It isn’t Malcolm’s fault the Coalition is imploding
As the Coalition thrash around looking for someone else to blame for their woes, they seem to have entirely missed the point. The reason they are imploding is because they are completely tone deaf to the people they supposedly represent.
When discussing marriage equality just before the 2013 election, Tony Abbott said he was “not someone who wants to see radical change based on the fashion of the moment.”
Well Tony, the overwhelming majority of the population does not view ending discrimination as “radical change” any more than they view sexuality as a “fashion of the moment”.
Whenever bits of the Ruddock review into religious freedom get leaked, there is community backlash because our increasingly secular society does not want our kids or our teachers victimised regardless of what Lyle Shelton or George Pell may want.
A couple of years later, when discussing the provision of services like water, electricity and garbage removal to remote communities, Tony said “What we can’t do is endlessly subsidise lifestyle choices.”
I am not sure that remaining on your ancestral land should be considered a “lifestyle choice”, and, with our cities bursting at the seams, surely we should encourage those who choose to live outside them.
It is not just Tony “climate change is crap” Abbott that has a tin ear to the community.
When questions were asked of the former Minister for Women, Michaelia Cash, as to the extent that taxpayers had funded Barnaby Joyce’s adultery with a junior staffer, she responded by threatening to slut-shame women in Bill Shorten’s office. In the context of the #metoo movement, very high-profile sexual harassment allegations, and the perception that the Liberal Party is anti-women, this showed an appalling lack of judgement.
The oafish Barry O’Sullivan continued to trawl the depths by saying, of Sarah-Hanson Young, “There’s a bit of Nick Xenophon in her, and I don’t mean that to be a double reference, but there’s a bit of Xenophon in her.” How childish can this get? How out-of-touch can they be? That sort of stuff is not ok anywhere let alone in the workplace of our country’s lawmakers.
Despite the community’s growing mistrust of politicians and their ongoing rorting of expenses, despite the obvious nepotism and cronyism that rewards and promotes completely inadequate people or offers career paths for expoliticans, despite the disturbing slide down the corruption index and the growing secrecy from the government about how contracts and grants are awarded, Scott Morrison tells us that a national anti-corruption watchdog is “a fringe issue” being pushed by the Opposition.
The increasing demonisation of renewable energy under Morrison’s leadership is moving the Coalition even further away from community attitudes. People are concerned about climate change, and not just the people of Wentworth. They are concerned about the Reef. They are worried about their children’s future. They believe the scientists.
The hard work and momentum built when Indigenous people from around the country came together to ask for a Voice in their own affairs was immediately snuffed out by a government who seemed to view that as some sort of threat to their power, yet, once again, the community views the issue completely differently. It is fit and proper that they are properly recognised as the First Australians, that we tell the truth about the past, and that we allow them to help determine what is needed to make their children’s future better.
The government can no longer hide the plight of children on Nauru and people want them cared for. Yet, until very recently, they fought every case for medical transfer tooth and nail through the courts. The strategies to keep our borders secure cannot include holding people hostage.
And whilst becoming a Republic may not be a frontline issue for the majority, it is inevitable that it will happen some time so we really should be putting more thought into designing a new system of government and the symbols that will represent an independent country on the world stage.
ProMo, as part of his image makeover, keeps talking about getting out of the Canberra bubble except he doesn’t mean a word of it. Everywhere he goes he spouts his new slogan about listening, hearing and doing, yet he wanders around in an echo chamber where all he can hear is the braying threats from the far right and the marketing advice from the spin merchants.
Instead of blaming Malcolm Turnbull for the turmoil they now find themselves in – a view that requires complete cognitive dissonance – the Coalition need to get rid of the tin ear that is deaf to all but the loudest ultra-conservatives.
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26 comments
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Shaun Newman -
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Yvonne Robertson -
Kaye Lee -
Baby Jewels -
Klaus Petrat -
Yvonne Robertson -
Kaye Lee -
Kaye Lee -
helvityni -
David Evans -
Carol Taylor -
eefteeuu -
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pierre wilkinson -
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Matters Not -
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Stephengb
Return to home pageThis tory government has lurched from one crisis to the next for years, it’s time for an election to be called. We simply cannot continue with a government in such disarray especially with a parliament that will not meet for 8 months. That is 8 months without public scrutiny.
They have gone from mildly amusing to a joke, to a circus, to a catastrophe, to the laughing stock of the region. We have added embarrassment to our anger over this bankers co-op of retards who do not resemble everyday Australians in any way shape or form.
The Liarbral Notional$ are unfit to govern. It’s time!
Actually I figure it would have been different if Malcolm Turnbull had allowed them to crash and burn under Tony Abbott instead of advancing his own opportunity for leadership of the Lying Nasty Parties by staging a coup – or ‘stabbing Tony in the back’ but he had no taste for playing Leader of the Opposition.
Upon his ascension he either caved completely to the Right’s whims to maintain said leadership position while playing ‘Poor Malcolm’ to the electorate like the sad clown he really is, or agreed with quite a lot of it, take your pick. Now he’s taking some vindictive swipes like a waspish jilted lover. Thank goodness the Liberals don’t have any cats that’s all I can say!
However I look at it – Malcolm is also responsible for the fall of the Liberal National government and I thank him for his participation but can we end it now?
Fair point Yvonne. Malcolm also behaved atrociously to Brendan Nelson which at least Warren Entsch still held some animosity about as shown by his comment on the petition.. But the right are getting even louder under Morrison. The conflict is being played out very publicly much as Kelly O’Dwyer is doing her best to keep it in-house. I wonder who leak her comments. Tim Wilson perhaps?
Two terms of this. What the hell is wrong with the Australian people that the majority would vote for this? I could cry for Australia, the country I loved and respected when I came here in 1969. How we’ve changed as a nation since that time.
Hi KL,
Whilst all your points, regarding the current government are correct, Malcolm himself carries a lot of blame. Despite when being in power and the leader of the LNP, he did nothing whatsoever (at least not that the electorate knew) to restrain his incompetent, corrupt team, allegedly chosen by him to be the finest.
No spine, no character and even know, he proofs, that power is all he ever cherished. And like a bad child, whose number one toy has been stolen, he kicks, screams and does everything in his power, to bring that government to its knees, which hopefully happens sooner rather than later.
He no longer cares for anything other than the downfall of his fine team, to satisfy his thirst for revenge. Not unlike Tony, simply more subtle.
Agree Kaye Lee re the Right getting louder under Scott Morrison though he was one of them and blotted his copy book by supporting Turnbull. He’s an evangelistic ad man – wow that is one hell of an image – and I imagine the Right gives him more to work with in terms of those gifts and talents. Scott would always have wanted to play with the big boys – the bullies. It must be even more exciting to feel like technically he’s leading them.
Re Kelly O’Dwyer – it has a malfeasant feel to me. Who were the ones who were trying to give her the push while she was on maternity leave? I’d look there. Now she’s been pressured to pretend that the Liberal party is the best bet and truest home for women, in order to make amends for her earlier ‘aberrant’ thought, thereby making her look the archetypal ‘ditzy broad’. From what I read she’s on a knife edge with her seat so no doubt she has cause.
And then – sometimes I think that trying to logically dissect Liberal, National or One Nation motives is just a nonsense – they’re dangerous but also desperate.
Klaus,
I have to agree with you and Yvonne. Malcolm has never been good at leading a team. He prefers an audience. He and Lucy really enjoyed swanning around the world stage, and he was certainly less embarrassing in that arena than Tony, but he conceded far too much ground to the “homophobic, anti-women, climate-change denying” dinosaurs in the mistaken view that that would help him keep power. It is all the more ignominious because he knows better.
The following is an interesting insight into Malcolm at school that presaged what was to come.
Mackerras remembers Malcolm at 12 or 13 as something of a loner, unpopular because of his intolerance of his peers’ “silly and immature” behaviour. “He was born middle-aged,” says Mackerras. “I don’t think he ever got any pleasure out of youthful things.” Mackerras remembers’ being disturbed at Malcolm’s “contemptuous” attitude to women, something he put down to his mother having “cleared out”. “I always thought when he was young he was distinctly anti-woman. He was anti his mother for one.”
In the finest tradition of Mackerras’ Grammar, where democracy took a back seat to master-knowing-best, Mackerras appointed Turnbull head prefect, knowing his unpopularity. “It doesn’t hurt to have someone who doesn’t mind doing unpopular things,” he said.
While Turnbull was useful for this purpose, Mackerras could see possible problems later in life. “When he bossed people around he did it in an abrasive way people didn’t like. He makes it clear that he thinks people are perfect fools and haven’t got a brain in their head – that’s not how to make friends and influence people.”
One former teacher recalls that, before the appointment, a deputation of older 1971-leavers went to see Mackerras to plead “anyone but Turnbull” – he was too domineering.
The job certainly seems to have brought out the worst in Turnbull. The bullied became the bully. Midnight Oil drummer Rob Hirst, a year below Turnbull at Grammar, later wrote about Turnbull’s time as head prefect. He described a menacing presence at the lectern, haranguing the boys at school assembly.
Hirst writes that Turnbull managed to alienate almost everyone around him, students and teachers alike. A fighter and a winner, he nevertheless had a dearth of people skills: “a ‘lummy brew of eloquence, imperiousness and un-humble pie, plus a kind of sighing, saturnine resignation that his job necessarily involves being constantly surrounded by cretins”‘.
Yvonne. How very true. It is difficult to understand people who think their only job in life is to make someone else look bad. People who think shouting abuse is clever. People whose only goal is to win an election and like the dog who catches the car, they then have no further plan beyond chasing the next one, and they are prepared to say and do anything to achieve that. It makes one mistrust their every move and disbelieve everything they say. It’s exhausting.
I very much doubt that Morrison would have ever been captain of anything before. And it shows.
Very good posts Yvonne, Baby Jewels and Klaus, my sentiments to a T, just so much better expressed.
BJ, like you I often lament the change in Australia for the worse…it wasn’t like this when I first came here…
I remember how mean/nasty Turnbull was towards Rudd with his job application….
How much longer are WE going to allow this rabble to um,…”govern”? It is way past time!
BTW, there is a growing petition calling for morrison to call it now!
Remember when the LNP accused Labor of failing to listen to ‘the silent majority’? It seems that in playing to ‘the base’ that the LNP have failed to do precisely that. For years the shock jocks on radio and TV have pronounced themselves the voice of this silent majority, and the Libs believed them. Ordinary folk it seems are homophonic, climate denying, misogynistic racists. It feels like Justice to be proving them wrong and that the true silent majority are not shock jock replicas.
Morrison is nothing more than a shonky used car salesman.
(apologies to used car salesmen)
Have a look at
https://mobile.twitter.com/larissawaters/status/1068015573764780037/photo/1
and then tell me if you felt as sick as I did with Coalavan, sorry, Canavan’s crawling tweet. The corruption of the LNP is there for all to see.
Just in case you think it’s not real –
https://mobile.twitter.com/mattjcan
It won’t be long now before the people finally put a stake through the heart of this corrupt, undeserving, useless bunch of fools. The Victorian and Wentworth elections are just the hand writings on the wall, something that Scummo is well acquainted with every time he bows his head and concentrates on his make believe benefactor in the sky. His problem is he equates street hustling with governing ability. That’s why he looks bewildered when he ends up with egg on his face.
and yet in parliament they continue to extol their fiscal credentials: despite almost doubling the national debt
they continue to claim good responsible government and laud the economy
they ignore the plight of the workers and poor yet scream that they are the party that families should support
and of course: they blame Labor, they threaten that the world will implode, explode and that dingoes will eat your baby if Shorten is elected, and that is after a tsunami of illegal boat people steal all our jobs and simultaneously rort our welfare system and create terrorists cells…
be scared voters, be very very scared
pierre, and who’s going to scream that the loudest? The government or the Murdoch media?
Although it’s a given thing that they’ll be singing in unison.
With the government trailing badly in the polls, that alone will be the best reason for the dirtiest campaign in over a decade. The Murdoch media too will be feral. Like never before.
It’s a scary thought.
We are witnessing the commencement of the End of Days… for the LNP
One more thing to come… wait for it… the dumping of Morrison when the LNP twits realise they can’t possibly win the next election with him at the helm. That will be like the grand finale. The last joke of the monstrous mistake of this LNP government.
Let’s hope Labor is up to the task (though I’m sure they’re not). I’m scared they’ve become LNP-lite, having voted more times than not with the awful LNP and having become seriously corrupted by corporate money and religious influence. They just voted to allow religious schools to be able to fire gay teachers. Penny Wong should be hanging her head in shame.
Took the $11.00 that Smirky McShoutyface will be gone by year’s end. However there’s barely a genuine leader’s fingernail in the Cabinet though the favourite to replace him would be that vile Pinocchio Josh Freudianslip. In any case the neo-nasties should, emphasise again, should be unelectable whether they are led by Shoely, Rabid, Smirky, et al.
Problem is, we have to vote Labor to get a cohesive workable majority government, and, well………. they really and treely appear to be just as others have said many times on this forum and others, LNP Lite.
It will be soooooo disappointing to see Labor dog it on all manner of social reform and justice, not to mention corporate tax rorts, wet lettucing the banks post RC, baulking on compensation and reform issues after sex abuse RC, watering down ICAC and political donations, butt f#cking the poor, aged, disabled, unemployed, battered wives, mentally ill etc etc……
Cast a critical eye over the opposition shadows…. remember the form of some of them in the Rudd Gillard governments, check out the character of the others, consider how they got preselected, their factions and allegiances.
Personally i despise most politicians for the obvious reason, power corrupts. My maxim is, can you trust someone who wants to have power over you? Except retiring senator Cameron, of course.
Re:
Perhaps the assumption being that gays (a) prey on children or (b) gays are in the conversion business (broadly defined) and therefore children will become gay by mimicking the lifestyle of certain teachers or being subject to active recruitment.
Assuming the validity of those argument(s), logic suggests that therefore students should not be permitted to visit Parliament and Members of Parliament – (a location where gays can roam free without discrimination) should not be permitted to visit schools – without some type of certification re their ‘gayness’ free status. (The mind boggles.)
Then there’s the problem of gay parents with children. Can they be on the P&C? On the Executive? Be the President? Can they go on school camps? Can they drive school buses? Can they be teacher aides? What if they work in the Ambulance service – can they treat children with injuries? Alone – or only under supervision? If there’s a school fire …
No doubt Wong et al thought of such possibilities and drew them to the attention of a fearful public?
Unfortunately The Me Too Movement has caught up with the LNP.And now it’s like a scene out of Wake in Fright.The women are out there now spotlighting for white neandotholic polititicians, AKA The LNP Men .Watch them all go down like a strike in a bowling alley.
As an aside (sort of) did Wong, Wilson et al construct a new reality for gay teachers? And if not, then what descriptor(s) would you choose? Feel free.
One things for certain – for many teachers in the present, and many more in the future – the world is a different place. That’s the reality of such a decision.
Wong et al supporting those who consider ‘gayness’ to be somehow morally inferior and therefore legitimising second class treatment.
“Ms Wong acknowledged her amendment does not deal with discrimination against teachers, but said Labor does not want to risk holding up the change for students.”
Talk about squibbing it. MN makes the point – either gays are accepted or they are not. As someone else asked, at what age does discrimination kick in? As far as I am aware, no school wanted the right to kick kids out so this amendment is purely window dressing. It dies not address the issue of intolerance and discrimination.
Bloody hell Ms Lee, you have done it again, fanatstic writtwriting.
HOWEVEVER, (just kidding)
S G B
You all missed the obvious aboit turnbull (lower case intended)
He is also a COWARD
https://goo.gl/images/5jvKj5