It says a lot about how desperate the far right at News Corp and within the Liberal Party are that Christopher Pyne’s entirely anodyne comments about same-sex marriage in a bar on Friday night have produced articles about “brawls”, “civil war” and “simmering tensions”.
Alarm bells are ringing among extremists because Malcolm Turnbull, out of political necessity, is shifting toward the centre on key issues. So far the Liberal party room has backed him — forecast clashes over Gonski and cutbacks to the great Catholic education funding rort failed to materialise. What if, for extremists, the unthinkable happens, and Turnbull keeps governing from the centre and manages to claw back ground against Labor?
Tony Abbott, the great hypocrite of Australian politics, naturally unloaded on Pyne yesterday. Abbott seems to invent political rules as he goes along. In February 2015, when a leadership spill motion was successfully moved by his party, apparently it was a rule that ministers were not allowed to vote for a spill because they were part of the leadership team. Now Abbott has gone further, to suggest that Pyne might have been “disloyal” because he voted for Turnbull in the 2015 leadership contest, and previous ones. So now frontbenchers can’t ever vote against a leader?
If Pyne was disloyal to Abbott, he had a pretty odd way of showing it. There was Pyne, shortly after the 2013 election, carrying out Abbott’s decision to cynically abandon his “unity ticket” promise on Gonski funding. And then backflipping, with Abbott, a few days later when the reaction overwhelmed them. There was Pyne trying to implement the ill-fated higher education reforms in the 2014 budget. There was Pyne, as Abbott’s Leader of the House, doing what he does best, always in the faces of his opponents, niggling away, annoying them bugging them, rattling them.
Pyne’s other critic is his long-time South Australian Liberal Party enemy Cory Bernardi. Only, Bernardi doesn’t have a shred of credibility. He betrayed his party, shortly after it gave him a six-year term in the Senate. He bailed out. He’s a quitter who couldn’t hack being in a party led by someone he didn’t support — unlike Pyne.
The whole thing’s been a pretext for an alliance of interests between Turnbull’s opponents on the far right, and Labor, to portray the government as hopelessly paralysed by a reaction against Turnbull’s so-called “Labor-lite” strategy. All less than a week after the government managed the unusual task of negotiating a major policy through the Senate in the teeth of opposition from Labor and the Greens.
It would be fascinating to know exactly what the far right would prefer to this alleged “Labor-lite” approach. A strident right-wing government that ignored the electorate in favour of imposing austerity, deregulation and — entirely inconsistently — imposing government regulation on social issues? Exactly how long do they think that government would last? In the dream world of the elderly readers of News Corp papers and safe Liberal branches, it would be a stunning success. On planet Earth, about five minutes.
Gwon Abbott, pull a party room coup. This would rid Australia of the fatally dysfunctional LNP government. If the voters don’t thank you (they won’t) you’ll always have the gratitude of Britain’s Royal Stallion for giving him a bunyip knighthood.
Abbott is surely a dope to be unaware that the enemy is not on the opposite side of the House but is seated on his own party benches. Pyne has gone up a notch in my estimation knowing he’s not an Abbott supporter.
I wonder how many dozen people (apart from journos seeking an easy headline) tune in to hear Abbott’s regular whinge/spray on Ray Hadley’s radio spot.
“….knowing he is not an Abbott supporter”. You don’t know that – Pyne will withdraw or bestow support wherever the probable winner stands.
Totally agree Marion, an opportunistic man if ever there was one.
Just heard a bit of him on the radio saying that we should stop all subsidies for renewables, blah, blah, blah…what world is he living in? What exactly are his motives? Possibly not getting preselection for the next election?
Damn,
There is not doubt that Abbot is a dope. He is like the schoolyard bully. Can’t win an argument with rational debate, so it’s on with the gloves, lets beat up Bill Shorten and buy some sexy US Nuclear Submarines at $12 trillion a piece while we are at it. Donald and the Neo-Con’s will love us although they will still get our names wrong at the press conferences.
When is this man going to grow up. I mean adolescents for most of us is a thing we’d rather have avoided, but he’s turned it in to an art form. The Peter Pan of the Parliament on steroids.
I don’t agree with everything that Malcolm does, but at least he is adult about it. Pyne can be a Pain, but he doesn’t take himself too seriously which does suggest some humility and lack of hubris; good characteristics in any middle ranking politician.
I am a bit of a lefty conservative who idolizes Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnston and Adam Smith, but I am very impressed that Malcolm is ditching Murdoch’s Oz-Politic in favor of policies that may actually improve the lives of those who do not fall into the category of the neo-liberal elites.
By the way is Rupert still alive?
I keep scanning the obit’s looking for his name, but I am always disappointment. I’m getting on a bit myself so it’s quite a worry.
Only Abbott, his cronies like Cory & Co, News Ltd and Ray Hadley believe that the majority are on their side. After months of poor polls Turnbull has woken up to the fact that only adopting”centrist ” policies will give him a chance of re-election, but it’s probably far too little, far too late.
Hope so.
“What if, for extremists, the unthinkable happens, and Turnbull keeps governing from the centre and manages to claw back ground against Labor?”
That, Bernard, is their worst nightmare. For them, ’tis better to have governed like a band of right wing nutters and to have lost, then to have governed from the centre and won.
In the event that their way leads to defeat, they can then argue that they just weren’t committed enough to their rightardness.
A slightly later thought on the subject of dummy spitting, from Milton’s Paradise Lost, “Moloch who, rather than not be Supreme, would rather not be at all…”, during the discussion in Pandemonium about resuming the attack on the High Seat.
At it again at the IPA today, apparently.
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-lays-out-alternative-policy-program-to-help-the-coalition-hang-on-to-government-20170627-gwz83z.html
But, he said, a government that’s “serious about keeping the lights on should get another big coal-fired power station into action as soon as possible, and be prepared to “go it alone” if “political risk means the market won’t do it”.
“Maintaining that Labor will put power prices up and that the Coalition will put power prices down will be much harder, though, if our renewable-energy target goes from 23 per cent to 42 per cent, as flagged in [the] Finkel [review],” he said.
“We should stop any further subsidised renewable power and freeze the Renewable Energy Target at the current level of about 15 per cent.”
Just demonstrating what a pile of opportunistic b/s the entire trajectory of Thatcherite economics has been. One great long spiv street hustle. The Theft Of The Century. These people are junk.
Fantastic piece, BK. You’ve been at the firewater again these last few days, wild dog…
This is Toned Abs: ‘In a major speech that can be read as an alternative political manifesto, the former prime minister outlined three energy policy measures – freezing the renewable energy target at 15 per cent, a moratorium on new wind farms, and for the federal government to potentially go it alone and build a new coal-fired power station – to put downward pressure on power prices.’
And this is the Australian electorate:”The latest (and final) Climate Of A Nation report from the Climate Institute states 96% of Australians want our primary source of energy to come from renewables, with 58% wanting renewables supported by storage technologies and 38% preferring renewable energy supported by fossil fuels.
The report is based on a survey administered by Galaxy Research of more than 2,660 Australians, carried out between 12-19 April this year.”
Get out of the way Toned. There’s a big bus headed straight for you.
No John, get him to lie down in the left hand lane and close his eyes. He won’t feel a thing and neither will we.