Leader of the Liberal Party wets and heir apparent to the prime ministership, Malcolm Bligh Turnbull is popular amongst progressives, however Sydney bureau chief Ross Jones thinks he's a drip.
Malcolm Turnbull is a rolled-gold dickhead.
Bright when he was young. Like his opponent, a Rhodes Scholar. Rich, successful, pumped. Mr Internet. One half of Australia’s pre-eminent power couple.
But a dickhead.
Rough assessment?
Despite the apparently glorious overarching narrative that is Malcolm’s life, even including his 1999 republic disappointment/failure, two events afford even the most casual observer a glimpse directly through the emperor’s clothes — Raingate and Utegate.
A leader does not make decisions like these.
In the week before the 2007 Ruddslide election, reported the ABC's Matt Hoy, when the Libs knew they were gone big time:
'… Mr Turnbull found the time to announce that the Government, already in caretaker mode, would bankroll to the tune of $10 million the investigation of an untried Russian technology that aims to trigger rainfall from the atmosphere, even when there are no clouds.'
Malcolm had another agenda of course.
Requests for interviews with Mr Turnbull, the head of the Australian Rain Corporation, the head of the centre contracted to test the device were declined.
So, $10m as caretaker environnment minister on untested hocus pocus. It seems the bucks were destined for associates.
Matt Hoy again:
Emanating from affluent suburbs like Vaucluse, Rose Bay and Watson's Bay, Malcolm Turnbull's fundraising group the Wentworth Forum, includes a long list of generous donors including Frank Lowy, Ros Packer, John Simons, and Matt Handbury, chairman and part-owner of the so-called Australian Rain Corporation, beneficiary of the Minister's funding....
Mr Handbury is the wealthy nephew of Rupert Murdoch and chairman and proprietor of Murdoch Books, which is the headquarters for Australian Rain Corporation.
The 7.30 Report put to Malcolm Turnbull the following questions: has Matt Handbury's contribution to your fundraising Wentworth Forum helped in securing funding for the Australian Rain Corporation?
"There is absolutely no connection," he said "That is an outrageous suggestion".
Secondly, why couldn't the Matt Handbury Swiss consortium pay for its own research?
Response: "The company is contributing funding to the research and trial."
Our final question to the Minister was why should this not be seen as securing funding for one of your electorate supporters ahead of an election the Government is tipped to lose?
Mr Turnbull did not directly answer this question ...
Then there was Utegate and Godwin Grech.
Poor Godwin. Ended up in care. We can only conclude Malcolm is a poor judge of scam artists.
Make no mistake, Turnbull is as cunning as a shithouse rat. But he, too, has many barnacles. The Libs would be mad to anoint him.
Here’s hoping.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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Turnbull says Murdoch is the ''most normal'' proprietor he knows: http://t.co/a1r5BgEITO Like Megarich Malcolm is an authority on "normal".
— Dave Donovan (@davrosz) March 10, 2014
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