What Malcolm Did Next!

‘Speaking in Japan’s capital Tokyo overnight, Mr Abbott said China’s activities were threatening the stability and security of the region.

“Over the past 18 months, Australia has quietly increased our own air and naval patrols in the South China Sea,” he said.

“We should be prepared to exercise our rights to freedom of navigation wherever international law permits because this is not something that the United States should have to police on its own.”

He said no country has more rights than others.’
ABC, February 27th, 2016

Well, it’s good to know that Australia has been “quietly” increasing our air and naval patrols in the South China Sea. I guess that’s why China is growing scared and pulling back its own presence. Although if we’ve been doing it quietly, how would they ever notice? I guess that’s probably why Mr Abbott felt the need to announce it. Either he felt that China needed to know that we were patrolling, or else he was suffering LADIS. (Lack of Attention Due To Irrelevance Syndrome)

I guess that’s why the Acting Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull felt that we needed to increase Defence spending to 2% of GDP: so we can take on China when the time comes. Although listening to Mr Abbott, one suspects that we shouldn’t waste any time building those 12 submarines.

No, don’t tell me that Mr Turnbull isn’t the Acting PM. He’s clearly been “acting”; the only question is whether he was acting when he pretended that all those things like the Republic, gay rights and the evrironment were important or whether he’s acting now that he’s actually managed to strike enough populist positions to get himself the job of seat-warmer to the next conservative PM.

Yes, with Tony Abbott’s pronouncement on China, one wonders whether Mr Turnbull will be consulting his advisers and asking how we can actually pretend that we’re at war with such an important trading partner without getting them so cross that they point out that they already own most of our country and under the free trade agreement they have the right to appoint the Australian Cabinet. (I understand that Mr Robb held out and demanded that the governing party in the House or Reps still had the power to appoint the PM. China eventually agreed as the position seemed pretty ineffectual anyway!)

Poor, old Malcolm…

I suppose somebody is going to point out that he’s rich, but that’ll just start a debate about the “politics of envy” and at the risk of being distracted I can’t help but wonder why when people use that phrase they think it’s the end of the discussion. I mean, would you expect the person to go away if you said “that’s just the politics of trying to prevent domestic violence” or “that’s just the politics of getting really angry because we’re going to bulldoze your house to build a retirement home for polo ponies”!

Yes, Malcolm has had a hard week. I mean, Turnbull, not Brough who has decided not to contest the next election. Part of the reason was probably the fact that central branch was taking a while to endorse him because they wanted to think through the best way to tell him that they weren’t going to, but a large part of the reason may have been to spend more time with his family while he can. (I mean, none of us know when circumstances may take us to places where spending time with the family is not as easy as it once was and while there’s no reason to think that Mal should find himself in such a place just because “60 Minutes” confused him into admitting something which he later relied on not saying in Parliament, but it’s good to be prepared!)

No, it’s Mr Turnbull who’s been having a rough week. Falling opinion polls (I believe one narrowly missed his head), suggestions that he’s caving in to the nuph-nuphs in his party, demands that he censor George Christensen when George is simply doing what he was put on earth for – ensuring people shake their heads and say that cousins should never marry!

It’s got so that all those good things that his governemnt is doing are just being lost. Like the NBN. The model which was going to be faster and cheaper because we were going to use the existing copper wires and we’d have by now if it wasn’t for the fact that we have to replace the existing copper with new copper wires. But at least we can be sure that the new copper will last us at least until after the next election.

And it’s the new copper wires that’s the sort of innovation that his government is responsible for, but unfortunately the media would rather concentrate on trivial things like protests from doctors, teachers and the voting public. That’s why his government has just spent $28 million explaining that it’s in favour of innovation. I mean, innovation – it’s a good idea. I mean that’s sort of the definition, so it’s obviously a good idea and, while it may be a surprise, the current government is in favour of good ideas which improve things. I know that some of you may not have seen the ads so you may not be aware of that fact. Yep, innovation is the idea of creating or inventing something new. And they’re in favour of it, unless it’s something new like the Safe Schools program.

You only have to take their actions to see examples of this, closing down the automobile industry was entirely consistent with this idea of innovation because, well, jobs in that industry were old jobs.

Similarly, the decision by the CSIRO to axe many of the climate science jobs is entirely consistent with the idea of getting rid of old things and replacing them with new.

And coal. They intend to have a whole team of people trying to work out a use for coal now that extracting from the ground to burn for fuel is no longer economically viable. Someone has come up with the idea of building houses out of it, but until they find a way to fire-proof it, it’s still considered too risky to be a goer!

And when the election comes, perhaps we too can consider innovation when casting our votes and perhaps try to find a creative, new innovative party to vote for. Or at least a change of government. As for a new PM, well I suspect we’ll get one of those before the year is out whoever wins the election.