Carlo's Corner: Thank god Turnbull has abandoned Abbott's politics

February 25, 2016
Issue 
Can you spot the difference?

I am not sure if I fully understand recent political developments, but the message I am getting from the Malcolm Turnbull government is that we have to send babies to hellish prison camps or else the gay lobby will persecute Christian students.

And we need a big increase in military spending or house prices will tragically collapse, or tragically rise, depending on which tragedy you wish to choose. Say what you will about the Turnbull government, it offers no shortages of tragedies.

Your view on whether housing prices going up or down amounts to a tragedy presumably depends on which sector of society you belong to — the sector involving rich investors using houses to avoid tax, or the sector involving everyone else.

You get the impression Turnbull has never met anyone who doesn't own significant property. This could explain why his attempt at a scare campaign over Labor's mild proposed reform to limit “negative gearing” as certain to drive down housing prices was almost immediately contradicted by assistant treasurer Kelly O'Dwyer — who pushed the exact opposite scare campaign that it would drive housing prices up.

Still, we should be thankful that the uncouth Tony Abbott is gone and now we have a suave, urbane, socially progressive, multimillionaire merchant banker in charge.

No more is the government's agenda set by backwards-looking Christian fundamentalist views. No, now we have moderate, liberal proposals like attacking anti-bullying programs on the grounds they “indoctrinate” kids by pushing tolerance of different sexualities.

Apparently such programs spread “cultural Marxism”, which I was disappointed to discover had nothing to do with encouraging kids to listen to Rage Against the Machine.

No more crude, savage class war attacks on public health or workers' rights ... more or less. That is, if you don't count the savage class war attacks on Medicare or penalty rates. If you exclude the actual savage class war attacks, then we are seeing real progress.

And finally, finally we have a government that cares about science! Just not actual scientists, as such.

Obviously we are still torturing children. I mean, there are some things that are sacrosanct in Australian politics, and abusing innocent children in prison camps is just one of those things.

As Turnbull said, if we don't jail innocent people indefinitely on isolated prison camps in widely condemned inhumane conditions, there could be a “humanitarian catastrophe”.

And we wouldn't want that.

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