Malcolm BLIGH Turnbull or is that Turncoat?

Malcolm Bligh Turnbull the would be Opposition leader shows he is not the man for the job and is as treacherous as Gillard herself herself.

In 1987, he established an investment banking firm, Whitlam Turnbull & Co Ltd, in partnership with Neville Wran (former Labor Premier of New South Wales) and the former State Bank of New South Wales chief executive, Nicholas Whitlam (son of Gough Whitlam, former Labor Prime Minister of Australia). Whitlam parted company with the others in 1990, and, from then until 1997, when Turnbull moved to become a managing director and later a partner of Goldman Sachs, the firm operated as Turnbull & Partners Ltd.

Turnbull was also chair of Australia Internet Service Provider, OzEmail (1994–99), a director of FTR Holdings Ltd (1995–2004), chair and managing director of Goldman Sachs Australia (1997–2001) and a partner with Goldman Sachs and Co (1998–2001). In the 1990s, Turnbull was chairman of Axiom Forest Resources, which conducted logging in the Solomon Islands under the trading name Silvania Forest Products. The latter’s work was described by the Australian International Development Aid Bureau as a “clear-felling operation”, and the then Solomon Islands Prime Minister Solomon Mamaloni reportedly threatened to close it down for “constant breaches of logging practices”, according to a critical article in the Solomon Times.

This is a man going to try to be leader of the Opposition that has as close a links with Labor as Kevin Rudd himself, and never discloses his involvement with Goldman Sachs.  An environmentalist, who when money is concerns has no qualms about clear felling forests. 

Before entering parliamentary politics he practised as a journalist, barrister, company legal counsel, and merchant banker, and was leader of the Australian Republican Movement.

Should Malcolm Turnbull take over the Liberal leadership, we must accept we are going to have another Malcolm Fraser on our hands, with the same disregard for the electorate as Julia Gillard.

Firstly he believes in Global Warming claiming it is an inescapable fact that greenhouse gases caused the earth to warm.  He went on to say:

“Politicians and shock jocks, scientists and coal barons, all of them can argue for as long as they like, but they cannot change the physical reality,” he said. “I won’t linger on climate change – the hopeless, confused, hyper-partisan nature of the debate is too well known to rehearse.”
So in this we have someone else that claims they know the truth and won’t discuss or debate the truth on Global Warming.  Where is a benefit of trading a in a dictator only to replace them with another dictator?

Mr Turnbull also revisited the republic debate, a cause he fought for and lost at the 1999 referendum, saying “the next big watershed will be the end of the Elizabethan era”.

He said republicans must not allow themselves to be split into two camps by the monarchists, as happened 13 years ago when monarchist strategists – including Mr Abbott and John Howard – “delightedly, if cynically, exploited the division by promising the direct electionists that if the parliamentary model was defeated at a referendum, they could have another referendum on a direct election model within a few years”.

Yet again we would have a leader that wants to not only discard the monarchy, but also of course to discard our Constitution and write one that suits all the Left Wing of politics. And again, he won’t care what we want he will be the Julia Gillard Malcolm Fraser love child of the Coalition.

Mr Turnbull’s main thrust to the media was political discourse.  He singled out question time as a principal villain of the decline as he saw it, and said it needed to be overhauled.

“If you love your country, have an interest in politics or policy, and care deeply about our nation’s future, there’s nothing more certain to arouse your fury and invite your contempt than listening to an entire House of Representatives question time,” he said.  In comments that will sit uneasily with his own side, Mr Turnbull said question time should not be dominated every day just by people smuggling and the carbon tax.  He said this was not a criticism of Mr Abbott or Julia Gillard but the limited scope of issues was a product of question time in which the Prime Minister is the focus every day.

A swipe at Abbott without the facts, Question time is irelevant now, between interjections and failure to answer the question and a Speaker who is so biased as to make a mockery of the position.  The big issues have been Carbon Tax and Asylum seekers, and the Government to date failed to actually answer questions on these matters, however, it seems Malcolm Turnbull would not repeal the Carbon Tax anyway, so would not argue the point.

Of  MOST concern in my opinion is the reasons behind Mr Turnbull’s actions:

• We know he has close links to the Labor government and former Labor members.  We know he has extremely close relationship with Goldman Sachs.
• We know he believes in Climate Change, and will not listen to debate in the same way the current PM treated us to get HER way.
• We know he will not repeal the Carbon Tax.
• We know he is a rabid Republican and would push heavily to this end, and to Change our Constitution to a Left sided Constitution.
• We know on 6 April 2010, he announced he would not seek re-election.  However, on 1 May 2010 he reversed his decision and since that date has been less than helpful to the Abbott Coalition.
• We know his thinking is very left of centre and we would simply have a new face PM with the old head should he succeed.
• Although I cannot say we know, I believe we would be getting a future PM with an eye on his wealth, rather than looking after Australians.
• We know he is not adverse to deceit as was evidenced when he traded Goldman Sachs under his own Company due to perceptions. Or when he felled a forest for the profit regardless of what the Solomon Islanders wanted

Mr Turnbull has a far more generous acceptance of Asylum Seekers also, therefore will not argue this point and will accept the increase in numbers into Australia it seems.

Mr Turnbull noted the decline in the number of journalists and the resources afforded them was contributing to a growing dishonesty in politics.

This is an interesting spin on the media debate, this time blaming the media for growing dishonesty in Politics.  It seems Mr Turnbull may in fact have a similar idea of controlling the media through a series of blaming them.

Mr Turnbull noted the decline in the number of journalists and the resources afforded them was contributing to a growing dishonesty in politics.

”I’m not suggesting politicians are innately less accurate or truthful than anyone else but rather that the system is not constraining – in fact it is all too often rewarding – spin, exaggeration, misstatements,” he said. Given the challenges facing the world, he said politicians had a responsibility ”to explain the big issues of our time”, not dumb them down into soundbites that treated people with ”contempt”.

”Call me idealistic if you like, but we have a greater need than ever for informed and honest debate and yet, with the decline of journalism, less means to deliver it and hold to account those who seek to frustrate it. Blatant misrepresentations, exaggerations or outright lies in politics should in theory be easily revealed. We don’t simply have a financial deficit, we have a deficit of trust.”

Turnbull stated that Prime Minister Rudd and Treasurer Wayne Swan had “used their offices and taxpayers’ resources to seek advantage for one of their mates and then lied about it to the Parliament” and that they needed to explain their actions or resign. On 22 June the e-mail Grech had provided to the Liberal Party to support this allegation was found to have been faked by Grech, something he later admitted, and an Australian National Audit Office inquiry cleared both Rudd and Swan of any wrongdoing on 4 August.Turnbull’s handing of the OzCar affair led to a large decline in his and the Liberal Party’s approval ratings in opinion polls.

On 24 November 2009 a party room meeting was held to discuss the Rudd government’s proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS). Turnbull instructed the party to support CPRS despite significant disagreement among his colleagues. It was even a suggested that some Liberal Senators should vote to ”guillotine” debate and force an immediate Senate vote on the CPRS bill. (If the Senate rejected the bill, this would give the government a double dissolution trigger.)

This morning, Assistant Treasurer David Bradbury and his Coalition counterpart, Mathias Cormann, appeared to prove Mr Turnbull’s argument.

When asked about the narrow scope of debate in Australian politics, both could not resist making well-worn political points.

This was a gauntlet thrown down to Tony Abbott, at a time when the government is waiting for a time to call the election and Mr Turnbull chooses now to attack his own party and leader, and offering himself as a Coalition Left Wing dictator to replace a man with more moral fibre, intelligence and energy than Turnbull and Gillard combined.