Do-nothing Malcolm is fast moving towards laughing stock status, John Hewson at Domainfax:
Turnbull, despite all the assurances he offered to seize the leadership from Abbott, concerning no more slogans and promising good policy and good government, is still mostly running a short-term, opportunistic political strategy designed to wedge or simply score media points against the Shorten opposition.
Several recent examples prove the argument – the omnibus bill, the attack on Labor states over their renewable energy targets as a response to the South Australian power blackout and his most recent attempt to impose a life-time visa ban on asylum seekers. Three attempts to wedge the opposition. None of these were to actually deal appropriately with three important, longer-term, structural policy challenges.
AdvertisementWhile the South Australian blackout was the result of an extreme weather event that effectively wiped out the state’s transmission system and had nothing to do with renewables, the government’s attack on the states having renewable energy targets beyond 2020 (of up to 50 per cent by 2030) was a cheap, irresponsible and hypocritical shot…This is especially so when it is widely accepted that Australia will need a national target approaching 60 per cent by 2030 if we are to meet our Paris target…
Likewise, the proposal to ban asylum seekers who arrived by boat, now detained offshore, from ever holding any form of Australian visa is simply designed to divide the ALP in the short-term, while neglecting the many more who arrive by plane and overstay their visas and the longer-term requirement to resettle those determined to be genuine refugees.
Too right. The sad thing about it is that Do-nothing Malcolm is committing political suicide. Given he is only popular owing to his centrist history, policy prowess and reason, these wedge politics have the opposite to their intended effect, only undermining his own legitimacy. This is so bloody obvious that the failure to see it in turn wrecks the polity’s view of his political as well as policy judgement.
He’s is dead PM walking.
