An Open Letter to Malcolm Turnbull
Dear Malcolm Turnbull,
I hate to distract you from the clusterfuck that is your political
party at the moment. But I can’t help but notice you’re all very busy
doing whatever it is you do during a painfully drawn out Libspill; you
know – making phone calls, counting numbers, receiving phone calls,
tallying numbers to be counted, and not really concentrating on your
jobs that you get paid to do, by us the tax payers. It’s all actually
fairly boring apart from being absolutely impossible to look away from.
But while you seem to be personally readying yourself for the job you’ve
been readying yourself for your entire life, I wanted to just let you
know how I feel about your leadership ambitions and the type of Prime
Minister you are going to be. I don’t think you’re going to enjoy this.
First I’d like to say that I do appreciate that you’ve previously
been very vocal about your support of action to reduce the catastrophic
effects of climate change and of course we know you lost the leadership
of the Liberal Party previously for your determination to be bi-partisan
and to support Rudd’s ETS. You should be applauded for this noble
gesture. However, what you will not be applauded for my be, and all
Australians who worry about our ever uncertain future in a
post-climate-change world, is that you are willing to give up on this
determination, this value, this hallmark of your political career, in
order to get yourself a new job. It’s one thing to be a spineless,
cowardly, lying little worm like Tony Abbott and to stake your political
career on denial of climate change and the wrecking of a perfectly good
Carbon Price. But honestly, I think your betrayal would be worse
Malcolm. Because you have shown that you understand the science, you
accept the science, and you’re alarmed about what the science is telling
us. Yet for your own political purposes, for your own personal
ambitions, for your own sense of individual achievement, glory, power
and no doubt pay rise, you are willing to do deals with climate change
deniers on the acceptance that you won’t, when in the most powerful job
in this warming land, do anything about climate change. And that makes
you the lowest of the low. That makes you worse than a denier. That
makes you a grub. Please don’t think Australia isn’t going to notice.
Another policy I am similarly concerned about you getting anywhere
near in your planned future as PM is the National Broadband Network. We
already know that you’ve been beavering away doing your best to destroy
this future-proofing world’s- best national infrastructure project for
the benefit of your Telstra mates in your job as Minister for
Communications. Or is that the Minister for
not-as-fast-as-they-should-have-been Communications? You’ve proved over
this NBN wrecking that you’re not fit to be in charge of Australia’s
future technological innovation, and therefore you’re not fit to be
making decisions about Australia’s future, full stop. And no, I’m not
going to give you any benefit of the doubt about what motivated you to
destroy the NBN and to instead create a joke of a copper fraudband. If
you were thinking you might be able to blame Tony Abbott for everything
that happened before you took his job, you’ll need to think again.
Because if that’s the case and you did just do whatever you were told
without protest, without care for the damage you were doing, then you’re
even more unqualified to be our Prime Minister.
As a man who knows how to make money, and who lives in Australia’s
most expensive suburb in a house that makes the Lodge look like a
cottage, you must know that talk is cheap. Yet, despite your popularity
due to presumably the leather jacket you wear on Q&A and your
some-might-call-charming-but-I-would-call-smarmy demeanour, all I see
from you is talk about your values and absolutely no action to back
these values up. For instance, have you ever, once, whilst working as a
member of the Abbott government, crossed the floor to protest Abbott’s
policies? No? Have you spoken out publically about Abbott and Hockey’s
outrageously unfair budget and actually fought them to change anything?
Or have you just been laying low, like a snake in the grass, waiting for
your moment to strike, your moment to take what you believe to have
always been yours at the expense of the Australian public who never
chose you as their PM?
The fact is that I don’t trust you Malcolm. I don’t trust you as far
as I can throw you. You’re a wolf in sheep’s clothing who talks about
supporting gay marriage, but given the chance would forget he ever said
that and instead campaign to reincarnate Howard’s WorkChoices as soon as
I can say ‘free-marketer’ or ‘neoliberal stooge’. You want what’s best
for your rich mates. Though you might make this look a bit prettier than
Abbott, we have learnt throughout this painful period of Abbott’s prime
ministership that the most important thing is not how something looks,
but how they behave. What policies they try to push through. You would
deregulate universities, you would slash and burn to create a small
ineffectual government, you would destroy Medicare, you would cut
education funding, you would fight on behalf of miners as they deny
Australians their fair share, you would get rid of penalty rates, you
would decrease the minimum wage, you would deny rights to asylum
seekers, you would destroy the NBN and you would deny Australia a
climate change policy. How do I know you would do all these things?
Because you’ve been doing it as a member of Abbott’s government and
there is absolutely no reason on earth why someone like you, who shares
Abbott’s values, would do anything differently. A turd with a cat-like
grin polished across it is still a turd.
Yours sincerely
Victoria Rollison
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