Mungo MacCallum (Dec'd)

Recent articles by Mungo MacCallum (Dec'd)

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Opponents of political correctness have had a ball.

The elitist couch crusaders of the far right have had a busy but productive week so many pesky lefties to sneer at,, so much political correctness to whinge about. It was almost an embarrassment of carnage, which was just the way they like it.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Will Malcolm Turnbull seize the opportunity?

One Nation also copped a hiding, largely as a result of the Faustian bargain on preferences struck between Barnett and Pauline Hanson and her sinister adviser, James Ashby.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Scratching to find an alternative to Malcolm Turnbull.

A corner has been turned, a bridge has been crossed, a line has been drawn. Australian politics has changed: the idea that Malcolm Turnbull could be replaced as Liberal leader is no longer unthinkable.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. The Abbott geyser.

Unless Malcolm Turnbull is prepared to take the pretender front on, to attempt to blow him away in the manner he is trying to dispose of Shorten, he will continue to cop the wrecking, sniping and undermining that Abbott is so enjoying.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Political morality and preference deals.

Turnbull, having told us that he is now an agnostic on energy policy whatever works, by which he means whatever is good politics has now become an agnostic, even an atheist, when it comes to political morality.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull's attacks.

But the real flaw in Turnbulls strategy is its sheer negativity. The great dominators of parliament Menzies, Whitlam and Keating most notably all had something to say: they were policy powerhouses, intent on changing the nation in their own images. There was plenty of attack, plenty of a invective, but it was all aimed at providing a genuine agenda.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Cory Bernardi and the Liberal Party.

In less exciting times, many in the Liberal Party probably most would have viewed the defection of Cory Bernardi with more relief than dismay. Understandably, they regard the South Australian senator as a royal (or at least monarchist) pain in the arse.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull on climate change and coal.

Unfortunately the storms and the heat waves are making it clear to reluctant voters that climate change is not going to disappear. Sooner or later the message will filter through even to the recalcitrants of the coalition. But by then it may be too late for Turnbull and, for that matter, the rest of us.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Trump and Turnbull.

The problem is not with America and Australia it is with Trump and Turnbull, and more urgently with Turnbull. Sooner or later he will have to decide: does he continue as the next in line of Trumps Aunt Sallies, punching bags and door mats or does he have a plan B? Perhaps it is finally time to unleash his inner political animal assuming, of course, that he actually has one.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull and Donald Trump on 'alternate facts'.

The Trans Pacific Partnership is not worth pursuing by anyone serious which leaves Turnbull and Ciobo, still clinging, not even to a straw, but to the open waters of internationalism.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Baird and Turnbull.

Apart from his regret at losing the nearest thing to a mate among the premiers, Turnbull must be feeling more than a little conflicted, because the inevitable comparisons that will be made between the two leaders will not be in his favour.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull and Sussan Ley.

The issue is not one of black-letter legality but ethics, if that concept has not withered away completely in the Australian parliament. Explanation, justification and excuse are utterly irrelevant in this case, and finally, many months after the report that was supposed to fix the Bronwyn Bishop problem was meant to be resolved, there is the prospect of movement.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Turnbull on Indonesia and Israel.

The theory remains that Indonesians are all right to visit, but we still dont regard them as full allies or equals.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull on his knees.

The recalcitrant right is, if anything, more antagonistic than ever as the season of peace and goodwill drags on.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull's future.

The Chinese will be celebrating the year of the rooster. But for Malcolm Turnbull it is more likely to be just another year of the chicken. If not the feather duster.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull's end of year report card.

It may well be that even if Turnbull has the will and nerve to try and move his ministry ... finding convenient places to accommodate them without serious disruption will prove impossible.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Federal Government failure and State Government responses.

Various premiers have finally despaired of the torpor of the Turnbull administration. .. so the states have begun to go it on their own.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull blaming everyone but himself.

The constant refrain of economists who get it wrong is that we should never rely on just one set of figures.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Saving democracy.

Protests are all very well, but only if they are seen to be ineffective. ... It is yet another indication that serious dissent cannot and will not be tolerated.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull will do anything to secure an outcome.

Malcolm Turnbull's experience in negotiation has been in the boardroom of Goldman Sachs, but the atmosphere of the Senate crossbench is more akin to that of the Istanbul Souk.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. George Brandis is a dead man walking.

What is not clear is whether George Brandis was genuinely ignorant of the implications of the tax case or whether he deliberately ignored them. In either case, he should immediately have resigned.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. the National Party is 'feeling its oats'.

Mungo MacCallum writes that the National Party may not yet be out of control but it represents a far more frightening prospect to Turnbull and the Liberals than the cross-benchers ever will.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Trump, Turnbull and ANZUS.

So with a single bound across the Pacific, Trumpery has come to Australia or at least to our elected leaders, which is the troubling bit. Last week Malcolm Turnbull was inveighing against the elites yes, Malcolm Bligh Turnbull, the multimillionaire lord of Wentworth, Mr Harbourside Mansion himself. His complaint that the elitist ABC was talking about section 18c the ABC, not the manic Murdoch press which has spent relentless months on the same subject until Turnbull was forced to throw a chunk of raw meat to his right wing predators in the form of an...

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Donald Trump - a change agenda?

First the Poms abandoned common sense in backing Brexit and now the Yanks have voted against their own best interests (and those of the rest of the civilized world) by electing Donald J Trump. This was not a rational decision; it was the ultimate political gesture, a defiant middle finger towards what they imagined was The Establishment, by which they actually meant anything and anyone they resented. It was the act of a demented driver who deliberately veers across the median strip into the oncoming traffic: he knows it will certainly harm him, he may not survive, but...

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Shorten and Trump.

Malcolm Turnbull and his supporters regularly deride Bill Shorten as standing for nothing first as a populist weather vane, and more recently as a constant nay-sayer in the style of Tony Abbott. And there has been some grounds for the accusations: Shorten has not always appeared a firm and consistent advocate of policies. But in the last couple of weeks he has changed, standing up for both his politics and principles. Both have been on display with his rejection of Turnbulls demands to restore the Building and Construction Commission and to pass the Same Sex marriage Plebiscite;...

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Paranoia about boat people and manufactured demagogic outrage.

There must surely be more to the governments latest assault on the boat people than simply crude wedge politics and gratuitous cruelty; but if there is, the Prime Minister is not saying at least not yet. This, of course, is part of a long-standing tradition. When and where asylum seekers are concerned, nothing is to be revealed unless it is absolutely necessary, and not always then. But Malcolm Turnbulls announcement last week that anyone seeking to arrive to Australia by boat after July 2013 is now to be banned from our fair shores always and forever seems...

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Family First or Day First?

The name of Bob Day, the now former senator, was never one to conjure with. If he was noted at all, it was usually as the Sancho Panza to David Leyonhjelms Don Quixote a loyal and reliable hanger-on, grounded where his leader tended at times to eccentricity. Leyonhjelm, the Liberal Democrat Libertarian, could be a touch unpredictable and troublesome, most recently in the brouhaha over his attempted deal to rebirth the Adler shotgun. Day, on the other hand, was an unswerving ideologue, a relentless crusader for a hard-line economic fundamentalism. Given that the designation of his party...

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Trickle down.

The economic theory known as supply side is better known as trickle down, because it goes something like this. You give large sums of money to those who already have it, because they know the best way to handle it they will invest it rather than simply trouser the loot. As a result, the benefits trickle down to the rest of the community in the form of more jobs, better productivity and higher wages and conditions. And there may even be a few drops left for those at the very bottom: everyone benefits.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. What worthwhile lawyer would want to work with George Brandis.

Our bumble-footed Attorney-General, George Brandis, has finally got something right. The resignation of the Solicitor-General, Justin Gleeson, was the proper course of action for him to have taken. Indeed, it was inevitable: when the first and second law officers of the nation are irrevocably divided, one of them must give way and if the first wont, the second must.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Concealing crimes in Manus and Nauru.

Those eminent jurists Malcolm Turnbull and George Brandis are normally very careful with the words they use; indeed, Brandis did his best to bore a senate committee rigid as he spent many minutes explaining exactly what he meant by the term consult. But in spite of their learning and erudition, our latter day Perry Masons seem unable to distinguish between the difference between refute (which is the one they constantly use) and rebut (which what they presumably mean).

MUNGO MacCALLUM. The Turnbull-Abbott shoot out.

In the normal world, the question of whether a gun could fire seven rounds or five rounds would be largely academic; if there was a dispute it could be expected to be settled swiftly and uneventfully. But in the confused and murky world of Malcolm Turnbull, in which reality and fantasy merge into a nightmare and every step seems mired in quicksand, with progress tortuous and salvation impossible well, thats just another average week. Within four short days what should have been the merest glitch has developed into major shit storm in which Turnbull and his predecessor,...

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Brandis vs Gleeson.

Our Attorney General George Brandis states as an unviolable credo that a barrister must give fearless and impartial advice at all times. This is a legal ideal, and perhaps one that he believes in, but the fact is that he, like all his predecessors in the office, faces an irreconcilable conflict of interest. Certainly he is a lawyer, and a very important one: he is the first law officer of Australia. But he is also predominantly a politician; a senior government minister. And as such, he has an obligation to both prosecute and defend the decisions of the...

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull's problem in the parliament.

Another week, another stuff up. Once again Malcolm Turnbulls year of delivery has delivered a parliamentary prat fall. This one was unprecedented, but not actually serious: for the first time ever, the government voted against itself. The mistake was quickly corrected, but there was considerable embarrassment in the process, an embarrassment compounded when the offending minister, Kelly ODwyer, was unable next day to explain the legislation of which she was in charge during the fiasco.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Royal Commissions for Labor prime ministers and trade union officials, but not bankers.

So the great inquisition is over, and the tycoons have laughed all the way back to their respective banks. As the gleeful business spruikers pointed out, the politicians did not lay a glove on them they were lashed with a feather, flogged with a limp lettuce leaf. But did anyone seriously expect that it would be different even (perhaps especially) Malcolm Turnbull?

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Honorary doctorate for John Howard.

Let me join in the chorus deploring the honorary doctorate conferred on John Howard by Sydney University. And its not because Im a Howard hater per se although there was plenty to detest about the policies of our 25th Prime Minister. Iraq, Tampa, kids overboard, the Pacific Solution, the refusal to apologise to the stolen generations, the racist response to the Wik decision, WorkChoices, to name but a few; even the GST, that lazy and regressive boost to revenue while offering a sweetener of tax cuts for the wealthy.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull's low road.

So much for Malcolm Turnbulls great fortnight in parliament, followed by his triumphant march through the marbled halls of New York and Washington. His claque of supporters raved, of course, but the paying customers the voters remained resolutely unimpressed. Newspoll, the bible on which our Prime Minister relied on when he made his grab for power, put his government behind on preferences, and the primary vote fell below 40 percent where The Australians Liberal spruiker Dennis Shanahan used to gleefully describe as the death zone when it involved Labor. Now he is more reticent, as...

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Cheering for East Timor.

It may sound unpatriotic, but I could not help cheering when the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague brought down its decision last week, and it was against Australia. After more than 12 festering years, this finally brings to a head a shameful and shameless exhibition of browbeating and exploiting our newest and poorest neighbour, Timor LEste. John Howard claimed much of the credit for defending the independence of the nation, and so he should; but it has to be said that his motives were not entirely altruistic.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. World's best practice - the Gulags on Manus and Nauru.

At a sparsely attended audience well past prime time at the United Nations General Assembly, Malcolm Turnbull used his pulpit to proclaim that Australias border security was the worlds best. And it is up to a point. Not since the demolition of the Berlin Wall has there been such ruthless sealing of our frontiers. The boats may not have stopped entirely, but they have been very effectively repelled from our shores. We have, as even Peter Dutton, Turnbulls hanger on in New York, admitted, something of a natural boundary; the country is, as our national anthem notes,...

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Happy birthday Malcolm Turnbull.

A bit over a year ago, Malcolm Turnbull decided that it was all about winning. Not winning for the nation, or winning for the party, and certainly not winning for his long-held policies, but winning for himself making himself number one. So he set about buying votes; it was, after all, almost second nature. That was the way he obtained his preselection and bludgeoned his way past the sitting member for Wentworth in the first place.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. ALP Ambush.

When Sam Dastyari was promoted to the shadow ministry earlier this year, Bill Shorten was unable, because of the oppositions salary cap rules, to give him a pay rise. But now Dastyari can surely apply for a lavish bonus from Malcolm Turnbull, because his stuff up in accepting money from a Chinese firm was the only thing that stood between his stupidity and a week of total humiliation for the government. It was not only the defeats on the floor of the House of Representatives in the dying hours of proceedings; these were a fitting climax to a...

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Undermining Malcolm Turnbull.

The baying pack of coalition backbenchers demanding the abolition, or at least the dilution, of the Racial Discrimination Act may be sincere crusaders for free speech. On the other hand they may be motivated by a desire to attack small-l liberals, of whom one is (or at least was) their own leader, Malcolm Turnbull. And some are just nasty. But in all cases they are guilty of that most heinous of political crimes: they are out of touch with the electorate. Despite the fanatical efforts of the ideological zealots of The Australian, there is not even a squall...

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Scott Morrison - channelling Paul Keating or Joe Hockey.

In his latest jeremiad on the state of the economy, Scott Morrison seemed torn between channelling Paul Keating or Joe Hockey. There was an echo of Keatings warning about the country turning into a banana republic, in the prospect of the national debt reaching a trillion dollars (thats $1,000,000,000,000, a figure of sheer fantasy for ordinary voters) and a glance to Hockeys need to end the age of entitlement and designate the populace as either lifters or leaners, rebranded by Morrison as the taxed and the taxed-not (by whom he means not the wealthy who employ armies of lawyers...

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Long Tan - minding our manners.

It is entirely understandable that Australian veterans were disappointed by the Long Tan commemoration stuff up; it is clear that the negotiations, such as they were, between the governments in Hanoi and Canberra were misconstrued, probably on both sides. It caused unnecessary grief and irritation, and this is to be regretted. But it is worth looking at the bigger picture: allowing the erection of a memorial cross at Long Tan at all was a remarkably generous gesture by the Vietnamese.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Born to rule and oppose.

It is really hardly surprising that Bill Shorten is proving reluctant to co-operate with the new government he so nearly toppled. After all, when the Liberals were in opposition from 2010 t0 2013, they had a policy of remorselessly opposing anything and everything that the government suggested. Tony Abbott extravagantly sauced Julia Gillards goose, and now Shorten is applying a touch of relish to Malcolm Turnbulls gander; What goes around comes around.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. The Olympic Games. A chance to celebrate and honour human achievements.

My favourite Olympic Games story comes not from Rio in 2016 but from Persepolis in 492 BC. The setting was the court of King Darius I, who styled himself Darius the Great. His Persian empire was vast, but there were problems: the Greek Ionian states had revolted, and although they had been ruthlessly put down, the root cause remained -- Greece itself. So he sent a trusted general, Mardonius, to finish off the Greek mainland. Mardoniuss troops smashed through Thrace and Thessaly with little serious resistance; but then something strange happened. Suddenly there was no resistance at all....

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull, accident-prone and careless.

When youre hot youre hot, and when youre not, youre not. Our Prime Minister was hardly responsible for the fact that the Australian Bureau of Statistics site crashed (or, the boffins insist, was pulled down) on census night. Only the very partisan and very silly are saying that it was his fault. But thats not the point: he will still have to wear the blame for what has been an embarrassing blooper which not only may have derailed the census, but also will set back the publics confidence of all forms of electronic commerce what price internet...

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Campaign against the Australian Census.

My first encounter with the Australian census was in 1971, and even then there were worries about its privacy. Gordon Barton, the proprietor of Nation Review, the paper for which I then worked, ran a fierce campaign against what he thought was a dangerous tendency for the government to collect peoples personal details. I spoke at length to the responsible minister, a somewhat bemused Billy Snedden; neither of us could see what the fuss was about, and 45 years later I still cant. The census is a necessary and desirable tool of government, a snapshot of the nation...

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull and indigenous affairs.

If Malcolm Turnbull did not know it before, he certainly should now: before you stomp your way into Aboriginal politics, it is wise to first don the emu-feather sandals of a trained Kadaitcha man. The area is fraught with uncertainty and sensitivities which are not always apparent to the outsider; whitefella politics are relatively straightforward compared to the Indigenous version.

MUNGO MacCALLUM. So much for Team Australia!

The term was always a bit suss indeed, when Tony Abbott coined it to claim solidarity against the war against terror, it quickly became obvious that membership of his side was to be strictly limited. Team Australia meant, in effect, Team Abbott: its participants were to be Captains picks, loyal not to the country but to the right wing causes he himself would select. And it was perhaps prescient that one of his immediate s decisions was to barrack for team New Zealand he enthusiastically endorsed the former Kiwi prime minister Helen Clark as his choice for...

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