “if you thought Gillard’s deal with Bob Brown was bad news, you ain’t seen nothing yet”. Ultimately,
if Turnbull sells out the Liberal Party to the Greens he will return as a prime minister who owes nothing to the party’s shattered conservatives, and will set about delivering same-sex marriage, a republic, a carbon trading scheme and the rest of the Left-liberal agenda, while setting himself up as Australia’s first president.
Is this the future of Australian politics? A domineering Liberal-Greens coalition that bulldozes through parliament all the trendy issues the progressivist left can think of, while the conservative mainstream is sidelined and maligned as reactionary troglodytes incapable of seeing the wisdom of a state-dominated, LGBTI-Green society where everyone knows their place and a dozen powerful government agencies exist to regulate their every thought and action?
This is a disgraceful piece of prose.
This statement of yours, Jody, is meaningless hot air without the slightest suggestion what makes Merv Bendle’s article “disgraceful”. Are there any inaccuracies in it? So put up or …!
Are you referring to Merv Bendle’s article or Don Watson’s?
“Pleasuring our PM”. Vile stuff. I can no longer read this rag.
Based on this, I doubt that you’d be missed a great deal.
Excellent decision, Jody. It means we no longer have to put up with your tedious inanities which are more at home with the Monthly rag.
Is that you Nikki?
Is that a core promise (we can but hope) or are you just having a tiny tot tantrum? By not ever replying I will take it as a core promise.
Well said, Jody.
Merv:
No autocrat or clique can ‘sideline’ the majority of the people; at least, not for long. In reality, it is only possible if the autocrat or the clique is running a military dictatorship: which requires the enthusiastic support of the armed forces and the police. That is how it plays out in the pages of history. “The conservative mainstream is sidelined” is thus a text-book example of self-contradiction.
The only other possibility I can think of would involve something like mass hypnosis.
Of course, the ‘conservative mainstream’ can sideline itself through internal division over policy, with one side tugging one way and the other in the diametrically opposite direction. And that happens when the said differences are substantial. And as long as you fail to recognise that, or even to admit it, you and the rest of the Abbott-Credlin cheer squad will continue to sideline yourselves: in a political world that cannot run on 3-word slogans or dismissive one-liners like “climate change is crap”, “ditch the Witch”; “axe the tax” and the rest of it.
So you brand yourself as a ‘reactionary troglodyte’. Nobody does it for you.
Persistent negativity and sniping from the sidelines only gets you so far: which is not far at all.
This excellent article, or more accurately, Don Watson’s revealing assessment of Turnbull, convinces me that the member for Wentworth is a greater danger to the future of this country than the Labour and Greens leaderships combined. It also explains something I and many others have been suspecting for some time: the reason why Turnbull has done precious little of note since his coup d’détat is because he is prevented, for now, from doing the things he would be fervently keen to do. Once he wins the election in his own right, the shackles will be off and heaven help us!
Careful Bill. I agree that Turnbull is bad news, but don’t over-rate the danger or you run the risk of losing perspective and pursuing disaster. Unexpected things can come from the least expected sources. The wheel turns.
Think of the ALA for example. Will they become useful thanks to Turnbull? We don’t know yet, although it might help if they actually put their money where their mouth is and ran some candidates, rather than using the undemocratic back door senate trick.
Then there is the Liberal Party itself. They are not dead yet. A lot can happen in the next few months.
We must make sure he does not win.
I think your analysis is spot on. His bill to rid the Senate of the “ferals” will benefit The Greens who I am sure will vote in sympathy with Turnbull’s left wing agenda. It is a mistake to see Turnbull as a “waffler” or driven by narcissism. He is the cuckoo in the nest.
Vote Shorten in the lower house and Liberal National in the Senate.
When he loses Turnbull will be dumped and Tony will return.
Shorten will lead a government that won’t get supply.
He’ll either have to have another election within months or be forced to resign.
Either way Tony will return as PM. Rightfully.
> Shorten will lead a government that won’t get supply
If I could be absolutely sure of that, your suggestion is interesting
I characterised Turnbull as Lord Waffle from the start of the palace coup – not because I think he’s empty-headed, but because I think he’s vain, spiteful and vindinctive; he is of the narcissistic view that waffling to the lumpenproletariat to avoid exposing any hard policy is sufficient to win because we’re so stupid. He may be right, of course, but if the current Senate can force him to put up the ABCC bill for debate before the tricky-dicky Senate voting changes and then pass it, he’s a feather duster … forlorn hope
Hello Keith, I like Mr Abbott, he is a good man but I don’t know I want to see him back. He failed me on 18C, he failed to deal politically with the great pretender.
Unless the liberal-national want to be seen as a copy of labor bringing him back will seem to Rudd-esque for my liking.
Shorten cannot be allowed anywhere near the levers, so I don’t see much of a choice except to hold my nose and vote national party locally and ALA in the senate, (tip the hat to Bill Martin).
Expecting Shorten to not get supply strikes me as wistful, 1975 would be spun like a top by the MSM, I grant it could happen but I wouldn’t like to bet the house on it.
Which if Shorten gets in is in effect what we are doing.
It does seem highly unlikely at this stage that Tony Abbott would ever be prime minister again, but, then again, as they say,” never say never”. Remember too, that John Howard was also written off at one stage of his career.
Should Tony return to the job, he will have learned many important lessons, like the counterproductive result of trying to appease your enemies at the expense of your allies. As you say, he is a good man, a decent man, qualities sadly lacking in most of the political class.
Agreed. The bottom line is we have a political vacuum in Australia that is being filled with the most unscrupulous characters pushing destructive agendas. Is there a solution? I can only think of praying. Give it a try, it won’t kill you.
Be careful of that ALA vote. It’s unlikely they’ll win a place in the senate without those filthy preference deals. Frankly I don’t trust any group that wants to take control of govt via the upper house.
For a start, pgang, read the manifesto of the ALA before passing judgement. Further, they are not a “group [which] wants to take control of govt via the upper house”. Every new political party, at least in the modern era, targeted senate seats first. It is simply the easier way to get a foothold in parliament. If they manage to get at least one senator from each state elected, that would constitute a formidable voting bloc. That would do very nicely for a start, thank you very much.
Watson is really showing his own fantasies, echoed by much of the media which went on about Turncoat’s “modernisation” of the Libs last time he was leader. Really the want no opposition – with “their people” in charge and their agenda pushed and no alternative. So much for “diversity”! Turncoat is certainly sympathetic to all this. But in reality he is a narcissist first and foremost. A deal with the Greens may get legislation through the Senate, but it won’t keep him PM.
Tony Abbott IS a decent man, and that is the trouble when working for an unscrupulous mafia like the parliamentary political party. Tony was a long time participant of this den of thieves, but still let his decency drag him down. When Tony won the election in 2013 I did not wait for the glow to die down before I write the following email to him BCC a lot of people in my address book):
“Tony,
Congratulations! Well deserved, but do not get ahead of yourself on the euphoria of winning. Nor can you now ignore the good advice I am going to give you.
1. Repeal 18C – and if the Senate rejects that, go for a double dissolution
2. Break your promise and decimate the ABC. (Actually, I mean reduce it by 90%, but I do not know the word!) We do not need it and it is like keeping termites as pets in your house.
3. Get Turnbull out of the party as all he knows is how to be a termite – and you can never feed termites enough. He will bring you down. There are enough illiberal infil-traitors in the party who support him and will destroy your government. Give him no portfolio and he will soon be so disloyal you can remove him – before he removes you.
4. Stop the boats as your signature policy.
5. Remove every dollar spent on climate change in any form
6. Cut the public service – and services by 20% in your first year
7. Stop foreigners BUYING land and businesses. Let them lease for 99-years, but not buy outright or through proxies.
That’s a start – and you will be PM for life!”
With the passage of time we can now rate the decent man’s scorecard … and that of the 54 indecent assassins. Maybe Tony can learn from the past and come back with ‘no more Mr Nice Guy’.
Hear, hear, en passan!
Hear, hear also!
Tony Abbott has established his political credentials as a thoroughly modern relativist, for he clearly holds to the view that there are no moral absolutes. Like some Islamist from the back streets of Mogadishu, he believes that lying is not only OK, but a moral duty if it will advance the Cause. (The Cause = Power.) So as an Australian politician in a field strewn with champion liars, he has emerged as one of the greatest political liars of all time, saying whatever he has thought at any given stage will (a) get him and his cronies into power and (b) keep them there.
The Jesuits not only taught (or should that be ‘trained’?) Tony Abbott, but have also been reviled over the centuries for allegedly holding that ‘the end justfies the means’.
Well if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and has the moral scruples of a duck, then it’s probably a chicken – come home to roost.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/05/02/comment-tony-abbotts-broken-promises-cost-him
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/tony-abbott-is-a-liar-its-a-mathematical-truth-20140529-zrs5h.html
http://www.thebibleistheotherside.org/newsitem24.htm
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/05/02/comment-tony-abbotts-broken-promises-cost-him
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/jesuit-old-boys-now-our-leaders/story-fn59niix-1226718806547
Those Labor center of Left and light Greens who do come over to the Liberal party will be saved from further humiliation as Donald Trump enters the room and changes everything Nanny state here takes for granted.