The former prime minister pointed to climate policy as one area that had been a “catastrophe” for the Liberal Party – singling out Tony Abbott and the “right wing press” for blame.
“When they decided to take energy policy or climate policy and turn it into a culture war issue, that was a catastrophe for us; a catastrophe for our party. And it did a lot of damage to Australia,” he said.
Within the 43-minute podcast, Mr Turnbull – the co-chair of activist group ‘Australians for a Murdoch Royal Media Commission’ – a position he took over from former-Labor PM Kevin Rudd – also used some of his time to complain about News Corp.
The former journalist, barrister and investment banker said that politics operates in an ecosystem made up of the media.
“Now, that doesn’t mean the opinion pages of a few newspapers, that’s the whole thing: Social media, mainstream media, the works,” he said.
“And we’re operating in that environment, which has increasingly become untethered from truth.
“It’s increasingly focused on what I call anger-tainment, and it’s making political parties generally, but the Liberal Party in particular, very hard to manage.”
For my part, that 2016 legislative change will likely make the difference between a snake oil peddler like ex-Liberal-turned-UAP-leader Craig Kelly being a footnote to Australian political history instead of switching to the Senate and enjoying six years spruiking imaginary medical advice through the most powerful megaphone in the country. And that’s reason enough to give Turnbull a grateful tip of the cap.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says his long-awaited net-zero plan will lower power bills, create 100,000 jobs, and leave Australians thousands of dollars better off by increasing the gross national income by 1.6 per cent.
But his predecessor Malcolm Turnbull has been scathing of a key pillar of the plan, calling carbon capture and storage – which the government is relying on to cut emissions in manufacturing and mining – as a “con” and “distraction” by the coal industry. Scott Morrison announces the net zero plan. “It is a proven failure and it keeps getting run up the flagpole by the fossil fuel sector as a way to defer action,” Mr Turnbull told The New Daily. Mr Morrison will take the net-zero plan, and a projection that Australia will comfortably beat its Paris agreement goals, to Glasgow’s COP26 climate summit this week.
Malcolm Turnbull, possibly making a subliminal point about revenge and how it is best served cold, sat himself in front of a cool blue curtain in calming botanical print… and set the room on fire.
As if screwing up a collection of Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers and wielding a flaming Zippo, Turnbull put Murdoch’s News Corp to the flame.
The vast majority of respondents — 78 per cent — think that the decision to remove Malcolm Turnbull in August last year was the wrong call. That conclusion is drawn from 153,354 responses to Vote Compass between April 10 and April 16.
The former prime minister tweeted:
“In fact the NEG had the support of the entire Cabinet, including and especially the current PM and Treasurer. It was approved by the Party Room on several occasions.”
He continued:
“It had the support of the business community and energy sector in a way that no previous energy policy had. However a right wing minority in the Party Room refused to accept the majority position and threatened to cross the floor and defeat their own government”.
“That is the only reason it has been abandoned by the Government. The consequence is no integration of energy and climate policy, uncertainty continues to discourage investment with the consequence, as I have often warned, of both higher emissions and higher electricity prices.”
Let’s face it Murdoch was caught out with the fake photo shoot at the Alfalfa Club in Atlanta in an effort to boost Tony Abbott’s stocks in his Daily Telegraph and they were both cought out in that lie too.(ODT)
Mr Turnbull challenged Mr Murdoch over the coverage of his government in News Corp newspapers and its Sky News television channel, arguing the media company was intensifying the leadership turmoil.
Fairfax Media has been told Mr Murdoch played down his part in fuelling the leadership speculation, saying it was primarily a matter for his son Lachlan, who is his co-chairman and a stronger presence in the company’s Australian operations.
In a report by Liberty Victoria’s Rights Advocacy Project released in May last year, former Fraser-era immigration minister Ian Macphee said he was “disgusted by the power accorded to current ministers regarding the lives of people fleeing persecution”.
“Ministers now exercise power that is mostly beyond the review of judges,” he said. “Such power should be exercised humanely and in accordance with morality, not absolute law.
“The law and its practice is now unjust. It is un-Australian.”
Turnbull, in choosing Dutton in the first place and then expanding his power, shows no judgement of ability and no regard for the best interests of the country, the rights of individuals, or the separation of powers.
He will gladly sacrifice our democracy in order to maintain his position.
By any measure, most Australian workers have gone backwards. It has been a gradual deterioration since 2013 and a far cry from the promises the “adults” made when they rubbished Labor’s handling of the economy between 2007-13.
The very fact that the 700,000+ unemployed people today is the same as it was when the coalition won government in 2013 should send warning signals to every coalition member in Canberra. It simply doesn’t add up, unless one concludes that the job’s bonanza has nothing to do with government initiatives and everything to do with population increase.
In much the the same way Turnbull wasn’t elected to office $1.7mill dollars bought it and Turnbull like Abbott has turned to bull.
The number of Australians “going under” financially accelerated last year, with personal bankruptcies up 6.1 per cent over the year. Key points:
Bankruptcies rose for the 3rd consecutive year in 2017 Queensland had the highest number of bankruptcies last year Men are more likely than women to declare bankruptcy
The increase follows an almost 5 per cent rise in 2016.
That folks is 12% over 2 years and Turnbull is meant to be a financial whiz. 1% profits have boomed 90% wages are at best flat but yes we don’t talk about that, (old dog)
This is our PM showing up at the Wayside Chapel to pretend to feed the homeless. The shirt he is wearing cost $850 and he and his government are responsible for homelessness increasing by nearly 500 percent. I liken him to a firebug that lights the fires then shows up to help put the fire out, or a serial killer who helps search for the body. Shamejob.
Last week was a tough one for Malcolm Trumble, President of Australia. But this week will be even worse, with the PM now facing three critical problems. On the right, Senator Cory Bernardi is about to quit the Liberal Party. On the left, moderate MPs are pushing for a parliamentary vote on same-sex marriage, forcing the PM to block a change that he himself supports. And hanging over his head are the government’s awful polling numbers from this morning’s first Newspoll of the year.
Everyone wants to know what achievements Malcolm Turnbull can point to after his first year as Prime Minister. Well, I can think of something: his reform of the tax breaks on superannuation – provided he gets it through without major watering down.
Say what you like about the Prime Minister, but at least when torturing refugees, cooking the planet, and accelerating the corporate takeover of our democracy, he’s sensible about it. Liam McLoughlin explains. Recently, Malcolm Turnbull called on parliamentarians to “meet us in the sensible centre. To act otherwise would badly misread the mood of theMore
It is possible, right now, to allow frustration with the Turnbull government to become overwhelming. Your particular political allegiance isn’t particularly important – it’s the consistency of disingenuous arguments, the tendency towards pratfall, the refusal to answer questions in a straightforward way, and the general lack of either wide-ranging agenda or eye-catching specific policies. For some of us, despair over the government’s attitude towards Nauru has added to the mix.
Many people claim that, because Malcolm Turnbull is personally wealthy, he is more qualified to oversee our economy. But if the ABS figures are anything to go by, Malcolm is taking us backwards at a rate of knots. Over the past 12 months, trend employment increased by 217,000 – a far cry from the 300,000…
Malcolm Turnbull has not only acted decisively, he has caught his opponents on the hop. By taking the initiative he has already set the early agenda to get the 2016 election under way.
On my first day of high school, I was looking around at all the new people with whom I would be spending the next six years of my life. One of the toughest looking girls wandered over to me, shoved me, and said “Wadda ya think you’re looking at?” I immediately responded “Dunno. I didn’t…
Malcolm Turnbull has publicly warned Tony Abbott that he will not hesitate to correct the record if false statements are made regarding government policy, in a sign that the frosty relationship between victor and vanquished is deteriorating.
After months of phony war the government has gone back to square one. It’s starting to become a serious problem for the PM, writes Ben Eltham. Just weeks into the adventure, the Turnbullian crusade for tax reform seems to have run into trouble. Malcolm Turnbull’s new-look government returned from the summer break full of vimMore
Malcolm Turnbull is happy to send children to concentration camps and happily interferes in the ABC. Australia, meet the new boss — just like the old boss, except shinier.
It looked like it might be a wonderful honeymoon, but we have to face the fact: Malcolm Turnbull is never going to leave his conservative partners for us
Malcolm Turnbull is riding the tidal wave of relief that is washing across the country, and at this stage the polls are showing nothing more than the fact that he isn’t Tony Abbott.
If Coalition strategists had any doubt about the case for Malcolm Turnbull considering an early election, the first Fairfax-Ipsos national poll since his ascension will comprehensively erase it.
Support for the ALP has tanked, with voters flocking back to a rejuvenated Coalition government under Malcolm Turnbull’s new leadership just one month after he replaced Tony Abbott as Prime Minister.
The advent of Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister has created the opportunity for a different approach on social, religious and racial issues – and he is taking it.
Greens Senator Scott Ludlum has called the Government’s mandatory data retention legislation an outrageous attack on Australian’ right to privacy’, which will be fought.
THE GOVERNMENT’S MANDATORY DATA RETENTION LEGISLATION is an outrageous attack on Australians’ fundamental right to privacy and does not represent a proportionate response to the needs of law enforcement authorities.
The bill contains no description of the metadata it is seeking to access and no details about the cost of this unwelcome new surveillance tax.
Since the idea was first floated in 2009, mandatory data retention has been dissected and rejected by almost every major stakeholder group affected by the idea, including the telecommunications industry, civil liberties groups, media organisations, journalists, political parties and thinktanks across the political spectrum.
Data retention will impose a surveillance tax on the entire Australian population, and turn the telecommunications industry into unwilling appendages to enforcement agencies, tracking and storing material on every device held by every man, woman and child in Australia.
Data retention was rolled back by the European Court of Justice because it was found to violate human rights and because it did not affect authorities’ ability to do their job.
Data retention will also make a mockery of the ability of journalists to protect their sources. When the Government has access to a log of every phone call made in Australia and every email sent, the practice of whistleblowing will cease to exist.
Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull got it right in 2012 when he said he had “very grave misgivings” about data retention, because it was “heading in precisely the wrong direction” and would create a “chilling effect on free speech” as well as invade privacy.
Turnbull said at the time:
“The German Federal Constitutional Court has recently struck down a similar data retention law noting that “metadata” may be used to draw conclusions about not simply the content of the messages, but the social and political affiliations, personal preferences, inclinations and weaknesses of the individual concerned.”
Turnbull also noted in 2012 that the criminals of greatest concern to Australia would be able to use numerous means to anonymise their communications to evade their data being retained, meaning the scheme would be easy to evade.
The Greens and a wide range of other groups across the political spectrum will step up the fight against data retention to ensure it is blocked in the Senate.
Today, the Greens call on the Labor Party to declare they will vote against Mandatory Data Retention, and not wait until after it has passed to express their regrets and concerns.
olddogthoughts 