If you use inducements or threats to manipulate a political process or public debate then we will unleash the full force of powerful new laws and defend our values and democratic institutions … foreign actors who would do us harm are now on notice: we will not tolerate covert, coercive or corrupting behaviour in our country.
Malcolm Turnbull, December 7 2017
These were people that were a foreign company, controlled by foreign nationals, was conspiring to overthrow the prime minister of Australia… you’ve got it from Murdoch’s own admissions.
Malcolm Turnbull, April 20, 2020
Plutocrats, Malcolm Turnbull called them in his ABC interview last night promoting his book A Bigger Picture: media moguls like the Murdoch family, who wanted to restore Tony Abbott to the leadership of the Liberal Party, even at the price of sending it into opposition, because they could control him, whereas they couldn’t control Turnbull. The Murdochs were responsible for trying to engineer regime change in Australia.
Ironically, one of Turnbull’s legacies is foreign interference laws aimed at exposing and limiting the influence of, inter alia, “a foreign political organisation” in Australian politics.
According to Turnbull in his book, “News Corporation operates now like a political party”; he compares Fox News in the US with “the state-owned media of an authoritarian government”.
Alas, Turnbull never took the opportunity to extend foreign influence laws to the malignant influence of “a foreign company, controlled by foreign nationals” operating “like a political party”.
Indeed, Turnbull was helpful to News Corp, managing an historic change in media ownership laws in 2017 — “the biggest reform to Australian media laws in nearly three decades,” as he termed it at the time, including “abolition of redundant ownership rules that shackle local media companies,” meaning the two out of three rule limiting News Corp and Nine from owning newspapers, TV licences and radio stations in the same market.
Turnbull thanked News Corp and Foxtel, along with the rest of the mainstream media, “for supporting these reforms.”
Turnbull also cut $84 million from News Corp’s number one enemy, the ABC, in the 2018 budget, following on from the Abbott government’s quarter-billion dollar cuts in 2014.
Like Kevin Rudd — who peddles a silly conspiracy theory involving Turnbull, News Corp and the NBN — Turnbull has only called out the Murdochs from the safety of post-political life. At least Turnbull’s predecessor as communications minister, Stephen Conroy, was still in power when he accused News Corp of trying to engineer “regime change” in 2010.
Given his extensive experience with media moguls, his legal and merchant banking experience, his time leading the republican movement, his wealth, family connections through his marriage and, of course, his political career, Malcolm Turnbull is, more than anyone else in Australia, even more than John Howard, perfectly placed to discuss how power really works in Australia. And while he’s happy to now call out the Murdochs, he fails to offer us the advantage of that, to provide a proper dissection of how power — and not just media power — shapes public life and policy here.
Take climate action, a topic close to Turnbull’s heart. The Coalition is held hostage by a “toxic alliance”, he says in the book, of the right of the Liberal and National parties, the Murdochs “and other right wing media”, and the fossil fuel lobby itself, with its big donors including Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer.
That’s one of the few occasions political donations get a mention in the book — donors are mentioned in passing (including the exhausting work of wining and dining them on budget night), and his own donation during the 2016 campaign is discussed, but not the role of donations, and the lack of disclosure around them, in politics and policymaking.
In 2016-17, and 2017-18, while Turnbull was prime minister, the Coalition across its federal and state divisions took over $650,000 in donations from fossil fuel energy and coal mining companies. Clive Palmer now uses his money for his own political party in an effort to stymie climate action, but those who benefit from a lack of serious climate action policy in Australia were major donors to the government Turnbull led.
Turnbull can at least claim he initiated a royal commission into financial services, but only after being dragged to it by Labor, the minor parties and the Nationals, and only after putting up stiff resistance to the idea before and after the 2016 election.
The Coalition — like Labor — accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from the major banks and large insurance companies during his leadership. Similarly, the big four auditing firms’ consultancy arms, which have enjoyed a rich and ever-growing harvest of taxpayer funding from the government’s outsourcing of policy advice, lifted their already-substantial donations to both sides while Turnbull was PM.
Turnbull also declined to establish a federal ICAC or do anything to improve the lack of transparency around influence peddling and corporate attempts to influence policy at the federal level.
The point is not so much Turnbull’s hypocrisy; hypocrisy is unremarkable in politics and if anything Turnbull was less inclined to it than most. And there’s a strong element of truth in his argument that he drew the wrath of the Murdochs for being his own man, compared to the docile figure, vindictive Tony Abbott.
But that’s just one small part of the structure of power in Australia, and the way key figures and corporations use that structure to serve themselves through the political system. A true bigger picture would have provided a better perspective on the abuse of power in a country where voters believe the system serves the powerful and not them.
The cant, bitter and twisted, miserable ghost Malcolm words in that opening two paragraphs -> funny(?) Sales didn’t take the opportunity to remind him of that when she had the chance last night?
…. Then again she’s on that band-wagon set against Get-Up! : while being unable to see the comparison of m.o. to Murdoch’s Muppet army.
I won’t buy the book but would be curious to know if there’s reference to his mutilation of Rudd’s NBN at the behest of his then superior, PM Abbott. As Minister for Communications he was complicit in delivering the woeful 20th century version of a network which currently beleaguers our nation.
My advice to Turnbull: forget that nest of snakes in Canberra and enjoy retirement with the family.
“woeful 20th century version of a network” made of 19th century technology. The NBN is to Turnbull and Abbott what the Ruby Princess is to Berejiklian, Hazzard and Co.
With all due respects Fred, in the case of the NBN, the evidence is there that a third party was involved – Murdoch!
In the case of the Ruby Princess, under our commonwealth constitution s51(ix) gives the commonwealth the power to create laws pertaining to quarantine. It does so under the Biosecurity Act(2015)- “to manage biosecurity threats to plant, animal and human health in Australia and its external territories”.
What should be of concern is –
(1) Where is the Minister responsible, Dutton as the Minister of Border Force in taking ownership for this stuff up?
(3) If the tragedy of the bushfires & Covid- 19 have taught us anything it is surely that this blame game between the jurisdictions under our federation has to end.
Nine tiers is becoming a sick joke we can no longer afford & here we go with another state generated inquiry to get to bottom of this shoddy saga ( remember the SA Royal Commission into the Murray- Darling).
Sort out our dysfunctional constitution!
Why isn’t the so called code forcing Google and FaceBook to pay portion of their assessed earnings from advertising to media companies including Nine and News Ltd. a massive boondoggle gift from politicians to the likes of Murdoch. The fact that it seems to have bipartisan support does not alter its character.
Unless I am mistaken, neither FaceBook or Google have much of a presence in the lists of taxpayers to Australia; if so, how is it that their earnings from advertising are leviable for the benefit of selected media companies but not substantially exposed to effective taxation as Australian earnings?
You say, “And there’s a strong element of truth in his argument that he drew the wrath of the Murdochs for being his own man, compared to the docile figure, vindictive Tony Abbott.”
Rubbish. You have it 100% the wrong way around.
Tony Abbott has extreme opinions on many things, and the Murdoch press like him because of those opinions. But they are his opinions, formed from his own rather singular view of the world. They’re not fed to him by the Murdoch press or anyone else.
Whatever else Tony Abbott may be, he’s not docile.
Yes ,Abbott is certainly his own Santamaria-stick-up-his-arse idiot .
Malcolm is rather inclined to regard the flaws in others as being of greater consequence than his own flaws. I see others have raised his guilt for the egregiously bad state of the NBN. He claims same sex marriage as an achievement but for me that is more than cancelled out by his failings on NBN and pusillanimity on climate change when bullied by fellow band member Barnaby Joyce.
He regularly dined with the big end of town but, in governing for all Australians, did he ever have a cup of tea with Sally McManus?
Slightly off-topic but within range – When Turnbull told Leigh Sales last night that he was rolled because he was his own man and not Murdoch’s man, why did she not press the point and ask if that therefore meant that Morrison and Dutton were both Murdoch’s men? That was my inference but I’d like to hear it aloud.