Ok, I’ve Been Wrong Before – I Said That Malcolm Turnbull Would Never Stand Up To Tony!

16 Comments

1. The day Abbott said to Turnballs as he made him Communication Minister, ‘now get out there and destroy Labors NBN’. the dye was caste, the weak kneed one complying. New colours adorned his timid persona…. a wimp was born.

2. I don’t think that M.T. will actually stand up to T.A. More like step over his already dead carcass.

   “The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre.” — Frank Zappa

   and

   “Never underestimate the power of doing nothing.” — Whinney the Pooh.

3. A stager.

4. David,
   I strongly believe that Malcolm Turnbull was offered the Communications portfolio (minister for copper-wiring) as a deliberate effort to stymie his leadership aspirations; a form of poisoned chalice.
   Turnbull was delegated the task of trying to sell the least popular of the coalition’s platforms, the scaling down of a communication upgrade that most voters see as both desirable and necessary (who wants slow internet?).
   ‘Moderate Mal’s’ choices were quisling acquiescence, with a diminishing of public credibility and respect, or an openly mutinous display against his newly elected leader (political suicide).
   MT (surprise surprise) chose cynical pragmatism over principles.

5. We are fast approaching the 2 year anniversary of the Abbott government and I wonder what their actual achievements are?

   Stopped the boats – no because the boats are still coming, we just aren’t being told about them.

   Axed the carbon tax – we took a step toward making polluters pay for the damage they are doing but Abbott decided against it. The only country in the world to renege on a carbon price, or indeed any action on climate change. Oh, and where’s the $500 reduction in my power bill?

   Axed the mining tax – for a government with revenue problems, Abbott decreed it was fine to allow foreign owned miners to get away without paying any tax.

   Budget emergency – how exactly is our deficit going? The billions handed to the reserve bank, all those manly jet fighters, the targeting of the poor, the sick or the unemployed to address the revenue shortfall rather than multinational corporations or tax loopholes.

   Create 2 million jobs – most of them for foreign workers on 457’s and the failure to support manufacturing doesn’t seem to be working at all. Propping-up coal and fossil fuels and the decimation of the environment, science, renewables and innovation.

   No cuts to health, education, ABC – well… we all know how that has played out.

   Are there actually any notable achievements for the past two year, besides Abbott’s famous Captain’s calls on knighthoods, bonnie, same-sex marriage, renewables, climate change, security?

6. It was also a CIA agent that once said, everyone lies just make sure your the first one to do it!

7. The Thug from Northern Beaches

   There was movement in the party, for the word had passed around
   The Thug from Northern Beaches could not stay
   He had told so many lies that the punters had surmised
   They could not believe a thing, he had to say

   So the politicians plotted from locations near and far
   As the centre fought against the rabid right
   They all agreed the thug was becoming more bizarre
   but they knew he’d not go down without a fight

   Turnbull had made his score from banking and the law
   But he’d lost out to the thug some years ago
   His plan was just to wait, for the thug to meet his fate
   He did not quite have the numbers yet to show

   And Bishop from the west, played at sitting on the fence
   Though she thought to throw her own hat in the ring
   She was quick to take offence as the thug became more tense
   And like Malcolm she could stay on a good thing

   Some others liked their chance so they jockeyed to advance
   Scott Morrison and perfidious poodle Pyne
   They gave the Thug some space but in case he’d run his race
   They positioned to survive in Turnbull’s line

   Others from the right, thought the Thug must win the fight
   Andrews, Corman, Brandis, Hockey and Robb
   by far their biggest fear was for their own career
   As Turnbull might relieve them of their job

   As the leaks came in a flood you could smell the scent of blood
   Even Murdoch’s mob were calling for the end
   The Thug was sticking fast but his fate it seemed was cast
   It was not a case of if, but only when

   The party had a spill but they couldn’t make the kill
   Though the Thug was nearly beaten by a chair
   With hand upon his heart, “good government would start”
   But still the smell of failure filled the air

   As the time flew past the Thug kept up the farce
   With help from Smokin Joe and his big mouth
   With a blunder every week they went further up shit creek
   And the polls just kept on trending further south

   When Bronwyn got caught out the public had no doubt
   The Thug and all his crew were on the take
   They tried to drag in Bourke but it really didn’t work
   And another captains call was a mistake

   Now we’re six months on the Thug looks to be gone
   As lies and bad decisions take their toll
   The public have concluded the Thug is quite deluded
   They know it’s the Thug’s head that’s going to roll

   Has the party got the guts to remove someone whose nuts
   Or will the Thug just take them to the grave
   disunity is death but then in the same breath
   to keep the Thug is surely crazy brave.

8. Bravo Graeme, you’re wordsmithing is really brilliant. Thanks for the chuckles!!

9. Cheers Corvus, good summary

10. corvus boreus
    Fiber to the node has advantages and does not exclude fiber to the premises for those that want or need it.
    The copper network is still in good condition. It is only the tips of the cables exposed to the atmosphere that degrade. Houses will not have to rewire their homes. Existing domestic routers will still operate. The telephone service will not need to be terminated. Other devices such as radio towers and relays can be connected to the nodes. Speeds will be improved because of the shorter length of copper cable and will be adequate for most purposes. It will be cheaper for consumers to set up and the cost of the node is shared between all those connected to it.
    A fiber cable is capable of well in excess of 100Mbs yet, this is what fiber connections will be restricted to and for what reason I do not know.
    Cheers.

11. Harquebus, you seem to be quoting from the Turnbull handbook ‘yes Prime Minister sir’.

12. Joe told us the Age of Entitlement was over .. I guess polies were exempted in the fine print. Silly us to complain.

13. @Harquebus “The copper network is still in good condition. It is only the tips of the cables exposed to the atmosphere that degrade.” Bullshit when water penetrates the sheath of the copper cable the entire cable degrades and a considerable percentage of the copper cable is past its use by date. Remember that most of these cables are run underground in conduits with joins in pits and the rest are swinging on poles so water is present for a considerable period of the year. Along my road people cannot get extra phone lines because there are not enough cores to service all of the houses because the infrastructure is so old.

    “Speeds will be improved because of the shorter length of copper cable and will be adequate for most purposes.” Given the uptake of services providing TV and movies on demand we need fibre to the home ASAP and the original concept of the NBN was the most cost effective option. Yes people can pay to have fibre to the home with the changes the LNP have made but the cost of fibre to the home has risen by more than 10 fold as a result.

    “It will be cheaper for consumers to set up and the cost of the node is shared between all those connected to it.” In the long term it will cost people more, doing half a job now and half a job later always costs more than doing the job properly in the first place.

    While the physical limitations of electrical cable prevent speeds in excess of 10 Gigabits per second, the physical limitations of fiber optics have not yet been reached. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-optic_communication#Bandwidth.E2.80.93distance_product

    Fibre optics were invented by the PMG back in the 1960’s and we still have not fully implemented the technology 50 years later, no wonder Australia is considered to be technologically backward by so many countries. We get most of our IT work performed offshore in India, all of our innovations are overlooked locally so the technology goes offshore and then we have to buy the rights to use it at huge expense to consumers. We should have installed fibre to the home 15 years ago instead of selling off Telstra and become world leaders in IT infrastructure. A little bit of vision could have born so much fruit, but of course the LNP have Turnbull, the man who invented the Internet!

    “Existing domestic routers will still operate.” Typical life of a domestic router and/or modem is 3-5 years and they cost under $100 so there is no huge savings to be had.

14. What Wally said (and in spades). The notion that the:

    The copper network is still in good condition … is only the tips of the cables exposed

    Hilarious. It’s like saying that my legs are in excellent condition but my broken ankles are a slight problem.

    Or, my body is in great shape, apart from a small severance to my spinal cord.

    It’s ignorance on display writ large.

    But I don’t think that the PMG invented ‘fibre optics’ in the 1960s because history suggests much earlier developments.

15. @Matters Not – we were taught at trade school in the mid 1970’s that the PMG developed fibre optic but they probably should have added (and so should I) for transmitting data at high speed. I think prior to that as far back as 1880 fibre tubes had been used to transmit light. I assume it was around the time that ARPANET was developed that the benefits of sending data using fibre optics became relevant. Remember that back then the telephone backbone was an analogue system.

    Sorry for any confusion caused.

16. as far back as 1880 fibre tubes had been used to transmit light

    Yes, but I am certainly not an expert on such matters. But what I do believe is that the best of the 19th technology should have been in operation yesterday. Today is far, far too late.

    ‘Tomorrow’ as a possible ‘consideration’ is evidence of abject failure.