The wheels turn slowly at Domainfax but they do turn, from Mark Kenny:
What is the point of the Turnbull government? It is a serious question. How is it superior in rhetoric and policy outcomes to its predecessor?
By his own admission, Malcolm Turnbull replaced Tony Abbott in 2015 for a reason. As challenger, he cited Abbott’s disastrous run in Newspoll, in which the Coalition had lost 30 surveys. Turnbull positioned Abbott as the problem: incapable of recovery, unwilling to change.
Now, the same poll conditions exist – albeit at an earlier stage.
Outwardly, many Australians harboured richer ambitions for the Turnbull ascendancy than a mere poll bounce for his party. They hoped that as a social moderate and enthusiastic modernist, Turnbull would champion unity and stability and that he would drag his party back from its Tea Party flirtations, its divisive culture wars, its pointless negativity.
But here, too, the results have been disappointing. A pattern is emerging in which Abbott’s policies can be seen to be doing better under Turnbull than they did under Abbott.
Put another way, who is worse, the criminal or the corrupt policeman? Tony Abbott is a bald-faced lying political hack with little vision and a neanderthal temperament. But that’s what he is. Nobody doubts it.
Malcolm Turnbull is career liberal reformer promoting the policies of the above. It is what he isn’t. Nobody doubts it.
So, for the polity, the wrestle between the two is one of authenticity. Abbott has it (unbelievably) and Turnbull does not.
In the law, when a corrupt policeman betrays his vows, duty and himself, he is treated with much more severe punishment than a criminal perpetrating the same crime. Why? Because his violation of the law is twofold.
I put it to you that the same basic law operates in politics. The farther a PM strays from who they are perceived to be, the more they are hated in the community on the double betrayal of policy and values.
On that basis we can expect Do-nothing Malcolm to be less popular than Tony Abbott before he is booted from the prime ministership next year.
