Dear Malcolm
So it’s all over.
I was hoping the rumours weren’t true, or that you’d have a last-minute change of heart. I was preparing an open letter imploring you to stay in politics. Not, of course, that my imploring or for that matter anyone else’s is of any moment to you, but I wanted to explain that Australian politics needs people like you, and your party, or at least the conservative side of politics in Australia, needs you, specifically. I wanted to explain how Malcolm Mark 2 could be a far scarier prospect for this Government than you were first time around, that you had a serious chance of challenging Labor in 2013.
Still, too late for that.
My favourite Turnbull moment is one that will probably be forgotten in the coverage that will ensue. It was your speech at the Apology to the Forgotten Australians last November. I challenge anyone to read the text of that speech and not be moved beyond words, not merely by the tragedy of what you described, but by the way you articulated both the anguish of those children who were betrayed, and the failure of those who let it happen. And when you spoke in particular of the “greatest tragedy”, of not knowing one’s mother, we knew you had a good idea of that pain.
But I’d couple that with another moment, when you called a press conference on the evening of 26 November, as your party crumbled around you, conservatives resigning en masse, Tony Abbott and Nick Minchin leading the charge. There was plenty of speculation you’d called it to announce you were resigning the leadership, because everything was that bad. On the contrary, you walked in and delivered a bravura performance defending the need to address climate change and honour the party’s commitment to vote for the CPRS. It incited open mockery from some MPs and amusement in the media that you thought you could defeat the forces arrayed against you. The following Tuesday, you came within one vote – one lousy bloody vote – of proving them all wrong.
And when you rose to cross the floor this year on the CPRS bills, your speech justifying action on climate change and the need for an ETS was far superior to anything heard on the issue from any parliamentarian for years. It was one of the great Australian political speeches.
I reckon if you’d ever returned to the leadership, Australians would have recalled that Turnbull, the Turnbull prepared to put his leadership on the line over an important principle, rather than the Turnbull of Godwin Grech fame.
Because, yes, despite, or perhaps because, of your vast ego, you had lousy judgement. You should have known Grech was too good to be true. But you were so convinced you could seize the top prize in one amazing stroke you failed to undertake the due diligence. And it wasn’t just political misjudgement. You allowed yourself to be gulled into opposing the second stimulus package by a parlour game for academic economists about tax cuts.
And there was personal misjudgement. Your blithe indifference to the opinions of others – based, admittedly, on the solid ground that you were usually right on pretty much any subject worth mentioning – wasn’t just a character flaw to be tolerated by colleagues, like it was in business and law, where only results matter. In politics it became a debilitating weakness as you lost control of a fractious backbench that had made it perfectly clear from the end of the Howard era onward that it wanted to be consulted and taken seriously far more than Howard ever did.
None of those were irreparable flaws – although I might be in a minority of one in thinking that. Malcolm Mark 2 could have been a more consultative, less intolerant leader, who still knew he was right, but who was a lot better at listening to the whingeing of his colleagues and appearing to give ground to them – and picking up danger signals that he would otherwise have missed. But that’s all a matter of “what if” stuff now.
The really sad part is, public life needs people like you. It needs people who have succeeded out in the real world. Politics is ever-more dominated by politicians pressed from the same mould, cloned and programmed and sent up the career ladder from Young Labor/Liberal ranks, into ministerial offices as advisers, then via preselection into Parliament, all clutching their talking points and trying to suppress any evidence of difference or natural human variability. They undoubtedly arrive in politics with more political skills than you managed to acquire in six years in the game, but very few of them have a capacity to think beyond politics, to work out how creatively to respond to major, complex policy challenges.
It’s worrying. Evan Thornley pulled the pin last year in Victoria. Peter Garrett has been battered and savaged. Now you’ve left.
I disagreed with any number of your policies – indeed, probably most of them – but I reckon you would have made a great Prime Minister. That speech to the Forgotten Australians showed why – for all the brilliance, for all the ego and aggression and bull-at-a-gate recklessness, for all the lifelong, burning desire for the top prize – your humanity, and a splendid capacity to give voice to it, shone through. Like Paul Keating, your flaws are great, but so are your strengths. Sadly, they’re now lost from Australian public life.
24 Comments
Hear hear!
http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=203867237528
Just sayin’, ya know?
Well written Bernard.
The Utegate affair did seem a bad misjudgement on behalf of Mr Turnbull, but his reasons for being in politics differ from most as you point out, in that he had already made it in the real world and was interested in making Australia a better place, and indeed that meant addressing the challenges of injustice and climate change.
I’d hoped he might stay on however, particularly after watching his speech on the ETS, but maybe like others who increasingly have seen politics no longer being a mechanism by which positive outcomes can be achieved, or they are demonized by our press to the point of irrationality, maybe he has something in mind which will achieve the same ends.
I wish him good luck and will be keeping an eye out on what he moves onto next, as I am sure it will something along the lines mentioned above.
I will miss Malcolm.
This is in spite of some fundamental rejections of the kind of person he is – at times. Thus, the Malcolm who – to my way of thinking – milked the ‘boat people’ (alleged) issue for all he was worth (with the absolute worst of them) was a moral disaster. If he didn’t really believe all the xenophobic hoopla he was spouting, then he was a dreadful hypocrite. If he did believe it, more’s the ammunition against his judgment (including his moral judgment) and character.
But, as Bernard makes clear, there was something good here, and there was always potential. And what are we left with in the Coalition? Dross, dregs, mere residue – with remarkably few exceptions (and I do not include Hockey amongst these).
In an informed and rational electorate, they would be gone for all money – and for quite a spell indeed. Clearly, all democracies including Australia have less than that and so the Coalition will struggle on, bumble on, for who knows how long – before the nation has the benefit of a decent opposition.
Dangerous waters.
As someone who could genuinely articulate a reasoned “l”iberal position Australian politics needs someone like Malcolm more than ever…..
Thank you Bernard for a most insightful letter. Australia cannot afford to lose politicians like Malcolm Turnbull. We could all too easily afford to lose politicians like Tony Abbott and his supporters such as Julie Bishop, Bronwyn Bishop, Philip Ruddock, Kevin Andrews, Wilson Tuckey, etc (and, yes, a selection on the Labor side). As you say “one lousy bloody vote”. What a wonderful final paragraph.
Bernard… you wrote:
“…you walked in and delivered a bravura performance defending the need to address climate change and honour the party’s commitment to vote for the CPRS…”.
That sums up Malcolm nicely… The party was clearly AGAINST the CPRS. So strongly, in fact, that it was prepared to throw away it’s best opposition leader and replace him with anyone ANYONE! who would oppose the ETS.
And so it did.
It is entirely revisionist to pretend that the ‘party’ had some kind of ethereal ‘will’ that Malcolm was somehow protecting.
The fact is that Malcolm’s political epitaph will tragically remain “Killed by the ETS”.
And so it should be.
How right you are Bernard. It’s a huge loss to the political landscape when people like Malcolm Turnbull walk away. Aside from making room at the top for more programmed dullards it reinforces politics as a mugs game where good policy-making comes by chance. We’re bereft of political talent at state and federal level because Australians aren’t encouraged to take it seriously. They see fools like Katter and Barnaby, hangers on like Ruddock and Tuckey, firebrands and bigots like Abbott and Minchin and that endless stream of loose-cannons Labor’s fielded in NSW and Qld. Two very tired old parties so controlled by antiquated doctrines they’re near comatose. Turnbull is leaving behind a highly unhealthy power-play-over-policy culture and he’s moving on. Shame about the Parliament.
Hear hear. I will miss Malcolm too, for all his personal flaws he was the last real liberal force to be reckoned with.
Here’s to the death of true liberalism in Australia. **raises glass**
It is sad. The comparison with Paul Keating is a good one. In my opinion, Keating saved Australia. Without him pushing the reforms, against his party, against the public, we would by now be an economic wasteland.
Who knows what Malcolm would have achieved? He certainly tried to bring the Liberals to a sensible position on climate change, but without Keating’s years in the game, wasn’t able to.
I was hoping to see Malcolm takeover after the current self-indulgent, economic know-nothing, virginity worshipping, narcissistic fool of an Opposition leader had lost the next election. I think that in 2013 with Malcolm in charge of the Liberals we would have seen a real competition. But it’s not to be. Malcolm will take his immense talent back to the private sector, make another squillion dollars and the rest of us will wonder what might have been.
“I disagreed with any number of your policies – indeed, probably most of them – but I reckon you would have made a great Prime Minister.”
The personal transcends the political- “Give me a leader I like, no matter where I’m led”.
A strange sycophancy…
Well said Bernard. I will miss Malcolm, but I’m glad that he didn’t compromise his principles the way he would have had to in order to contest the next election as a Liberal candidate.
Not a bad piece of writing yourself, Bernard. I felt Turnbull was too given to lies ie The Godwin affaire. On the other hand, it is a shameful waste of sheer brain power. He will leave a second rate Party, whereas he could have brought it up to being as it used to be-one day in the past? Camelot?
My latest theory: It’s all part of a conspiracy! When little Johnny Howard got arsed out of his job he colluded with the great God of Zog to cast a mysterious curse. “All potential leaders of the Liberal Party will be cursed until such time as seven seasons of Articus have passed”-one season being as twenty years on earth.
“Know ye when a man cometh dressed in a black business suit, and weareth a tie made of wondrous silk, of a pattern known as abstract. Upon his eye will be a certain madness. He carryeth a brown brief case; within this leather capsule will lie a document wrought on parchment upon which will be written a single word. Philosophy. Regard him well oh ye of little faith. Know him well, for he will be your saviour.”
“When cometh yet another season of Articus thus will he be condemned to a martyr’s fate. And yea will his body be foundeth in the Stock Exchange, with a noose around his neck. And upon his pale body will be writ ‘Gotcha’ BHP.
Here here,
Can not something be done. The country can not afford this loss.
I have just watched my recoding of QandA with Tony and I feel sick.
Rob M
I recently read about Terry White in Queensland; yes, the pharmacy franchiser. He was also done-over by the right wing Nationals in Queensland back in the Joh days, and eventually was hounded out of politics. Now he has a huge business. I’m sure Malcolm will do exceptionally well in whatever venture he undertakes, and who knows, maybe one day he might control the media like Rupert does today.
Very nicely put Bernard – one of your best – you write well when you write with passion.
Don’t go to far away Malcolm. A Republic will be your sweet revenge.
I do hope Mr On the Moon will be sensitive if he decides to convey the Liberal Party’s seppuku (though it must be said that the act was traditionally the reserve of great samurais not ninjas).
Holy goatballs Frank – I agree with your contribution!
Although, isn’t it interesting how desperately we crave a politician with principles?
I agree, generally. However, he would not have been a better PM than Rudd is now and will be for the foreseeable future, so there is not really that much of a loss to the nation. If, by some chance, he took at tilt at becoming premier of NSW then he could make a big difference – O’Farrell is showing no sign of being up to the job.
Administration and policy both need a big shake-up in this state and he would be the ideal person to make that happen.
Is greed a necessary perquisite to a lawmaker or is regarding most constituents as cretins just as important? I ask because yesterday we had the profound words of Abbott to digest and today we are enlightened by he who would have been king. Turnbull’s mistake was to clutch at a theme that by association should have given him human aspects .It didn’t sustain him, did it? A body has to have a genuineness about it before it can emanate honesty. Some 2600 years ago, enlightened Greeks challenged the flawed morality of the gods of the day because they weren’t performing to expectations. They started thinking scientific and reckoned there was a natural explanation for the catastrophes that were giving the locals a hard time. Six hundred years later the real deal turned up, and with him the genesis of financial opportunists and the ignorance and stupidity on which the megalomaniacs flourish, but that’s another story.
My naïve inquiry is to wonder if non-interest groups of selfless thinkers might again head a government whose members don’t thrive on glib observations like monkeys and peanuts or overcharge mightily for child care.
Well written Bernard. I think the Godwin Gretch, ETS and loss of the leadership were the chastening Malcolm neaded to turn him into a truly great leader of Australia.
The comparison with Keating is a good one. As an Economics teacher of mine used to say, “sometimes the medicine tastes bad, and it’s forced upon you; but you’re better off for having taken it”. A caution against poll driven politics. Keating and Turnbull both adhered to this.
I am greatly disappointed by Malcolm’s departure from politics. If given the chance he would have been a great Prime Minister. Where else does one find in politics a person with libertarian inclinations (people know what to do best for their own lives and governments should get out of the way – especially on economic matters), with an adherence to evidence based policy when government needs to get in the way for the greater good (vide climate change and “least cost abatement”). Save for his halfheartedly blowing the asylum seeker “dog whistle” to try to gain a boost in the polls, I think I agreed with just about every policy position Malcolm adopted.
Have to agree with all of that.
I personally thought that even a late switch to Turnbull would cause Rudd some concern. Not a loss but a narrowing. In comparison to Abbott and Joyce Turnbull would seem like a reliable old hand and basically the only man in the Liberal camp with any ability.
A ‘battle hardened’ Turnbull would have garnered more respect. Malcolm two would have been a much wiser operator and a better match for Rudd.
Now the Liberal Party truly are without ‘real’ leadership talent.
Abbott is an insane joke and it is only the media that keeps him looking respectable. HOw long will the Libs be out in the cold with the right now firmly in control
Mal Turnbull is one of the rare breed known as Statesmen. His playmates in the Coalition were lulled into a modus operandi in daily pursuits comfortably in the Howard-mastered mold. No businessman who likes to get things done can take the speed for long unless he firmly puts one foot onto the other and keeps still and tries hard not to patronise, to be quiet and play the game. But even had he done that all the way through, a bunch of resentful players who hadn’t got a turn yet r it were not going to accept a latecomer who got things easier than they. If you don’t fit that mold, you don’t fit! Better out of it. My problem now is that an informal vote from me would just be giving away a vote for some bunch I don’t want. Que hace?
Did he ever apologise for Grechgate?