Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. - George Orwell
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://theharshcouch.com/thc/2015-01-27/
The Harsh Couch - 2015.01.27 Herd Immunity
wibbly
#1
Tony - can the man out last the week?
Bishop + Turnbull would be an interesting combination, but I’ve got no idea how they align factionally/politically and whether that’s just fantasty football combination.
I was chatting with my parents about it last night and my mother thinks that Australia isn’t ready yet for another female primeminister, as there is still a lot of misogynist sentiment lingering around post-Gilliard.
My dad has sat on the other side of a negotiating table to Turnbull when he was at Sydney Uni and speaks highly of him. That said, my dad (doctor, also ex-administrator in hospitals) has also said that Tony Abbott was a reasonably good health minister.
My read on Abbott (perhaps influenced by THC’s view as the man as overgrown student politician) is that he’s simply not capable of delivering what Australia expects of a prime minister. He’s state premier or opposition leader material at best.
He seems trapped in a mindset which can’t manage the transition from opposition leader to leader of a country.
wibbly
#4
I swept all appointments off my calendar this morning and tuned in to the NPC address.
That is time I will never get back, but I will be able to tell my grandchildren that I watched the last public speech of Australia’s least popular prime minister in recent history. (Perhaps the good Dr Gob could help me out with some more prime ministerial history).
The man is surely toast, but I don’t really see their next move.
Malcolm is evidently not well liked and they fear his environmental concerns … Julie doesn’t seem to have the spirit … Scott Morrison, well he’s a fine henchman, but we know little else …
Hockey and Pyne are electoral poison too …
I see a lot of talk in the meeja about a Turnbull (PM)/Bishop (deputy leader and foreign minister)/Morrison (Treasurer) combo …
Can Tony last the week? Probably not.
wibbly
#5
There’s a good Waleed Aly piece that suggests that Tony’s great success as Opposition Leader was the source of his great problems now:
“[…] as he destroyed Rudd and Gillard, he was also destroying himself. Abbott’s rhetoric in opposition simply turned the budget into a time bomb. When your promises are contradictory, you very quickly find yourself having to break them. Lots of times. And when you pledge to fix the budget but start by abolishing the taxes that will help you get there, you have no choice but to go for cuts you shouldn’t and frequently said you wouldn’t.”
Good article.
Great points about Shorten. Shorten’s say nothing, small target strategy is working well for keeping attention focused on Abbott, but it also means that we’ve got very little to judge Shorten on.
What does he stand for? What’s his alternative?
Like Abbott, Shorten just represents “not the current idiot”.
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
wibbly
#7
Fresh moves by Albanese against Shorten … but he can’t do it directly, so the mechanism is to try further democratisation of the ALP …