For anyone taking a step back, the question is: Has Turnbull sold his soul, or only rented it in the hope of buying it back when the right wing of his party don’t have any capital to use in the auction after the next election?
However, for most people, we’re in the real world and there’s a fair bit of cognitive dissonance going on. Yep, it’s really good that Abbott is no longer PM and his pronouncements just make it seem more and more like we must have all been on drugs and there’s no possibility that a man who’d knight Prince Phil, and declare that coal was good for humanity could ever have been our Prime Minister and that it’s good to have someone who actually can actually use three word slogans which have more than one syllable in the words. IN-O-VAY-SHONE! On the other hand, there’s concern that Malcolm Turnbull is still pursuing some of the worst of Abbott’s policies. But on yet the other hand, there’s concern amongst the very strange – those like Eric Abetz who seem to have three hands – that Turnbull has captured the One True Party and will soon be doing the work of the devil unless we can organise a coup after the next election and restore Abbott, the Anointed One. I think I was about to move on to my fourth hand, but then I grew worried that once I had four hands, I’d be like one of those infinite monkeys typing the works of Shakespeare.
Anyway, I happened to notice today that the Coalition are pushing ahead with their legislation to make “lawfare” illegal.
You remember? Lawfare? You know these “vigilantes” taking the law into their own hands by using the courts when we all know that the courts are meant to belong to the rich and powerful and if poor people start to use them to uphold existing laws then there’s obviously something wrong with the law. Better change it. We don’t want these green groups mounting challenges unless they’re directly affected. And they’re not directly affected unless they own shares in the company trying to do whatever it is that makes money.
Because when mining companies make money it helps us all because they have to pay taxes. Not the mining tax, of course, but other ones, like company tax -in the unlikely event that they ever make a profit. The subsidies that we give them barely cover the cost of the money they give us in political donations.
As for the National Farmers’ Federation being concerned about the “lawfare” legislation taking away their rights, well, we love farmers. The National Party used to be called the Country Party, you know, so Country People will always have a say. After all, didn’t Mr Abbott invite the Nats in to make sure that whole gay marriage thing didn’t get up? Mm, probably just as well they changed their name after re-reading that previous sentence…
Anyway, back to Turnbull…
Yep, that’s what the Liberals said. It’s got so bad we’re prepared to take on board someone who used Godwin Grech’s fake emails, because we’re hoping that he didn’t do that because he was too stupid to have them checked out, we’re hoping that he was unethical enough not to care what the truth was.
I guess time will tell.
