Some politicians deal with stress by exercising. Others watch mindless TV. Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull likes to go to the opera. So let’s resist calling him a snob. He’s had a tough week, the poor guy.
After all, he made a clear decision. Decisions must be really hard for Malcolm: he’s made so few of them since coming to the top job.
And the prime minister didn’t make any old decision. Malcolm decided to prorogue parliament. Perhaps no one in the Commonwealth of Australia was more delighted with this news than me. He removed the mantle of the most (in)famous prorogation of parliament from my shoulders. I really should send him a thank you card. Or perhaps a bottle of wine. I’ll have to look up the year in which Malcolm was born.
Not only did the prime minister prorogue parliament, but also he moved the budget a week early to 3 May. Running a cabinet government, as he does, Malcolm was careful to ensure that changing the date of the budget was no captain’s call. Important ministers were consulted. Legal advice was sought. Letters to the governor general were drafted. Only then, in a hastily-arranged cabinet phone hook-up on the morning of the announcement, did Malcolm tell the treasurer, Scott Morrison, that he had to hand the budget in a week early.
The prime minister sought to downplay his own admission that the treasurer is not a member of his inner circle. Malcolm explained that he works with ScoMo “as closely together as you can.” I’m sure that’s true, in a Julianna Margulies/Archie Panjabi kind of way.
The prime minister not only prorogued parliament and moved the budget, but he also launched an election campaign! No wonder he’s so tired. Well, a pseudo-campaign, hurtling Australia to a possible double-dissolution election on 2 July.
But while the nation might have thought Malcolm launched the Turnbull government’s re-election campaign, Tony popped up to remind us that it Malcolm was really running a campaign to re-elect the Abbott government. A vote for Malcolm is a vote for Tony. A new campaign slogan, perhaps?
But the prime minister, understandably, was not keen to borrow a slogan from Tony Abbott. So Malcolm instead borrowed one from Selina Meyer.
To be fair, the prime minister didn’t straight-out steal the Veep’s slogan “Continuity with Change.” We all know that Malcolm will, with agility and innovation, choose to use more words than strictly required to underline, to stress, and to underscore the imperative importance and significant, vital message he strives to impart. Turnbull transmogrified the fictitious Meyer’s slogan to fit his reality: “There is continuity and there is change.”
Granted, Malcolm’s version won’t look as snappy on the side of a bus, but then again, the era of three-word-slogans is over.
Selina Meyer was unimpressed. In fact, she was dumbstruck.
She wasn’t the only one. Dumbstruck is how the prime minister must have felt when he heard the news – at a press conference, no less – that the NSW 2011 state election was back to bite him on the arse.
Yes, the NSW Liberal party’s greatest election triumph. Their sweetest victory of all. Between Icac and the NSW Electoral Commission, Australia keeps finding Liberal stains across the underpants of that election. There was the cricket team of Liberal MPs hauled before Icac and allegations of wads of cash given in paper bags in the back of a Bentley. Liberal premier Barry O’Farrell resigned for misleading Icac. Still to come are the Icac’s findings about Australian Water Holdings, its donations to the Liberal party, and Icac’s conclusions about its former chairman, Arthur Sinodinos.
And now, just when Malcolm wants to campaign on the ABCC and union corruption, along comes an extraordinary ruling from the NSW Electoral Commission that the NSW Liberal party “washed” donations in 2011 funds from prohibited donors through the Free Enterprise Foundation.
Until the Free Enterprise Foundation comes clean in its list of donors, the NSW Electoral Commission chairman Keith Mason (former NSW court of appeal president) is withholding $4.4m and all future administration funding from the NSW Liberal party. Who was treasurer of the NSW Liberal party during this glorious time? No less than Turnbull’s cabinet secretary and trusted lieutenant, Arthur Sinodinos.
Cue the calls from the Australian for a royal commission into Liberal party fundraising. OK, OK – that’s my April Fool’s joke for the week.
(As an aside, really guys, I’m humbled by the extremes you would go to in order to defeat me and my Labor colleagues, but you shouldn’t have. Really, you shouldn’t have. And if this is how you conduct yourselves in a relatively sure thing, how are you going to behave in a tougher, closer election?)
So I say let’s cut Malcolm some slack for going to the opera. To each their own. Even prime ministers need a break now and then at the end of a hard week.
Kristina Keneally is a former NSW Labor premier
