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Time for Turnbull to rescue his party
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Malcolm Turnbull needs to give a stirring performance tonight in his Budget Reply. Not particularly for the sake of his leadership, although that could do with some bolstering, but more for the sake of the Opposition as a whole. It won’t be easy. Already the Budget is dropping out of the media cycle, with no particular positives or negatives for the Government. Turnbull will have to compete with rugby league’s penchant for group sex for attention. But, if we want to stick with the sporting thing for a moment, this is about converting pressure into points. The Liberals have slowly become a one-issue party economically: it’s been all about debt and deficits for months. There’s no turning back on that and one suspects the highly self-assured Turnbull doesn’t do Damascene conversions very well. The ALP’s polling momentum seems to have peaked — although that peak has been called half a dozen times since December 2006 — and maybe voters are starting to worry about the sheer size of the numbers being thrown around by the Government. Tonight needs to be about finding a way of crystallizing that concern — even if only in a pithy phrase — but avoiding the Government’s trap of appearing to contribute to the deficit by opposing savings measures. Turnbull also needs to throw off the mantle of Dr No and offer some positives. Then there’s the problem of the Liberals’ support base. Big business is fleeing, convinced the Government understands its needs better than the natural party of the corporate sector, even if they resent the Government’s IR changes. Pensioners are being wooed away by Labor’s pension increases. Only small business remains onside, although the Government threw some more tax relief their way on Tuesday. Expect Turnbull to announce more for what he’ll call job-generating machine of the economy. His broader task, though, is for relevance. The Liberals keep finding ways to sideline themselves from crucial debates. When you don’t believe the Government should be spending anything, it’s hard to argue with how it is spending. And the constant naysaying means voters tune out. Turnbull needs to get back in the spotlight and re-engage voters’ attention. Last year Brendan Nelson did it with his petrol excise proposal, a remarkably bad policy — as Turnbull himself made clear — that nevertheless shifted the debate away from where the Government was comfortable. Turnbull needs a similar approach this year to get some attention, to get people thinking of him as the alternative Prime Minister, not just the leader of the Opposition. At least Turnbull is well-equipped for the task. One of the weaknesses of the Budget is the complexity of the messages it offered and Turnbull is better-equipped than anyone else in his party to dissect that complexity and with a cutting phrase or three — inevitably cheered on by a Public Gallery packed with Liberal supporters — show its flaws. With an even a little substance, Turnbull can provide the style, and he gets half an hour to do it. If nothing else, at least Turnbull is about the only MP who can make a long speech entertaining. Still, the signs aren’t promising. Yesterday’s Question Time was singularly lacking in bite. If the Coalition had the courage of its ideological convictions, it should have been greeting a $53b deficit with howls of fury about the betrayal of future generations. $53.1b is the correct accrual deficit, by the way, not the misleading $57.6b cash figure, although if you want the biggest possible figure, you can use the “headline cash balance” figure of $59.8b, which would have yielded a nice “Sixty Billion Dollar Man” cartoon instead of Wolverine and Frankenstein’s monster (too obscure? Too seventies? Maybe). Where was the outrage from the Opposition? The debt truck — that “fully-imported lorry of lies” from the early nineties — should have been hauled from the junkyard and revved up again. Small children should have been ushered in front of cameras to lament being given thousands of dollars of debt for nothing. But instead, yesterday, we had the usual Question Time: Prime Ministerial droning, albeit enlivened by an elaborate WW1 metaphor, Lindsay Tanner mocking Helen “FBI” Coonan and Anthony Albanese unveiling the new website of the Member for Higgins. On the Coalition side, Wilson Tuckey made lots of points of order. Someone should be employed specifically to keep Tuckey in the Member’s Dining Room with a good bottle of WA red after lunch is finished and make sure he never gets to Question Time. |
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12 Comments
Turnbull also needs to show a lot more leadership if the shambles in the Parliament during question time today is an indication. Rudd, Swan, and co really know how to rev the rabble up and there are plenty taking the bait with the supposed Manager of Opposition business Pyne, acting like a spoilt brat. It has been a complete shambles, these days the PM only has to take a swipe, and bedlam breaks out. Interesting point made by Lindsay Tanner today. He suggests the Opposition have given them selves nicknames,such are the type of names he could not mention them in the House. What the hell is going on in the Liberal ranks? Ironbar Tuckey was at it again, more absurd points of order, looks as if the Speaker has given up, it was chaos in there today. Turnbull has a multitude of problems.
The majority of the Canberra press gallery mildly rebuked this dishonest budget before turning to the ‘weightier matter’ of the ‘problems’ with the Liberal party………. but Bernard Keane of the ‘independent’, small and a supposedly proudly dissident Crikey actually nearly always toes the orthodox line….and it serves Kev 57 well doesn’t it?
The budget after the next election will radically rewrite this one causing great pain. That will be true irrespective of which side wins. This laughable excuse for political commentary are all aware of it.
It doesn’t even seem strange anymore.
Apparently Bernard believes that just repeating nonsense such as this often enough with an affected air of thoughtful earnestness whilst the punters go quietly in a numbing stupefaction to see their country commit a fiscal version of harikari (just like Japan did in the early 90’s) will at least prevent John Howard governing again.
The Canberra press gallery having vilified Howard and lauded this loon can’t quite bring themselves to acknowledge the truth.
Tonight Turnbull needs to make a full departure from the last 18-months of hackneyed snitchy scaremongering that’s defined the conservatives as dyed in the wool denialists of current circumstances. As Obama said and no doubt our flame-throwing former Treasurer would agree, its time to put aside childish things - if only for the sake of democracy. No more ludicrous reasons as to why a nation should regret its choice at the last federal poll or that they’d manage better a recession they had no hand in and didn’t see coming. If he alludes to kids of the future with hump-backs caused by the weight of national debt or athletes left at the starting blocks with lead weights in their pockets he’ll lose his credibility and leadership as he sends his party further down the popularity scale. If Malcolm steps outside the suffocating square surrounding the Opposition they’ll not just turn a corner but send Costello packing.
Nice piece Bernard…balanced, thoughtful…..I enjoyed it.
No, what tripe, MT has nothing to prove.
The onus is on our elected Government. Something that BK really has problems adjusting too.
JamesK. I love it when you thrash around in your matted ochre cloak of hatred for the Labor Party. However, it saddens me to realize your agonized calls of hatred are achieving the opposite effect from the one you intended. No matter how foul is your perception of the Labor Party it’s all a waste of your excellent writing talent to carry along on that line. Isn’t there something in the tortured, turgid prose of your christian bible? Something like ‘before you point out other peoples’ defects, haul the log out of your own eye’. You will know the correct quote.
The whole point JamesK, is the Liberal Party(?) equates to the entertaining sight of each member pulling in a different direction. They are not a party in the true sense of the word. They are a disunited rabble wondering why they are not on the front benches. And, if they haven’t figured that out yet they are in deep sh-t.
They fail to be of help to the tragic/comic figure who was passed the poisoned chalice, and Malcolm Turnbull is brightly living up to his surname. Albeit with rows of pearly white teeth set in an undershot jaw, and an ability to talk ad infinitum. Note: I’m not mocking the man’s obvious brains, I merely regret his lack of political smarts.
Regrettably, I suffer from Althaeaophobia-one glimpse of Christopher Pyne and I immediately break out in hives. And he is but one of them.
BTW: I was at the local chemist when Peter the Putrid’s PA came in on the morning after the budget and apart from much rolling of eyes wasn’t prepared to say a thing? Odd!
Well he’s going to block (lol) the health insurance rebate means test and advocate an increase in cigarette tax (lol).
Venise, I love the ALP and what it has historically stood for.
I didn’t hate Rudd when he first became PM as you know. I do now, however.
My post was critical of the Canberra press gallery including Bernard Keane rather than Labor.
I know Kev 07 declared there was not a cigarette paper’s difference between his “unapologetically” conservative economic policies and those of Mr Howard.
Unfortunately the Canberra commentariat with their collective heads buried in the sand don’t show a similarly loose definition of intimacy for their ‘chuminess’ with Kev 57.
There is certainly much more than a cigarette paper’s difference between the media and the primary interest of the nation.
I don’t care about Mr Rudd’s ‘ideology’ but his patent insane decision making will unnecessarily cause much suffering among his fellow Australians.
Not that he gives a toss. He puts himself first, perhaps a contorted view of the ALP second and the nation a very long way last.
Your future is being compromised. Wake up. Volunteer for Pete!
Your local Prince needs you!
Well! Malcom really delivered a nation-awakening statement. No doubt as we’re dozing News Limited will beaver away to mould his bits and pieces effort into an impact statement for the morning dailies. Increased cig prices certain to headline Turnbull’s attack on how to offset a government deficit in complex fiscal times. Such sophisticated fiscal management in highly complex times of a world monetary meltdown has never been more welcome. What a shame Malcolm and co can’t form a Coalition let alone government.
Chris Johnson listened to a speech but it was apparently an imaginary one between her ears.
It certainly was not Malcolm Turnbull’s budget reply speech tonight.
Turnbull’s suggested tobacco excise was, he clearly explained, by way of offsetting the monies the Government would fail to save by the Coalition’s successful blocking of the Health Insurance Rebate revocation component of the Budget.
It specifically was not “on how to offset a government deficit in complex fiscal times” as Chris Johnson dishonestly suggested.
Indeed Turnbull specifically pointed to the inadequacy of Labor saying: “None of the savings measures in this Budget will make, by themselves, a material difference to the deficit” …..let alone a 3c a cigarette tax.
Futhermore he said he would not provide “Labor with the policy alternatives, with the map and compass, that will get them out of the mess in which they find themselves”.
Chis routinely subscribes to the perverse and duplicitous leftist school which almost disdainfully articulates: ‘Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good going prejudice’.
Two cheers for Truffles! By not sharing his map and compass with the Prime Minister — particularly in the uncharted waters of this economic crisis — he is truly putting Queen and country first.
JamesK can interpret whatever he heard Truffles say whichever way he likes. But the ABC and other media outlets heard the Opposition leader say he would oppose the means testing of Medicare rebates preferring a 12.5% increase on cigarette taxes. Perhaps reading the words will fill in the gaps.
Instead of means testing the rebate, Mr Turnbull has called for an increase on cigarette taxes by 12.5 per cent, which he says is about three cents per cigarette.
“Raise $1.9 billion by making health more expensive and putting more pressure on the public hospital system, or by adding about three cents more to the price of a cigarette and taking pressure off the public health system.”
Apology please Mr K.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/14/2570901.htm