By John Stapleton
Those Whom the Gods Would Destroy
The Coverage
Malcolm Turnbull’s Day of Reckoning has arrived.
He could have left with dignity ten days ago; doctors advice, spend more time with his grandchildren.
But this hapless Prime Minister, with his Party Room in revolt, cannot even manage his own political death.
A very bad loser, he may well end up taking down the entire government.
Here’s what the papers are saying:
The Australian: Turnbull’s house of cards crumbles
Malcolm Turnbull has threatened to strip the government of its majority in the parliament and force an early election.
The Guardian: Turnbull shows no mercy as warring Liberals tear out the party’s heart and soul
Australian politics has found new depths to plumb. “It’s been olive branch after olive branch. Eventually they will shove that olive branch up his arse.”
As premonitions go, it was apposite. That is precisely what happened, and then some.
The New Daily: Madness: Turnbull plays final card to stay on as PM
Australia will get a new prime minister this Friday. No matter who it is, the damage to the government over the past week is beyond repair.
In an extraordinary gamble to stay in power, Malcolm Turnbull has attacked his leadership rival Peter Dutton as possibly ineligible to be prime minister, and demanded written proof of party room discontent.
ABC: Stable government?
Malcolm Turnbull, besieged by his own party colleagues, has strapped explosive devices to himself and dared them to come and get him.
The Disastrous Legacy
With the Media baying for blood, Malcolm Turnbull is leaving not just a divided Party but a divided country.
The evil that men do lives after them.
A poor loser, in his final hours Turnbull is lashing out, blaming everybody but himself, and threatening to destroy his government rather than hand over the reigns of power.
All of this is occurring in front of the cameras he cannot resist; the psychodrama and the theatre of political suicide.
Now is the time to look at the tragedy of arguably the worst Prime Minister in Australian history.
Everyone will have their own list.
Here are but a few:
The National Broadband Network — NBN
The NBN was a government fiasco which forced by law millions of Australians onto an inferior broadband network, destroying businesses and individual creativity alike.
While the rest of the world is forging online, Australia now has by a number of measures the worst and most expensive internet in the world.
Described as the greatest infrastructure debacle in Australian history, with costs which may run as high as $90billion.
Despite being Communications Minister for two years, Turnbull has refused to accept responsibility. Or to apologise to the NBN’s long suffering customers.
Now there’s a business model: pass a law forcing you to downgrade your technology to medieval times.
Indigenous Relations: Constitutional Recognition
Millions of taxpayer dollars vanished in the push for Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.
The hopes, energies and aspirations of Australia’s indigenous populations were absorbed in an elaborate bureaucratic farce.
Despite all the talk, in the end Turnbull did not even have the courtesy to attend the National Constitutional Convention or listen in person to the Uluru Statement From The Heart.
Shortly afterwards, the government dismissed the whole idea of constitutional change via press release, not even bothering to inform or consult the main players.
It was a brutal colonialist contempt towards the indigenous populations, now increasingly disengaged from the mainstream as the country undergoes rapid demographic transformation.
Same Sex Marriage
In a deliberate attempt to poison the public square and to distract the attention of Australians from their own falling living standards and the spectacular incompetence of his government, Malcolm Turnbull spearheaded a national plebiscite costing an estimated $122 million.
Day after day, month after month, journalists could think of nothing else. Every question directed at a politician was seen through a rainbow prism. Are you a progressive? Or are you not?
While there was a 62% yes vote celebrated as a victory, the process left the country deeply divided.
The question read: “Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?” Ballots were posted to Australia’s 16 million registered voters.
Religious minorities are now more isolated than ever.
For a start Muslims are more convinced than ever that the sooner the Caliphate arrives the better. For them the sight of two men, or two women, kissing is a shocking anathema flying in the face of Allah’s will, an example of the putrid cesspool the infidels have created for themselves.
Promised religious protections never arrived.
Australians, in their own gruff indifferent way, were once more tolerant than they are now: “I don’t care who you fuck as long as you’re not fucking me.”
Now they have been forced to think about things they really don’t want to think about. And humans being humans, all they can think about are the pink bits. They do what?
The gay movement wasn’t born ouit of a desire to live behind a white picket fence. But that’s where it’s ended, in a marriage, just like the those raving heterosexuals nextdoor.
The government is inept. It does nothing well. It certainly doesn’t do marriage well. It should get out of our lives.
Marriage, a multi-billion dollar cash cow for lawyers because of the nation’s atrocious divorce courts, now has rich new pickings.
They’re my Barbara Streisand records!!
No they’re not, they’mine.
Where does it all end?
Certificates for Outstanding Performance at an Orgy, Best in the Over-60s Category, Distinguished Courage Medals for Facing the World Alone.
These people, the overlords, their henchmen and henchwomen, never stop in their appropriation of private space.
Thousands of hours of media time, countless stories for and against, the stirring up of intense emotions over a social justice issue which could have been resolved in five minutes and which the government created in the first place, turning people’s private lives into public theatre for political advantage, even by the standards of Australia’s political class this was a new low.
Losing the Outer Suburbs
The residents of Australia’s outer suburbs have never been more disengaged from the nation’s political processes.
“They don’t give a fuck about me so why should I give a fuck about them?” Tradie. Public Bar. The Illawarra.
One of the golden rules of Australian politics is that no party can form government without winning seats in the outer suburbs and hinterland of our major cities.
Former leader of the Labor Party and former Prime Ministerial contender Mark Latham, now a vicious critic of both sides of parliament, argues that these are the key marginal electorates that make or break political leaders.
“Why is the Prime Minister so unpopular in these areas? It’s not just his aloof manner and Harbourside Mansion reputation.
“His policies are hurting working families battling away on the fringe of our major cities.The real problem is not in the relative distribution of incomes in Australia. It’s the way in which flawed government policies are hurting ALL income earners.
“Turnbull’s policies have failed for people living on the edge of our major cities, so not surprisingly, they don’t want him as our Prime Minister. Mark Latham, The Daily Telegraph, 1 August 2018.
Latham names several touchstone issues:
- The housing affordability crisis, due to new arrivals under Big Australia immigration flooding the housing market.
- Increased energy prices, as Australia goes further down the path of putting all our eggs in the renewables basket.
- Income tax bracket creep, with Turnbull giving higher priority to corporate tax cuts than an immediate plan for substantial personal tax cuts.
- Sluggish wage growth, again caused by Big Australia immigration that has flooded the labour market and given two-thirds of new jobs to newly arrived migrants.
Epitaph
There are so many low points to Turnbull’s prime ministership it is difficult to count them all. Plunging educational outcomes, a collapsing underclass and a dispirited nation are just some.
While strutting the political stage in front of a thousand cameras, many of Turnbull’s announcements were the leitmotifs of the bureaucratic left.
At the same time he dragged the country closer to totalitarianism, with his attacks on journalists and free speech, his massive expansion of surveillance of the population, and his gifting of large amounts of money to Australia’s ultra-secretive and essentially unaccountable national security agencies.
The hidden powers of Australian governance.
There are no saviours of democracy on the horizon. Rather, around the world we see a new authoritarianism that is always anti-democratic in practice, populist in appeal, nationalist in sentiment, fascist in sympathy, criminal in disposition, tending to spew a poisonous rhetoric aimed against refugees, Muslims, and increasingly Jews, and hostile to truth and those who speak it, most particularly journalists to the point, sometimes, of murder. Richard Flanagan.
This is the point Turnbull brought to the country to.
The true tragedy of Turnbull’s failed Prime-ministership is that the country stands at a precipice, facing increasing social division, crumbling services, and a plummeting place in the world.
A once plucky, optimistic, industrious country is happy no longer.
And nobody believes a word that comes out of the mouths of their elected representatives.
With Australians experiencing a drift towards totalitarianism in their daily lives, evident in everything from ridiculous if not insane levels of regulation to excessive micro-policing, a growing intolerance of divergent views and bureaucratic and political contempt for the views of ordinary people, there could be no worse time for a loss of faith in democracy.
NEXT:
SECURITY THEATRE: JAILING TEN-YEAR-OLDS
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