Malcolm Turnbull: “It’s Just A Flesh Wound…”

Update: After writing this, I noticed that both the ABC and The Australian are reporting that they “understand” that the deal is going ahead. I do note that the Whitehouse didn’t mention it in their press release, and there was no official announcement from Australia. Ok, good, I’m happy to say that I was wrong about the deal going ahead and that’s a good thing… Unless someone’s just “leaked” this to them in the hope that we’ll all breathe a sigh and forget all about it so that Turnbull won’t have to say that we didn’t get any agreement from Trump. And whenever this is brought up in the future, then the response will be checks are still underway, because in nearly four years, there hasn’t been enough time to check them out yet.

Recently, a number of people have suggested that Turnbull was the worst PM since Billy McMahon, which long-time apologist for the Liberal Party, David Flint, suggested was terribly unfair because there’s no way Billy would have done some of the things that Malcolm’s doing…

McMahon – for those of you too young to remember – became our leader when Gorton failed to get a majority in the spill and used his casting vote to resign. With ears that would put Tony Abbott to shame and a capacity to put his foot in it that would make Barnaby blush, one of Billy’s best moments came in the ’72 election campaign when he told voters that after examining all the facts, he was sure that they’d all vote for the Labor Party. Ok, he quickly corrected himself, but he may have been better not to and claimed that as a rare moment of political honesty in Australia. Billy was nicknamed “the Leak” by various journalists, and not because he needed to urinate frequently.

Whatever, it’s rather embarrassing for a man such as Turnbull to be compared to McMahon. It’s sort of the opposite of when people say, “This is the best thing since sliced bread!” Mm, what was the best thing before sliced bread? And who would there be to compare Turnbull to, if McMahon hadn’t had those glorious couple of years ensuring Whitlam’s victory? Malcolm Bligh Turnbull worst Australian leader since his namesake, Governor Bligh, who was the only Australian leader deposed by a rebellion. The Rum Rebellion was January 26th… Now there’s something we could all celebrate on January 26th: getting rid of an out-of-touch arrogant leader! Anybody want to suggest it to the Liberals?

All right, I know that some of you will have alternative facts on Bligh’s removal and suggest that – as with Whitlam – it was the ruling elite who removed him and we could be here all day when all I wanted to do was defend poor Malcolm who has been bravely continuing on in the face of reality.

Yes, Malcolm assured us that there’s no need to abandon the TPP just because the USA and Japan have called it dead, Mexico will be ultra-keen when Trump imposes that twenty percent tariff. And China! Maybe China could step and do what the US was going to do and reap all the benefits by allowing their companies all sort of access to our markets in return for Australians being allowed to sell three extra blocks of cheese a week and all the Vegemite that China requires!

For most people, that would be enough. Most people can only ask us to believe in one impossible thing a week, but Malcolm is telling us that he’s “confident” that Trump will honour the refugee deal and resettle asylum seekers from Manus and Nauru, even though visa-holding non-refugees with family in the US have been stopped at the border if they’re from certain designated countries.

Interestingly, Saudi Arabia was not one of the countries on the no-fly list… Is no-fly list the right term here? Because unless one believes the various conspiracy theories on 9/11 – it was Israel/the CIA/Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone – then wasn’t it mainly Saudi nationals who took flying lessons and asked for a discount because they didn’t need to learn how to land?

So, Malcolm will ring Donald today and argue that the US should take them!

Why? Because well, we can’t! No, no it’s not because we’re worried that they’re a security threat. No, no, not at all, we’ve been holding them in an off-shore detention centre… No, not like Guantanamo Bay…Well, yes a bit like that… but not because they’ve done anything wrong – apart from try to come to Australia. No, it’s because letting them come here would send the wrong message to people smugglers if we were to resettle them in a nice country like Australia… but taking them to the US, well that’s not something that would incentivise people to make the dangerous journey by boat. Look, it’s just a favour. Can you take them? Come on, we took those ones from Central America and you were going to take these ones! That was the deal even though we said that it wasn’t… We made this deal with Obama and… Hello? hello? Can you get, Mr Trump back on the line? We seem to have been cut off.

But like the TPP – where the Coalition was so confident that they didn’t do any modelling – and everyone having access to the NBN by 2016 and cutting back the debt, Malcolm is confident. I hope he does manage to persuade The T-Rump, but somehow I think we have more chance of Barnaby Joyce giving some sensible advice on housing or a One Nation senator admitting that there’s an area where they’re not an expert so they’d like some advice.

Speaking of cutting back the debt, did anyone notice that Mr Morrison will be raising debt ceiling past $500 billion, telling us: “Despite the debt and deficit legacy we inherited as a government we continue to make progress in getting the growth in government expenditure under control and arresting the growth in Commonwealth debt, which is still well below that of many comparable and other AAA rated economies.”

While yes, I agree with his assertion that we’re still below many comparable, triple A economies, it does seem a strange thing to suggest that you’re making progress when all you’re doing is boasting about reducing the rate of growth in expenditure. That means it’s still growing. It’s like saying, “Yes, doctor, I haven’t reduced my drinking, but I’ve slowed down the rate at which I’m increasing it! Surely that’s impressive. If I’d keep up last year’s rate, I’d have been drinking a bottle of scotch and two bottles of wine by 2020, by at this rate it’ll take me till 2022 to get there.”

Let’s just ignore that Labor had gone through the GFC and many of the items that were causing the increase in expenditure were arguably good ideas which would have produced economic benefits in the longer term like Gonksi, the NBN and the NDIS. Compare that with submarines, planes that don’t fly, helicopter flights and running an offshore detention centre where nobody’s quite sure who authorised the spending of a billion dollars, but someone must have because we spent it, so what’s the big deal?