April 7, 2010
What can be said about Malcolm Turnbull's decision to leave politics after the Canberra Press Gallery and political commentators have had their say?
The hard grind of opposition would have few rewards for a social liberal in a party that has increasingly become a conservative party hollowing out its liberal values (including individualism); a party that is turning away from its professional highly educated base in the inner urban seats to the suburbs and regions. A party that consciously repudiated its liberalism (using the market to put a price on greenhouse emissions) with its rejection of an emissions trading scheme to actually reach targeted reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Turnbull crossed the floor on February 11 to vote with the Labor government on its proposed emissions trading scheme. He states:
I remain convinced it is in Australia's interest to start cutting our emissions now and to do so by means of a market-based mechanism where the government sets the rules and businesses make their own decisions as to how they will cut their emissions.
In crossing the floor Turnbull closed off his chances of leading the party again. Why bother to stick around as a Federal backbencher until Abbott becomes political roadkill?
The Liberal Party under the highly statist Tony Abbott appears to be increasingly turning back to the Howard decade to define its horizons, politics and social conservative understanding of what pursuing prudent and judicious stewardship actually means in a global world. It seems that the old ways are the good ways; that there is no need for radical change; and no need for a modernising Australia project that Turnbull stood for, and represented, on water in the Murray-Darling Basin and climate change.
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politics has become a 'trench warfare of managerialism'