The Prince of Point Piper�s (Malcolm Turnbull's) woes

[stui magpie]

[Wokko]

Shorten the corrupt, self serving, power hungry union boss and Tanya Plibersook with her heroin dealer husband riding the Labor jobs for mates gravy train vs Moderate Malcolm and his evil pet witch.

At this stage I'd take Bernardi, Hanson or Team X over the pack of wankers on offer.

[swoop42]

Bernadi is the leader of the Wanker party.

Hanson deputy leader.

What are you on about.

[Mugwump]

[Pies4shaw]

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[Mugwump]

[David]

Do you have a source, Mugwump? It�s not that I�d put any level of bastardry beyond the creeps in NSW Labor, but I have no idea whether it�s a true story, a joke he told at an event, a press gallery rumour, something you heard from a friend of a friend, or what.

[Mugwump]

It was quoted in the SMH article Feb 12 2015, headline �Tanya Plibersek on her brothers death and husbands drug addiction.�

Quote : �Egan tells me that the selection committee thought he was the standout candidate but that there was this problem. Egan had other objections. "I don't like the fact you have a hyphenated name or been educated by the Jesuits," he tells me he said to Coutts-Trotter. "And if I give you the job, your background will come out."

In fairness, Egan apparently did give him the job, in the end. But the comment is an interesting snapshot of the values self-reported by a modern senior politician of the Left. It could have been meant wryly perhaps, it it does not come across that way, and of course even things couched as humour have a meaning. The use of humour as camouflage for modern propaganda is actually a topic in itself.

More generally on the OP, the Cash saga is the kind of petty, partisan, bickering barracking drama which becomes so important when a government, and a PM, have no real values other than staying in office. Still, as John Silvester�s column in the Age today said, we now have a community without many serious values either, so perhaps that is to be expected. Though Corey Bernardi does not understand what conservatism is (he thinks it is libertarianism, which is to conservatism as Trotskyism is to Old Labour) he is right in one respect - a true conservative party is sorely needed.

[Jezza]

Here's the relevant article that Mugwump mentions.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tanya-plibersek-on-her-brothers-death-and-husbands-drug-addiction-20150212-13cqrh.html

[watt price tully]

I remind people that this thread is about the Prince of Pott's Point and his woes which ha been great theatre, indeed comedy farce this last week & more.

[David]

The only bad thing about him going � at this stage, I feel like he�s pretty much lost all credibility and I wouldn�t really care if he was sacked or not � is when you start to think about who replaces him. If he lasts until the election and then subsequently gets subbed out for Peter Dutton after a humiliating election loss, that might be a blessing � Dutton could do a Brendan Nelson, enjoy a spectacularly unsuccessful half-term as opposition leader and then hopefully never be heard from again. What I really hope is that the Liberals can find someone relatively forward-thinking, who buys all the neoliberal economics and some traditional values (that�s a given) but nonetheless follows some humanist principles and isn�t a total troglodyte on social matters or compulsive panderer to the far-right, as Turnbull has proven to be. There can be a place for a decent conservative or centre-right party in the political spectrum. I�m just not sure if or when that will ever happen here.

[Mugwump]

^ depends on your definition of a troglodyte, I guess. I�d say that a coarse society with little real interpersonal respect, high crime, cyber bullying, sexting, widespread dependence on mid-altering drugs and a growing subservience to a corrupt dictatorship in China is rather more troglodytic than having �dated� attitudes to sexuality and religion. Funny, what you get used to.

Anyway, given WPT�s desire to keep this thread devoted to the yah-boo-sux we call politics (like footy but without the fun bits), I think Turnbull is probably done for, but if he can survive to the next election, I wonder whether Australians will really want a union boss running the country. While Turnbull clearly stands for nothing other than a kind of soft loyalty to the wealthy and a few �progressive� attitudes, at least he doesn�t seem like a machine politician, and he may yet be able to turn that into votes against Shorten, the shifty little sectionalist.