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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx

Malcolm Turnbull: Truth to Power « Previous | |Next »
November 30, 2009

The following is taken from a transcript of a Laurie Oaks interview with Malcolm Turnbull, the leader of the Coalition Opposition in Australia, on the Nine network Sunday 29th November.

Turnbull was as frank as any leading Australian politician in living memory and it is an important interview in terms of speaking truth to power. He is describing the effects of power as it circulated among political statements and events. Turnbull understands scientific battles and competition amongst intellectuals for defining knowledge and truth as conflicts of power, not simply as intellectual debate.

Oaks begins by asking Turnbull how 'How are the knife wounds?' Turnbull quickly moves into criticizing Senator Minchin's position on climate change as a left-wing conspiracy about climate change, which Turnbull doesn't agree with.

MT: Look the Minchin-ites do not want to delay consideration of the legislation, they do not believe that climate change is real, they do not believe that humans are causing it and they do not want to do anything about it. Nick Minchin made that very clear in the Four Corners programme as did a number of his acolytes. What he is trying, what he is is a climate change denier. He stands for doing nothing on climate change. He said a majority of our party room do not believe that humans have any impact on climate change. Now that is a view contrary to the opinion of the vast majority of Australians, contrary to the opinion of every government in the world, and every major political party in the world. Now, if Nick Minchin wins, if he wins this battle, he condemns our party to irrelevance, because what he is saying on one of the greatest issues and challenges of our time, one that will affect the future of the planet and the future of our children and their children, Nick Minchin is staying "do nothing". He wants us to be the "do nothing on climate change" party and he has been, he's on the record about that, and when he talks about a delay or a deferral, what that means is denial.

LO: But if you …

MT: That is political death for us.

LO: If you agree to delay, you could probably save your leadership and live to fight another day. You must know in your heart that you are going to get done on Tuesday?

MT: Laurie, I will win on Tuesday and I am not interested in becoming a mouth piece or a Patsy or a tool for people whose views are completely wrong and are contrary to the best interests of our nation, our planet and indeed the Liberal Party. Just remember this, John Howard was a noted sceptic about climate change, he had doubts about the science. But John was enough of a leader to recognise that we had to act. And the emissions trading scheme that is currently in the Parliament this coming week and which must be passed this week is one which is very similar to the scheme that John Howard took to the last election, John Howard himself has said that. Nick Minchin and Tony Abbott and Kevin Andrews for that matter, were in that Cabinet. They didn't object, they went along with it and now they say "We didn't ever believe in it". What does that say about their integrity.

LO: But this is destroying the Liberal Party.

MT: Well they are destroying the Liberal Party, there is a recklessness and a wilfulness in these men which is going to destroy the Liberal Party. Remember this: we took an ETS to the last election. John Howard did. We then had a party room meeting back in October in which we overwhelmingly agreed to take a set of amendments, Rudd's ETS to the government. And the basis of that negotiation was if you agree with what we're asking, or enough of it, to satisfy us, then we will vote it through. Then we will give you what we want, we will pass the bill with our amendments. We achieved massive concessions, everyone was amazed how much the government gave us. We went back to the party room, and as you have note in your column the party room, by a majority, not a huge majority to be fair, but by a majority, agreed with the recommendation of the Shadow Cabinet. So we shook hands with the government, an agreement was done and we agreed to support those amendments.

Oaks says that then the Liberal Party fell apart. Turnbull responds by saying that the only way the Liberal Party can get over this is to get this issue passed. If this issue is not resolved, the climate change war that Nick Minchin and his wreckers have started will continue to destroy the Liberal Party until such time as we are destroyed by Kevin Rudd in an election.

What Turnbull is describing is a "regime of truth" which refers to the mechanisms for deciding what is true, the status of those who utter true statements, and so on.He is saying that this is dependent on power and he understands power as being dispersed through the network of relationships which make up society and based in discourse. This is not to deny that power struggle might be unequal but to suggest that it is not exercised in a single, downward vector. Foucault says:

Truth isn't outside power … Truth is a thing of this world; it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint…And it induces regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its 'general politics' of truth; that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true

If this is so, it implies that knowledge and power create what Foucault calls "rules of formation", or an epistemological form which he calls a dispositif or apparatus. The effect of constructing reality in this way is to apply artificial limits to discourse.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:24 PM |