IG has released new analysis showing that Australia’s Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, is the highest paid head of government in the OECD:
Clearly, paying Australia’s Prime Ministers bucket loads of money has done little to ensure quality, given the conga-line of failures over the past decade.
But for mine, Malcolm Turnbull has been the most disappointing Prime Minister in my lifetime.
Like most people I was initially thrilled when Turnbull took over the Prime Ministership from Tony Abbott, believing that we had a leader that would place good policy over short-term political opportunism. He even promised as much:
“Ultimately, the prime minister has not been capable of providing the economic leadership our nation needs… We need a different style of leadership. We need a style of leadership that… respects the people’s intelligence, that explains these complex issues and then sets out a course of action that we believe we should take… We need to respect the intelligence of the Australian people. We need to restore traditional cabinet government [and] put an end to policy on the run and captain’s calls”.
– Malcolm Turnbull, launching his leadership challenge, 14 September 2015.
Yet, in just a few short months the goodwill evaporated when we witnessed a Prime Minister completely devoid of policy, while performing a U-turn and going against many of the things that he previously stood for (e.g. climate policy, reforming property tax concessions, etc).
We’ve also witnessed the Turnbull Government’s blatant hypocrisy and lies. For example, first bemoaning that the Federal Budget faced immense structural pressures and a “revenue problem”, only to then pin its entire ‘reform agenda’ on a hugely expensive company tax cut, based on a flawed belief in trickle-down economics and equally dodgy modelling.
Or arguing vehemently against a banking Royal Commission, only to later claim it was in favour all along.
Or endlessly lying that Australia’s immigration program is being managed in the national interest, when in reality Turnbull is keeping the throttle as open as he possibly can to protect his ‘growth lobby’ gangsters.
Australia could probably have made a work experience kid Prime Minister, paid them $100,000 a year, and achieved better results than what has been achieved under Turnbull’s failed leadership.
