Malcolm Turnbull



The laws of mathematics are very commendable but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia.

Malcolm "Sugar Bomb"  Trumble   Turncoat   Turdball   Turnbull is an economic hit man, former Australian Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party. He's an ex-banker and ex-lawyer who sees himself as a thoroughbred. He was really just the sacrificed Yoshi used to make a jump in a Mario level.

Turnbull may have presented a more measured face (small-l "liberal") to the public than the open lunacy that was Abbott; however, he still echoed the far-right's mad ramblings and was beholden to the same internal factions. Despite this, many in the Coalition considered Turnbull to be a Labor plant, a fellow traveller, or simply disloyal for not leaning far enough to the right.

Turnbull always argues for both sides of the argument, e.g. taking selfies at a pride parade held in his electorate, then turning around and supporting a referendum that the marriage equality side will surely lose. By fluffing the debate with silly lawyer tricks (using similar language in different contexts), he can make each opposing group think he is on their side. But he is friendlier than Tony and looks better in a suit.

In 2018, having changed nothing and facing horrendous polling as a consequence, Turnbull was challenged for leadership by Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison, both in the same week. He beat Dutton but lost to Morrison, who became Prime Minister instead.

Business experience
In addition to his family fortune, Turnbull started his own investment firm (Whitlam Turnbull & Co) and was also chairman of an internet startup called OzEmail. He hardly needs the money, which is one of the upsides in having a very wealthy leader: less likely to take donations! Ah yes, the rich are famously reluctant to further grow their wealth.

Opposition leader and ousting
Climate change is real, it is affecting us now, and it is having a particularly severe impact on Australia. And yet right now, we have every resource available to us to meet the challenge of climate change, except for one—and that is leadership.

Turnbull became the leader of the opposition in 2009. He has always been out of his league when it comes to politics: A number of factors led to his downfall, namely his botch-up of the federal car loan program (otherwise known as "Utegate" or the OzCar affair).

More commendably, Malc has always believed in climate science (it's why he got bounced in the first place), and he supported emissions trading against the wishes of his party. Once Malcolm got dropped as opposition leader, he went off his nut. When the chance came to take the job again, he capitulated to the ones who dumped him.

Minister in Abbott Government
...if connectivity was so vital to you why did you buy a house where no connectivity was available?

Abbott was elected Prime Minister in 2013, and Turnbull went from Shadow to actual Communications Minister. Turnbull was responsible for overseeing construction of the National Broadband Network, which became a half-measure and blew out in its costs under his watch. (He's an investor, not an internet maven.)

It was a clever play by Abbott. The Communications portfolio was a poisoned chalice in 2010, as it was running against Labor's hugely popular fiber-to-the-premises policy. So what does he do? Give it to the guy he beat by 1 vote in a party leadership spill: Turnbull. No way Abbott could run for re-election on such an inferior policy, and by pushing it, Turnbull's own popularity would fall. Despite it being an utter failure, NBN Co. is still the greatest achievement of his tenure as Communications Minister—and now PM. This is like when you're applying for your first job and have to desperately clutch at straws to put something on your resume.

The worst part is how the media didn't rip him to shreds over this or the piracy filter. He should have been a carcass a long time ago but instead he becomes PM.

Prime Minister
Mr. Turnbull’s problem is that I think eight months ago, many people hoped that he could change the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party’s changed him.

Despite all this, Turnbull was consistently ranked in opinion polls as the preferred Leader—and Prime Minister. In September 2015, Malcolm Turnbull deposed Tony Abbott. His Business as Usual attitude in the first week was a bit strange and confused a lot of people. Why change leaders if the policies are going to remain the same? There was supposed to be a huge bounce in the polls, like when Rudd replaced Gillard and Labor went from looking at electoral wipeout to leading 53-47. If the 51-49 polling results were the "honeymoon period" for Turnbull, then his only hope for survival is to shift towards the centre.

That hasn't happened. Turnbull largely supports the same agenda as the Abbott Government — including climate change denial and funding cuts to research and education — though he is less embarrassing than Tony by a wide margin. Abbott safely became the scapegoat for a host of so-called "zombie measures" that are still being pushed through Parliament.

On election night 2016, before they started counting the votes, experts called a safe win for Turnbull. The election was fought over the question of are unions bad? and "class warfare". They've been trying to shoehorn the term and related buzzwords ("politics of envy","mum & dad investors") into the debate for a long while−a result of importing Republican spin doctors and copying their strategies.

Post-election, the government has been farcical. Turnbull and co. were banking on the marriage plebiscite eating up all the airtime. Once the Catholics put a kibosh on it, they started scrambling for something, anything, to look like they are actually governing. You had radio hosts shouting about the Racial Discrimination Act (18c) and guest workers (impose a harsher tax on people who are already exploited pretty badly)—which, whatever side of it you come down, is a pissant little nothing to spend so much energy on.

Same as the old boss
The search continues!

Either unable or unwilling to protect his left flank, Turnbull quickly abandoned all pretense of being a moderate and governed just like his predecessor:


 * Looking back, Tony was more misguided than corrupt. He used to sneak in the back door of the Herald Sun offices to his meetings with the editors. Turnbull is more open about it.
 * News Corp also wanted Tony to abolish the "two out of three" law which was preventing them from buying more TV stations. Tony looked into it, but even he could see that securing Murdoch's monopoly on Australian media was not a good thing for democracy. Malcolm, on the other hand?


 * Abbott made his Labor-appointed board members "reapply" for their positions, then gave them to his cronies instead. He politicised ambassadorial postings by awarding them to friends. Just one of many awful conventions and precedents that Turnbull is continuing. This current cabinet has got not one, not two, but three ministers with defense-related portfolios.  Turnbull created the extra two positions as a knifing for stabbing Abbott. (Also, it was "inappropriate" for Labor to appoint a Consul-General months before an election—but perfectly fine to appoint judges for vacancies that don't exist yet?')
 * Fortunately, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (LNP 07-13) wrote a letter of documentation in case Turnbull should backflip on his appointment. This gloating tweet made it abundantly clear that Abbott's people shafted Turnbull on his pick; the harm done to Rudd was collateral damage.


 * The idea behind a double dissolution is that, if the Senate keeps rejecting the House's bills, then Parliament goes home, and you can elect a new one. (And, it must be noted, if the Americans had this system, they would not have had that government shutdown) Abbott had the trigger for almost his entire term: he never pulled it, because he knew he would be ousted.
 * Turnbull is burning up political capital like it's for free, hoping to capture the Senate... only his DD was about as useful as a blind man in a titty bar. Leaving aside the triviality of calling it over a labor dispute, Senate's as feral as before (if not moreso), it set One Nation up to get four seats, and now he's on a razor thin margin in the House of Reps.  Hardly his finest plan.


 * Australia's vibrant arts and culture sectors, from theaters and literary journals to art magazines and other forms of expression, will get slashed across the board; several arts institutions may be forced to close as a result. Conservatives generally have a problem with truth in art.
 * So that's the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Medical Association, Australian Dental Association,  Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Department of Immigration and Border Protection, and the Specsavers guy, all campaigning against Turnbull. It's impressive how many employment organisations on top of the regular trade unions he has managed to offend. At least he has John Symond and the banks in his corner.
 * Supply and demand, Mr. Turnbull. Construction industry is booming, so of course wages should rise. And isn't the ABCC supposed to investigate crime and misconduct (not try and ratfuck other trade unions)?
 * Raising education fees, whilst shrinking education budgets. What Turnbull failed to mention is here is that each time the price goes up for the students, it is also going up for the government. He isn't saving public money by doing this. Credit to Lambie and the Palmer senators for shooting this down.
 * In a rare (for Australians) display of sanity, he nearly lost his parliamentary majority in the 2016 election, to Bill Shorten, of all people. Cue whining from LNP, despite their own Attorney General, George Brandis, personally overseeing the recount (which was sketchy in itself).
 * #CensusFail. One million submissions was double their projections (500,000/hour), and the website fell over. There was a lot of arm-waving at invisible "foreign actors" who DDOS'ed the online census. Cui bono?
 * Turnbull finally admitted that the IP block went plooey, going as far as to blame "hardware failure," but assured everybody that "your data is safe." Well if Mister Broadband said it, that puts us much more at ease.  It's not like his own commissioner was investigating whether the shutdown of the site compromised privacy. After all, there is no security breach if nobody is allowed to look for one (nor talk about one)!


 * The Liberal Party is having a go at publicly-funded "elite media" since it annoys Australia's real-life Bond villain. Turnbull just got finished watering down media regulations, and the ABC is headed by a Liberal appointee, which is why the Institute of Public Affairs are invited on regularly. Turnbull is the "media elite" he despises.
 * Malcolm himself spoke about amending the Racial Discrimination Act on the ABC. All of a sudden, it's the ABC's fault for covering an interview which he gave.


 * Lost a majority vote for the first time since the 1960s. And again a month later. This is the sort of comedy you expect from third parties.
 * Established a banking inquiry. Not a Royal Commission, just an inquiry. The banks are not actively trying to stop the tribunal, and the words he used to describe it are "inexpensive" and "quick", i.e. it won't have any civil or criminal investigative authority. Another paper tiger to go with the defanged APRA (Australian Prudential Regulation Authority) and ASIC (Australian Securities and Investments Commission).
 * It doesn't speak well of his judgement: he actually thought the public would back him up while he was defending the banks from Shorten's Royal Commission.


 * You know this government is in trouble when John Howard is more progressive than them. Howard was the one who enacted the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and National Firearms Agreement, and now it's his own party who will tear them down.  The NFA is perhaps the only Howard legislation which has massive support across partisan lines.
 * In an increasingly mail-order world, the post office is being downgraded. The internet must be a big and scary place to him.
 * All I Want for Christmas is my AAA Rating... Whatever happened to that "budget emergency", anyway? When the government's entire legitimacy is predicated on being economic managers and they fail to do so by every metric, even the arbitrary ones they set for Labor and themselves (while voting themselves bigger perks, staffs and salaries),  then this is further proof of their irrelevance.

Budget mess
I think Britney Spears’ first marriage lasted longer than this policy.

Abbott had a short window where voters believed in a "budget emergency". The '15 budget made no mention of an emergency, yet it handed out tax deductions like they were candy. Suddenly crying poor after those cuts has only aroused cynicism.

First came the Goods and Services Tax. Turnbull's treasurer, Scott Morrison, asked for a model to increase a regressive tax in order to cut a progressive tax. As though he had zero understanding of basic economics. (This from a man with a degree in "Economic Geography".) He finally agreed to scrap the GST hike, since consumption taxes affect the poor more than the rich, so it's effectively lowering taxes on the wealthy while raising them on the poor.

According the now-infamous '16 budget, Scott's plan will benefit the wealthiest top 30% at the expense of the lower 70%. You'll just have to trust Malcolm's forward estimate on where this $50b of corporate tax cuts is going to come from. In four years, the superannuation (pension plan) cuts will have a net savings of $3 billion. How does that make up for the remaining 6 years (and $47 billion) in his 10-year plan? Their forecasts were widely considered fantasy when they first made them; even the rating agencies didn't buy it.

By Turnbull's own acknowledgement in a 2005 tax paper, which he authored, the country is in a housing bubble. By supporting policies that distort the housing market, he's essentially arguing that prices must never fall. ("It's common sense!")  He also introduced a cap on superannuation (after income tax) which only affects multimillionaires. This change is likely to make negative gearing even more popular, worsening over-investment in property.

They later admitted that an entire generation may be unable to achieve financial independence. Of course they have no solution, just doubling-down on the economic mismanagement which failed their children. Actually, ScoMo had the temerity to blame them. He is seriously lacking in imagination if he thinks taxing tobacco is going to make any significant dent on the budget.

In 2017, they released a new budget commonly referred to as Labor-lite.

Backpacker tax
Foreigners on working holidays are to be slapped with a tax on each dollar they make—but it died in the Senate. Derryn Hinch switched his vote because Scott pissed him off at Turnbull's weekend barbecue by admitting the LNP doesn't compromise. It is vital to follow Abbott's example and never concede anything.

The worst thing is when both parties agree, but don't want to look like they agree. Actually, it's even more tragicomic than that: The "Better Economic Managers" were conned by a bunch of "eco-terrorists" into paying $100m for land conservation in exchange for the votes needed to pass—instead of just agreeing to Shorten's figure (which would have cost them around $15m). It's likely they just conceded the money so the PM could claim a (much-needed) victory.

The government bungled it from start to finish, and then they accused Shorten of helping these migrants (or is it "rich European kids", Mal?) avoid paying tax—the same tax these buffoons introduced in the first place.

"No stone unturned"
Medicare will never, ever, ever be privatised.

What political parties say they will support and oppose at one time is not necessarily ultimately what they will do.

More hacking away at Australia's support systems. Early into his first term, he eliminated the Disabilities Discrimination Commissioner, and instead appointed a do-nothing commissioner on wind farms. In the spring, he named Alan Tudge, a graduate of "Tough Love" University, as Minister for Human Services. He then cut over $1 billion worth of healthcare funding for the elderly, $2.1 billion from disability pensions, and cut welfare payments to fund Labor's disability insurance scheme—which has also come under threat in the past.

LNP policy on paid parental leave has gone from the worst extreme (approved by Murdoch) to the most generous, and then back to not doing anything. Domestic victims then lost phone access to trauma counselors and therapists, which disproportionately affected women and children.

Turnbull promised to "leave no stone unturned" in addressing mental illness. How about unfreezing the medicare rebate so people with mental illnesses can keep seeing their doctors? crickets

He already silenced the ICAC for exposing political class crooks. Now he wants to bankrupt or jail citizens for speaking out against the Medicare cuts. The medicare logo, along with a whole bunch of government department logos, images, symbols, etc. are protected by the 1995 Trademark Act and some other Commonwealth legislation. Turnbull is going after the "Save Medicare" guy for two reasons: 1) he's an easy target who may take down his website without a fight, and 2) it will have a chilling effect on bigger organizations who oppose the government.

He's also encouraging job services providers to create a living Hell for 'clients'. That's just Mal doing his bit to solve unemployment. The more job seekers he pays to exploit the unemployed, the more jobs he creates in the job network. By the way, if a Minister can't crack down on his own underlings for illegal activities, then he has no business being in politics.

Robo-Debt
We told them 'shit', that's not going to work when they explained how the computer was going to do the work and said that it was going to misrepresent people's income and lead to incorrect debts going out, but they just told us 'computers and data can't be wrong'. They wanted to save a shitload of money and weren't interested in hearing what we thought about it.

Centrelink, the authority who handle unemployment, disability and Social Security benefits (among other things), claims to be so busy and overworked that it takes over six months to process applications for student aid or disability pensions, but they have plenty of time to chase after the $12 they overpaid six years ago. "Dole bludgers" are like immigrant detainees: People don't have sympathy for them, so the Coalition can kick them as hard as they want and still get a poll bump. This time, they overreached.

Centrelink set up a computer system to compare their records with the Australian Tax Office to determine if you owe a debt. Someone decided to take your annual reported income and divide it by 26 to calculate your fortnightly income. So if you were on Centrelink and got a job like you're supposed to, the government thinks you were earning money when you weren't, and sends you a letter demanding repayment immediately. The system reaches back 6 years retrospectively, and often targets people who no longer in it—say, pensioners who are about to see their disability benefits gets shaved? The program also cost a billion dollars to run and will probably make a negative return in the billions, all in the name of ideology. Turnbull set them on this course with the NBN.

To top it off, you have to prove you didn't earn any money, even though they have no evidence you did. Phoning them involves a wait of an hour if you are lucky and hours if you are not, because the government cut thousands of staff to weaken the agency. The irony is that the Robo-Debt only hits the people who found jobs; if you stayed on welfare you'd be left alone.

Morrison will be the one to sink this government. He has built an imaginary revenue stream of $4b into the Mid-Year Economic Outlook based on the income from Robo-debt. He can't back down on this without exposing the shambles he and Joe Hockey have created.

Tough Borders
Well, we don’t hold them [asylum seekers] there. We don’t hold them there. That is not correct. We do not hold them there.

It's been a quarter century since the Royal Commission into an aboriginal death in custody, and of the 339 recommendations made, almost none have been implemented. The Lib policy on detainees is to abuse them so badly it is legally torture, tell the UN they are sick of hearing about it, and stop right before an election.

The abuse in "offshore" detention facilities doesn't even merit a review. Sure, let's just ignore the fact that the centres are funded by Australia, staffed by Australians, operated under the control of the Australian Department of Immigration and Border Control, and the detainees are there because of the Australian Parliament. And don't forget the 2 years' jail time for any staff member going on record about the conditions. Why bother to rationalize your policies when you can just shoot the messenger?

Even this "Tough Border" policy is just a half-measure, not a sustainable solution: Labor had Malaysia all lined up to take a backlog of refugees, but Abbott them stopped in their tracks. The Coalition had three years to do something about the Nauru-Manos camps, and decided to wait until the week an anti-Islam, anti-immigration candidate was in office before settling some in Costa Rica. New Zealand even offered to take in a bunch, and Turnbull said no.

After winning reelection, Turnbull immediately went to the state premiers and called for indefinite detention to suspected terrorists. Imagine telling Malcolm back in 2009 that when his ship came in, he would end up carrying water for Abbott and Pauline Hanson. Tragic.

No wind turbine unstopped
I’ve been very consistent on these energy issues throughout my career in politics. You've got to take ideology out of it.

More tinkering around the edges to make it look like Liberals are doing something about the environment. His government "created" a 1$ billion fund to promote the growth of clean energy, but what he really did was cut the renewables budget by 1.3bn and then re-label $1bn that was already in there. That's so much better, thank you Malcolm for this innovative move. He also removed Australia from a U.N. climate change report, just so he could preserve his tourism industry.

$50 billion on tax cuts to big business, $50 billion on French submarines. Not only that, the government has also raised spending on border protection and other right-wing favourites. Somehow those take precedence over the NBN and climate research, which would have far greater economic benefits to the country. First they sacked the climate scientists, and now suddenly they want to hire some of them back at cheaper wages. The smart ones already got offered jobs overseas. All that will be left are the B-team and new graduates in a race to the bottom. Jobson Grothe.

Worse yet, he continues to print money from resources he can never replace, drawing every red cent he can from mining, and laughs off renewables as "political claptrap." At least Abbott believes the nonsense he spewed about this stuff.

It looks like Turnbull is about to stuff up the National Electricity Grid (wind power) just like he 'fixed' the NBN. He keeps coming back to investment in his speeches. You can certainly tell where his priorities lie. (Didn't Turnbull write a paper on the merits of emission trading? Before it became politically inconvenient.)

Gay marriage plebiscite
Labor voters were ecstatic about a plebiscite when it was first announced. A majority of Australians are socially liberal anyway, so this was a brief window to get marriage equality passed.

One year and $175 million later, they've come to realise that this plebiscite is nothing but an expensive stalling tactic by the Liberals. There have been forty-four referendums in Australian history, only eight of which were successful. The right-wing ideologues who oppose same-sex marriage are cashed up to the gills. A paltry few million allocated for a "No" campaign is nothing to them. The opportunity to publicly attack a minority under the guise of open debate is exactly what they want. When Ireland tried to do the same thing, the conservatives had direct control of the bill outcome while the LGBTQ community had to suffer through endless, and ugly, 'discussions'. Even if "Yes" wins, the Coalition won't be bound to vote in favour.

Turnbull has communicated in the most parliamentarian terms that he's been given shit to sell and doesn't believe in what he is doing. Due to whinging from Christian lobby groups, he defunded an anti-bullying program which was meant to help LGBT kids seeking education. This emboldened the right wing and conservative media to speak out against the "homosexual agenda" and the plebiscite, which was gathering public support. He can't even hand-pick a "moderate" Sheik to dine with without drawing a hate preacher who thinks poofs should be executed. It's pretty clear that Malcolm never spoke to his MPs about reigning in the homophobic discourse, either.

And now, the 'Labor's fault' whinge. George Brandis is still pretending Labor killed the plebiscite because they secretly hate marriage equality. Now Labor gets to introduce a bill to parliament while at the same time catching heat for blocking the plebiscite. They can also blame the micro-parties, which is bonus mudslinging for them. Then there's this:

That's the same type of logic as opposing boat turnbacks means  you want them to drown!, so it's sadly not surprising.

Aussies don't take kindly to back-stabbers, and Malcolm has turned it into an art form. The gay scene in Sydney isn't too happy with him at the moment.

Mendez is back
How surreal that Gillard's campaign now depends on the resuscitation of the man she so ruthlessly deposed only a few weeks ago.

Abbott is a sewer rat: Tearing down governments is what he does. Apparently Tony doesn't understand what "underminding" and "sniping" actually mean. (Sadly, he genuinely believes that he has a valid legacy, that he can defend it, and that doing so isn't sniping or undermining.)

Since Turnbull took over, a lot of cracks are showing as the civil war within the party gains heat. If there's one thing Abbott was good at, it was keeping a lid on stuff like this. It seems like twice or three times a week, some "rogue" coalition MP comes out with a criticism of the government or threatens a walk-out—and they're not always backbenchers, either.


 * The Attorney General is doing his best to ignore the law.
 * The Immigration Minister looks (and acts) like a potato.
 * Julie Bishop can't find any asbestos, so now she's crawling through Syria.
 * Scotty is crying about lesbians taking away his rights. (Scott, you are not the victim. You even went out of your way to defend an actual bigot.)
 * The media, despite FOX's best efforts, is uncovering the truth of the NBN.
 * NBN Co. keeps asking for more money.
 * Those blokes at ABC keep making fun of Mal, even though he appointed a News Corp executive to head it.
 * Done right, with experienced human staff to vet the process, the "debt recovery system" could have been a vote-winner. Funny what happens when you shotgun collection letters (let's not mince words here) at hundreds of thousands of people who show up the ballot box. For whatever reason cough the Murdoch press are the ones leading the charge against it.

Abbott did a lot of dumb things, but he did them very loudly. For the average voter, it probably does seem like Turnbull isn't doing anything because he's not surrounded by flags and giving five press conferences a week. In comparison, all Turnbull has done is break promises. "Malcolm Turnbull considering..." and "After the election" has become increasingly common and meaningless. Does anyone still remember high-speed rail and 30-minute cities? (Nah, those take more than an election cycle to make.)

Malcolm sees the curtain coming down: he is sounding more and more erratic each time he spots a camera in the vicinity.

Videos

 * Malcolm DESTROYS Turnbull on Double Dissolution - Don't blame me, I voted for Malcolm.
 * The Malcolm Turnbull Saga - Not As Crazy As the Last Cunt™
 * Trumpocalypse Now