“You’ve got to be true to yourself, Neil. I am who I am. I’m a practical, pragmatic leader. I’m not an ideological leader.”
So said Malcolm Turnbull when asked if he would be changing his leadership style in the aftermath of Trump’s victory.
True to yourself? Which self would that be? Would it be the self who, in 2009, said
“Now politics is about conviction and a commitment to carry out those convictions. The Liberal Party is currently led by people whose conviction on climate change is that it is “crap” and you don’t need to do anything about it. Any policy that is announced will simply be a con, an environmental figleaf to cover a determination to do nothing.”
Would it be the self who ridiculed Abbott for changing his mind on an ETS?
His only redeeming virtue in this remarkable lack of conviction is that every time he announced a new position to me he would preface it with “Mate, mate, I know I am a bit of a weather vane on this, but…..”
At the time, Turnbull said “I am not a barrister any more. I am not going to go out there and make a case for something I don’t believe in.”
But just as Abbott did, Turnbull has shown that, in return for the crown of leadership, he is more than happy to throw away his convictions and to make the case for all sorts of rubbish that he does not believe in like the marriage equality plebiscite, the attacks on renewable energy, the expansion of coal mining and the trashing of the NBN.
He sounds more like he is back at Sydney Grammar, the second speaker in the debate presenting minor arguments whilst ignoring the big issues.
All of a sudden, being a weathervane has morphed into being a pragmatist.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, pragmatic means “relating to matters of fact or practical affairs often to the exclusion of intellectual or artistic matters: practical as opposed to idealistic <pragmatic men of power have had no time or inclination to deal with … social morality — K. B. Clark>
Malcolm’s pragmatism has absolutely nothing to do with the most practical course of action and everything to do with what he has to say and do to retain the leadership of a party whose values are worlds away from his own.
