The ALP hasn’t wasted any time getting stuck into Malcolm Turnbull’s wealth. In fact Wayne Swan had a crack yesterday in Question Time.
“The member for Wentworth has no great affiliation with those sort of everyday goods,” Swan said. “He thinks alcopops is the noise that is made when he uncorks a Moet!”
Boom, as they say, boom.
This will be a relentless line of ALP attack. Turnbull knows it. It was the first thing he spoke about in his press conference yesterday. Turnbull shouldn’t overplay the indigence of his background — after all, he still went to Sydney Grammar and did Arts/Law at the University of Sydney (not, I might add, that there’s anything wrong with Arts/Law at Sydney).
And Labor will be careful to avoid harping about it too much, given the Prime Minister has a quid or sixty million himself — or is married to someone who does. But there’ll be constant sniping about it — Turnbull is too rich to understand ordinary Australians. Stand by for a recycling of all those Keating lines about John Hewson’s wealth.
Labor backbencher David Bradbury gave us a taste of it at a doorstop this morning — and we know doorstops are carefully coordinated by the PM’s office.
“Well, life is tough for many people in this country at the moment,” Bradbury — Jackie Kelly’s replacement in Lindsay — said.
“Somehow I don’t think the challenges that people face around the boardroom tables of Point Piper are anything near what people sitting around kitchen tables in Penrith are currently facing.”
Yeah, um, there’s not actually too many boardrooms in Point Piper, Dave. Plenty of big houses and harbour views, sure, but not too many businesses are headquartered there. Bit pricey in the rent department, see. But I guess we know what you mean. Kind of amusing, though, while a Parliamentary Secretary whingeing in Parliament about the size of the food portions (Stroganoff-gate, anyone?) in the subsidised Parliament House facilities.
Labor’s disgraceful hypocrisy on this doesn’t derive from Kevin Rudd and Therese Rein’s wealth. It comes from the fact that many Labor politicians have been every bit as bent on getting rich as Malcolm Turnbull ever was — only they prefer to do it by cashing in on their political careers.
Have a look at the federal Lobbyist Register. There are dozens of ex-Labor MPs, premiers or senior party officials who are on the lobbying gravy train. Bob Carr. Nick Bolkus. Ross Free. Sandra Nori. Steve Bredhauer. Chris Schacht. Con Sciacca. John Dawkins. Christian Zahra. Graham Edwards. Stephen Loosley. Cameron Milner. On it goes. All using their Labor connections.
And Bob Hawke and Paul Keating aren’t exactly poor either.
How soon before the recent casualties of NSW Labor make their way to Canberra? Iemma? Meagher? Costa? Watch out for Cranky Consultants Pty Ltd on the Register.
In fact, lobbying is the perfect career for today’s breed of professional political hack. It looks like a business career, but it’s really a continuation of the same influence-peddling and deal-making that marked their ascension through party ranks.
Malcolm Turnbull did it the other way around. He came into public life after a staggeringly successful legal and business career. It’s not the first time he has put what he believes in ahead of his immediate financial interests, either. He brings networks to politics, not the other way around.
Yes he’s an egomaniac, but he’s exactly the sort of person we should be encouraging into politics to slow the apparently remorseless diminution of the political gene pool in this country. Turnbull compares very well to Michael Kroger, who has been content to remain a political dilettante while growing rich from banking.
For Labor to try to bag Turnbull for his wealth isn’t just hypocritical and crass, it’s damaging in the long-term to the quality of our politics. Which successful businessman or woman is going to want to enter politics on either side knowing they’ll be derided as a silvertail? And all while the hacks, the non-achievers, who’ve spent their lives cloistered in politics, think about how much they can make as lobbyists once the jig is up.
Is Kevin Rudd a multimilionaire in his own right or is the Coalition transferring his wife’s money into his pockets? Isn’t that just a bit sexist?
There are very few women who have been ultra successful in business and thus wealthy in their own right. Her wealth is not his to dispose of, as he would very soon discover if she decided that being married to a Prime Minister was not to her liking. Her money is no more our business than was Tammy Fraser’s nor Patti Menzies’s.
Monty Python dealt with early poverty – are we going to hear how Malcolm lived in a shoebox and had to lick lake clean with tongue before going off to mill to work 26 hours a day but was happy. Give over!
Wasn’t Bradbury one of the high flying, champagne swilling corporate lawyers who drafted the workchoices legislation for john howard or do we only mention the “bad”, ” garbage collecting” type jobs you’ve had when you’re describing your pre-political life. Classic ALP tactics, claim to represent everyone equally but drive home the rich- poor, eastern – western suburbs wedge. Obviously in the eyes of the ALP, it’s OK to be a little successful ($65M for Mrs Rudd) but not too succssful ($150M for Turnbull). Mmmmm
After the dregs swilling around our state public houses lately Malcolm Turnbull’s like a slab of Vielle Bon-Secours. So what if he gets up a few noses as a brash, arrogant and ruthless non-team player he’s at least literate, applies his education and clearly communicates awareness of his role and responsibilities – a national administrator. If he starts to spin off on selling himself, the party, memoirs or veneer policies as he sobs over the despatch box he’s stuffed. A whiff of the high-octane or volcanic equally ruinous. His role is to deliver workable, effective outcomes reflecting the interests of the broader community most of whom are now no longer of the conservative variety. A tough call for a Liberal but if he really wants to pull the rug from under Rudd’s feet he’s soldered to the litany of guaranteed health, workplace and environment reforms as promised last election. Me-too Malcolm can beat Labor’s conformist spin by being the first politician to honor the needs of the Australian electorate. The Rudd nemesis of ignoring improved payments for our ageing, ill and disadvantaged is where he can start. Is he smart enough to pull off populist policies in a silk suit?
Isn’t this see-saw on who’s financially advantaged, by how much and how come …pitiful? In the last 20-years both Rudd and Turnbull are parliamentary figures who’ve enjoyed lifestyles well beyond those of mainstream Australians. Both have fulfilled and enjoyed rewards, comforts and experiences most of us could never dream of. As do all MPs. When you’re sitting in our federal parliament you’re one of 200 influential Australians in elite public service with unlimited fiscal, social and career benefits – most of the 200 are out-of-the-hat winners of local party branch membership ballots. In 2008 hearing slurs about wealth are as nauseous as allegations that someone’s Mum was the town bike or their father the local drunk. Both sides should stop scoring cheap shots when every single one is privileged in so many ways. Using cheap unproductive theatre to hoax a nation into thinking these people are ‘average working Australians’ is offensive. All of them are significantly and permanently advantaged…their lives will never be ordinary.
Now now Bernard. Labor are most certainly being hypocritical about this, but let’s not get bogged down in the notion that only people who get rich before entering politics have proven themselves worthy. Career politicians aren’t necessarily non-achievers, unless one counts obtaining obscence levels of wealth as the sole measure of success. Class warfare is just as bad when the arrows are pointed downhill.