I may be wrong about this, but it seems to me that Labor is ahead again and the Turnbull honeymoon shrivelling.
There are several reasons for this. One is the lunatic assertion by Abbott that the boats arriving from Africa could have been turned back and people who came to Europe that way deserved to die in their native countries. Turnbull did not reprove him for this, nor call him a dunderheaded advocate of on-water terrorism, nor, as he should have, expel him from the Liberal Party.
Another was the handling by Dutton of Abyan, the raped and pregnant Somali 23-year-old whom he refused an abortion twelve weeks ago and now must keep in Australia on medical advice — a two-time refugee growing daily bigger with an unpunished rapist's foetus and in danger of losing her mind.
Turnbull should have sacked him for this and did not. He should have let her stay, as an escapee from Nauruan persecution, in Australia and – of course – did not.
Another was the Trans-Pacific Partnership, among whose provisions is the right of cigarette companies to sue Australia for loss of income, in billions, through the enactment of our plain-packaging legislation. Turnbull did not resist this provision and showed himself to be on the side of cancer-friendly profit-mongers — killers we must now give buckets of money for having poisoned less people than they wanted to, thanks to our interference.
And another is the talk of a bigger or a wider GST, and the loss to the average family of $80 a week. This lunacy has been emphasised by Turnbull’s admission that he himself, ho ho, saved millions in tax in the Caymans, get used to it, I’m luckier than you, ho ho, tough titty.
It will be thought by some, as well, that the Royal Commission into Trade Union Corruption was itself corrupt, for having slimed for a year the innocent Bill Shorten while going very easy on Kathy Jackson, the Liberal-voting mental patient and big spender, and paying millions to Dyson Heydon, firm friend of the Liberal Party’s muddleheaded fundraisers.
Royal commission under fire over Shorten submission release https://t.co/doiMiH861W via @ABCNews
— Dave Donovan (@davrosz) November 8, 2015
All these things have shown Turnbull to be an impotent wuss, whose lofty, smirking jokiness ill-suits the position he lately seized and the seriousness of the decisions he is evading.
It’s likely there’ll be a swing away from the Liberals of six or seven per cent in North Sydney, after similar swings in Canning, South West Coast and Polwarth.
I could be wrong about this. But it’s likely that Turnbull’s record as a tax avoider who is calling, now, for "fairness" in tax collection, will stain his name irreparably and give his insouciant jocularity the air of a rich man slumming, who can always – like Tom and Daisy in Gatsby – retreat back into his money when his jovial, smirking decade in politics comes unstuck, with no great damage to his wallet, his mansions, his yacht or his family trusts.
And so ... it will go.
Or perhaps you disagree?
It's a recipe for a complex, expensive, bureaucratic world of co-payments and exclusions. You *might* be covered... https://t.co/8wGuffp4VM
— Tim Senior (@timsenior) November 8, 2015The original John Graham artwork featured in this piece may be purchased from the IA store.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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Malcolm'Caymans'Turnbull:"It's just wrong to say that tax is optional in Australia"
[nudge nudge, wink wink]
#auspol pic.twitter.com/SFR5x1MXA7
— U Bet I'm Gone❗️ (@johndory49) November 7, 2015
