John Hewson on Q&A: Malcolm Turnbull a 'better salesman' but 'may have sold out on climate change'
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Version 0 of 1. Malcolm Turnbull may discover personal popularity is “ephemeral” unless he can establish credentials in tackling substantive economic reform or climate change, the former Liberal leader John Hewson has said on ABC’s Q&A program. Turnbull’s prospects as the new prime minister dominated discussion on the ABC talkshow, which was shunted to the national broadcaster’s second digital channel in favour of live coverage of the leadership contest. The other major topic was Australia’s role in Syria, which prompted prominent the Christian leader Tim Costello to urge the government not to discriminate against Muslims by restricting refugee intake from the conflict to persecuted Christian minorities. Related: Scott Morrison says Christians will be focus of Australia's refugee intake In response to a question about whether Turnbull’s ascendance over Tony Abbott signalled a rebirth in the soul of the Liberal party, Hewson said this hinged on whether he moved to deliver a substantial advance in the government’s climate change policy before UN climate talks in Paris at the end of this year. “I think it’s all for Malcolm to do right now,” he said. “The rumour is he’s sold out on climate change, which I personally think is the largest policy challenge – moral challenge, economic, political and social challenge – of this century.” Hewson said Turnbull would be “a better salesman” than Abbott, which meant “more of a contest” for the Labor opposition leader, Bill Shorten. But voters experiencing a “fairly consistent” slide on the standard of living in recent years expected delivery on economic growth and many options had been “burned” by the Abbott government’s ill-fated sales job on its two budgets, Hewson said. “Popularity is fairly short term and ephemeral,” he said. “Unless Malcolm delivers, repositions the party and himself in the course of the next few months, I think it’s going to be hard for him to sustain that. “Which says to me that perhaps they’re actually going to go to an early election on the back of a change in leadership rather than wait 12 months.” The Labor MP Terri Butler claimed that Turnbull as leader would not force a change in the opposition’s campaign strategy leading up to the next election. Butler said Turnbull “wholeheartedly supported” the Abbott budgets which aimed to cut funding in higher education, health and social services. “Not just because he’s obliged to but because his values are the values of the Liberal government,” she said. “And so for me he is a new vessel and a new salesperson but the same core message.” Related: Malcolm Turnbull promises new style of leadership after overthrowing Abbott Butler also suggested that Turnbull’s oversight of the government’s pared down national broadband network as communications minister was a sleeper issue. “I don’t think you can underestimate the sentiment out there about the NBN, certainly for voters under 35,” she said. “People actually see through the fraudband model that Malcolm Turnbull has led.” The conservative commentator Rowan Dean suggested there was a parallel between Turnbull and the US president, Barack Obama, in that he was “a great speaker, great orator, that’s what he’s selling himself on” but it remained to be seen whether, like Obama, he may falter on delivery in office. When the US folk singer Joan Baez responded that Obama had been under unprecedented “24-hour attacks” by his political rivals, Dean suggested Abbott had fallen prey to the same treatment. Costello said Turnbull would have to “pay his dues because the great suspicion in the conservative side of the Liberal party is ‘he’s not one of us’.” “And he really now sounds too much like Malcolm Fraser – or John Hewson when you left politics … Malcolm’s going to have to be careful but I do think now the … rebirth of the Liberal party may be on.” Costello said the “new pressure” for Shorten was to show Labor was “a viable alternative government”. “I think Bill Shorten and Labor didn’t have to show [that] too much under Abbott because he was so unpopular.” Related: Malcolm Turnbull: former journalist, banker, lawyer – and now Australia's PM At one point when discussion turned to Australia’s proposed military intervention in Syria and the vexing question of Islamic State aggression and why the Assad regime should not also be targeted, Baez said she was “a pacificist, but I’m not an idiot”. Baez, a prominent figure from the 1960s peace movement, said she had “no answers” for how to deal with Isis but that bombings would play into their hands and “help them grow”. Costello, the chief executive of World Vision Australia and a Baptist minister, agreed that bombing was “never a solution” and said the strife between Shia and Sunni Muslims in the Middle East, inflamed by the Iraq war of 2003 – a factor in the rise of Isis – showed the “unintended consequences” of war. Butler said extending Australia’s military involvement into Syria was a “humanitarian intervention” that was part of upholding a promise to give security to the Iraqi government. |