Australia gets new Prime Minister

[JimC]

On both those issues, I think he will move in a more progressive manner than Abbott, although cabinet realpolitik may slow the changes down for a while.

[mistermack]

On both those issues, I think he will move in a more progressive manner than Abbott, although cabinet realpolitik may slow the changes down for a while.

Climate change? It's already hot enough to boil a monkey's bum.
Anyway, he'll have to get rid of rules 1,3,5 and 7 first.

[Hermit]

On both those issues, I think he will move in a more progressive manner than Abbott, although cabinet realpolitik may slow the changes down for a while.

Um, yeah, right...

Today Turnbull announced that any decision on same sex marriage will not be on the table before the next election. That's about a year away, and he was not talking on behalf a cabinet decision. For one thing he has not appointed a cabinet yet.

...same as the old boss...

[mistermack]

Today Turnbull announced that any decision on same sex marriage will not be on the table before the next election. That's about a year away, and he was not talking on behalf a cabinet decision. For one thing he has not appointed a cabinet yet.

...same as the old boss...

Hardly surprising, as he's dealing with the same old Australian electorate.

[Hermit]

Today Turnbull announced that any decision on same sex marriage will not be on the table before the next election. That's about a year away, and he was not talking on behalf a cabinet decision. For one thing he has not appointed a cabinet yet.

...same as the old boss...

Hardly surprising, as he's dealing with the same old Australian electorate.

71% of which is in favour of enabling same sex marriage.

[mistermack]

Today Turnbull announced that any decision on same sex marriage will not be on the table before the next election. That's about a year away, and he was not talking on behalf a cabinet decision. For one thing he has not appointed a cabinet yet.

...same as the old boss...

Hardly surprising, as he's dealing with the same old Australian electorate.

71% of which is in favour of enabling same sex marriage.

Sounds like he's missing a trick then. But maybe he had to make some deals and promises, to get the votes he needed to unseat Abbot.

[Hermit]

But maybe he had to make some deals and promises, to get the votes he needed to unseat Abbot.

Possible but not likely. Turnbull won 54 to 44. That is not exactly a close run race. He did not need to compromise. The government MPs knew bloody well by last Monday that they could not possibly win the next general election with Abbott at the helm. If they wanted to be re-elected they just had to change horses.

[mistermack]

But maybe he had to make some deals and promises, to get the votes he needed to unseat Abbot.

Possible but not likely. Turnbull won 54 to 44. That is not exactly a close run race. He did not need to compromise. The government MPs knew bloody well by last Monday that they could not possibly win the next general election with Abbott at the helm. If they wanted to be re-elected they just had to change horses.

Five members could have swung it the other way then. 44 MPs wanted to keep Abbot, so there might have been quite a lot of waverers.
But they presumably all read the same polls that you do, so you would think that they would have been prepared to go with a popular policy.

Maybe they think that it's popular, but mainly with people who would never vote for them anyway.
Dunno, seems odd to persist with opposing it.
Maybe it's a matter of timing. They might want to keep it till closer to the next election.

[JimC]

I'm fairly certain that Turnbull would vote for same sex marriage, or at the very least be happy to allow a conscience vote for Liberal politicians, unlike Abbott. Whether he will feel able to allow the parliamentary vote to proceed between now and the election (which of course it should) will depend on how confident he is in his dealings with fellow ministers, I suspect.

As for renewable energy, at least he will not be as ridiculously against wind turbines because "they look ugly" as Abbott and Hockey insisted...

Having said that, I know that Hermit means that it will still be a government that will be pro-business, anti-union and all the other trappings of their political heritage, and that, to an extent, Turbull's changes will simply be the masking of the most rabid elements.

[Tero]

burn baby burn!

What did the Turnbull of 2010 make of a plan to move away from fossil fuels that was twice as ambitious as Labor’s, that actually explained how it could be done and that proposed doing it faster?

Turnbull said that to “effectively combat climate change” the nation “must move… to a situation where all or almost all of our energy comes from zero or very near zero emissions sources”.

But now it seems, Turnbull wants to ridicule an idea that he enthusiastically supported five years earlier.

Turnbull once described the government’s Direct Action climate change policy as “fiscal recklessness on a grand scale” but now thinks the policy is a “resounding success”.

During his Question Time response, Turnbull also listed “clean coal” and “carbon capture” as viable responses to the problem.

[mistermack]

Seem like he favoured meeting non-existent problems with imaginary solutions.

That's good politics.

[JimC]

I'm more and more thinking Hermit's assessment is correct...

[mistermack]

I'm more and more thinking Hermit's assessment is correct...

I put that down to the gin.

Hopefully, it's just the short-term effect, not the long-term one.