Mungo MacCallum (Dec'd)

Recent articles by Mungo MacCallum (Dec'd)

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Rejoicing in the good old days.

I may be getting nostalgic n my old age hell, I am getting nostalgic in my old age. But it was hard not to rejoice in the good old days as Bob Hawke and Gareth Evans arrived at the National Club Press last week to spruik Evans memoir.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Malcolm is sure of one thing: it's all Labor's fault.

Well it was not exactly water tight or perhaps gas tight.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Politics is an integral part of sport

Keep politics out of sport.No doubt this piece of graffiti appeared some two thousand years ago on the walls of Olympia, when the Roman emperors were accused of fixing the chariot race. Certainly it has appeared on and off ever since as conservatives pretend that sport is some sacred activity that can be divorced from the messy business of being part of the society in which it takes place.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Easier for Turnbull to deal with Blackout Bill than Abominable Abbott

ABC news flashed the headline last Thursday: Abbott headbutted by SSM supporter.For a delirious moment I thought that Malcolm Turnbull had finally run out of patience with his sniping, undermining, wrecking tormentor and replied to his latest provocation with a full blown Liverpool kiss.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. At last our national daily has finally come clean.

The Australian has now abandoned any pretence that the current plebiscite has anything to do with same sex marriage and instead embarked on a holy war to maintain, and if possible enhance, religious (by which it really means Roman Catholic) privilege.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. With Turnbull, hope is all we've got.

Malcolm Turnbull is doing something about the energy crisis he has manufactured.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Murphy was a political giant, a man of voracious appetites on many levels.

Murphy may have been flawed, but he was a flawed colossus, a Labor hero. Whatever his peccadillos, history has already redeemed him.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. An energy emergency after ten years!

Malcolm Turnbull assures us that he is concentrating on energy and its three pillars cost, security and environment. Well, at least the first two; it must be said that the environment has not had much of a look in during the last frenzied week.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. 'Come on chaps,I am right behind you'

It was not the end; it was not even the beginning of the end. But it was, finally, the end of the beginning. The High Court has at last fanned the long smouldering same sex marriage into flame, and now it has become a question of not if, but how, the inferno will play out and how many victims it will consume in the forthcoming holocaust.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Turnbull has had a quiet week: is that because no one is listening to him anymore?

Turnbull has had a relatively quiet week in the parliamentary break. But whether he continues to appease the right in the Coalition, or reverts to the old Malcolm, he has a more basic problem people have stopped listening to him.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Business people and trade unionists.

Not only has the debt and deficit emergency ballooned and productivity stalled, but the mantra of Jobs and Growth, which Turnbull still insists is not a slogan but an outcome, has signally failed to deliver.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Captain Cook.

For months we have had to endure war on all fronts the class war, the gender war, the religion war, the equality war, the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war against political correctness, the war on the ABC and of course the perennially convenient war on terror.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Our Prime Minister needs to become more prime ministerial.

From bollocks one week to bollards the next. Malcolm Turnbulls response to everything that went wrong with the last session of parliament was to ramp up the terrorist threat to install aesthetically pleasing road blocks to deter truck driving terrorist and then disappear into the outback.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. The good news.

The good news for Malcolm Turnbull is that his government is not in immediate danger of falling at least, not any more than usual.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Strong leaders carry out their promises - Malcolm Turnbull.

It is impossible to imagine Gough Whitlam, Paul Keating or even John Gorton being so cowed by the vengeful has-beens and disgruntled bigots who are now calling the shots in what is laughingly described as the government.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull and Eric Abetz in furious agreement on same sex marriage.

The recalcitrants will call it a backdown and it will certainly be a change: but, as John Maynard Keynes memorably said: When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? But then, for much of his life Keynes was gay. Abetz can and will ignore that kind of dangerous advice.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. A $30 million gift to the great rent seeker, News Corp.

Inevitably a scandal over $30 million of taxpayers money to Foxtel tended to get lost in the rush. But it remains a scandal nonetheless, especially when the government admits no, boasts that there is no record of the transaction; apparently the cash was simply handed over in a brown paper bag with a wink and a nudge.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Time to take Bill Shorten seriously.

It is time, perhaps past time, to take Bill Shorten seriously.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Another fine mess the constitution has got us into.

We bar dual citizenship from the parliament, but the head of it the Queen of England one who presides over ceremonial openings when she happens to be in the country, is not only a dual but a multiple citizen herself.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Greek Wisdom.

The Greeks said it succinctly: the system of tyranny is only as good as the worst man who can become a tyrant. Step forward, Peter Craig Dutton, Master of the Universe.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. A peace deal between Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott!

The new Liberal Party Federal President Nick Greiner is aiming for the Nobel Peace Prize, and hes doing it the hard way.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Malcolm gazes at broad church

Just about the last thing Malcolm Turnbull did before leaving Australia last week was to inveigh against his colleagues navel gazing.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Caught in the endless travails of his ungovernable party room, Frydenberg has procrastinated yet again.

The most remarkable thing our Prime Minister said last week was not his claim that the party founded by Sir Robert Menzies was not Conservative but Liberal even liberal, a touch progressive. This has furrowed brows and raised gorges, and not only from the right wing rump and their media claque. But it was at least a matter of debate, and so was duly debated.

MUNGO MACCALLUM. No holiday for Tony Abbott

Malcolm Turnbull was off in Hamburg, schmoozing his fellow leaders in the hope of getting something anything done about North Korea, terrorism, trade, Donald Trump something anything.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. 'The gentleman you describe.'

We can at least talk about it without pretending it isn't really there.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Tony Abbott shoots first and asks questions later.

In all, [Tony Abbott's] program is for a regime which can best charitably be described as a socialist theocracy, somewhat along the lines of Abbotts mentor, Bartholomew Augustine Santamaria although the Abbott version would be considerably more totalitarian.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. The Greens remain political amateurs.

Lee Rhiannon is undoubtedly the disrupter, but in a sense the public fracturing of the Greens is largely the fault of her leader, Richard di Natale.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. With his Gonski II win, Malcolm Turnbull has something to smile about at last.

Turnbull can chalk up a rare and vitally important win before the winter recess closes in. It came just in time for the longest night of the year; our Prime Minister, if not all his colleagues, will hope that this is a sign that increasing hours of daylight, if not actual sunshine, will follow.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. We are in dreadful peril.

You might not have known it, but Australia is in deadly peril.National security is endangered on all fronts, the most obvious indicator the imminent arrival of fleets of boats poised to descend on our sacred shores, ready to wreak havoc and despair among the populace. Terrorism is just the start of it; who can tell what horrors to which the lucky country will be subjugated.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Tony Abbott is winning and Peter Dutton is paying hush-money.

Chief Scientists Alan Finkels report on energy is not yet dead, buried and cremated, but Abbott and his gang of avid colliers have already left it struggling on life support.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. The Australian again supports Trump against Turnbull.

Lets face it, it was hardly surprising to find Malcolm Turnbull taking the piss out of Donald Trump. For starters, just about everyone does it indeed, for much of the time The Donald seems to be doing it himself.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. The Finkel Report and Malcolm Turnbull - compromising at the expense of the planet.

It has little if anything to do with the real issues around climate change: it is all about satisfying Tony Abbott, Barnaby Joyce, George Christensen and Eric Abetz.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Theresa May and Malcolm Turnbull - same problems and same prospects.

The conservatives of the Anglosphere still dont get it: their elitist prescriptions for both the economy and the society that houses it are simply no longer acceptable. The mob are ready to reject what has been dubbed the political class and are scrabbling for solutions that can embrace more prosperity, and, even more crucially, more equality. There is no sign either May or Turnbull have either the skill or the desire to provide them.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Shrill parliamentary voices.

Our Prime Minister is obviously not as graceful and elegant as Marceau, nor, unfortunately, as silent: he has spent the last week of parliament repeating the same diatribe in ever-increasing volume in the hope that those few voters who watch question time on television will hear him even when they have reached for the mute button.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Will the forgotten people be heard at last?

The crusaders of the far right have already delivered their sentence: the Uluru statement is to be dead, buried and cremated before it can infect the fairness and decency of the ignorant masses.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. The Uluru Statement.

It is fitting that the Uluru Statement from the Heart celebrated the triumphant referendum of 1967: In 1967 we were counted; in 2017 we seek to be heard, the statement declared.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Menzies' 'forgotten people' and 'forgotten issues'.

It is all very jolly for Turnbull's troops to indulge in nostalgia and sentimentality, but they should realize that those times are gone forever. Few Australians were even alive to remember them, and the rest of us dont want to except in black and white movies.

MUNGO MacCALLUM So much for the miracle budget

Just a week after, it appears that nothing has really changed another bad negative Newspoll, war on two fronts with the banks and the Catholics, and, of course, more brawling in the party room. There must be times when even the unquestionably optimistic and egotistic Malcolm Turnbull wonders why he bothers.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. And with one bound, our hero was free

Well, perhaps not completely; it will take more than one agile budget to loose Malcolm Turnbull from his self-imposed bondage, He remains chained hand and foot to the right over climate change and same sex marriage, and he cannot remove himself from the Nationals pork barrel of provincial perks in the name of infrastructure.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Turnbull's lunge to the populist right.

And this is the big glitch in last weeks announcements there was a lot of sound and fury, but it was hard to see just what, if anything, will really change except, perhaps, the squalid dynamics within the Liberal Party. At least Tony Abbott has given the changes a cautious tick. But he has not, and never will, endorse the core values of his leader. He has his own announceables to ponder.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Dog whistling about Australian values.

Housing will not be a centrepiece of the forthcoming budget, our Prime Minister assures us, while remaining vague about what, if anything, will be.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull on superannuation and housing.

But that means nothing to the ideological right, which is now shamelessly defying Turnbull on every level. Naturally Tony Abbott is front and centre of the rebellion, with most of the usual suspects on the backbench.

MUNGO McCALLUM. Turnbull's Passage to India.

He may not have landed any concrete results, but he continues to give the myths and legends a good workout.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Another distraction, but what a distraction.

The starting point is putting a price on carbon some form of emissions trading policy. But this is total anathema to the coalition party room worse even than negative gearing.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Who is to blame for the last Liberal Party election failure - Turnbull or Nutt.

Malcolm Turnbull will plough ahead pushing the doors marked pull and ignoring the lessons, not just from the last election, but from all the polling since.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Even in Malcolm Turnbull's own terms, it is a fizzer.

Well it wasnt what was hoped for, and certainly not what was required; but it was better than nothing.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Free speech, Newscorp and Mark Latham.

What a craven capitulation to political correctness. What a surrender to the great values of Australian democracy, the most important of which, it needs hardly be said (although it has been incessantly by the free speakers of The Australian) is free speech.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Can Turnbull learn from Trump?

It may have been one of the few rational things Trump has done since moving into the White House, but it was considerably more decisive than the endless procrastination of our own leader, who seems determined to hang on to the great National Economic Plan of 2016, the plan for massive across-the-board cuts to company tax.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Gas bags and hydro hype.

So Turnbull gave his orders: ensure that there will be enough gas held locally if there are crises. And the bloated gas bags were only too happy to concur, at least a couple of them were, which was enough to secure Turnbull bragging rights. But what was missing was just how this process would be implemented, and more particularly, what it would cost.

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