Extract from The Guardian
The prime minister has his good points but he is getting played by
almost everyone in parliament and the gun control debate shows that
Here’s what’s good about Malcolm Turnbull, prime minister.
He is comfortable with complexity. He’s happy to let issues run, much further than many prime ministers would. He owns complexity, and doesn’t try to dumb it down to chase a sound bite.
Here’s what’s imperilling Malcolm Turnbull, prime minister.
Too often, he seems to lack basic political instincts. A conflagration happens, and he’s consumed by it, before it’s even set off his early warning beacons. He’s too busy explaining the complexities to know that the wave has already picked him up and ploughed him head first into the beach.
Tuesday was one of those days.
It was obvious from the opening of the day that Labor would move to turn the tables on Turnbull politically.
Turnbull had wanted Tuesday to be about Labor’s links with the trade union movement, and about the imminent restoration of order on the nation’s building sites but then the Liberal Democratic party Senator David Leyonhjelm put gun control on the table.
That’s a pretty big thing to put on the table, politically – gun control.
Unless Turnbull moved to shut that conversation down very early in the day, gun control was going to dominate the day.
And so it came to pass. Gun control was the story of the day, because the prime minister allowed it to be the story of the day.
It took until question time for Turnbull to fire up on the issue, to say the Coalition wouldn’t walk back controls – and even then, the defence was less than complete.
Turnbull was still explaining, apparently. Gun control was a complicated issue. There was the states. There was what shooters wanted. There were senators and their views, which should be listened to.
And so it went. It wasn’t even 100% clear, by close of business, that Turnbull absolutely, definitively, wanted the states to ban the weapon Leyonjhelm wants to allow into the country.
Because, you know, the states. They are the regulators in this field – of gun control. Complicated business.
Never mind that the states are also regulators, of, say, horridly ambitious and deeply subversive renewable energy targets, and the commonwealth feels perfectly at ease to have strong views about those anytime there’s an open microphone.
Apparently one mustn’t express a definitive view to the states on gun control, because consensus is the objective Canberra is working towards.
Again, this is laudable, but what is the prime minister’s view, and why did it seem so difficult to articulate?
This is an incredibly complicated parliament. Turnbull is being played off the break by almost everyone in the building, and he’s trying to build a consensus that will allow his government to make modest progress.
So he explains.
But sometimes, you just have to decide.
He is comfortable with complexity. He’s happy to let issues run, much further than many prime ministers would. He owns complexity, and doesn’t try to dumb it down to chase a sound bite.
Here’s what’s imperilling Malcolm Turnbull, prime minister.
Too often, he seems to lack basic political instincts. A conflagration happens, and he’s consumed by it, before it’s even set off his early warning beacons. He’s too busy explaining the complexities to know that the wave has already picked him up and ploughed him head first into the beach.
Tuesday was one of those days.
It was obvious from the opening of the day that Labor would move to turn the tables on Turnbull politically.
Turnbull had wanted Tuesday to be about Labor’s links with the trade union movement, and about the imminent restoration of order on the nation’s building sites but then the Liberal Democratic party Senator David Leyonhjelm put gun control on the table.
That’s a pretty big thing to put on the table, politically – gun control.
Unless Turnbull moved to shut that conversation down very early in the day, gun control was going to dominate the day.
And so it came to pass. Gun control was the story of the day, because the prime minister allowed it to be the story of the day.
It took until question time for Turnbull to fire up on the issue, to say the Coalition wouldn’t walk back controls – and even then, the defence was less than complete.
Turnbull was still explaining, apparently. Gun control was a complicated issue. There was the states. There was what shooters wanted. There were senators and their views, which should be listened to.
And so it went. It wasn’t even 100% clear, by close of business, that Turnbull absolutely, definitively, wanted the states to ban the weapon Leyonjhelm wants to allow into the country.
Because, you know, the states. They are the regulators in this field – of gun control. Complicated business.
Never mind that the states are also regulators, of, say, horridly ambitious and deeply subversive renewable energy targets, and the commonwealth feels perfectly at ease to have strong views about those anytime there’s an open microphone.
Apparently one mustn’t express a definitive view to the states on gun control, because consensus is the objective Canberra is working towards.
Again, this is laudable, but what is the prime minister’s view, and why did it seem so difficult to articulate?
This is an incredibly complicated parliament. Turnbull is being played off the break by almost everyone in the building, and he’s trying to build a consensus that will allow his government to make modest progress.
So he explains.
But sometimes, you just have to decide.
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