Malcolm Turnbull has been doing some peculiar things lately. Even more peculiar than his hissy-fit on election night. Even more peculiar than Barnaby Joyce’s admission on AM yesterday: “Well, as I’ve said to everybody including Tony, these are questions for Tony to answer, you know, not for me. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t read another bloke’s mind; I’ve got enough trouble dealing with my own”, because that is probably the most accurate thing that Mr Joyce has ever said.
For starters, there’s Malcolm’s little video trumpeting a year of achievements, not just “headlines and press statements”. Now, are we meant to infer from this that he didn’t achieve anything in the previous year? Or was the election a reset and we were meant to treat it like the start of a sporting event and the score has gone back to zero for both sides so not only can’t the Labor Party claim credit for anything they achieved – like reducing the number of seats the government holds – he also can’t be blamed for anything that Tony did.
Of course, given that they haven’t changed their policies in a whole range of areas, it’s hard to argue that Malcolm is trying to draw a line in the sand and say, “Look, forget Tony, he was an aberration, nobody really wanted him and his silly ideas but once he looked like winning an election it was pretty hard to shift him. At least, until after the election…”
Take raising the pension age to 70, for example. It’s still Liberal Party policy… Which sort of makes Turnbull’s “I’m not too old at 62” seem a tad obvious. Of course not, Malcolm, you should be working for another eight years, you bludger!
And speaking of bludgers, isn’t it great that they’re going to get all those people off the dole by offering “internships” or as they used to be known “slave labour”. From what I understand, businesses will be paid to train unemployed people and, in return, the government will get a drop in the number of people listed as unemployed.
Yes, it’s true that the unemployed person will get $4 an hour on top of their unemployment benefit. I presume that it’s on top of their unemployment benefit, but I better check that because, while the idea that someone could live on $100 a week is ludicrous, given they tried to leave young people without unemployment benefits for six months, being ludicrous is no reason to presume that it wouldn’t be their policy.
A trial of 1200 participants has been so successful that over 80 have them have since found a job. Awesome. Given that we’ll soon have 10,000 interns that means that almost 900 will have jobs. Of course, one could wonder how many might have found jobs anyway, but surely a figure of nearly ten percent can be considered an enormous success. Particularly when compared to all the government’s other initiatives. Look at their success at “Budget Repair” or reducing government debt. And if you check out the fifteen or so things listed as achievements on the Liberal website you have such wonderful things as “An innovation and science agenda to help create the jobs of the future”. Great we have an “agenda”. Absolutely spiffing. For some reason, the term “hidden agenda” springs to mind.
Still, one might wonder, with all these internships about, whether some businesses will have any need to hire at all when they can just keep getting people “job ready”, but that would be a cynical way to view this wonderful opportunity that Malcolm and the big retailers are providing.
As Malcolm said at the launch, ‘They will get a start at a job and, you know what, they could go on to great heights.’ And no, he didn’t just mean window cleaners in high rise buildings. He was suggesting that they “could go on to, like many others before them, running big businesses, owning big businesses and employing lots of other people, realising their dreams.”
All that from a simple internship, where the young person gets the opportunity to see that the way to get ahead isn’t by hard work, but by exploiting people without paying them and relying on a handout from government to boost your bottom line. Yes, I can see that Freddie after a few weeks as an intern will be going to the bank and asking for a business loan because he’s ready to start his own retail chain where he can be paid to provide “training” for others while pocketing a subsidy from the government.
But perhaps most peculiar of all is Mr Turnbull’s public shot across the bow followed by his assertions about thing he has no real control over. While Malcolm’s “I’ll leave politics if I’m no longer PM” was widely interpreted as “I will spit the dummy and cause a by-election (as opposed to his putting in $1.7 million to buy election) if you dump me”, he quickly moved to reassure everyone that he intends to be PM for a very long time. I don’t know about anyone else but it seems like he’s already been PM for a very long time, but that could be because time flies when you’re having fun, and clearly nobody’s having fun. But given he could be voted out by Liberals if he doesn’t start improving in the polls his assurance “I will be running at the 2019 election and will win”, seems a little like bravado more than a promise. No, bravado isnt’ quite the right word. Umm… I know. It sounds more like bullshit than a promise.
