Radio Australia Today Editorial

Malcolm Turnbull faces a reckoning

26 November 2009

Malcolm Turnbull is the Opposition leader here in Australia, and he’s rapidly finding out that being in Opposition is akin to being a gardener in the Sahara. There is really not that much for his members to do. There are parliamentary committees of course, and meeting constituents, but there’s no power involved. No governing, no voting power, and as former minister Tony Abbott once told me, no real interest in you by the media.

This makes for a vacuum, and nowhere for all that adrenaline to go.

It’s no wonder that former ministers get ropey mid-term.

Which is where we are right now, and Malcolm Turnbull is the man who has to deal with this pent-up fruistration from among his flock. The vote over Australia’s Emissions Trading Scheme brought a lot of emotion out last night, with some members calling for Turnbull’s head for having what they considered the audacity to claim that the Opposition supported the government bill.

The truth is that the Opposition does support the bill. he got, through hook and crook, majority support for it. It was bare support, but still support.

He will survive this fight, although some commentators say that the survival is sure to be short-lived.

I disagree. Malcolm Turnbull is one of the strngest politicians we have seen in a long time. He was forged on the twin anvils of the law courts and business. He has known tough opponents before and as often as not, won through. Every successful leader has had at least one Waterloo. yesterday’s bludgeoning fight to get the ETS through was his. he could’ve caved to the dissenters in his party, but he didn’t. He didn’t want to go down in history as the man who stopped Australia doing anything about global warming. he had gone to the government wanting changes, and got a lot of them. The government met him more than halfway, and he saw the result as something worth fighting for.

In saying that I think Malcolm Turnbull will survive, I’m not saying that he won’t lose his job as Opposition leader before the next election, but I do predict that he will regain it at some stage, probably when his party has an election victory in its grasp, which may be four or eight years away. If he stays in parliament, he will do well.

But he’s a wealthy man with a CV that’s full of achievements. If he wanted toi walk away, he wouldn’t end up sitting on a pavement somewhere with a tin cup. if he had wanted to leave politics, he had plenty of chances to do it already, when things were really down.

The fact that he’s stayed shows that there’s more to him.

- Phil Kafcaloudes