Grist to Turnbull's mill
Malcolm Turnbull has a super-sized ambition, which Australia has always found difficult to contain. In the mid-1980s, as a thirty-something lawyer, he started to carve out an international reputation when he took aim at the British establishment in the famed Mr Turnbull represented Peter Wright, the former MI5 agent whose candid biography the British government sought to suppress. The trial in Sydney is perhaps remembered for the phrase 鈥渆conomical with the truth鈥, uttered by the then UK Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong, under withering cross-examination from Turnbull and to audible guffaws from the press gallery.
After humiliating the British Establishment, he then sought to remove its footprint from Australia. He did so by leading the republican movement in the mid-1990s. Some interpreted Mr Turnbull鈥檚 involvement as a nifty piece of job creation - inventing an Australian presidency so that he could one-day occupy the post. (Had he not been hampered by the geographic inconvenience of being born in the completely wrong country, many think he would ideally have liked to become the president of the United States). With neither job available to him, the man presently charged with protecting Australia鈥檚 environment has set his sights on becoming prime minister.
Since entering parliament in 2004, the 53-year-old has risen quickly and easily through the ranks. In September last year, he became Australia鈥檚 鈥渨ater tsar鈥, reporting directly to John Howard on how to deal with the so-called Big Dry. This January, as well. Arguably the government鈥檚 most polished media performer, Mr Howard presumably hoped Mr Turnbull would become the acceptable face of what many regard as an unacceptable environment policy - that he could sell the government鈥檚 repeated refusal to ratify Kyoto to an increasingly sceptical public.
Now, it seems, Turnbull has admitted defeat on that front. In cabinet seven weeks ago, the environment minister reportedly argued that the Howard government had nothing to lose by belatedly . He was rebuffed, however, by cabinet colleagues, who thought a pre-election flip-flop would look panic-stricken and unprincipled. Now this 鈥渋nside-the-cabinet-room鈥 revelation has been leaked to the papers, possibly in a move to help save his parliamentary career.
Fittingly enough, Mr Turnbull represents the most glittering jewel in the Liberal crown - the Sydney seat of Wentworth, which includes Bondi Beach, fashionable Point Piper, and the millionaire belt of Bellevue Hill. Since Australia became Australia, it has never gone anything other than Liberal or its centre-right predecessors. Now, though, boundary changes have made the seat a marginal, and green issues are looming large.
Worse still for Mr Turnbull, the influential businessman Geoffrey Cousins is . The reason that is particularly noteworthy is because Mr Cousins is a former close confidant of John Howard.
The Cousins campaign is payback for the government鈥檚 decision to give the green light to what protesters argue is a decidedly un-green project - a massive new pulp mill in the beautiful Tamar Valley in northern Tasmania.
鈥淚 am hoping we can cost him his seat,鈥 Mr Cousins told me, with a edge of menace in his gravely voice. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 want to see Malcolm Turnbull as the minister for the environment, or the shadow minister of the environment. He鈥檚 a man of ability, and there are not a vast number of those in the Australia parliament. But if you don鈥檛 use that ability to good purpose then go and do something else.鈥
Now Mr Turnbull has another enemy combatant to contend with - an unlikely one, too. Peter Cundall, the genial presenter of the ABC television鈥檚 popular 鈥淕ardening Australia鈥- the green-fingered Lancastrian horticulturalist claims the environment minister approached him at a Sydney flower show in August and said that the Tamar Valley in Northern Tasmania was a .
Mr Cundall went on: "I also think that when he said, 'oh Peter, Peter I just want you to know I hate this so-and-so mill, I hate it,' he was also I think extremely concerned about the effect it was having on his own campaign in Wentworth."
Malcolm Turnbull claims he has been misrepresented and never expressed an 鈥渆motional response鈥 to the pulp mill. Ultimately, the voters of Wentworth will decide who is being economical with the truth.
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The Liberal Coalition have had an abysmal environment record in government; Kyoto, the Tamar Valley, then Malcolm Turnbull brought quid pro quo in return for hard selling a government no-policy zone. Many Australians are now looking forward to Peter Garrett taking up the Environment portfolio putting Australia back at the forefront. Turnbull鈥檚 unburdening onto poor old Peter Cundall shows not quite the ability Cousin鈥檚 might be alluding to.
I don't think there is anything to be gained by wishing for Garrett to take up the post - he's backflipped on just about everything he ever stood for.
The problem I have with Turnbull, and I say this as a true-believer in Conservatism, is that he seems to think political office is something you can buy. He's bought his way into Parliament, and he thinks he can buy his way into the PMs chair.
The Liberals face a real problem when Howard goes, none of the "anointed" successors can defeat the loathsome Rudd...the next 10 years are not going to be good for the right....
Garett needs to get his act together and quit his me-tooing. The Liberal environment track-record is truly abysmal but I don't want Garett, who I honestly though had his eggs in the right basket, to now become the 'moderate man' in the Labour party when it comes to his environment portfolio. Maybe the election will see some of the Greens receive a few more seats in the Senate...
The Coalition actually negotiated a very favourable deal early on in the Kyoto process and were publicly delighted about it. Under pressure from the Bush administration they then reneged, refused to sign and parroted the US line. This decision cost Australia plenty of international credibility and dealt many Australian companies out of the carbon trading economy.
Turnbull is an intelligent man who has worked in business (unlike most of the Coalition front bench) and without doubt he would have seen the stupidity of the Government's stance on Kyoto. It's not surprising that the (belated) ratification was discussed by Cabinet. What IS surprising is that unlike the issue of Aboriginal reconciliation, where Howard back flipped and suddenly acknowledged the importance of symbolic gestures, he somehow stopped short of doing the same reversal with Kyoto.
Not that it would have mattered .. most Australians have probably already made up their minds which party to vote for (hence the stability of the percentages in the never-ending opinion polls).
Peter Garrett is such a meek figure, I can't help but be worried about his abilities to handle the portfolio. What was the underlying idea behind putting him in it in the first place? Match the celebrity rock star with (perhaps) the election deciding portfolio? Geez, thanks a lot Labor. Shows how serious you are about the environment and not just willing the election. We don't need iconic faces to solve Australia's green problems, just people that are going to do a job we can count on.
Come off it. A barrister who has more than earned his green (and Labor) credentials. We're not talking about Pamela Anderson here. One more point. His own business success (and so what if that's show business) is more than enough to turn Turnbull green (with envy)
There have been a number of media reports which suggest that Malcolm Turnbull is "greener" than his party's Environmental Policies permit him to admit to. I consider this is a positive, rather than a negative. A fiscally responsible, but conservation and environmentally aware conservative politician suggests one who will avoid the extremes, but consider all issues from a balanced standpoint in the interests of our nations' environmental posterity.
Peter Garrett, not to put it too finely, is an unintelligent walking disaster, without an original thought in his head.
Signing Kyoto is so meaningless in terms of worthwhile goal achievement, that the truth is that it would not matter if Australia did sign it - which is exactly Malcolm Turnbull's attitude. Kyoto is meaningless because it offers nothing towards a practical resolution of the globe's carbon problem. Hence the Australian PM saw no sense in risking Australian corporate dollars in a plan of no sense and zero achievement - needless economic loss. I agree entirely that unless the major emission-prolific economies in the world, (USA, Russia, China & India), also agree to adopt carbon credit schemes, then no genuine or real impact can be made against the damage incurred by global emissions. Howard's refusal to sign Kyoto and his insistence instead, for a better, more worthy and more practical scheme is not a denial of the global warming problem or a resistance to emission controls, as his opponents like to pretend it is, just to gain political mileage.