Is this Turnbull’s last dance?

Drifter says:

07:16am | 10/08/09

It’s reported that he’s “got the backing of most of his colleagues”. In that case, they’re no more ethical than he is. Stand forward and demand his resignation, petals.

J says:

08:26am | 10/08/09

Rudd and Swan trusted Grech as did Treasury Boss Ken Henry to run Ozcar on his own. Howard and Costello gave Grech thumbs up when Turnbull checked with them. A journalist in The Australian trusted the source. What makes Turnbull different? It is all about fear as Rudd appreciates that if Turnbull gets any momentum at all Rudd is no match for him especially if the veil of Rudd spin evaporates. I think it is about time political commentators got a bit honest with their own comments and started to publish honest commentary about all sides of politics and not the drivel we are mainly reading and hearing .

Shel says:

09:06am | 10/08/09

Give the leadership to Barnaby Joyce. He’s got balls and we know what he stands fo.r

Pollie Wollie says:

09:07am | 10/08/09

Turnbull has lost credibility,simple as that,time to step down.

Alison says:

09:13am | 10/08/09

Calls for Prime Minister and Bowen to Resign over Fake Websites

NOT THE NEWS … The Prime Minister and a senior Cabinet Minister have been found guilty of faking not one, but two websites costing taxpayers millions of dollars in a scandal set to rock the very foundations of the Labor Party.

The fake websites were found to have originated in the office of the Prime Minister when he was Opposition Leader and were designed to deliberately mislead the Australian people into believing that the Rudd Government could ‘ease the cost of living pressures on the family budget’.

In particular the Prime Minister promised to ease the squeeze on the price of food, groceries and fuel.

The Prime Minister has since admitted that his Grocerywatch and Fuelwatch website were fakes.

In an embarrassing about face the Prime Minister and the Minister responsible Minister Chris Bowen have made all traces of these fake website vanish faster than a fart in a fan factory.

Not surprisingly the Prime Minister and Minister Bowen have refused to take responsibility for the fake websites, despite overwhelming evidence of their complicity in deliberately misleading Australians that the fake websites were really a goer.

It has since transpired that the Minister responsible for delivering the fake websites, Chris Bowen has been rewarding for his arse covering with a seat in Cabinet.

It is also understood the Prime Minister, who is well known as being a tech savy tweeter (or twat to the none twitters) has requested that Minister Bowen shred all evidence of the fake websites because it worked so well in getting rid of the evidence in the Heiner Affair.

Daniel says:

09:41am | 10/08/09

Who is behind all this overkill on Turnbull and the opposition? This constant stream of citisism of Turnbull is over the top! Meanwhile we have the Government not being held to account on anything (the way they like it). Turnbulls never ending media coverage is looking like a witch hunt organised by Rudd and his robots. We only ever get this sqeaky clean, polished, look given to Rudd and his mates. Doesn’t this look a little odd to anyone else? I have never seen an opposition recieve so much hounding in the media before. Also have never seen a Government recieve such an on going pat on the back either. Rudd and co seem to be PERFECT. Not one mistake anywhere to be seen! Can this Governmnet be so PERFECT? Does Turnbull deserve all the negative never ending media bashings he gets? It just doesn’t seem right that we hear more about the opposition leader than our Prime Minister. No one is PERFECT, including Rudd and his Government. I wonder what really is going on behind Labors GREAT WALL, while we’re all pre occupied with Turnbull and the opposition.

Mark B says:

10:20am | 10/08/09

The ‘Australian Story’ program last week was compelling watching. It portrayed Mr Turnbull as a troubled man who believes he suffered as a child, needs to repeatedly prove himself, and is prone to ruthlessness and fits of angry impatience. It certainly didn’t portray him as a consultative, careful and considered politician. Its not the first media piece to present Mr Turnbull as a slightly scary character, but it was his own words, and those of his wife, that were most revealing, and worrying. He is not a Mr Latham, but he presented as the closest the Liberals have to a Lathamesque character. Politicians have a tendency to think that the average voter is stupid, as often does the media. Australian voters are largely disengaged between elections and then we typically elect the team that looks most capable of doing the job ahead. The Labor Party knows that a Costello led government might have won in 2007. They also know that a Costello led Opposition would be the biggest threat by far in 2010. They knew it was just a matter of time before Malcolm blew a hole in his foot; they just didn’t expect him to spectacularly blow the whole leg off. The Liberals look like being in the wilderness for two terms at least; it is just taking time for some people to get used to it.

Lani says:

10:23am | 10/08/09

An opposition leader who has no chance of winning the next election, has the media focus, i agree the media need to get back to Rudd and his Government. We keep reading and hearing the same stories about Turnbull day in and day out, nothing new just rehashed over and over while Rudd is sitting on his throne not being questioned about anything his Government is doing.(or not doing) One hell of a free kick! The media need to even things up a bit here. Alot of us are getting sick and tired of this regurgitated Turnbull hatred.

iansand says:

10:41am | 10/08/09

Most people who deal with Mr Turnbull on any sort of extended basis respect his intelligence, imagination and drive.  They also understand, very quickly, that anything standing between Mr Turnbull and his desired outcome will be used. abused and discarded.  I bet that his party colleagues have come to realise this.  I suspect that he has their continued support only because, regardless of their views of him, they perceive him as the best chance they have to achieve power.  What Utegate and Australian Story have done is reveal the true Turnbull to the world.  It is not a pretty sight.  This means that the sole basis of his support in the party - the prospect of power - is eroding.

I give him six months, and look forward to Messrs Abbott and Hockey fighting the next round.

Neil P says:

10:42am | 10/08/09

Is anyone keeping an eye on Kevin Rudd? or Jenny Maklin? Most people probably don’t even know who she is. She’s incharge of Indigenous Affairs, who has completely stuffed up her portfolio. But no, we are more concerned about assasinating Malcolm Turnbull. I suppose by focusing on Turnbull she can get away with underperforming in her job!

groucho says:

10:52am | 10/08/09

Fancy thinking you could bring down a PM with a glance at an email from nowhere.  Mr Turnbull has mortally wounded himself.

The electorate has a long memory and he has no chance now of ever being a PM. Email Turnbull, they’ll call him, the poor silly, for ever.  Right now he’s the best the Liberals have got, so the rest of us will just have to buckle down and get on with testing our sound but uninspiring Government by fairer, brighter and more direct means.

Now would be a good time for the Government to buckle down and get on
with the rest of the hard bits. All that potential and opportunity locked up in
the sea of reviews, buried somewhere on the PMs desk.

Memo, Mr Rudd:  Kindly be big enough to resist the temptation of any
more free kicks. There’s no need to rub our noses in what a dill poor
Mr Turnbull he is. We know. You need to get on with the real job, now,
please.

Karen says:

11:04am | 10/08/09

Rudd better be carefull, because people don’t like smart ass’s either. We know what happens to people who live in glass houses!

Mark B says:

11:08am | 10/08/09

The Liberal Party appears to suffer from the disease of apathy, a bit like Tattersall’s Club. The Party got too comfortable with the wily politician Mr Howard, who fooled the members into complacency until it was too late. For some unknown reason, they didn’t effect the renewal that Mr Costello offered, and in retrospect it was clearly a mistake; they misjudged his patience and loyalty. When Dr Nelson stepped up to the very tough job, they allowed him to be undermined by the impatient Mr Turnbull, as if they were mere spectators at a prize fight. The Liberal Party “organisation” appears to be a rabble that depends on a political “leader”. It seems to me that Mr Howard tapped into that, in the hope that he could break the Menzies record as longest serving Prime Minister, and stay in that magnificent property in Kirribilli. This meant that Mr Howard had to undermine Mr Costello within the Party. He was good at it, such as when he had Shane Stone release polling data on Mr Costello. Mr Costello would have looked at Mr Keating’s approach of going to the backbench to undermine Mr Howard, and rejected it. It’s quite possible that Mr Costello is too honourable a politician to be the Leader of the Liberal Party; similarly so of Dr Nelson. It is important for the public to understand the nature of the Liberal Party though, because if the leader of the Liberal Party becomes Prime Minister, he wields a lot more power that even Mr Rudd could dream of.

james says:

11:34am | 10/08/09

I happen to love having Malcolm Turnbull as the leader of the Opposition. He won’t be leading them to Government, that’s certain. And the Labor-sympathetic should appreciate the approval rating holiday we’ve been give.

Massie says:

11:35am | 10/08/09

I wonder how long Rudds Ministers are going to be happy all soldering on behind their leader and not saying a word out of place. Eventually they are going to want have their own say about issues, thats democracy. The Rudd Government is too scripted. Robots are the order of the day with Labor at the moment, but those robots will get sick of being told what to do and say at some point. It’s not possible for a Government not to have any discontent amongst themselves as Labor portray. The cork will one day pop out of their bottle. It will be interesting to see after being under the thumb for so long what we will find out is actually going on behind the closed doors of Labor,

Yolanda says:

11:56am | 10/08/09

Yes it will be interesting to see what spew’s out of Labors cosy little bubble they’ve created. That little bubble won’t last forever, and when it bursts it’s going to have alot of spewing to do after such a long time. Watch this space.

Mark B says:

12:00pm | 10/08/09

Groucho is right. Ten years ago, about the time Mr Turnbull was a major founding shareholder of Ozemail, I was involved in a Supreme Court matter at which my emails were filed as evidence. The lawyers read the printed copies with interest, and then asked for the electronic versions. Those emails won the case. It beggars belief that in these times of daily shonky emails from Nigeria, Russia and Banks, Mr Turnbull accepted viewing a printed version of an email, on face value, from a well known compromised and unwell public servant, to seek to entrap the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. In many ways the whole Ozcar saga is a beat-up, by both sides. But it has served better than anything else to highlight the aspects of Mr Turnbull’s behavior that seem to worry so many people. It also highlights the need for the Liberal Party to reform its management model, because it has the wrong person in the top job, with no real alternative available that wants the job. Today’s polls suggest impending disaster some time in the next twelve months.

Trent B says:

12:18pm | 10/08/09

I don’t understand why there is such a big deal made of Turnbulls character because he was fed a fake e-mail. He acted on information given to him by a senior Treasury Official. Using the excuse he was not well is rediculas, if he was so unwell then why did Rudd have him working for him in that position? In retrospect yes Turnbull should have checked the e-mail wasn’t fake first, but it’s not so difficult to understand why he believed it true. Grech wasn’t just joe blow off the street.

groucho says:

12:38pm | 10/08/09

Fortunately, the employment and jobs of Departmental officials is not the gift of a Prime Minister, of today or any other day.

The problem is not the faked email as such. The problem for Mr Turnbull -as Mr Abetz has realised -  is the needless rush, the needless over-play to try and unseat the duly elected Prime Minister of our country, without bothering to make sure the case was really bullet-proof.

This wasn’t an episode of one of those loopy “reality TV” Mole/Team pursuit programs.  We can’t go around chucking out our Prime Ministers by this sort of nonsense, whatever their Party.

Ostermann says:

12:46pm | 10/08/09

To say we trusted him (Grech) and he lied to us is fair, and I could imagine the shock Turnbull and Abetz felt when they realised that there man in the treasury buggered them probably with something borrowed from the new Sex Party. But! and here is the rub as far as I can see, Grech was a liberal mole inside a supposedly non-partisan system (o.k. non partisan I lived in Canberra for 20yrs with time off for good behaviour) not whistle blowing but leaking like a sieve, “one of there own” I guess if you are going to use sneaky backdoor methods to attempt to undermine a democratically elected government instead of fighting with sound policies for a quick return to goverment as what we have seen then you deserve everything you get, and when you have screwed right royally then you also need to accept the humility especially in the eyes of the voting public

Keith says:

12:47pm | 10/08/09

Unfortunately we will never know how Rudd would have reacted given the same circumstances.

stephen says:

01:10pm | 10/08/09

Give it to Mr Abbott. Though his politics are a bit stiff for me, he’s honest and he’s REAL.

Peter says:

01:22pm | 10/08/09

Mr Rudds “holier than thou” approach is wearing a bit thin too. This mans own character aint so sweet. Arrogance, Self Importance, Ego Maniac, over inflated self ambition etc, everything Turnbull is called also fits Rudd.

watty says:

02:07pm | 10/08/09

Lani you suggest “the media needs to get back to Rudd”

When were they ever on Rudd’s back?

As long as the “Greatful Dead” like Oakes,Grattan, Steketee O’Brien Jones (Tony)  Hartcher and Biongorno are being hand fed by the P.M.‘s Office no criticism will be heard.

There are others who have traded in their journalistic ethics just to keep their seats on the plane during the Rudd Flying Circus. so we can hear every pearl of wisdom Rudd drops during one of his many overseas trips.

It’s laughingly called “Freedom of the Press”

Haven Maven says:

02:36pm | 10/08/09

People in asbestos houses shouldn’t throw parties….

RT says:

02:39pm | 10/08/09

@watty 2:07 - how about I mention some media names too? Albrechtson, Akerman, Alan Jones, Bolt, Blair - that’s just the As and Bs.  Seen any pro-Rudd stuff coming from any of them?

Mark B says:

03:20pm | 10/08/09

RT, how about Glenn (Ambulance Chaser) Milne. And Christian Kerr is clearly very pro-Labor. Even the moderates went feral at the beginning of Utegate, smelling blood. The PM was derided for his linguistic eccentricities by otherwise respectable journalists, and accused of being a shallow fake when he referred to a sauce bottle. Yes, they’re screaming lefties at News Corp, the lot of them.

Helen says:

03:31pm | 10/08/09

The media protect Rudd like Chapelles mother protects her daughter.

RT says:

04:12pm | 10/08/09

Christian Kerr is very pro-Labor, MArk B? Funny how that kind of thing is in the eye of the beholder because he gets comments on his blog accusing him of the opposite. I think the same could be said of Milne. There is no doubt about how anyone I mentioned leans though.

Steve's view says:

05:06pm | 10/08/09

I am not fooled for a second. Rudd and Swan know they’ve dodged a silver bullet over utegate. They have cleverly out manoeuvred Turnbull due to his inexperience. There’s enough evidence to suggest they misled parliament in spite of Grech’s fake email. What I find sad is that a lot of Australians are allowing themselves to be misled by a deceitful government.

Mark B says:

05:32pm | 10/08/09

RT, I was joking about Christian, who I understand is a former Liberal staffer. Mr Milne chases fire engines every couple of days; this week the Labor Party is guilty of cronyism apparently, as if the Howard Government was the last bastion of propriety. Mr Turnbull gave $10 million of taxpayer funds to a mate for a rain making machine, but when the PM and Treasurer did not help their mate, they were supposed to resign. Some of these Liberals have no professional or personal integrity whatsoever. A few of the News Limited journalists got sucked in by Utegate so I suspect their will be a bit more scrutiny of leaks they get in the future. Anyway, we have a conservative government that listens to the advice from the smartest Treasury Secretary in the western world, so I’m happy. Oh, and they attacked Dr Henry as well!!!!

Craig Rowley says:

03:03pm | 11/08/09

Completely wrong-footed, the more Malcolm Turnbull does now to “distance himself further from his now-disgraced former dance partner Godwin Grech,” the more he’ll look mean and tricky. Afterall, everyone knows it takes two to Tango.