It’s been almost a month since Malcolm Turnbull ousted Tony Abbott as Prime Minister. This has gone down a treat with the the Labor Party and the Greens. But, not surprisingly, conservative Australians remain furious. Liberal members are leaving in droves and Saint Malcolm has been jeered by his own party members.
The article below is not mine. It is a guest post from a barrister and it reflects the disdain that many, many Australians have for the man who was desperate to run for the Labor Party…
Malcolm Turnbull approached up to six senior Labor figures seeking endorsement with the Labor Party.
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I personally witnessed the craven character of the Member for Mardi Gras Wentworth, who is now our political Assassin in Chief Prime Minister, during the RU-486 abortion drug debate. After a pro-abortion vote in the green Parliamentary chamber was carried on the voices, this baptised pagan MP rose to his feet and announced he was in favour of legalising the abortion drug.
Why did Turnbull make a special uninvited effort to grandstand like this as distinct from any other MP present, pro-life or pro-killing? It was to ensure that the Hansard transcript recorded his vote for baby murder, when otherwise Malcolm would have been covered by the anonymity of a voice vote. Those of us in the public gallery were as saddened as we were appalled: not many Christians effectively apostasize on the official record in front of a silent audience without any prompting whatsoever to undertake the dirty deed. He wanted all and sundry to know he supported foetal poisoning.
This episode dovetails with his latest calculated act of treachery political achievement: his RU-486 vote undermined Health Minister Abbott and now he has added a mortal blow to that political wounding by finishing-off Mr Abbott’s Prime Ministership. We know Republican Turnbull doesn’t have a portrait of the Queen in his office; I speculate that instead there hangs a gold framed rendering of Niccolò Machiavelli.
“If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared”, said Mr Turnbull’s renaissance mentor.
Malcolm Turnbull is allegedly a Catholic; although in this Barrister’s assessment we may need some more evidence of that before proving it at Trial. He was raised a Presbyterian and married to Lucy Hughes in the Church of England (where on reflection he might have found a happier theological home), but eventually Mr Turnbull ended up ‘converting’ to his wife’s religion: Roman Catholicism. Reports say he received instruction from Father Michael Kelly SJ just prior to announcing his run for the seat of Wentworth. This has a touch of the Tony Blairs about it (readers can draw their own inferences about a conversion on the eve of setting out on a political career). I think it was the type of ‘conversion’ one might make from being a British motor car driver and then switching to a well-worn Fiat; it doesn’t appear to have gone much deeper than that.
How can an armchair critic who has never spoken with him make such an assessment of the internal forum? Well, I take Malcolm at his word and his faith appears perfectly oxymoronic: he’s an absolute relativist.
Turnbull said in 2009:
“I don’t imagine that the Catholic tradition has all the answers, or more answers than any other Christian, or indeed any religious tradition. I think religion is very much a mystery. It’s very hard; it’s not something that’s readily rationalized. That’s why it is correctly called a mystery in the truer sense of the word, and it’s a question of faith and I’ve been comfortable, not completely comfortable, but reasonably comfortable in that Catholic tradition. Most Catholics feel uncomfortable from time to time with the decisions of the hierarchy. You know, there is… there are some teachings of the church that most Catholics, particularly in Australia, don’t agree with.”
Perhaps Malcolm should return to Presbyterianism which in his view is equally valid anyway; it might make him less ‘uncomfortable’ given there is no hierarchy to disagree with.
When Malcolm Turnbull disagrees with a hierarchy he just takes it over. Thank goodness for the celibate Priesthood, otherwise Archbishop Fisher would have to sleep with one eye open lest the Member for Wentworth decided an ecclesiastical career took his fancy. He has such a born-to-rule mentality it is surprising he is a Republican. It’s possible though that Malcolm is only a Republican because by some unfair accident of birth he can’t be King of Australia; if we do become a Republic, President Turnbull seems to be our country’s unfortunate future fate. On the bright side, if Malcolm converts again to the ‘just as valid and truthful’ Tibetan Buddhist tradition, in his view of it, he will probably call for a leadership spill against the Dalai Lama.
Intellectual hubris is indelibly marked on our new PM’s brain. Of course he knows better than Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI on gay marriage, cloning, abortion and contraception. However, he never shies away from making a sideshow of his ‘observant’ Catholicism when it has suited his own policy ends to endorse a particular papal pronouncement which he likes. At the moment, in the same vein as all the fashionable Catholics-in-name-only, Turnbull ‘hearts’ Francis.
I think it was during the St Vincent de Paul sleep-out for the homeless this year that Turnbull was reading and subsequently tweeting his favourite snippets from Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si (the one about air conditioners humming to heaven for vengeance). ‘On care for our common home’ really struck a chord with a man whose own home is a waterfront mansion in Point Piper; no doubt he and his servants care very deeply for all 1940 square metres and the attached private jetty too. Never mind that the current Pope has also condemned abortion and gay marriage (admittedly less often than I would have liked), there is zero chance of Malcolm retweeting papal orthodoxies. The Pope is a means to an end for this Prime Minister.
Next time there is a sleep-out perhaps a friendly hand might provide Turnbull a copy of Humanae Vitae for night-light reading. It would be a challenging task for a man who told the Australian Christian Lobby(!) that ‘it’s a woman’s choice’ when quizzed about abortion. Perhaps a follow-up question might have been whether he would answer the same way about infanticide or ISIS beheadings. ‘Their Jihad, their choice’ as the famous aphorism goes.
Our richest politician is now our most senior politician. Abbott was not the first victim of his white-anting. In 2003 Turnbull, Liberal party treasurer at the time, out-stacked real conservative and incumbent Peter King MP to take over the blue-ribbon Liberal seat of Wentworth. The wet-as-the-ocean small ‘l’ liberal Republican defeated the relatively conservative right-faction aligned Monarchist: who says history doesn’t repeat itself?
After getting elected Turnbull didn’t take long to put Church teaching, and little humans, to the sword (under a microscope). During the 2006 debate over cloning Turnbull, who prides himself on advocacy and communication skills, dropped this clanger:
“… our society has already reached a conclusion to the effect that an embryo at this very early stage is more in the nature of a potential than an actual human being and that the rights of this microscopic bundle of cells are not equal to those of a foetus, let alone a newborn baby.”
When Turnbull refers to ‘society’, I think he means ‘my Point Piper chardonnay set’. Typically of pro-aborts, he easily and arbitrarily declares that there are three categories of humans/sub-humans at the start of life: cells, foetus and then baby. It must be a lot easier for politicians like Turnbull to sleep at night with the consoling thought that, ‘OK I was a tad brutal today in dispatching my colleague, but at the end of the day Peter King, Brendan Nelson and Tony Abbott were only inconvenient collections of cells.’
Turnbull is viscerally pro-choice on incumbents; his ambitions, his choice.
The Wentworth electorate he represents has a high concentration of practicing sodomites: it is ground zero for the perverse Mardi Gras ‘parade’. Turnbull often has positive articles written about him in the Star Observer magazine (it’s Pravda for men who like Prada). He uses his soapbox in Canberra to tend to his rainbow fleeced sheep with statements like, “The case against gay marriage is a very weak one, in my view.”
In Malcolm’s relativist world adding the words ‘in my view’ is a debating check mate; how can you argue with someone stating that something is their view? I grant that it is Turnbull’s view that gay marriage is ‘A OK’. The only problem with his view is that it’s wrong.
Malcolm ‘Turncoat’ has done so many switcheroos that people shouldn’t be too concerned with his current views; they’ll probably change soon enough (they’re similar in temperament to the Melbourne weather).
In his maiden speech to Parliament he said, “I will work here to defend and promote marriage and families.” As the young ones are apt to say: LMAO.
Now Turnbull is against traditional marriage; he is about the most high profile supporter of the homosexual mirage. I don’t doubt for a second that he would be against gay marriage again if he felt it would add one more day to his Prime Ministership. He doesn’t have a binary world view, it is octagonal: so many different positions, so many inconsistencies.
At the present moment Turnbull will be riding high, feeling accomplished, vainglorious vindicated and as if the whole world has turned in his favour. What gives me consolation is that with each passing day our new PM is 24 hours closer to not being Prime Minister anymore. Parliamentary prestige is often sought by men who imagine it grants them something eternal; this explains the supercilious look many of them have on their faces right before the moment of their political demise (then the tears follow for some, like Kevin Rudd, who immediately grasped that his life’s highpoint was behind him).
The wealthy and powerful never see the end of their commission coming, even though it is as inevitable as death and tax avoidance.
There are very few fulfilling career choices left for ex-Prime Ministers whose entire lives were geared towards attaining the top job. Perhaps in a couple of years Rudd and Turnbull, both pathologically ambitious, will duke it out for UN Secretary General. One thing is for sure, Ban Ki-Moon will need a stab vest if he’s ever in the same ballot room as those two.
There is an instructive episode from Turnbull’s early 20s which appeared in a 1991 biographical newspaper article about him:
Even in the early days, he had the fire of ambition in his breast. In the mid-1970s, Turnbull, then 21, and radio broadcaster David Dale were seeing two women from the same house. This led to a fascinating exchange in the early hours. Both men, with towels around them, found themselves tiptoeing to the bathroom at the same time. Turnbull, whom Dale knew only as “Malcolm the Footballer” because of his solid frame, announced to Dale he wanted to be Prime Minister by the time he was 40.
“For which party?” asked Dale.
“It doesn’t matter,” responded Malcolm the Footballer.
How enlightening. The man has no real religion and no real ideology: ambition has always been his driving force. Later in the same article the journalist asked Turnbull what the definition of humility was (good move scribe), and after a long pause the response:
“Don’t think I’d have anything original to contribute on that. I mean, I think I’d have to look up a dictionary to see what it means. I guess humility is being suitably modest about yourself and your attainments… Humility is for saints.”
GOLD!! Old @Malcolm Turnbull zine cover ‘Humility is for Saints’ Via @declanf @BrigadierSlog #libspill #auspol pic.twitter.com/h5TXyx8lgI
— rafael epstein (@Raf_Epstein) February 8, 2015
Well then, it’s not for Malcolm Turnbull. While he’s looking for the definition of humilitas in a theology manual, right after he’s taken up my suggestion of reading Humanae Vitae, perhaps he could locate Benevolentia and its related sub-category ‘loyalty’. Now, granted, Abbott was not perfect and I admit to being uniformly critical of him for his own heterodoxies; he hardly inspired loyalty among conservatives let alone leftists like MBT.
However, despite all his ills, now I wish to pay Tony Abbott a genuine compliment, which I think you will all understand: at least he wasn’t Malcom Bligh Turnbull. Perhaps it would also be charitable to politely pay Turnbull a kind word: at least he isn’t Bill Shorten.
That’s what politics in Australia has become: vote for me (I’m not as bad as next guy in line)… If we continue down this rapid trajectory we will have a Greens Prime Minister within five years.
Back to Turnbull. He brings to mind that social dilemma amongst the upwardly mobile when birthdays swing around: ‘what do you buy for the man who has everything?’
Don’t buy him anything at all. Put together a stipend and, with genuine pious hope for the undoubtedly talented leader of our country, have the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass offered for his eternal salvation. Because, to adapt Our Blessed Lord’s famous warning as transcribed in the Book of Matthew: “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a Rhodes Scholar/Barrister/Merchant Banker/Goldman Sachs Partner/Multi-millionaire/Prime Minister to enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
October 15, 2015
Thanks for showing us the real Malcolm
October 12, 2015
One of the readings at Mass last night was ‘it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.’