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.”
Source: National Times – ‘Antithesis of what Menzies stood for’: Turnbull… | Facebook
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