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The last few days have brought Team Turnbull yet another bad poll. Tick-tock, tick-tock. In terms of calendar months, rather than number of polls, Prime Minister Turnbull’s government has now been behind Labor for pretty much as long as Prime Minister Abbott had been when Turnbull and the 54 bedwetters defenestrated a first-term Liberal PM – giving as their reason that he had been too long behind in the polls. A truly pathetic rationale, I know, for any political party that thinks about long-term party unity. Or medium term for that matter. Heck, that thinks past the end of the calendar year.
But there you have it. And an eternal truth about human nature, what all the Niki Savva-like critics of us Delcons try to wish away but never will, is that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Turnbull will be without any legitimacy inside his own party once bad poll 30 arrives. Indeed, as I noted above, Malcolm has already served as much consecutive ‘bad poll’ time as Abbott had when the George Brandis and Christopher Pyne wing of ‘Labor-lite Libs R Us’ decided to appease the ABC, defenestrate Tony and install a man who seems to lack a single conservative view. It is only by the grace of Newscorp, and the much slower and less frequent rate at which they are conducting polls, that Team Turnbull has not already suffered some 30 bad polls in a row.
Other than the usual suspects of Niki Savva, PVO, David Crowe, Paul Kelly and those in paid employment with the Liberal Party, is there anyone who does not recognise Malcolm as a dead man walking? You can’t even pretend Turnbull’s unpopularity has anything to do with forcing through needed tough medicine. This is a government that has thrown billions of dollars at an idiotic submarine contract in a bid (hopefully unsuccessfully) to retain Christopher Pyne’s seat and that has attacked the superannuation system in a way that means spending a working life’s saving $1 million puts you in the equivalent net position as someone saving $400,000 (once you account for the Age Pension) which cuts to the heart of, well, thrift, hard work and basic Liberal Party beliefs while making all Kelly O’Dwyer’s recent assurances that the government won’t attack superannuation again simultaneously pathetic and unbelievable.
Oh, and this is a government that can’t get the budget to surplus in any realistic way (as opposed to ‘we’ll grow our way to surplus’ platitudes), even with ever more taxes – sorry, ‘budget savings’ as our Big Government Treasurer Scott Morrison, a la Wayne Swann, likes to call them – and can’t rid us of the impoverishing RET, and does nothing about the patently leftward biased ABC nor the various inroads that have been made into free speech in this country. Indeed, this government is authoring some of those speech-stifling inroad! And that’s just the start of the list of ineptitudes and Labor-lite decisions emanating from this most leftist of Liberal governments. Hey, but they’re a millimetre better than Shorten right?
Yet still there are no murmurs of a spill or a ‘give to Turnbull what he himself dished out’ within the Liberal partyroom. Why?
a) Is it because too many Coalition MPs have resigned themselves to defeat and figure another year and a bit with all these perks is better than rocking the boat?
b) Is it because it turns out that the Liberal partyroom is chock full of Labor-lite MPs who hate conservatives at least as much as they hate Labor, possibly more, and don’t really want to protect free speech, cut spending, shrink government, encourage thrift or challenge the perverse consequences of unthinking global warming hysteria?
c) Is it a function of the fact that far too many Liberal candidates are pre-selected from the narrowest of gene pools – political staffers, no successful career in anything else beforehand, think tanks, and of course lawyers – and don’t really hold any principles as sufficiently important to imperil their own positions by speaking out against bad government policy or, heaven forbid, crossing the floor?
d) Is it sheer cowardice, or stupidity?
e) Is it all of the above?
Lest you be tempted to put this woeful policy record down solely to our puffed-up and comparatively democratically deficient Senate (and I put myself second to none in thinking our Upper House is a big, big problem), let me disabuse you of that conceit. You see, when it comes to appointments to key positions – the ABC, the Human Rights Commission (‘HRC’), the judiciary, the list goes on – this Team Turnbull government is wholly unconstrained by the Senate. It was this supposedly Liberal government that appointed Ed Santow to the HRC as the so-called ‘Freedom Commissioner’, with no veto or input from the Senate – a man who has said not a word in defence of Bill Leak or the QUT students. Ditto Herr Turnbull’s unconstrained-by-the-Senate choices of Michelle Guthrie and Justin Milne to run the Green-Left TV Collective, aka ‘our’ ABC (when Guthrie bags the mooted media reforms and sees no bias anywhere one can only smile.)
Again, the same goes for picking Alan Finkel and David Gonski to deliver reports. It makes you wonder if Brandis and Turnbull actually know any conservatives, or least any they don’t hold in evident contempt. Because they sure don’t appoint any to anything important. (Note: The Abbott government wasn’t great on this front either, Lord knows why, but it was better than the current mob of ‘Liberals in Name Only’.) And on the same theme, if after what happened to Bill Leak and the three QUT students you can’t even bring yourself to close down the HRC and put “Call-me-and-complain-Tim” out of work, or even try to do so, then you might at least pick a president more obviously supportive of free speech and less in thrall to international, judge-driven, democracy-enervating human rights ideas than Rosalind Croucher!
Run your eye over those names above and tell me which ones Labor couldn’t have appointed. Good luck. And that had nothing to do with the Senate.
So if someone claims that this is the worst collection of Liberal Party politicians in Australian history, what would you say in response? Meanwhile the bad polls keep coming.
I attended a conservative political meeting last Saturday. About 120 people turned up despite the lack of advertising or notification. A straw pool was held at the beginning. 50 were former MEMBERS of the once great Liberal Party and another 20 were current members. The Liberal Party claims 80,000 members in 2014, but has not updated their website since then. Let me guess: if numbers were now 90,000 the trumpets would be playing the tune from the roofs, but if the numbers have gone down catastrophically then – just leave the website alone as there are other things to concentrate on. I tried to bet Michael Kroger an easy $1,000 that numbers were down 25% after he claimed Turnbull had stimulated growth. He did not take my money.
I now conclude that membership would be less than 40,000, but that is purely anecdotal and a logical assumption. I am sure the website is just about to tell the truth – soon – because otherwise they would be falsely advertising a known lie.
they informed crikey that they have between “40,000-50,000. Of these, 13,000-14,000 believed to be in Qld LNP”
https://www.crikey.com.au/2013/07/18/the-partys-over-which-clubs-have-the-most-members/
So well guessed.
So what’s happening to the Libs?. They used to be viewed as paragons of good behaviour and common sense but the latest stunt of alerting the media to attend a police raid is so unethical and juvenile as to beg belief, to say nothing of being a display of a lack of political sophistication. The staffers must belong to gut-spilling Facebook generation who lack any idea of self-discipline and social sophistication and respect for the rule of law. Talking of which, who is leaking to the media when local police in Sydney are about to launch a raid? Just about every night on the TV news of commercial stations we see a raid on a house in Western Sydney and a man, usually of middle eastern appearance being dragged along and packed into a paddy wagon. Do the TV stations pay for this info?
Excuse me, that’s SOME staffers. Others, like my own child, are super trustworthy and loyal to a fault.
I agree Jody, but I was referring only to staffers involved in the latest stunt. I will have to curb my “broad brush” tendencies and focus more clearly on the target.
And who is the bedwetter your child works for?
“Ah, no mate. No we’re not trying to pretend we still have 80,000 members. Just haven’t updated the website, now have we? It’s not a lie: just haven’t got around to it. Real figures? Buggered if we know mate. Our IT person nipped off and joined a new mob. Called something like Australian Conservatives. No haven’t been able to find a replacement yet: still trying, but our recruitment officer skipped off to Pauline’s mob. Don’t understand today’s Libs, they don’t seem to like Malcolm much”.
‘
“It makes you wonder if Brandis and Turnbull actually know any conservatives, or least any they don’t hold in evident contempt.”
It certainly does. In the event of a ‘Yes’ vote in the ABS poll, Brandis and Turnbull have indicated they would attempt to change the Marriage Act without providing any protection for free speech, freedom of religion and parental rights. If this happens, few conservatives would want to know them come the next election, regardless of whether Turnbull serves out his term as PM.
In response to your final question – yes, I agree. The follow up question is ‘Why is it so?’ Why can the current bunch see what others having been showing them? Take Farage, Trump, Bernardi, Szydlo and, to a lesser extent, Hastie. These people are showing conservatives in name what it means to be a conservative. Not only that, they are showing that true conservatives have huge support in western liberal nations. If you can’t lead as a conservative, as least mimic those that can.
Tony Abbott deserves special comment. Putting aside his time as PM, he has displayed all the hallmarks of a true conservative – I would have him as PM over any of the current ministry. He seems to have refined his credentials further after being dumped as PM. Yet during his time in office as PM, he made several blunders of such magnitude that I was aghast and embittered with him. I’m wary of forgetting that time.
Abbott failed mainly in providing coherence within the party I thought, and he also started to lose touch with the base. The situation might have become worse, or better, who knows, but with Abbott we had a man who was at least capable of improving himself. I’ve always thought that his failings were somewhat exaggerated in the context of the reality of self destructive politics that is the current norm with the left.
Abbott was utterly undermined by Turnbull and his bed wetting mates. Add to that the unfair hounding by the media, who the great backstabber courted, coupled with bed wetter in chief, Christopher Payne, attempting to enlist the services of Get Up, for christs sake, to help win over wavering MPs to backstabbers side.
Really what chance did Abbott really have.
All those who hate Abbott and side with Turnbull and co should hang their heads onbloody shame. They are the very worst and lack any shred of intergrity or plain decency.
They are just another bunch of labor politicians and their navvies. Yes navvies, Jody and they will all get theirjust deserts.
I’d never tell you anything.
Play nice, children, please.
Nice, DT I do. I only ever reply to Jodys nastiness with nastiness. I never initiate the exchange.
Three things Jody.
1)
I’m proud of what my children do. Ones an electrical engineer with a second degree in Applied Math, works for himself, the other is a stay home mum of two little girls.
Why aren’t you proud of who your children work for?
Both mine are being guided in reading, from my library, philosophy, theology and literature. Yep I’m guiding them with a little help from Jaques Barzun and Bertrand Russell.
You spill your guts in here regularly about your possessions, your ownership of a chook farm and your children.
You never tell us what you are actually doing. Ie the sort of stuff that cements or creates power, within your personality.
Your latest rant tells us that you hate Abbott and Trump. Both positions of the bedwetters. It would have been the right thing to do to have told us of your direct connection to Turnbulls cohort right at the outset. You know, when you first showed your hatred of first Tony and then Donald.
Cheers and have a nice day.
Ps I was right when you ranted that you would not read me, and I said you didn’t have the discipline to not read what I write.
Hoho
Abbott tried to make his bitter enemies his friends by pandering to the ABC and the “values” of the inner city luvvies. For this, he became known as PM Weasel around our house. I have never been an admirer of Turnbull, Bishop, Brandis, Pyne, my local member Alexander, or Morrison and my lack of admiration turned to loathing when the bed-wetters defenestrated (love that word James) Abbott. The LNP is overloaded with gutless wonders who in the main, are beholden to the faction overlords (consider the scum that has floated to the top of the sewer that is the NSW Liberal Party hierarchy} and deserves to be destroyed at the next federal election. Will he who sold out the workers of Cleanevent be worse? I don’t give a rat’s – I just want to see the end of Turnbull and the Bed-wetters. After the next election, my hope is that the likes of Latham, Leyonhjelm and Bernardi are in the senate to keep the ALP-Green totalitarians at bay.
> “… Latham, Leyonhjelm and Bernardi are in the senate to keep the ALP-Green totalitarians at bay”
Yes, that faint hope had occurred to me as well. So, maybe …
And I really enjoyed the title of this article – scuffs on the LINO indeed.
The High Court pleasantly surprised me yesterday October 27, 2017. I had expected a weasel-word decision on S44, not an honest, straightforward black-letter law decision. Unanimous, too. Waffle with his impenetrable vanity has irritated a lot of people, it seems.
@Padriac:
Staffers make excellent axle grease after being thrown under a bus.
There is an art to self-manufacturing the impression of being an establishment figure: first step is to consult and alchemist, one who gives the impression of specialising in the white arts rather than the dark variety (invariably performed by witches of the Julie Bishop school).
A secret gathering took place in the Queenbeyan bush retreat of orange robed alchemist-in-chief, Peter Hendy, with seedy acolytes Sinodinos, McGrath, Ryan, Fifield, Malfeasance Brough and long forgotten Wyatt Roy.
Bearing potions they came: Brough with sleaze-dried impression of limp-handshake; Sinodinos with 10 ml of distillation of baboon’s breath,;Ryan, 3 grams of powdered cheetah’s scrotum and 20 grams each of lily-liver for the rest.
A plate of knuckle sandwiches prepared, with paste of potion spread. Washed down with glasses of 1920s vintage absinthe and transformation complete: a brood of establishment figures are let loose on the surrounding countryside, the necessary sense of ‘tone’, unquestioned authority, blind stupidity and craven cowardice complete.
Mission accomplished you might say, but for the Credlin predictions of distant demise. The clowns did crow for a while till the polls turned sour, then rancid and eventually thoroughly toxic.
I guess they all saved the electorate the trouble of throwing out Abbott. Now his finest disaster, “Recognition”, seems to have been cast to the scrap heap – and not before time.
Whatever the interpretation, whether historical or Shakespeare’s, there was a legacy following the assassination of Julius, and in a respect Rome never recovered. Using the term James Allan uses . . . the defenestration of Abbott led to the demise of the Liberal Party, though too many do not as yet realise it. I know you are using ‘finest’ ironically, but Abbott’s position, regarding reconciliation, needed no adjective: it was a disaster pure and simple: idealistic, politically correct and rather hard to understand.
There are rule of the thumb questions everyone should ask, with regards to SSM, or gender dysphoria insanity, or the relentless attack on church, family, nationality, masculinity/femininity and all the values we once held dear, and that question is who the hell is driving it all? You don’t need me to give you a response, as you know the answer.
You can cling to the past, if you wish, but my own view is that the overthrow of Tony is the best thing that could ever have happened to him, and seems to have put him firmly back on the right side of politics, pun intended. If he were to return to any of the policies he wavered on, when leader of the Libs, he’d be toast, and I mean permanently. If someone like me, of little brain, knows this, don’t you think he knows too?
Now, your views and experiences are your own, and you can sift through all that stuff as you wish; but just ask yourself how the Liberal Party can even begin to turn itself around without a bloodbath? With your Turnbulls and Paynes and Pynes and Brandises there are too many vested interests, too many intrenched factions to dislodge by simply being polite. As close to the party as you are, surely you’d know this. And I truly think the bloodbath is coming. The left still feels rampant in its disdain for the conservatives in their midst, seem oblivious to the massive leak on its right flank, and worse still seem oblivious to subterranean rumblings coming form the aforesaid conservative factions. Do you remember the symbolism of the ostrich with its head in the sand, yet the bulk of its body in plain view to the predator, the most tempting part being its juicy arse sticking up in the air.
Those that continue to denigrate Tony Abbott often do so to deflect from the fact that his assassination created far more problems than the ones it sought to get rid of, not least of which was giving the middle finger to the conservative factions, who were once part of the life-blood of the so called broad church. The irony is that both Menzies and Howard lauded the broad church aspect, but it is the very ‘cornerstone’ that is proving to be the party’s undoing. The times have passed for broad churches in an increasingly divisive political climate.
You know my views, but I wonder if you are just a little too close to see how much damage has in fact been done to the party. No question mark there: I’m just wondering.
Abbott would have won handsomely the, without the Nationals, Malcolm would have lost.
What Tony proposed wasn’t discarde and hasn’t been discarded.
What has been rejected was the declaration from the group of Aboriginal Leaders at Alice Springs.
Abbott would never have allowed that declaration to have been made. Malcolm, in weakness, never ever spoke out against the making of that declaration.
I like most Australians would actually support recognition of indigenous people in the preamble.Now wasnt that what Abbott probably owed?
I doubt you’d know.You are usually wrong.
You are right Warty in most things you’ve said here.
But Jody isn’t close to the inner workings at all, she is merely a mouthpiece.
And her behaviour exemplifies that.
I have struggled to understand the motives of the 54 but I wonder if perhaps Tony Abbott expected too much of them, like honesty, and effort, deliberation, loyalty. Maybe they knew they were just not up to it.