A leader is defined as: “A person that holds a dominant or superior position within their field, and is able to exercise a high degree of control or influence over others”.
People are starting to question whether Malcolm Turnbull meets the definition of a leader. It must be asked whether Malcolm Turnbull has a dominant position whereby he can exercise a high degree of control?
Since his inception as Leader he has had difficulty in securing the support of his colleagues. No amount of “smoke and mirrors” can hide the very deep division within his Party and while being so busily consumed by the cold war with Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull is so distracted that he has to keep shifting to the right to stay away from Abbott’s grasp.
No wonder his party as well as many Australians are becoming more confused and disappointed with Mr Turnbull’s leadership.
Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister was responsible for the 2016 census debacle, his NBN rollout is behind time and over budget as well as being substandard. Increasing costs to medical services, rising house prices, falling living standards, limited job numbers, negative economic growth and inequity in education funding are significant issues facing our country.
It has been over 12 months ago now since Malcolm Turnbull stood in one of the many courtyards at Parliament House and vowed to take the Prime Ministership on the basis of a lack of economic leadership. However, unfortunately he has not delivered any economic leadership in his time as Prime Minister thus far.
The tsunami of financial issues has already begun; the threat of Australia losing its AAA credit rating will have a far reaching impact on our economy; a $50 billion corporate tax cut, no structured budget strategy to reform negative gearing and capital gains tax, no strategies at all to address the revenue stream of our nation’s budget demonstrated by our national fiscal deficit for 2015-16 to 2018-19 being deteriorated by a further $14.9 billion.
Malcolm Turnbull has also failed Australians by protecting banks and financial institutions from scrutiny allowing them to continue their alleged bad behaviour in financial arenas.
Random financial “thought bubbles” of increasing the GST, interfering with our superannuation, and radical back packer tax initiatives are obvious failed economic initiatives in attempt to raise revenue. All these ventures represent policy on the run, with no understanding of economic policy, let alone economic leadership.
All this from a Prime Minister whom was an “Investment Banker” and should have the economic smarts to easily deal with changing economic times.
Australian’s are demanding economic leadership now. We can’t afford the living standards of any Australian to be compromised. The Australian economy is like a fast moving racing car and when the steering fails, disaster is imminent.
Malcolm Turnbull and his “thought bubbles” continue to impact many Australians with 70,000 mothers losing part of their paid parental leave causing uncertainty and anxiety for thousands of pregnant women.
Undoubtedly, Malcolm Turnbull’s political gymnastics are very well exercised, with backflip after backflip whilst at the same time pulling random “thought bubbles” from the sky, tossing them into the political arena and then watching them vaporise into nothing. All this together with constantly looking to the right to avoid the Abbott threat makes for a Prime Minister that can neither lead nor govern.
Malcolm Turnbull has been given the opportunity to lead our nation and has blundered his way so far. Australians certainly deserve better Government than this. When Mr Turnbull is not allowed to speak about what he clearly cares about the Australian people can see he is being held back by his own Party. Australian’s are asking, where is the champion of climate change or the republic? He is even too good to live in Kirribilli House.
Australians want a Prime Minister that is fair dinkum. Who doesn’t have to pretend to be someone they are not. Mr Turnbull will have many tests in the New Year, this is perhaps his biggest test yet.
*Senator Helen Polley is Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader (Tasmania), Shadow Minister for Ageing, and Senator for Tasmania
Lynne Newington
December 21, 2016 at 21:02
He may be better off starting a party of his own then maybe we would see the real Malcolm Turnbull…That dreadful rarebit Tony Abbott would be enough to drive anybody to drink.
Robin Charles Halton
December 22, 2016 at 07:26
Helen has to remember Labor leader Bill Shorten would be no better a leader as PM pulling the country too far to the left in the dream time of 40% renewables by 2040, most Australians are not convinced about climate change and worry more about their jobs to be able to lead a normal life!
When in fact energy supply the southern states in actually in crisis especially with the madness in SA the fault of Labor Premier Weatherill inability to grasp with reality.
I think Kevin Andrews as Labor Premier is taking a hard look at energy now that Hazlewood is shut down with significant job losses, where to now, retraining for what.
The decommissioning event will be a sad time for the La Trobe valley with social unheveal and government will be blamed!
The Alcoa smelter at Portland is ready to sign a new electricity deal with AGL, if it fails then the plant could shut down 3600 jobs will go, $800M loss of GNP, $192m loss of commonwealth revenue and $50m from Vic accounts
Further flow on effect is the shutdown of the Kwinanna WA which provides feedstock for the Portland smelter.
Adani is now under investigation, an Indian company who is planning to build a new port near Bowen Qld and rail coal from the Gallilee Basin has produced false documentation that it has the financial potential to develop this project at all.
If there is doubt about dodgy deal then it would be best for the Federal government to kill off the project until a better solution if there is one, is presented!
Getting back to PM Turnbull who is too nice a person to be PM with a divided party.
SA Senator Cory Bernardi after his US tour to the UN summit and meeting with Donald Trump is on the brink of a Libs split with the formation of the new Australian Conservative Party with help of close friend Gina Rinehart and from Trump’s US right hand man Rudy Guilani.
50,000 new members have been signed up so far and issues to be taken to task are immigration, jobs and cost of living.
George Christianson, Eric Abetz and perhaps Tony Abbott could join in he split!
Sure enough something will happen it wont be a pretty sight as “something” will spill over during the New Year
Thank you for the insight Helen.
Lynne Newington
December 22, 2016 at 09:55
I agree some are just too nice, I recall Ted Baillieu.
Leonard Colquhoun
December 22, 2016 at 14:13
“Australians want a Prime Minister who is Fair Dinkum” – pretty well removes any of her mob from the short list.
Chris
December 22, 2016 at 16:20
#2
Quack with blinkers!
Mike Adams
December 22, 2016 at 17:18
This Australian wants a Prime Minister of Australia who doesn’t squirrel away money in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying tax in his own country.
Steve Webber
December 22, 2016 at 17:39
What people really need is for someone to redefine the purpose of Government. Under neoliberalism over the past 40 years the role of Government seems to have become one of transferring the ownership of national funding and resources to a select group of vested interests – most if not all that no interest in the quality of lives of ordinary Australians.
In my view the role of Government is to defend the country and to raise sufficient revenue to provide the goods and services that people need, and without having to ration them. Those goods and services include education, health, welfare,and public infrastructure. There is absolutely no need for Government to have a role in providing largesse to private and for profit interests. If those businesses cannot survive without that largesse then they should be allowed to die.
So why do politicians do it? Because rather than being elected to serve it is now a coveted path to wealth and riches.
Simon Warriner
December 22, 2016 at 17:51
Aren’t conflicted interests and factional groups such a bugger. Especially in such a broad church.
“pot, pot, kettle, kettle”, or alternatively, “people in glass houses should not throw stones” come readily to mind.
What I suspect most Australians actually want is a government that governs to deliver the greatest good possible for all Australians and does not lie to us repeatedly, badly, and with such practised ease.
Fair dinkum leaves an awfully large amount of scope. Wasn’t Rudd a fair dinkum wanker, just like Abbott?
Anyone remember when we last had one of those?
Leveller
December 22, 2016 at 20:46
It’s about time renewal was taken seriously time for the greedy old guard to move on for new younger blood. All the current dinosaur’s just regurgitate the same old stuff. At least the Labor Party has new comer Josh Willie some fresh air for once. People like David Llewellyn who has been absent from the Electorate for several year’s in noticeable week in week out and where is Bryan Green’s leadership on this? If we were in NSW, ICAC would be prosecuting left right and centre. Come on Senator Polley the ALP need’s to get it’s own house in order.
TGC
December 22, 2016 at 22:12
#6 “This Australian wants a Prime Minister of Australia who doesn’t squirrel away money in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying tax in his own country.”
Does #6 know who is doing that?
In any event- such a ‘requirement’ -whether it’s anything to do with the Cayman Islands or some other ‘tax avoidance’ scheme-we’d be struggling to find a candidate from any political grouping.
Lynne Newington
December 22, 2016 at 22:12
Some may begin thinking we’re taking on Communism ideals and I quess on some issues we could do worse.
http://www.cpa.org.au/amr/58/amr-58-07-thoughts-on-public-housing-from-the1940s.html
phill Parsons
December 23, 2016 at 08:52
For those with blue blindfolds there are two outstanding items that should convince them that Turnbull cannot lead his Party in the direction many voters expected following Abbott.
Turnbull created a persons which included apparent beliefs.
Lately he has abandoned the idea of trading Carbon emissions although he once said it was the most sensible way to reduce them. This abandonment was against the view of the energy industry, the chief scientist and Liberal principle.
As if this was not enough, the former leader of the Australian Republican movement then abandoned all pretense of a republic by having a bob each way on the process, opining that Australians won’t support a change whilst the current Monarch reigns, but when we do make the move [after the death of Elizabeth] we should have a vote to decide what type of system we want.
This may seem like reasonableness itself but really it is just shoving the issue under the carpet after a media grab.
Polley is correct, Turnbull can only lead on things everybody agrees about as we have seen recently with the latest arrests in Melbourne of those accused of plotting to attack their own community.
Amd then he appears as the strong leader of the blue team making us all safe. Well even Bernadi would approve, as would Shorten, Di Natalie, Hanson, Xenophon and every other leader of a political party in any Australian Paliament.
That’s not leadership, it’s just common sense.
Turnbull may recover in the polls but he has to believably take control of his own Liberals, and his Coalition partners the Nationals, which will be a herculean task while the far right tea type party neo-liberal conservatives remain within it.
If they leave the tent he will not have a majority and will be in their thrall even more obviously.
It will be ongoing tension leaving the nation without anyone clearly at the helm, adrift on a policy free course seeking the port of jobsngrowth in a world where the turbulence of events will commence on the 21st of next month and run with the longest global storm since President Shrub.
Leonard Colquhoun
December 23, 2016 at 12:02
About Comment 11’s “taking on Communism ideals”: was the worry the actual ideals themselves, or the modus operandi of putting them into practice?
Mike Adams
December 23, 2016 at 19:47
No 10.
Some 2000 years ago it was deemed that Caesar’s wife was above suspicion.
Any ruler of a democratic country should attain the same status. The parliamentary events of 2015, despite the P.M.’s explanations, still left the general public, with some exceptions, wondering why the leader of our country needed to stash his money away in a notorious tax haven.
Greg James
December 25, 2016 at 14:49
If the ALP was ‘Fair Dinkum’ they would have said it was wrong for Paul Lennon to be a paid lobbyist for Federal Hotels. Lennon the ‘Godfather’ of the local ALP was also the ALP Deputy Premier who was in charge of overseeing the last extension of the Poker Machine license for Federal Hotels.
This hypocrisy of the ALP, extending poker machines into the poorest suburbs of Tasmania on behalf of their owner/operator Federal Hotels in 2003, has never been publicly criticised by any ALP Member of Parliament, State or Federal. They, like the hypocrite Polley are all guilty of lying to their voters about the values of the ALP.
Shame Labor, shame. Polley, Brown, Urquart, Singh and Bylik as well as every state member are all deceivers of the poor and the addicted, they have sold every poor suburb in Tasmania to Federal Hotels at every opportunity in exchange for small amounts of money.
The State Executive are controlled by Federal Hotels who make petty donations to political campaigns and buy the ALP’s ethics and morals and in the process corrupt the political establishment of Tasmania.
It is shameless and disgusting how they grovel to the owners of Federal Hotels, their silence is bought and they have no credibility. They say nothing, they do nothing and allow themselves to be corrupted.
Leveller
December 26, 2016 at 10:49
#15. So well said and exactly the truth. No wonder the Labor Party doesn’t advertise the State Secretary’s job they have given to a political staff from Senator Carol Browne’s office. The ALP (if they expect to win the next State and or Federal Election) need’s to start DRAINING THEIR OWN SWAMP first!.
Lynne Newington
December 26, 2016 at 12:59
Hi Leonard, the ideals…..Christ’s teaching were certainly a guideline and not conducive to the example of the wealthy church’s tradition at least, including those who claim poverty and as a by product, throwing in celibacy, chastity and the children they father and coerced to abandon.
Lynne Newington
December 26, 2016 at 16:27
Despotism or Communism Leon?
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/06/16/fall-vice-pope-bertone/
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2010/05/17/father-maciel/
john hayward
December 27, 2016 at 09:28
You gotus! #10, TGC, with your Mr Magoo polemical gambit. Or at least got those of us whose reading is confined to the Examiner.
Unfortunately, it is undisputed, even by Malcolm, that Malcolm is extremely rich, probably the richest in Parliament, with a fortune of over $150m, much of which is stashed in funds in the Cayman Islands. Excepting, of course, the $2m he donated to his own party in his campaign for the leadership.
I suggest you employ a favourite Tas logging tactic, which might be to demand that the accuser produce Mal’s original deposit receipts from the high-end investment fund. Then hit them with your “gotcha”.
John Hayward
Leonard Colquhoun
December 27, 2016 at 10:25
Comment 18’s “[d]espotism or Communism” exemplifies two of the main uses of the ‘-ism’ suffix – see uses 3 and 2 in https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-ism#Suffix . (And note where ‘capitalism’ is put.)
In the historical record, Communism (as distinct by degree and kind from socialism-lite) has operated via despotism; there is no record of people freely voting for the full monty of Stalinism or Maoism. However, China’s and now Vietnam’s despots have learned (largely through the Soviet Union’s decline and fall) that despotism need not be stupidly, brainlessly and unnaturally totalitarian.
Lynne Newington
December 27, 2016 at 11:03
18 cont….and what’s new.
Catholica.
Argentina probes sex abuse at deaf school, what Vatican knew (Main Forum)
by Roy , Arnold, Victoria, Wednesday, December 28, 2016, 05:38 (3 hours, 14 minutes ago)
edited by Roy, Wednesday, December 28, 2016, 06:04
The clerical sex abuse scandal unfolding at the Antonio Provolo Institute for hearing impaired children in Mendoza province would be shocking enough on its own. Except that dozens of students in the Provolo Institute’s school in Italy were similarly abused for decades, allegedly by the same priest who now stands accused of raping and molesting young deaf Argentines.
Pope Francis has not spoken publicly about the case and the Vatican declined to comment.
sounds like the same scenario as was found with Saint John of God order here in australia ….the original group who came to Aus were banished paedophiles in the first place.
Even though that article is date 2007 …..the same group now run our hospitals etc here in bendigo at this very moment ….they run CentaCare and the Towards Healing mediations also …..and no one seems to mind.
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2007/
Christopher Eastman-Nagle
December 27, 2016 at 15:52
It seems to me that Turnbull finds himself wedged between different wings of his party in ways that Shorten isn’t, because the wets of the ALP have already deserted to The Greens.
I would have thought that encouraging the dries of his own party to form their own one would be risky in the short term, but in the slightly longer one, might enable him to rip more Goldilocks voters off Labor and marginalize the dries to a rump of radicals who would be fighting for space with Hanson and Co.
I think Turnbull would beat Shorten easily if he were less encumbered by the likes of Bernardi and Abbott. And he would have the flexibility to play Bernardi et al against the Greens when it came to environmental policy and then use dry support to cover his drier side of Goldilocks agendas, and keep him in government.
Whether that would be enough to counter the enormous funding that Bernardi will be able to get from his corporate sponsors and the support of Newscorp, is a moot question.
Robin Charles Halton
January 8, 2017 at 10:52
PM Turnbull’s first task as leader is to sack the dishonorable Health Minister Susan Ley for abusing her travel claim allowances for what can be seen as focused for her private gain and not being primarily directed for Health administration.
In view of the Governments toughening the rules with Centrelink clients, some of which could be seen to be unfair if not misguided and review of the Pensions Assets test, at such a sensitive time the PM must take action and rid of Ley immediately.
Leonard Colquhoun
January 8, 2017 at 11:52
About (the apparent historical amnesia in) Comment 23, “In view of the Government’s toughening the rules with Centrelink clients”^, wasn’t it MHRs Plibersek as Minister for Human Services and Shorten as Assistant Treasurer who introduced the ‘robo-debt’ data-matching mechanisms?
Is the discussion heading towards condoning welfare corruption? Because if it is, doesn’t that undercut any moral basis for pursuing MPs’ corruption of their (far too generous, and, anyway, in this day and age, quite unnecessary) add-ons to their base salaries? (A PM with guts heading a Party with principles would introduce a Bill to enact a one base salary payment mins all add-ons structure.)
^ And about those Centrelink “clients”: google the term and study its origin and development in the Roman Republic, and you’ll how superbly suitable it is for what Labor, Labour and other socialist-lite parties have an innate tendency to do with public benefits.
Ain’t Google grand!!
Robin Charles Halton
January 9, 2017 at 04:34
#24 Good old Google ” Minister for good times on the Goldie for another one of dozens of articles now being produced by the Australian media for the benefit of the voting public who till now, would not have a clue who are newly found out Gold Coast celebrity star works her part time taxpayer funded job as Health Minister around her real love for life as a frequent party animal on the Gold Coast with her filthy rich mates.
She is seen with Gold Coast socialite Qld Employment millionaire Sarina Russo who was awarded $45M in Coalition government contracts.
Funny how amnesia works for Sussan!
Vendors claim Ley inspected the Gold Coast high rise apartment investment property 9 months before ” on a whim to buy”!
It is also revealed the former owner was Martin Corkeram, a Liberal donor!
Hmm, too many errors of judgement …
Leonard Colquhoun
January 9, 2017 at 12:57
“Hmm, too many errors of judgement …”, and not just by Coalition MPs (as I inferred, and which may not have been implied).
The assumption of entitlement by MPs in all our parliaments is a nation-wide disgrace, and those members with a tinge of conscience should be pressuring their gutless parliamentary leaders to put a decisive end to this cred-trashing behaviour.
For their own sakes, and to avoid sharing the reputational damage inflicted on their whole class, Coalition and Labor federal MPs should demand that their two (so-called) leaders develop spines, and put a joint Bill to parliament to enact something like ‘one annual salary, paid fortnightly, absolutely no add-ons of any kind or under any pretext’ (MPs have shown that they just CAN NOT BE TRUSTED with them.)
Ditto, mutatis mutandis, for their superannuation.
Oh, and zero post-career ‘entitlements’.
Come on, Mal Boy and Billy, amaze / astonish / astound us who comprise We the People: show some guts and principle.
Could TT set up an online petition to parliament?
Leonard Colquhoun
January 9, 2017 at 15:49
What works for me – http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/judith-sloan/sussan-ley-should-get-the-chop-for-one-reason-shes-a-dud/news-story/ac486a50df57d8a8dec916d7ba315898
And, as John Lennon (sort of) sang,”[She’s] not the only one”.
Leveller
January 9, 2017 at 18:08
The AFP should be already in there charging the Minister under the Crimes Act 1914 for “Misuse of Public Monies” and also the charge of “Abuse of Public Office”. Commit the Crime, do the Time.
Leonard Colquhoun
January 9, 2017 at 19:43
And to ‘Level’ things out, all the others.